I Shall Devour Everything

Arion saw many weapons like swords, axes, spears, sabers, daggers, and so on. However, his eyes landed upon a glaive with two long blades connected to each of its ends with a handle in the middle.

Even though he had never used a glaive before, he could imagine that this weapon can be used for fast attacks while dealing severe damage to his enemies close range, of course.

He thought back to his fight with the Jawfiends in all that darkness and remembered how they tried to attack him in a pack by trying to surround him from all sides.

His bow and arrow were obviously useless at such close range, and his axes were only able to help him out because he was backed into a corner, and he only had to deal with the Jawfiends in front of him.

But he knew that if at that time they had attacked him from the back as well, then he would have surely been doomed and would have gone down before the Queen Jawfiend showed up.

He had already realized by now that he needed a weapon good enough for crowd control, especially the freedom and ability to deal damage to enemies trying to gang up on him from all sides.

And all this time, he had been thinking which weapon might be suitable for this and had decided to ask Old Zi. But now, seeing this glaive before him, he felt like all his doubts had been thrown out the window and that this was the weapon he was looking for.

Without saying anything, Arion walked forward and picked up the glaive by its handle, and inspected its two sharp and long blades.

It looked more like a double-edged spear, but the handle was too short, and the glaive as a whole wasn't longer than five feet.

The weapon as a whole didn't seem that heavy, and he had a feeling he could just whirl it around him to skewer through Dreadlings trying to gang upon him.

However, he knew it would require perfect skills and finesse to make such moves and master this weapon. Otherwise, he might end up cutting himself in the process while swinging it around.

"Hmm, a double-edged weapon, good. Why did you choose it?" Old Zi asked with his hands behind his back while Shun looked at Arion with his brows raised.

"Because one thing I noticed back when I was attacked by Dreadlings was that they love to corner us by cutting off any retreat. And in such a situation, I couldn't think of any better weapon than this to make a path for myself while slaughtering them as well," Arion confidently said.

Old Zi nodded, "Very good. I had a feeling you might take a liking to this weapon which is why I placed it on this stand."

"Those two blades surely look dangerous. Be careful not to cut yourself, hehe." Shun said smugly.

"Just pick a weapon already and stop wasting our time," Arion said with a tired sigh. Right now, he was excited to try out this weapon and master it bit by bit.

He slowly rotated the glaive around by moving his wrist around. And indeed, he felt that this weapon could be used to give out attacks at high speed.

He could already imagine himself skewering through an army of Dreadlings on his own.

He then came out of his dream world when he saw Shun picking up two sabers and inspecting them.

"Alright, I pick these two," Shun said as if he came to a decision. Arion didn't expect him to be a dual wielder.

"Why so?" Old Zi asked.

"Well, these weapons are quite fast and light enough for me to slash through my enemies and reduce my blindspots compared to using a single weapon," Shun answered.

Old Zi nodded, "Good. It seems like you two didn't have much confusion on what weapon to choose and already have your needs sorted out. But I have to tell you, even though I personally use a spear, I can at least teach you both the basics of these weapons so that you two wouldn't be helpless before Dreadlings."

Arion and Shun bowed, "Of course, Master. We eagerly await your teachings."

"Then put away those weapons first."

Arion realized immediately what Old Zi was planning while Shun had a confused look and looked at Arion, putting away his glaive, and did the same as well.

"Then what are we going to do now?" Shun asked in a confused tone.

"Of course, we have to cover the basics first—hand-to-hand combat. You two need to get accustomed to fighting without any weapons first so that you could make your body adapt to dodging attacks and make your mind react faster to make sure your body can follow up with your mind. Otherwise, say you already see an attack coming at you, but your body may be too slow to react even if your mind was fast enough. So, the most important thing you two have to learn is to build that synchronization between body and mind," Old Zi explained.

Arion nodded while Shun nodded in realization as if what he said really made sense, and he never really thought about such details.

Arion wasn't worried about having difficulty in mastering hand-to-hand combat since he already had some fighting experience and felt that he could incorporate his crazy flukes into his normal attacks as well.

The three then went back to the middle of the peak of the hills, where it was a vast open space with cool air drifting through.

"Okay. You two come at me and show me what you two know. It doesn't matter if both of you don't know how to fight at all. I just want to know which areas of your skills I need to focus upon first," Old Zi said as he gestured to the two to punch him together.

Arion and Shun glanced at each other and then looked at Old Zi. 

"Yaa!" Shun already charged forward as he jumped and tried to punch Old Zi, but he easily deflected Shun's arm by pushing away his arm without much force.

Arion shook his head, wondering why Shun was making himself look like a fool by attempting such an idiotic move.

Arion immediately followed after but didn't try to land a punch directly. Instead, he feigned as if he was going to punch Old Zi in the stomach but quickly sidestepped towards his back to land a quick elbow to his kidney.

But just as Arion smiled in surprise that he was about to land an attack on a senior expert, his expectations indeed came true when Old Zi caught his elbow without even turning around and flung him away.

"Damn...that was faster than I expected…" Arion mumbled as he got up and dusted his back.

Shun also got up and had an aggrieved look at being thrown away so easily like a ragdoll.

Old Zi sighed and said, "Shun, you didn't even care to observe your enemy, and instead, you even took to the air to punch him. That is nothing but foolishness since you are giving your enemy lots of opening to take you down, especially when you can't change your trajectory in mid-air. Unless you are absolutely sure you can land a finishing move on your enemy who is cornered, don't try such attacks."

Shun pursed his lips as if he didn't expect that his flamboyant attack would be seen as child's play.

Old Zi then looked at Arion and said, "Arion, it seems like you indeed know something about hand-to-hand combat. I know you observed me carefully, especially my arms and legs, to see if I was going to make any moves. But since I didn't, you decided to attack first and even feigned before trying to elbow me—good effort on your part. But your mistake was that when you tried to land an attack on me, you used all your focus and concentration on hitting me when in fact, you should still have shifted a part of your focus onto what I was doing. Then probably, you could have seen me extending my hand out to catch yours."

As if a bulb lit up in his head, Arion's eyes brightened up as if he realized something important and wondered why he made such a silly mistake and how he hadn't thought about this earlier.

The advice Old Zi gave was simple, but only because he pointed them out. Otherwise, Arion, on his own might have taken some time to figure it out.

"Again!" Old Zi said in a vigorous tone, making Arion and Shun fill with enthusiasm to make sure that their next try would at least be better.

Mei and Yaro came out by this time as they had already prepared breakfast but seeing Arion and Shun training so diligently with complete focus and passion, they decided not to disturb them and simply watch.