Interference

'I'm pretty sure that last tackle was followed by a near-perfect takedown... So why am I the one being choked while he's living his best life hanging on my back?' I thought while I was getting choked by that guy.

He had his arm wrapped around my neck, strangling me with all his might while I was concentrating most of my mana there to try and put some resistance there and avoid getting my neck snapped in half. I tried to struggle a bit to get him off by making part of the mana bounce around my body, which culminated in an attempted headbutt that failed miserably.

As the guy kept tightening his hold on my neck, I found myself forced to tap before the situation could get any more serious. With my pride hurt, I immediately spun around myself the moment he released me, managing to sweep away his right leg when he was trying to get up.

He fell, and I immediately used this opportunity to get on top of him while he tried to throw some dirt at me to blind me. It was then that I finally landed the first punch on his face of the day, with both eyes closed. Then I tried to wiggle around while grabbing my right arm with both of his hands as he was pulling me close.

'I guess it's time to return the favor then.' I thought as I landed with my elbow first on his face.

But it was too early to celebrate, as the guy quickly put his arms around my neck and tried to pull me closer, so I put both hands on his chest and enhanced them to be strong enough to push myself upwards and escape from his grasp. Just as I was about to throw another punch, I saw the guy's feet on my neck.

'This mother-'

He catapulted me to the ground and tried to get a hold of my left arm while he was at it. To stop him, I made another foul move and made some flames out of mana around my arm. Then I quickly got back on my knees while he was trying to back away and jumped him while I was still on all fours.

'If I keep playing dirty, maybe I can-' Then the man turned around and managed to stop me by grabbing me by the shoulders. He then tried flipping me towards his right to get on the ground, but I managed to avoid it by simply using mana to match his strength.

As I was slowly getting better at fighting, he also started to get more serious. He then suddenly changed the direction in which he was pushing me, and we ended up rolling on the ground. While that was happening, I was trying to get a hold of his back while he was trying to get a hold of my legs. Ultimately, he ended up grabbing my leg, but before he could do anything with it, I kicked him away using all of my strength. The rebound also managed to push me away.

We then both got up, removed some of the dirt off our clothes, and took our stances. I imitated his wide stance from earlier while he took another stance, a more compact stance with the right leg forward and both his hands in a weird pose with all of his fingers extended and tightly compressed against one another.

Since no one seemed willing to strike first, I decided to be the one attacking once again and began to charge at my nemesis. Once in striking range, I raised my left knee, feigning a kick, and saw no reaction from him.

'What?'

Before I could drop the leg, he managed to rapidly place his right leg on top of my knee, and with a bit of leverage, he made me drop the food on the ground. I got distracted then, I was looking at his foot when I noticed the other leg wasn't on the ground, and then it hit me on the right side like a wip. His left leg was also incredibly fast and powerful. I don't know how he was doing it, but they seemed like springs, managing to bounce with extreme power behind them.

The kick managed to push me back by a couple of steps, but it wasn't anything serious, so, without feeling the pain, I proceeded to move forward when suddenly the back leg of the nemesis sprung up, ready to deliver a frontal kick, but when I raised the right knee, I didn't feel anything, and before I could even ask myself if that was a feint, an extremely powerful left kick to my neck.

One moment I was standing on my feet, and the next I was on the ground while the enemy was making weird gestures in celebration.

'I give up for now; it's useless at this point. He's too good at hand-to-hand combat.' I thought as I was slowly getting up.

He was nice enough to not attack me while I slowly got up, even though I wasn't so nice when he was doing the same thing moments earlier. Even though the god's blessing was numbing the pain, it didn't outright cancel the dizziness and imbalance that that kick brought me, as I was even a single year younger, and that could've potentially turned fatal to me. So I took some time to regain my breath and recover some of my senses before unsheathing the swords.

The man before me did the same, and we immediately resumed our fight.

'Concentrate, I need all my focus this time; I can't lose a clash of swords; I can't allow that to happen.' 

Even then, the enemy wasn't using his life force because we both clashed swords in a diagonal slash, and I didn't feel any headaches or weird feelings across my body. A part of me was kind of glad he didn't use that power, yet another one was pissed that he was still able to match my strength and power without using his full arsenal of techniques.

For the next couple of minutes, he began getting more and more aggressive with his attacks. Immediately after the first clash, after I managed to win the contest of strength, he tried a vertical slash with the left hand, which I avoided by sliding to my left side.

He then followed with a horizontal slash with the right sword, which I evaded by stepping backwards, followed by a diagonal slash with the same hand as before that I deflected with the sword on my right hand. He then tried a sword thrust with the sword on his left, but before I could redirect it, he changed the grip on his sword and tried to stab me in my thighs.

'This little…'

As I kept retreating more and more, I found myself forced to defend over and over again without ever getting the chance to strike back. Then, all of a sudden, the man decided to crash his sword against the tip of mine, probably to check my grip.

'How dare you?'

I tried to imitate his spring-like technique and managed to sneak in a kick; however, it was a bit lower than where I wanted it to land, so it landed a little over his crotch, but it gave me a big enough window to do the same to him out of spite.

He backed away a couple of steps, and I used the opportunity to start.

The last thing I saw was a weird dragon of water coming out of his sword.

"I hope this was a great lesson for you." Was the last thing I heard before the massive amount of energy struck me at a speed almost faster than what my eyes could perceive.

I woke up in the guest room as always, covered in bandages that held some weird leaves and herbs within them. I would barely move my chest without feeling an incredibly acute pain across my chest.

"You suck!" The god commented as soon as I woke up.

"What happened? Why did he suddenly end the match?" I asked while trying to get up.

I failed miserably, and soon after, I think I passed out. I don't know well; everything was kind of blurry, and I couldn't really focus on what was happening, but when I finally regained consciousness, it was already the next day.

I then began drawing the healing spell using only one hand and only moving my fingers since I couldn't move much due to the injury, and even after casting that spell, it still left a large scar from left to right across the umbilical region.

'Did he try to remove my guts? What is this?' I asked the god.

"The next part of your training" He calmly said

He then began creating many pages floating around with many weird drawings of human bodies, one with many dots with each dot having a weird name, another one showing weird veins in the body that weren't blood vessels and neither mana canals, and other weird drawings of human anatomy.

"That is the biggest property of life force—the ability to inflict permanent wounds. This is not permanent, but you won't be able to heal it unless you clean the wound with his life energy; otherwise, no matter what kind of treatment you make, it will remain there. Don't worry, it's not a life-threatening wound; I made sure to fix it," he explained while creating a bunch of more weird drawings.

"Yeah, but I haven't awakened my life force yet." I protested.

"Don't worry, that can be fixed anytime," he assured me while showing me drawings of a bunch of weird creatures.

"Please don't."

"Didn't you want to get your revenge? Well, it's time to put your resolve too the test not today, obviously; you can rest today."