The Ultimate Devourer

The realization of being talentless

After making sure I scrubbed every inch of the pungent smells that covered my body, It was time to clean my clothes.

Not much blood had splashed on them when I ripped that youngster's jugular out, but it was better to be more precautions.

I took all my clothes from the river bank. I unceremoniously started to cleanse them inside the water, leaving behind only my satchel with the goods that I took from the bandit camp, and my sword that didn't need any cleaning considering I didn't use it to deal the fatal blow.

After making sure they were clean, I left them to dry on a nearby tree while I started thinking about my next move.

Now that I was clean and quite far from the murder location, I thought I wouldn't have any trouble with any pursuers for the time being.

As I rested my head near a tree, I could feel my head swimming as the changes in my body weren't fully finished. It looked like eating that youngster was the right decision.

As I sat there, I could see that some bushes from the other part of the river were moving, and out of them came a tall blonde man wearing heavy armor with a war hammer as tall as him being holstered on his back.

The man immediately targeted me with his eyes, and I could feel a pressure that I had never encountered in my short life before, it was as if 10,000 cattle were running down my chest, pushing my lungs into being unusable and destroying my two hearts at the same time.

The pressure was lifted off shortly after, and before I could blink my eyes, the man suddenly appeared in front of me!

He had a neutral look on his face as he looked down at my naked form and asked:

"Hey kid, have you seen someone younger than you who wore armor similar to mine's waving a sword around and investigating things about a certain famous bandit group around this area?"

I shook my head slowly and looked him directly in the eyes, making eye contact with a composed face would make me look like I wasn't lying. Atleast that's what Mikutsuhi told me to do in situations where the use of violence wouldn't lead me anywhere.

It looked like this person was that youngster's backing.

The man shook his head as he looked down at me and then said:

"That fool must have got himself killed if he didn't come back to report at the set time, and I told him these types of bandits have quite a few tricks up their sleeves, even though they're only normal humans..."

The man looked down at me and thought for a few seconds before saying:

"Whatever, you, what's your name?"

I decided to respond truthfully, in this case, after all, the wanted poster didn't have my name on it, only my alias.

"My name is Minato."

The man nodded and then said:

"Put your clothes on and let's go, you will be my squire from today onward!"

I couldn't help but feel that something was missing in this situation. Was I taken as this man's underling so easily?

From his strength, I could see that he was a powerhouse, and I would be able to learn quite a bit under him, way more than whatever Mikutsuhi taught me, that fact was for certain.

Seeing my dumbfounded look and how I remained silent made the man annoyed as he slapped me over the head and said:

"Think fast!"

But before I could think fast, my head was already down on the ground, and my mouth filled with dirt.

The man laughed slightly as he saw my pained visage but didn't say anything else as I got up from the ground and spat out a tooth along with quite a bit of dirt.

"Are you surprised that I choose you as my squire out of the blue? That's how I do things, so get used to it kid!"

"That's how I choose the previous kid too, he was slightly strong, so I took him under my wing because the church imposes on all of its paladins to have a squire, quite bothersome for me considering I have to train those squires, but whatever, I guess you want to know why I choose you?"

I couldn't help but nod, on the surface, I shouldn't be that special.

The man looked me up and down once again before saying:

"Your strength is quite good, even a little higher than my previous squire, you might be a little bit older, but that's not a problem for me."

He then patted my shoulder and said:

"Before I take you back to report to the church as my replacement squire, I need to train you a bit so you don't look too bad in front of the examiners and make a fool out of both of us, you have appropriate strength, but you ooze the aura of an amateur, you might have been in a few fights, but it's obvious you don't have any style of swordsmanship for that blade you have."

He pointed towards my blade which now rested on the tree near my clothes which were slowly drying.

"And put the damn clothes on already, I will dry them for you."

A little bit of fire appeared on the tip of his fingertip, which he quickly threw onto the clothes, making them dry instantly.

My eyes widened as I saw this, Mikutsuhi and the other bandits always talked about these fairytales of superhumans fighting with lightning/fire/water under their control, and the old deceased leader even said that he had seen some of these people with his own eyes when he was young, the result of a stray bolt of wind was the reason he wore that eyepatch.

I put my clothes on and followed the tall man into a clearing, getting even farther away from the murder scene.

"For starters, let me introduce myself, I'm Aratas. Paladin of the Fire War God's first church."

"As a wandering commoner, I guess you are pretty excited about getting lessons from me but don't get too excited, I'm not sure how good your comprehension is, so let's start by teaching you some basic swordsmanship that I have taught to all my previous squires."

The man unsheathed a short sword from his waist and started doing some slashes in the air, creating small sharp airwaves that almost hit me in the face if I didn't dodge at the last second.

However, some drops of blood still dropped from my now slightly scarred face.

The man pointed his finger towards my face, healing the new scar immediately before saying:

"Have you seen everything? Then do as I showed you!"

I have seen the slashes quite clearly, but I couldn't copy them easily, I was unable to understand the essence behind the slashes, so even though I copied the movements to the best of my ability, Aratas shook his head and said:

"It looks like your comprehension isn't very good. At least you have decent bodily talent."

I shook my head inside, Only I knew that my current strength was gained from devouring his previous squire, my head started hurting again as some experience from the previous squire's swordsmanship started to imprint itself upon my brain.

It looked like eating the brain gave me a delayed memory imprint, but the imprint was very incomplete, and all it contained was the basic slashes that the squire had comprehended and used during our fight.

There was no way to get the completed experience, but this was also good enough.

I did the slashes once again, making Aratas's eyes narrow as a slight smile appeared on his face and he said:

"Oh, not bad, but usually the slightly more talented ones learn from the first try, whatever, this should be enough to get the green light from the examiners back at the church."

I looked up at Aratas and the man nodded before saying:

"Let's go."

I followed him from behind as my thoughts were a mess while we traveled through the forest:

"It looks like my talent is even worse than I thought..."