The Pathway Of Wisdom-Chapter 43: I was naive.

"I am not a swordsman or a warrior; I do not need to follow the code of the warrior, Jake..."

"You are too naïve!"

Those words were like an arrow that pierced Jake’s heart and caused tremendous damage to his mental defense; they broke his entire worldview apart!

"I am the god of wisdom’s saint! Not a warrior! I fight with wisdom and strategy!"

Alex’s words were completely right, and Jake had no energy or ability to argue with him; he had no counter to Alex’s attacks and abilities.

Against those strategies he was helpless.

"No, I can’t loose!! I can’t lose!"

Jake tried his best, but he could not even land a proper attack on Alex until the end; he was defeated completely one-sided.

...

Church of the god of wisdom, Infirmary.

*Pant!* *HUFF* *Pant!*

Jake’s eyes opened abruptly due to the nightmare of Alex mocking him and defeating him easily, and he sat up on the bed with a jolt and started panting.

He was covered in sweat all over his body, and his well-defined muscles and abs were wet in his own sweat.

The blanket and the sheets were all soaked in his sweat; thankfully, he wasn’t wearing any shirts, or they would have also become wet.

Jake placed his hand on his forehead and noticed that his headache and fever had disappeared, but he felt exhausted and very weak at the moment.

’My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore...’

That stomachache was the worst nightmare Jake had ever had in his entire life; it was so bad that Jake could not even muster the energy to take a few steps before feeling immense pain.

’hmmm? This is... the infirmary of the church... father must have treated me with divine power...’

’Sigh... I lost so badly...’

Jake was not an idiot; by now, he also understood that Alex had used various shady methods to defeat him. If it were someone else who had done this, Jake would have definitely not forgiven them ever.

But Alex clearly stated out loud that he was not a ’warrior’; he was never going to walk the ’Path’ of being a ’warrior,’ as he had spoken it out loud himself.

Words hold a lot of power in this world; sometimes what you say ends up being true.

Alex acknowledging that he wasn’t a ’Warrior’ was almost similar to acknowledging that he will never walk the ’Path’ of being a ’Warrior,’ and this held immense meaning.

Perhaps the ’Path’ of ’warriors’ might completely reject Alex after saying such things if he ever tried to walk on it in the future. 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

But that also meant that Alex could use any shady tactic he could think of, and it wouldn’t affect his own ideals and ambitions at all.

A person’s ideals and ambitions determine their ’Path’ in life; if Jake tried to do what Alex had done and tried to use weird, shady tactics against his opponents, he would be unconsciously destroying and corrupting his own ideals and ambitions.

That would also destroy his own ’Path’ to becoming stronger and improving.

Going against your own ’Path’ is almost like trying to hit your own leg with a hammer; it brings more harm to yourself than others.

’But I also learned a lot from this.... I was too arrogant and naïve...’

Jake looked at his hand and clenched it tightly as he finally acknowledged that he had underestimated Alex severely.

Alex obviously looked very weak and untrained; even his aura was very weak, so weak that even a random commoner girl might have more physical strength than him.

It was easy to misunderstand his strength in this case and easy to think that he was just an arrogant, immature brat with no real skill or combat ability.

But the truth was far from Jake’s imagination.

Alex was a monster in human skin; he was a literal demon incarnate with the title of a ’Saint’ given to him at birth.

His royal bloodline or anything else had nothing to do with it at all; he was simply too smart and cunning!

Alex only spent two or three days in this unknown place and managed to easily find people to manipulate and use in such coordinated ways that Jake could not even sense and notice that he was already falling into Alex’s traps.

The moment Jake accepted Alex’s proposal of fighting in two days, he had already lost the duel.

Alex had already made the entire plan right then and there and had already figured out how to use all the factors available in the surroundings to his own advantage.

His cunningness was off the charts; if Alex wanted, he could have just made Jake die then and there the moment Jake ate that contaminated food by adding poison to it instead of stomach ache-inducing stuff.

’I underestimated him... while challenging him, I only considered his physical abilities and never even considered that perhaps he might be able to make strategies...’

’Despite praying to the god of wisdom day and night... I didn’t even understand the importance of strategies and tactics at all... I was too naïve...’

This duel not only taught Jake the importance of not underestimating his opponents, but it also taught him that even when you are stronger than someone, you can still lose if certain conditions are met.

’I will need to stop being so arrogant and start evaluating people more accurately from now on...’

A warrior’s ability to determine or predict their opponent’s strength is very crucial to their survival in real battlefields.

If you ended up fighting someone or something that is too powerful for you to deal with by mistake, you will have no second chances to redo it all; you will be dead by then.

Until he fought Alex, Jake was always praised by everyone as the most talented person of the younger generation in the entire city.

Moreover, he was easily able to defeat almost anyone from the younger generation; thus, he had no rivals or anyone equal to him among his peers.

This made him very arrogant, and he started thinking that as long as it was someone of his age, he could easily win against them, and given enough time, he could also defeat everyone older than him too.

But Alex shattered that flawed worldview of Jake in just a single battle.