I could say without being too immodest that I rarely expected surprises when crossing blades at close range. Of course, that didn't include things with a significant advantage in size and physical strength.
Setting aside unconventional methods, I was also an experienced practical fighter, the sort with a hard-won understanding of combat—though I couldn't rule out the possibility that using Spiritual Senses too much had left me seeing things.
Judging an opponent's approximate posture from fragments of movement and predicting what they would do next had become a complex, advanced system of conditioned reflexes for someone with enough knowledge and quick reactions.
That was what gave Kraft the confidence to close in and try to control his opponent. Judging by what the other man had done so far, calling it a fight would have been generous.
Much like the impression left by their previous encounters, people who could produce unnatural phenomena by one means or another tended to rely heavily on that ability, to the point of overlooking more practical things. A few more crossbows behind a tripwire could be just as lethal, and at close quarters, "magic" was no match for a good punch.
But for that very reason, when Kraft sensed movements that fit neither his combat experience nor Anatomy, his first instinct was to let go.
Unfamiliar meant dangerous. It meant he might have to pay for new experience.
The arm felt gaunt and slender beneath his grip, like that of someone suffering from severe malnutrition. There was no subcutaneous fat to be felt; it seemed all the body's energy reserves had been diverted elsewhere and literally burned away.
At first, Kraft thought he had grabbed the forearm. More than one bone seemed to turn alongside the muscle bundles—probably the ulna and radius.
He was ready to