Board Thread:Antaeus' Arena: Audience Chamber/@comment-1515612-20150930233157/@comment-5471249-20160413005051

Hands down? Well, not exactly, as you both took the example with Percy beating Ares out of context, and blew it out of proportion. For instance, 4 years later, when Percy is considerably more skilled than he was at 12, he still is unable to defeat Chrysaor in a straight up swordsmanship duel, and Percy described Chrysaor to be as good a swordsman as Ares. In addition, 13-year-old Percy is rather quickly defeated by Luke, who, in turn, had been defeated by Ares. Hence, the only logical conclusion that we may gather from both of these instances is that in his duel with 12-year-old Percy, Ares (due to being confident in his imminent victory) held back quite a bit, since otherwise, it would be logically absurd for Percy to loose to Luke, since he had been able to defeat someone that managed to actually defeat Luke, and it would be logically absurd for a much more skilled and experienced version of Percy to quickly loose (twice, in rapid succession) to an opponent of Ares' skill, if he had actually been able to beat a not holding back Ares when he was far less skilled and experienced. It just doesn't make sense any other way! Hence, this makes you argument pretty much a moot point, as it doesn't really show Percy being a superior swordsman to Jason, who would have also lost against opponents of Ares and Chysaor's caliber.