Right. He's not lying in that statement. He literally was granted powers and he was actually able to accomplish those feats. That's how he became the Blade of Frontiers. The lie is just that he didn't train to become so great, and lacks the actual hero spirit behind them.
I think the abilities pushed him to become this, but his fine tuning is his own. He obviously trained with a sword/combat. And I believe even Astarion will comment on how strong and fast he is, which doesn't really come from the abilities. He has most of these scars I would assume due to fighting these beast upclose. And when you first see him, the first thing he does is jump straight to a goblin rather than blast them.
Yeah, I feel like people prefer to see him as an incompetent liar, but there are merits to his skill. At the Burning Inn you can give him a complement in that regard about being good at combat.
Right, and people are too critical of his wanting to be seen as a hero. If you know his past, it's clear that he wants to convince himself of it because he never wants to feel like he's in a weak and helpless position like he was back then, there's not much in the Early Access but in the romance with certain options you start to see that he is indeed vunerable and quite human.
People in this fanbase are far too critical of the more neutral characters and far too lenient on the not so neutral ones.
