Sword God in a World of Magic

A couple of minutes later, Shang left the Caves and went to where Jerald was currently.

Jerald simply handed Shang several large books, and Shang left for the Caves again.

As soon as he came back, Shang read through all the books.

These books were Spell Compendiums, and they basically listed every standard True Mage Spell known to the Skythunder Kingdom.

Something like that would go for an extraordinary price, but Jerald just gave them to Shang.

Sure, these Spell Compendiums were extremely valuable, but their value was still perceived in gold.

Shang could hunt True Path Stage beasts. If he wanted to repay Jerald, he would only need to hand over a single corpse, and he would have repaid far more than he owed.

Naturally, Shang wasn't interested in learning Magic. He only looked at the Spells and how they worked to gain inspiration for his techniques.

Shang was no longer on a level where he needed to learn other people's techniques. No, he needed to create his own techniques.

Additionally, with Shang's powerful Path, he was more than qualified to create such techniques.

Over the next two years, Shang's Path didn't make much progress. He was fully focused on coming up with new techniques and trying to manipulate his Mana and Affinities well enough to actually use them.

He created a couple of duds, but he also found a couple of useful ones.

After coming up with a good framework for his future fighting style, Shang went on to make his new fighting style an actual reality.

The beginning was hard since this was a new field for Shang.

Three years later, Shang had only made marginal progress.

At least, that was how it felt.

When Shang actually looked at the Star Map, he noticed something.

The Shards that had symbolized Shang's different Affinities were starting to connect to Shang's Paths.

This didn't increase the actual progress of his Path but made it wider and more powerful.

By now, all four Paths were even wider than Mervin's Path, showing their ridiculous power.

Shang realized that he was onto something big, and his determination to continue pursuing this path only increased.

Five years later, Shang managed to fully integrate his Affinities with his Paths.

In the last ten or so years, Shang's Path hadn't advanced upward but had gotten far wider.

Right now, Shang's Path was still stuck at a bit more than 50%, but it couldn't be compared to its earlier version.

From this point onward, Shang focused on progressing his Path again with its new width.

Over the past couple of years, even more True Path Stage warriors and High Mages appeared.

Sadly, the number of deaths amongst the True Path Stage warriors rose.

They started to be sent on reckless missions or just mysteriously vanished.

Most of all, the warriors that died were all warriors that were not too happy with the Mages.

that the Council was behind all of

have the power to

something they

appeared on the critical frontlines, even when

necessary things that were expected of them but didn't go beyond. They simply did the bare minimum and tried

many powerful warriors didn't even announce their new power or show themselves in public. When nobody knew that they existed, they couldn't be forced to fight

short, they had given up on the

respect them, they also

frontlines between the Skythunder Kingdom and the Magic

the Skythunder Kingdom increased, and the Council was

way to announce such

they announced now that they were no longer doing these things, it would be like telling everyone that they had been responsible

were changing in the world over the years,

deep in the Caves, working on his

now, Count Sword had been

included him, but he was basically only a footnote, and nobody

a very powerful and talented Peak Commander Stage warrior. By now, there were many Early True Path Stage warriors and even a couple of Mid True Path

warriors

entire world was changing, and even if Count Sword actually existed, he would only be

back then, but would he still be outstanding

True Path Stage warriors needed resources and experience. Wouldn't he want to fight Mages? How

even if Shang knew about all of this,

working on something

increasing day by day, and Shang could see

remained deep in the

later, some bad news

Ranos had died.

been killed

a deep breath and continue working on

was the future he had

that more and more of the few people he knew would

thing he could do was

the most

year later, Soran

had also most likely been killed by

never truly been Shang's biggest fan, but

other student, the woman Viera, had been sent

gone overboard while hunting beasts and

that she also wouldn't stay alive

Council was systematically getting rid of all the important people in the old

year later,

of Chaos, and she had also

hadn't seen her in

one year later, Mattheo

hit Jerald very

his sole heir, and he had had a bright

and

probably been the most powerful person in the Commander Stage aside from

had

powerful, and he

the biggest

he had

that Shang needed a

friend after the other left Jerald's life, and