Sword God in a World of Magic

Now, things were different.

Shang had thought that killing each other was completely forbidden, but apparently, it wasn't.

"And how does something like that go down?" Shang asked.

"Well," Lucin said before transforming into a Lightning Bolt again. "Let's continue on our way. I'll explain while we're traveling."

Shang didn't answer, and the two of them continued shooting into the distance.

"So, basically, in order to become as powerful as a Cloud, you need a lot of danger and actual fighting. Forever staying inside your little cave and meditating forever won't get you this kind of Battle-Strength. If it did, we would have a thousand times more Clouds than currently."

"In order to be outstanding, you must live an outstanding life. You must achieve things that others are too scared to do or can't do, no matter how much they try. One big component of that is actual fights to the death."

"We know that, and that's why we have created a perfect environment for just that. You ever heard about this weird story about that guy that wanted to make the most venomous insect?" Lucin asked.

"No," Shang answered.

"So, there was this guy, and he wanted to make the most venomous insect. One day, he had this genius idea of putting a hundred of the most venomous insects he could find into a pot and making them kill each other until only one was left, believing that the strongest insect would embody the power of all the insects it had killed, making it the most venomous."

"Of course, biology doesn't work like that, and he failed miserably. However, his experiment demonstrated a very real concept."

necessarily very powerful. The word peerless means that

genius in a village might as well be trash when there are a hundred better geniuses in the nearest town. Yet, how did these better geniuses become better? It was because, in order to become peerless, they needed

peerless geniuses from 100 villages. If we lock them all into an arena and only allow one

and the other half have gained valuable knowledge regarding fighting life and death battles, making

die, and the remaining 25 might have

that remained would have grown once again during their

have one guy left, but that one guy has learned so

geniuses to create

how the Contender

110 Archmage Clouds in the Contender Department. Obviously, they can't all become King Contenders. In fact, chances are high

of them reaching the Mage Lord Realm. With their talent, they would reach the power of Thunders eventually, and what then? We only have space for about 70 Thunders, and we got 110 potential Thunders in one generation

would almost certainly be lower than our current Thunders since, in order for all of these Clouds to survive, we would have

maximize the benefit, the Lightning Manor takes this venomous insect approach, but instead of simply ordering you all to kill each other,

you gotta join very dangerous missions, tournaments, tests, and similar. Additionally, if two Clouds agree on a life and death duel, the winner gets to keep all

force you into dangerous situations. Since you are

is someone that kills another Cloud with borrowed strength. One-time Spells from a Mage Lord, an Ancestral Mage assassin, a powerful Ancestral Beast, and

a question. "And

them no matter what, but whenever you challenge them to a duel, they decline. Whenever you join one of the big trials to kill

but there's no way to kill that person

of people, there are still differences. You have