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."

powerful. The word peerless means that the peerless in

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,

villages. If we lock them all into an arena and

valuable knowledge regarding fighting life and death battles, making them stronger for

remaining 25 might have comprehended something that made them superior to

even more died, but the ones that remained would have grown once

but that one guy has learned so much that the past him couldn't be compared to the current

to create one true peerless

how the Contender Department

the moment, there are a bit more than 110 Archmage Clouds in the Contender Department. Obviously, they can't all become King Contenders. In fact, chances are high that not even one of them will become a King Contender since we burn

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 of Archmages, which spans about a thousand years

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

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

Archmage Cloud, you get your one Grade Seven Mana Crystal per century, but if you want more, 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 the belongings of the

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 so

to all of this, Shang interjected with a question. "And you still get

with a sigh. "Imagine you have some kind of unresolvable enmity with another Cloud. You want to kill them no matter what, but whenever you challenge them to a duel, they decline. Whenever you join one

hatred, but there's no way to

amongst billions upon billions of people, there