Sword God in a World of Magic

Shang noticed that the barrier before him started to distort under the pressure.

Shang pulled his hand back and healed himself to his peak.

He had filled the barrier with an unreal amount of Death Mana, and it wouldn't stop absorbing Mana anytime soon.

Shang watched the barrier distort more and more until…

BANG!

The barrier shattered.

WHOOOOOOM!

As the entire barrier around the trial vanished, all the wet ground surrounding it suddenly imploded, filling the spots that had been filled with normal air until now.

In the short moment when the barrier had been destroyed but the earth hadn't yet filled in the empty space, Shang had been able to feel his surroundings with his Spirit Sense.

The image Shang had seen was of a rather large room with several pitfalls, several Magic Circles, and several platforms.

Shang assumed that this had probably been some kind of trial where people had to find out how the Magic Circles worked to divine the correct way across the platforms and pitfalls.

But now…

As soon as the barrier broke, all the earth rushed into the room, destroying the platforms, filling the pitfalls, and disrupting almost all the Magic Circles.

Shang remained standing on his spot for a couple of seconds until all the ground around him had calmed down.

Then, Shang took out the emblem and looked at the arrow.

Diagonally down.

Shang hadn't seen his target in the brief moment before the earth had filled in the gaps, which meant that his target was inside a different challenge within the trial.

Shang remembered where one of the doors had been and dug towards that spot by punching more dirt.

None of the pitfalls, platforms, and Magic Circles worked anymore.

Some seconds later, Shang reached the doorway, and one punch later, the door opened slightly.

WHOOOM!

The door immediately exploded outward, and the earth around Shang rushed into the opened doorway.

Shang simply continued punching forward.

BANG!

After one particular punch, Shang noticed that he had destroyed something that wasn't the normal kind of ground.

pieces of marble shot

hallway with a stairway that went upward, and he

took out the emblem again and looked

Diagonally down.

door, through the room, and

punched through some marble again, but he noticed that the angle was different, which meant that he had just

that this stairway

was just about to kick diagonally down

He realized something.

he looked at the arrow again and oriented himself perfectly

didn't need to adhere to the planned layout if

forward, and the more he advanced, the more the arrow was moving left

didn't mean that his target was moving but that

for a battle as he

Yet, nothing was happening.

the arrow started to move rapidly when

moving it around a bit, Shang realized that his

already

forward and

then, he

a small cube of bloody meat surrounding

wasn't particularly surprised

Ancestral Mages couldn't permanently resist the pressure at

even deeper than

even more brutal than the pressure in the

probably been taken by surprise while undertaking

her Mana Shield

her Mana had

of earth had killed her and compressed her

body of an

Not very strong.

strong as Shang's body had been at the Mid

Shang, it was

current body was already under quite a lot of

imagine how a

dug the Space Ring out of

'Pretty good,' he thought.

worth quite a couple of Grade Seven

to the side again and

the trial and kept checking what kind

noticed that he wasn't destroying marble anymore and turned

minutes, Shang kept searching through the highest layer of

followed that hallway for a bit and noticed that it led to an inconspicuous spot at the

This was the exit.

turned around again and

and after opening it, he began to dig more