Sword God in a World of Magic

Time passed.

After a couple of years, quite a big chunk of Shang's stump had already vanished into nothingness.

It was a strange feeling to lose a part of oneself.

It didn't even hurt.

In a technical sense, Shang never received an injury while he was doing this since he had always been in his peak condition.

And yet, experiencing something like this elicited a certain feeling of approaching doom in someone.

A normal human could see this like their arm slowly necrosing.

With every passing second, death would come closer to one's core.

But Shang just continued and kept watching the process.

Due to the long time he had watched the Abominations before, he had already made many connections.

Even just the name of the Concept had already helped.

Transformation.

It was one thing turning into another.

With Shang's normal Domain of Entropy, he was turning Elemental Mana into Neutral Mana, but he also had to use his body as fuel.

Meanwhile, Abominations could just turn every kind of Mana into nothing without paying a price.

It was almost like they were using the Mana around them as fuel to destroy the Mana around them.

Yet, something like this was impossible.

Shang knew that his abilities were superior to Lucius' abilities while they had been on similar levels.

Lucius hadn't had access to the Domain of Entropy until the Peak Ancestral Mage Realm.

When Lucius had comprehended the Concept of Transformation, he gained a Domain that would turn all kinds of Mana into Neutral Mana without paying a price.

What would Shang get?

He already had quite a good guess.

More years passed.

By now, Shang had been comprehending the Concept of Transformation for 50 years, and his stump had already nearly reached his elbow.

But Shang just continued.

Another 50 years passed.

By now, Shang's entire elbow was already gone, and he only had about 75% of his upper arm left.

On the flip side, Shang had already made sense of most of the Concept.

For the first time, the Concept actually seemed understandable and clear.

Even more, the several centuries of watching Abominations before this had not been in vain since Shang noticed that a lot of his guesses had proven to be true.

His progress was faster than expected, and that was thanks to the many centuries of watching the Abominations.

And then, 30 years later, he finally did it.

The black smoke stopped coming out of Shang's shoulder, and the life energy inside the crystals stopped being consumed.

Shang took a deep breath.

Lucius' image had expected that Shang would take about 200 years to comprehend the Concept.

But Shang had actually only needed 130 years.

It wasn't that Lucius had underestimated Shang's talent but that Shang had already spent several centuries watching Abominations.

Without that, Shang would have probably needed to sacrifice a chunk of his torso for the remaining 70 years.

Luckily, he only needed to sacrifice his left arm.

As of this moment, Shang's entire left arm was gone, just like his eyes.

This had been a brutal payment.

Shang stood up for the first time in a long while and directly noticed that his balance was off.

Seeing a blank space where his left arm was supposed to be felt unreal.

Shang felt like his arm was still there, and he willed it to touch his head.

But nothing happened, and nothing moved.

It was such a strange and alien feeling.

Then, Shang looked at his Subsis, which was lying on the ground.

Shang willed his left arm to pick it up, but nothing happened.

Shang had always fought with his Addum in his right hand and his Subsis in his left.

He couldn't swing both of them.

All the new techniques he had created relied on two swords.

Now, Shang only had one.

His fighting style had been crippled.

"How do you feel?" Lucius' image asked. There was a small inkling of empathy and pity in his voice.

Shang didn't look at him.

"It doesn't matter," Shang said evenly. "I have chosen my Path, and all these sacrifices push me closer to its fulfillment."

"Using two swords had been a temporary solution anyway."

"Ever since I created my four Paths, I had already aimed at one day combining all of them."

"First, there were four weapons."

"Then, there were two."

"And now, there will be one."

"I might not be able to realize the full potential of my fighting style, but the other option was death."

"I made the correct choice."

"And I would do it again."

Lucius' image turned blurrier.

"I hope you can fulfill your dream," Lucius said as he vanished.

Silence.

"My dream," Shang said in a voice that betrayed a feeling of disgust.

He hated the word dream.

Dream implied something great, happy, and fulfilling.

Shang wasn't sure if his goal fit with either of these three words.

But that didn't matter.

This was the Path he had decided to travel down, and he wouldn't stop until the very end.

His Path was for his existence, and his existence was for his Path.

Nothing else mattered.

A portal opened beside Shang, but he didn't walk through it.

There was something else he wanted to do first.

Shang took a deep breath and focused on the level five Concept of Transformation.

WHOOOOM!

The next moment, something seemed to break as an apocalyptic storm of Mana shot at Shang.

At the same time, the portal closed.

Over six million kilometers to the north of Aterium, a humongous storm of Mana appeared.

Whirlpools thousands of kilometers wide formed above a seemingly random point in the Eternal Ocean.

Millions of beasts died to the natural forces, turning into corpses, which then turned into Mana that flowed down into the ground.

And things didn't seem to calm down at all after that!

The storms became bigger and more intense, and after a couple of seconds, the surrounding 100,000 kilometers turned into a world of destruction.

All the Mana in the surroundings got pulled into the ground, and even the Beast Lords fled in panic.

None of the Beast Lords had ever seen such a gigantic storm of destruction.

Finally, about 30 seconds later, things calmed down.

The water evened out, and the wind stopped.

Many kilometers below the seafloor, Shang's mind returned to the real world.

He had consumed his momentum, but compared to last time, he did it on purpose.