Sword God in a World of Magic

After a couple more minutes of arguing, Shang finally got his answer.

According to teacher Loran's explanation, to advance in the Soldier Stage required the warrior to strengthen different parts of their body.

A normal human would reach the Initial Soldier Stage by simply becoming an adult. The natural presence of Mana in the surroundings strengthened their bodies naturally to a certain extent.

Because of that, even the most normal adult already had a body on the level of a professional athlete on Earth.

Of course, reaching the Initial Soldier Stage at the age of 18 was already way too late for someone that wanted to become a warrior. If someone wanted to become a warrior, they needed to reach the Initial Soldier Stage at the age of 14, at the latest.

The way of reaching the Initial Soldier Stage early was very simple.

Normal training.

Running around, lifting some stuff, climbing stuff, whatever. As long as the child was very physically active, they would reach it early.

When Shang asked if excessive training at such a young age could have negative effects on a child's development, everyone looked at him like he was a weirdo.

After some ridicule, Shang simply swallowed his frustration.

Shang couldn't be faulted for his question. After all, on Earth, excessive physical training at such a young age could cause issues with bone development. That was also why fitness centers often only accepted kids aged 14 and up.

But, apparently, in this world, it was no concern. Shang guessed that it was the Mana that allowed kids to train so much without any issues.

To reach the Early Soldier Stage, it was necessary to train one's skin and muscles. The training of the muscles was obvious, but the training of the skin was a bit weird in Shang's mind.

However, it also made sense. If the muscles bulged too much, the sudden expansion could tear the skin. One had to remember that people in this world were far more powerful than people on Earth. On Earth, the skin had enough time to deal with the expansion of mass since it didn't happen very quickly.

In this world, it was an issue.

On top of that, if the skin weren't properly trained, it wouldn't let much Mana through. In a way, the skin was a filter for Mana, and at the base level, the skin would block a lot of Mana from entering the body.

However, the more Mana the skin of someone had, the easier it was for the body to absorb Mana. That additional absorption was imperative to reach the later levels of the Soldier Stage.

Shang remembered that he had bled quite a lot in Duke Whirlwind's garden. That was also how he had trained his skin.

To reach the Middle Soldier Stage, one needed to also train one's bones. After reaching the Early Soldier Stage, the muscles slowly closed in on having enough power to break one's own bones if they were stressed too much.

Now, how did one train one's bones?

Well, there were three methods.

Method one was to ingest Bone Dissolving Grass or medicine made out of Bone Dissolving Grass. Just as the name suggested, Bone Dissolving Grass was a poison that dissolved bone.

On Earth, such a poison would have been viewed as something insanely cruel. It could essentially cripple someone forever.

But here, it was a treasure. With Mana, one could regrow bone with quite a lot of speed.

Bone Dissolving Grass was rather common, but it was still a bit expensive due to the demand. However, it wasn't an issue for someone in the Early Soldier Stage to get enough money to buy Bone Dissolving Grass.

Sadly, that method was rather painful.

Of course, the rich people could also buy medicine made out of Bone Dissolving Grass and numbing agents to make the training much easier to handle.

The first method was the slowest one of the three methods.

The second method was to simply not train one's bones.

Not training one's bones didn't sound very conducive when the goal was to train one's bones, but, ironically, it actually worked.

If someone simply continued training their body, at one point, their own muscles would break their bones one by one, and that would strengthen them.

However, nearly no one did that. After all, not all the bones would be broken by the muscles. Chest muscles and head muscles needed a lot of time and training to become powerful enough to break their respective bones.

The third method was the simplest.

Just break your bones and ingest healing medicine.

It was very straightforward, but in a way, it was also the hardest to pull off. Not everyone had the willpower to straight-up break their own bones.

It was also very dangerous. After all, if a bone broke in a weird way, it could cause internal bleeding, which would quickly spell the death of the warrior if they didn't receive immediate healing.

Because of that, nearly no one used the third method. It was cruel and dangerous.

But wait!

If this were so dangerous, how did Shang manage to pull it off in such a reckless manner without dying?

It was his warrior's body, obviously. His mind didn't consume a large amount of Mana in comparison to people without a warrior's body. Additionally, Shang had always overfilled his Mana storages before injuring himself.

Other people avoided overfilling their Mana storages. After all, if they did, they would be forced into nearly killing themselves with no way back. Humans generally didn't like being in a situation where they had to do something drastic to survive, and they definitely didn't like putting themselves into such a situation.

If their willpower weren't powerful enough, they would die.

This was how one reached the Middle Soldier Stage.

To reach the Late Soldier Stage, one needed to train their blood.

Yes, blood came from the bone marrow, but just breaking the bone wasn't enough to strengthen the production and quality of blood.

In order to do that, one needed to bleed… a lot.

The body had to essentially fall into a bloodless crisis. The body had to be in a situation where, if it didn't up its blood production, it would die.

After upping the blood production by a lot, and if that still weren't enough, the body would switch from quantity to quality, allowing less blood to carry more Mana and nutrients.

When both things had been achieved to a sufficient degree, one would have reached the Late Soldier Stage.

Most people reached that level by ingesting Mana Inhibition Powder.

Mana Inhibition Powder made the transportation of Mana very difficult for someone. If a normal person ingested that powder, they would probably die since Mana was an essential component to survival.

However, if a Mid Soldier Stage warrior ingested it, they would simply lose consciousness.

The body would notice that it couldn't transfer enough Mana, so it upped the blood production and its quality. It was essentially a way to train one's blood without bleeding.

Of course, the other way to train one's blood was to simply bleed a lot.

Shang had bled quite a bit.

To reach the Peak Soldier Stage, one needed to train one's organs.

The common method to train one's organs was to simply ingest several different kinds of medicine, which were quite expensive. However, a warrior at that Stage could earn a lot of money already.

After ingesting the medicine, they would only need to meditate and gather Mana while their organs would slowly be dissolved.

As long as someone meditated, it wasn't dangerous, but it could get dangerous if someone were interrupted.

That was also why the academy forbade other students from breaking down the door of another student.

Of course, the other way to reach that level was to simply injure one's organs the normal way.

That method was a bit more dangerous and painful.

And finally, how did one reach the Second Realm, the General Stage?

The heart.

The heart was the crux.

The heart required much more training than all the other organs, and the heart also acted as a major storage for Mana in this world.

In order to train the heart, one either needed to continually injure their entire body again and again to put it under stress or directly injure the heart itself, which was very dangerous.

Of course, if someone didn't want to do that, they could also ingest a type of medicine that accomplished that.

The medicine had a name that Shang found quite funny.

It was called Heartburn Medicine.

Back when Soran had inspected Shang's body, he had checked up on how far along exactly Shang was in his training.

According to Soran, Shang was around 60% done with his heart.

If Shang wanted to reach the General Stage, he would need to destroy his entire body at least another 40 times. As long as he avoided doing that, he would be able to remain in the Soldier Stage.

After everything had been explained to Shang, teacher Loran started the lesson.

And the very first thing teacher Loran did was to put Shang into a fight.

Against whom?

Astor.