RMGCFW — Chapter 116 - Zero-Backswing Spatial Slash
[Magic to Restore the Body to Health (Unlearned)]
Half a day had passed since the three monsters were eliminated.
Banxia followed Frieren to her temporary dwelling.
She mentioned she'd only been living around here for eighty years.
Hearing the weight behind that word "only," Banxia couldn't help marveling at how nice it was to be an elf — tossing eighty years around as lightly as eighty days.
If he hadn't found a way to extend his lifespan, he'd probably have been reduced to sighing whenever he ran into the white-haired elf: Frieren, without elven blood, is it really impossible to live forever?
"Did you get all of that?" Right now Frieren looked every bit the strict teacher, quizzing Banxia on his homework.
"Every bit of it," Banxia replied softly.
A marker had already appeared on his panel, which meant it was memorized.
"Even though it's just ordinary folk magic, failing to follow the steps properly when casting can cause irreversible damage to the body..." Frieren continued her explanation and moved on to introduce the next body-strengthening spell.
"..."
Banxia split his attention.
He kept half an ear on Frieren's lecture while his gaze drifted to the panel floating in the void.
[Heaven Rewards Diligence, perseverance always bears fruit.]
[Current Skills: Hundred-Forged Body (Chroma) lv.3, Return to Fundamentals (Chroma) lv.2, Blade Body (Chroma) lv.2, Realm of Clarity (Chroma) lv.2, Spatial Secret Technique (Chroma) lv.1, Sacred Spirit Affinity (Chroma) lv.1, Rejuvenation (Chroma) lv.1, Wrath of Finality lv.3, Mana Concealment lv.3, Magic to Show Fond Memories lv.3...]
[Current Remaining Time: 526 years.]
[Held Monster Time: 32,000 years (Can Fuse) (Can Enhance)]
"How should I spend all this?"
Sitting on a fortune that large, Banxia found himself hesitating.
"Might as well shore up my soul's strength first."
The battle with the three monsters had made one thing clear: his physical defense was already well beyond what Magic-Sealing Ore could threaten. There was almost nothing in this world that could punch through his body anymore.
Which meant his soul was the next weak point.
Realm of Clarity was a Chroma skill just like the others, and it was still sitting at lv.2.
That bothered him.
He needed both Chroma enhancement skills at lv.3 before he could breathe easy.
Under his gaze, time began to flow.
[Year 1. You begin researching how to further enhance the Realm of Clarity.]
[Year 10. You travel across mountains and seas. Hard work pays off, and you finally discover a path toward elevating your soul strength even further.]
[Year 12,000. Your soul has been tempered through the mortal world and finally reaches true clarity. All stray thoughts recede like a tide pulling back, leaving a mind that mirrors all things like still water.]
[Realm of Clarity (Chroma) lv.2 → Realm of Clarity (Chroma) lv.3.]
[Held Monster Time: 20,000 years (Can Fuse) (Can Enhance)]
Banxia slowly exhaled.
The flood of insights left him momentarily adrift.
The world grew quieter. Even Frieren's incantation-like lecturing seemed to reach him through water — clear, but no longer capable of stirring his mind. He looked down at his hand. His fingertips shifted slightly. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed.
Amid ten thousand transformations, the original heart remains.
If every curse and soul-targeting spell were a crowd-control ability in a game, then he was now a unit that ran magic immunity by default. Cannot be targeted.
And compared to lv.2, where the occasional thought of the mortal world is utterly tedious used to surface, his wants right now were refreshingly simple:
Go find the Parting Clan and see if they were as exquisite as rumored. Then set out immediately for the royal capital to find out whether Xiaoyan could actually be revived.
Frieren's lecture rolled on. She had moved into a broad overview of the next spell.
Banxia listened the same way he always did, half his mind elsewhere.
"Still twenty thousand years left..."
His body and soul had both reached the peak of this world. Standing perfectly still, not many humans or monsters could even scratch him.
But he knew better than to get comfortable. Heroes were thick on the ground in every era.
Mages in this world were dead weight the moment a warrior closed the gap, that much was common knowledge. But Banxia had future sight, and he knew that humans would eventually master flight the same way monsters had. Give a mage enough reaction time and distance, and the balance could tip the other way.
That wasn't the real concern, though. He could fly. Sky-bound mages didn't worry him.
What did worry him was something else his future sight had shown: someone out there possessed a conceptual skill.
As long as you believe it can be cut, the defense breaks.
Magic in this world played by its own rules, and sometimes those rules were deeply unreasonable.
Which meant he needed high-quality combat tools ready for exactly that kind of unreasonable encounter.
"Wrath of Finality hits hard, but the windup is too long. At my level, it's a non-starter. Honestly, the mage identity can't keep pace with me anymore. Even Chroma-rank offensive magic would barely move the needle."
"Magic is support at this point — lifespan extension, utility. Real combat still lives and dies on warrior skills."
"A jack-of-all-trades beats no one. Better to master one path completely."
His mind settled. His gaze landed on [Blade Body].
The skill was lv.2, and within the time he had available, there was still room to push it. He'd take it to the top as well.
Then he'd actually have three god-tier skills worth calling his pillars.
No sooner decided than done.
Time began to move.
[Year 1. You begin contemplating how to push your slashes further. Where they stand now, they can no longer keep pace with your overall strength. At minimum, they need to reach a level capable of piercing your own outer hide before they qualify as a lethal technique against enemies.]
[Year 15. Your travels yield considerable insight. You observe that many mages use combined magic, single-attribute spells deal limited damage, but pairing compatible elements like wind and fire, or earth and water, multiplies both lethality and power.]
[Year 100. You attempt to cultivate Battle Aura. Unfortunately, you appear to have no talent for it.]
[Year 500. You refuse to abandon the enchantment path. If Battle Aura won't work, use magic to enchant instead. Slashes were never a Battle Aura-derived skill to begin with, there's no rule against it.]
[Year 9,400. You finally integrate everything you have learned with the Blade Body skill and deepen your comprehension of it once more.]
[You can now unleash ten-thousand-meter slashes with zero backswing, and enchant those slashes with any elemental magic in your possession.]
[Blade Body (Chroma) lv.2 → Blade Body (Chroma) lv.3]
[Held Monster Time: 10,600 years (Can Fuse) (Can Enhance)]
"Enchant with any elemental magic I possess?"
Banxia stared at the new line.
Metal, wood, water, fire, earth, those weren't what came to mind first. What he thought of immediately was the special Chroma spatial skill he'd gotten from the elf.
If those two could be fused together...
Wouldn't he be able to throw out space-splitting slashes whenever he felt like it?
➤ Next: The Old Fogey Who Was Beaten into a Shut-In for Centuries