Shang's next opponent was an Earth Adept, and he obviously also had nearly no combat experience.
Just like Shang's first opponent, this one also made several rookie mistakes, and Shang managed to use up a lot of Mana of his opponent by hitting his Mana Shield a couple of times.
But, eventually, Shang's opponent managed to prepare several devastating attacks, which were released in rapid succession. This time, Shang's opponent had summoned several Earth Spires that shot out of the ground.
Due to Shang's reflexes, he had been able to evade the first one, but it hadn't been easy. Shang had to abandon all his balance to barely evade the Earth Spire.
Since the Adept only needed a single thought to unleash his remaining spells, he released the next two in rapid succession, and Shang hadn't been able to avoid those.
Shang had lost.
The Adept bowed politely to Viera and threw Shang a look. Then, with a snort, he left without saying anything.
Shang's next opponent was a Metal Adept.
When the Metal Adept used Mana Step, Shang decided not to use his sword but to jump into the way of the Mana Step to grapple with the Adept.
However, the Mana Shield threw Shang away, and he quickly lost after that.
These Adepts were faster than Shang while using Mana Step, which surprised him quite a bit. Sure, Mana Step was fast, but this fast?
The next opponent was a Fire Adept.
Fire Adepts basically didn't exist in the Mage Academy, but Shang's opponents didn't only come from the Mage Academy. A lot of his opponents were Adepts that gave up trying to become True Mages or were ones that simply didn't have the talent or discipline to become one.
In short, those were Adepts that would forever remain Adepts. They basically counted to the worst Adepts in existence.
And yet, even though they all had horrible fighting experience, by simply following some simple rules, they always won against Shang.
As a warrior, Shang had to constantly adapt to his opponent and make quick decisions, but a Mage didn't fight that way.
A Mage followed rules.
They followed protocol.
They followed a path.
They followed a sequence.
They followed a plan.
Fighting against warriors for them was nothing more than following a step-by-step guide.
Mages were superior to warriors in Battle-Strength, and the only way they could lose was if they didn't use their powers correctly.
But by following a step-by-step guide, they used them perfectly.
A huge man could lose against a far smaller man in hand-to-hand combat if he made many mistakes and didn't use his powers correctly. However, if the huge man simply focused on resisting the strikes and barreling over his opponent, the huge man would almost always win.
The huge man had the weight and power advantage, and if he managed to throw the other one to the ground and land on top of him, the huge man would only need to use his raw power to win.
Technique didn't matter.
That was exactly why there were weight classes in combat sports on Earth.
Being heavier and bigger was an unreasonable advantage.
The same thing was true for Mages when they fought against warriors in this world.
Their powers were unreasonably greater than their opponent's powers.
They would need to take several hits while going through the procedure, but their Mana Shield took care of that. As long as they could resist their opponent's attacks until they were ready to unleash their own power, the Mages would win.
Of course, this only counted for the inexperienced Mages. An experienced Mage wouldn't even let their opponents hit them while thoroughly crushing their opponent.
And Shang felt the power difference very clearly.
After a full day of fighting, Shang hadn't won even a single time.
He had become pretty good at anticipating where his opponents would go while using Mana Step, and he managed to hit their Mana Shield several times.
Shang had also become far faster in following his opponent, which often gave him an additional opportunity to hit their Mana Shield.
But in the end, Shang would always succumb to the rapid barrage of Spells after the Adept was done preparing.
Shang tried to increase his ability to intercept the Adepts and deal more damage to them, but after a full day, he realized that there wasn't much else he could do.
This path was a dead end.
So, Shang concentrated on being able to dodge his opponent's barrage of spells.
At that moment, Shang realized once again that fighting Mages was somewhat similar to fighting beasts.
When fighting beasts, the most important thing was to dodge their devastating attacks. Their attacks had far more power behind them than the attacks of other warriors, which basically made it impossible for a warrior to block them. One always had to evade these attacks.
The same thing was true when one fought Mages. Blocking their Spells was basically impossible, and one always needed to evade them.
However, the difference between Mages and beasts was the frequency of these devastating attacks.
A beast could only unleash one devastating attack at a time, but a Mage could unleash several in just a single second.
In the end, Shang focused on increasing his ability to evade the spells. It was fine as long as he was only hit once since his uniform would cancel that hit.
At that point, his opponent would need to prepare several more Spells again since Shang could evade the Spell if it were only one.
And that was where Shang's experience in fighting against beasts came into play.
It was not normal for a warrior to be able to confidently evade a Mage's Spell.
In fact, it was very rare.
Nearly all warriors only managed to evade a Spell with a lot of luck, but Shang could do it consistently.
This was the basis of Shang's power, and it had given him a solid starting point.
Now, he only had to advance in that department!
After two days, Shang managed to evade one Spell consistently and a second Spell about every second attempt.
After the third day, Shang pushed that frequency to 75%.
After the fourth day, it became 90%.
After the fifth day, it became 95%.
By now, Shang had managed to deplete a lot more of his opponents' Mana, but he still hadn't won even once.
But he was making progress!
By now, nearly all of Shang's opponents had to use over 70% of their Mana.
After the tenth day, Shang managed to evade two Spells confidently, but that was when it became far harder again to advance.
Shang had to use all his power to evade the second Spell, making it impossible for him to evade the third.
If an Adept prepared three Spells, Shang would be hit by one, and the Adept would need to prepare another three.
If an Adept prepared four Spells, Shang would lose immediately.
But in both cases, Shang managed to push his opponent to waste about 80% of their Mana.
Just a bit more! As long as he managed to exhaust all their Mana, he would win!
