The corpse vanished, and the applause returned.
The wheel began to spin.
"Level seven: Weak Mid True Path Stage beast."
At that moment, Shang took out some ore and allowed Sword to return to its Saber State while he waited for his opponent.
His Long Sword State was not very good against beasts but devastating to Mages. His Long Sword State wouldn't be very useful in the beast category.
Sword returned to its Saber State just when the new picture appeared, but Shang didn't even look at it.
SHING!
When Shang saw his next opponent, he raised an eyebrow.
'A hippo? That's a new one.'
It was a massive hippo, nearly 200 meters long and 50 meters high.
'Aren't hippos usually pretty powerful?'
But as he looked closer at the hippo with his Spirit Sense, he realized why.
Shang felt a lot of Water Mana come from it.
Shang had gained the ability to feel all kinds of Mana after he reached the True Path Stage, which was how he was able to tell that the hippo had a Water Affinity.
Water wasn't very good in one-on-one fights.
DING!
The bell rang, and Shang unleashed more Shooting Stars and Hidden Suns.
The hippo was dead within five attacks.
It didn't even take a second.
"Level eight: Average Mid True Path Stage beast."
Shang just waited.
SHING!
Eventually, a huge brown pangolin appeared in front of Shang.
'Why do I only get beasts with a lot of defense this time?' he thought.
DING!
The bell rang, and the pangolin immediately had to deal with a barrage of attacks coming at it.
It turned into a ball and summoned boulders, which it threw at the attacks while rolling around the area.
A couple of Shang's attacks hit, but its defense was powerful enough to shrug those couple of attacks off. It was similar to the tortoise from before when it came to its defense.
However, it was an average beast, not a powerful one.
Shang changed tactics and burst after it while releasing more attacks.
As Shang ran beside its body, he changed his attacks to Inferno.
One hot pillar of fire after the other appeared around the pangolin's rolling body.
The pangolin focused on evading the pillars while assaulting Shang with stones. Its offensive powers were about as powerful as the tortoise's as well.
However, avoiding the flames proved impossible. Shang was very good at aiming Inferno.
Sure, the rolling motion did a lot to distribute the heat over the entire body, but that only meant that Shang needed to spend some extra seconds.
After around 15 seconds, the pangolin started to spasm and returned to its normal form.
Its entire body was burning violently, and it even started melting in some places.
It was dying, and three seconds later, it was over.
Sure enough, the pangolin might have the same offensive and defensive powers as the tortoise, but that was because it was an entire level stronger than it. Additionally, it didn't have the ingenious method that the tortoise had used to defend itself from Inferno.
The corpse vanished, and the cheering returned.
"Level nine: Powerful Mid True Path Stage beast."
This time, Shang looked over at the wheel.
The next fight definitely wouldn't be easy, but it also wouldn't be hard.
When the wheel stopped, Shang could see a smiling spider sitting on a throne of ice.
SHING!
The beast that actually appeared surprised Shang by a bit.
It was small.
Shang had been fighting beasts that were hundreds of meters long, but this spider was barely five meters wide.
Quite small for a True Path Stage beast.
However, that wasn't completely unusual.
Most of the smaller True Path Stage beasts were this small to take advantage of their speed and flexibility. After all, hitting a smaller target was harder than hitting a big one.
'Ice Affinity, a lot of speed, obviously a lot of offensive power, and probably also quite good defense,' Shang thought.
This powerful beast was good at everything.
The spider had very long and thin legs with a comparatively smaller abdomen.
The jester lifted his hammer and hit the bell.
DING!
Shang already began releasing his attacks, and the spider looked over.
Shang could feel that it wasn't too worried.
SHING!
With no sound, the spider shot forward, directly at the attacks.
Two of its legs turned icy blue and attacked Shang's attacks.
DING! DING! DING!
Surprisingly, Shang's attacks didn't explode, and the spider even managed to divert them.
It kind of reminded Shang of himself when he was charging at an enemy Mage.
It seemed like Shang's offense was useless against the agile spider.
However, when Shang saw how it dealt with his attacks, he only smirked a bit.
As if he hadn't considered such an opponent while creating his battle style.
After releasing another Shooting Star, Shang's Saber went to the side and released a horizontal slash.
The Hidden Sun he released was now angled completely differently.
BOOOOOM!
Due to the new angle, the Hidden Sun connected with Shang's opponent, but the spider's body only heated up by a bit.
Sure enough, it also had a lot of defense.
After swinging his Saber to his left, Shang slightly changed the angle at which he was holding his Saber and swung to his right again.
However, what the spider didn't see was how Shang's Saber slightly paused at a certain spot before continuing.
Another Hidden Sun shot at the spider, and it used one of its legs to deflect.
Whoosh!
However, its leg missed!
The crescent-shaped Hidden Sun had suddenly collapsed into itself!
It folded at a certain place, and the two parts of the crescent turned into one line.
One could easily imagine this picture by taking a thread of wool and folding it. It would still be in the shape of a line, but the line would point forward instead of from side to side.
The Hidden Sun had transformed into a Shooting Star mid-flight!
Yes, Shang could do that, but it would slow his offense by a bit.
But a bit of variation was deadly against opponents that dealt with his attacks by anticipating their trajectory.
From this moment onward, Shang kept releasing Hidden Suns that collapsed into Shooting Stars at different places, making it nearly impossible to foresee where the attack came from.
The spider was slowly accumulating damage, but it would still take a while to kill it.
And just a second later, it arrived in front of Shang.
Obviously, it was a beast that loved fighting in close quarters, which was also why it hadn't released a single ranged attack.
'I guess this is how a Mage feels while fighting me,' Shang thought as he looked at the spider.
Four of the spider's legs turned blue, and it lifted its body to stab Shang with them.
BANG! BANG!
Shang very quickly released two Ice Blasts to change his trajectory, evading two of the legs.
Then, his body spun until his feet pointed to his right, evading the third leg.
The last leg pointed right at Shang.
Then, he swung his Saber.
CRACK!
Shang parried the leg, cracking its icy armor.
BANG!
As soon as the Saber cracked the armor, it released an explosion, breaking the leg off the spider's body.
Then, Shang simply blasted away with another Ice Blast.
'But I'm not a Mage.'
One couldn't fault someone fighting Shang for thinking that he was bad at close combat after he released such an intense barrage of ranged attacks.
However, Shang was a warrior.
Warriors thrived in close combat.
The spider also jumped back when it realized that it had lost one of its legs.
BOOOOM!
Suddenly, the ground below it exploded with fire.
Shang had used Inferno.
The spider felt the heat building up and jumped to the side.
BANG!
That was when Shang arrived in front of it with a burning Saber.
CRACK! BANG!
Another leg was destroyed.
At that moment, a terrifying amount of blue and spiky silk shot out of the spider's mouth.
This was a powerful beast, and it obviously had trump cards.
BANG! BANG!
Shang retreated with two Ice Blasts and released a couple of Hidden Suns at the net, destroying it before it reached him.
Then, Shang went back to his basic attacking pattern and alternatingly used Shooting Star and Hidden Sun.
With two fewer legs, the spider couldn't even muster a proper defense, and it slowly died over the next three seconds.
This was the first opponent of the trial that forced Shang into fighting at close range.
The ninth opponent was the first one that managed to reach Shang.
This, more than anything, showed how far Shang's Battle-Strength had progressed.
