Shang had transformed Sword into its Colossal Sword State again, but due to the God's answer, he had decided to stop with the beast category.
Shang quickly transformed Sword into its Saber State for the Mage category. He didn't really mind all the ore he had wasted by doing that. He had more than enough ore.
The wheel began to spin, and just like last time, there were now Affinities on the wheel instead of pictures.
Shang didn't really care about what Affinities his first few opponents had, and he simply waited for his opponent.
The first Mage appeared, and Shang simply looked at them without any changes to his expression.
The bell rang, and the Mage opened their eyes.
They were immediately greeted by a Shooting Star.
BANG!
Surprisingly, even the weak High Mage managed to get their Mana Shield off before Shooting Star hit, surprising Shang by a little.
However, Shang just continued unleashing Shooting Stars and Hidden Suns one after the other, and before the Mage had even readied their first Spell, their Mana Shield already broke.
It took three attacks to break the Mana Shield.
The Mage couldn't even comprehend what had happened before the next attack blew them apart.
And that was level one.
Level two literally wasn't any different.
Level three, on the other hand, saw some slight changes.
The Mage managed to get Mana Shield plus Mana Step off very quickly, and their Focus was already condensing a Spell.
However, Shang only needed to angle his new attacks to the Mage's new spot.
The Mage used Mana Step once again, and Shang continued shooting at their new location.
Obviously, the Mage was trying to exhaust Shang's Mana. After all, such an insanely powerful offense had to cost a ridiculous amount of Mana, right?
With every Mana Step, the Mage managed to evade about five attacks.
In the Mage's mind, the cost of Mana Step had to be lower than what the opponent was using with these five attacks.
But eventually, Shang's attacks began to connect again as the Mage grew more worried with the increasing expenditure of Mana.
The Mage's Focus even managed to shoot two Spells at Shang, but with the distance between the two of them and Shang's speed, those weren't exactly hard for Shang to evade.
And then, the Mage died.
While the first two fights couldn't even be called fights, the third one at least gave the opponent an opportunity to somewhat resist Shang's assault.
That showed the sheer difference between an average Mage and a powerful one.
With level four, the fight returned to its previous state.
The Mage couldn't even get one Spell off except Mana Shield, and they died within ten attacks.
The difference in terms of Mana became apparent at this point.
Shang had needed three attacks to destroy the Mana Shield of an Initial High Mage, but he needed nine attacks for the Mana Shield of an Early High Mage.
Things would only become even more terrifying as the levels of Shang's opponents increased.
Luckily, a Mage's defense was fundamentally different from a beast's defense.
One could look at a beast's defense as a threshold one had to break.
If a beast theoretically had a defensive rating of 100 and one unleashed an attack with 100 power, the beast wouldn't receive any damage, no matter how many attacks of that power were unleashed.
If the attack had a power of 101, the beast would take damage with every attack.
This meant that a beast had a defense that needed a minimum amount of power to be pierced.
With Mages, that wasn't the case.
Everything that hit a Mage's Mana Shield would consume the Mage's Mana.
If the Mana Shield had a defensive rating of 100, and one attacked it with an attack with 1 power, the shield's defensive rating would drop to 99.
However, a Mage also regenerated Mana at a terrifying rate, which meant that the Mana Shield would also regain its power very quickly.
This difference in the kind of defense made the Saber and Long Sword States so terrifying against Mages.
They unleashed comparatively weak attacks but with insane attack speed.
Speaking more of hypothetical numbers, it would take an insane amount of concentration, preparation, and power for Shang to unleash an attack with 200 power, and that attack would probably also be very slow and a one-time thing. Shang definitely couldn't use such an attack in rapid succession.
However, it would be incredibly easy for Shang to simply unleash 20 attacks with 20 power, creating a collective offensive of 400 power.
It would take less time.
It would be faster.
It would deal more damage.
It would be easier.
With such an offensive, a Mage with 400 defense would crumble in only one wave, while a beast with only 30 defense wouldn't even receive a scratch.
This was the very difference in defense between Mages and beasts.
Level five wasn't very difficult for Shang. The Mage managed to release a Spell and perform Mana Step, but the fight only took something like three seconds.
As the corpse vanished, Shang furrowed his brows.
He knew that he would reach the ninth level, but the sixth level would still not be easy.
Shang was sure that he would win, but the next fight would require Shang to at least pay attention.
The wheel returned, and Shang looked over.
This time, his opponent's Affinity might be relevant to how the fight progressed.
The wheel began to spin, and Shang watched it. In comparison to the beast wheel, the pictures on the Affinity wheel were easy for Shang to discern.
And as Shang looked at it, he also realized that he could discern some of the smaller fields now that he hadn't been able to discern before.
There were a couple of rare, mixed Affinities that Shang didn't know about.
For example, there was a Blizzard Affinity and even a Twilight Affinity.
However, the most interesting things were the three new Pure Affinities.
Shang already knew about Space, but there was now also Time and Gravity.
'So, there are also Time and Gravity Affinities, huh?'
However, that wasn't even everything.
There was one spot on the wheel.
The spot was so insanely small that it looked like a slightly bigger black line, even with Shang's powerful Spirit Sense.
If Shang hadn't focused on the wheel that much, he would have missed it.
The collective size of the Space, Time, and Gravity Affinities was already so small that Shang needed to be at the True Path Stage to even see them.
The wheel was several meters wide, but the collective width of these three Affinities was probably in the range of single or double-digit micrometers.
And that slightly bigger black line?
Probably nanometers.
These Affinities were ridiculously rare.
It was so rare that it was impossible to visualize.
Getting one of the three rare Pure Affinities was probably one in several million.
But getting whatever was in that black line was probably one in several billion if not trillion.
At that point, the wheel stopped spinning, and Shang finally saw what kind of opponent he would be facing now.
The Affinity of his new opponent was…
Earth.
