After the jester left, Shang only remained standing, thinking about his future path.
There was a lot to do.
First, he needed to comprehend the Concept of Addition.
Then, he needed to comprehend the Concept of Subtraction.
After that, he would need to create two incredibly powerful and strong Imposes.
And lastly, he would need to integrate everything.
It was a lot to do, but Shang had known from the very beginning that this wouldn't be easy.
'Luckily, I don't need to do these things one at a time. They will not strengthen my body or help in any way during the small advancements. This is more of a do-everything-at-once thing.'
'These are the four components I need, and after gaining them, I can attempt a breakthrough.'
'But first, I should advance to the Early Fusion Realm to strengthen my mind. The stronger my mind, the easier it will be to comprehend the two Concepts I need.'
'I still have several days left before I should return to the real world. I think I should use these days to become familiar with my second sword.'
'First, become familiar with my second sword. Second, reach the Early Fusion Realm. Third, try to comprehend the Concept of Addition while absorbing Abominations during missions.'
Shang nodded once and took hold of both of his swords.
A second later, the Long Sword vanished.
Shang had put it into his Space Ring. His Space Ring was easier to access than his inner world, allowing for faster swapping of weapons.
SHING! SHING!
Shang swapped out his swords and moved Shock several times before swapping back to his Colossal Sword.
It felt unnatural.
Additionally, the Mana Shang left behind after using a technique was interfering with the follow-up technique.
The Darkness Mana for Shang's Shock made it difficult to properly create Brilliance, for example.
Using Ghost Step instead of Shock made it a bit easier, but Shang still felt awkward.
All of his techniques had been created to be used separately.
'That's a problem,' Shang thought. 'In the future, I will be using only two States instead of four, and I will even use them at the same time.'
'My techniques need to flow better into each other, even if that might reduce their power by a bit.'
Suddenly, Shang shook his head. 'That shouldn't be my concern now. That's for when I create my two new Imposes.'
'For now, I should just get familiar with fighting with two swords, even if it feels awkward.'
After practicing for a couple of hours, Shang mostly got the hang of it.
Then, he began to summon the wheel.
Shang willed the beast wheel to appear, and it appeared.
He willed for his opponents to be of a certain level of power and spun it.
Sadly, he couldn't just choose who or what he wanted to fight.
He could only choose his opponent's power.
Shang's opponent soon appeared, and he attacked it.
After the fight, Shang directly summoned his next opponent.
And his next one.
And so on.
While summoning his opponents, he was very careful not to summon opponents that were too powerful.
Shang wasn't young and inexperienced anymore.
He knew exactly what kind of danger this wheel could pose to him.
Using the wheel in the wrong way could hurt Shang.
It could get rid of his fear.
Fear of death.
Fear of losing.
At the moment, dying was still terrifying and morbid to Shang, and if there hadn't been an incentive for him to earn more points, he would never have decided to fight a powerful Peak Archbeast or a powerful Late Archmage.
These intense emotions and the fear of death were the very things necessary to unearth someone's potential.
On Earth, there were stories of mothers being able to lift cars to save their children.
While the example might be a bit extreme, it showed an inevitable fact.
Under fear of death or losing a loved one, humans could perform feats that they would never be able to perform otherwise.
The same was true for Shang.
The monumental risk of losing absolutely everything could increase someone's power by a lot.
Yet, if Shang kept on fighting powerful beasts in his inner world and dying, the feeling of death would dull.
At some point, Shang would grow so used to dying that his body wouldn't even send fear to his mind when he was actually fighting with his life on the line.
But this fear was necessary to perform at his best.
Because of that, Shang wouldn't summon any truly dangerous opponents with the wheel.
Every death would weaken his fear.
Fear was a powerful motivator, and Shang had to save it for the times he really needed it.
Additionally, Shang didn't want to use any more of Sword's Entropy. He was already out of Entropy Ore, and Sword only had a limited number of uses left.
So, in the end, Shang decided to fight against powerful Mid Archbeasts.
They were strong enough that Shang could injure them without using Sword's Entropy but still quite problematic to win against without it.
In the worst-case scenario, Shang would need to use a bit of Sword's Entropy.
For several days, Shang continued fighting different beasts, and he didn't need to use Sword's Entropy even once.
Eventually, Shang was satisfied with his progress and stopped.
It still felt a bit awkward to switch out weapons between different techniques, but he could now do it without any problems.
Shang wanted to adapt his techniques to make it more fluent more than anything, but that wasn't so easy.
Every single technique of Shang's had been perfected, and he had even created his Mana pathways to support these movements.
If Shang wanted to change his techniques, he would need to also change his Mana pathways.
For now, that was too much work.
Instead of cramming two houses together and combining them, Shang decided that it would be easier just to build a third one between them.
This would be where his new Impose would reside.
But, for now, Shang needed to work on comprehending Addition.
Shang put his Colossal Sword into his Space Ring and left his inner world.
