Plot and the Progress of Shang's Insanity
The book is titled Sword God in a World of Magic, we find the main character named Alex, who was an MMA Fighter in his last life, who killed a mugger before getting whacked in the back of the head by the mugger's accomplice. He wakes up in a throne room, stared at by an unnamed god. God is smirking at Alex with Interest, telling Alex he is the god's entertainment in the new world and hates how all the fights are going. We get a little exposition, the Mage Emporer, the 9th realm, eradicated all the previous paths, before ascending to a god. God makes Alex the enemy of the new world because he wants to pressure Alex to make a new and better path for the Warriors. He also prevents Alex from thinking of his name and gives Alex a new name, Shang. From now on, when Shang thinks of the name Alex he gets a migraine so bad he nearly passes out. So he is Alienated from his previous life, and he is alienated from the world, he can technically have no friends, as he's the reason they will die in the future.
[There is a secondary force in the world that is a bigger threat than all of the mages in the world. They are called Abominations, they hate Mana and seek it out to destroy it by sacrificing themselves to blow up Mana. Abominations spawn all over the world, but they only spawn in the realm according to the realm of the Child of Calamity, which is the enemy of the world, which is what the god made Shang. If Shang is at the Soldier stage, the maximum realm the abominations can spawn at is Soldier, if he is in the Fusion realm or the 5th realm, then Abominations can spawn at the 1st realm up to the 5th realm. So as Shang gets more powerful, the more deadly the world becomes, as higher level Abominations will spawn. For context an Abomination Emporer if spawned, can wipe out the entire world in less than a minute.][1] Before the god leaves him to be reborn, he gives him two boons to help him on his journey. One is a sword that grows with him, but only if he feeds it ore that is equal to his stage. The second is a private space in his soul that functions as a storage area as well as a personal world he can move around in. In his private world is a pedestal that explains the rules of the trials as well as a timer that tells him how long he has to take the trial after advancing a realm. Finally, the god wants to make this slightly interesting, so he gives Alex 9 questions he can ask, and the god will be 100% truthful. 1 question for every realm Alex reaches.
Shang is reborn into a forest and has to temper his body to a certain level. [He has a Warrior's body which allows him to heal fast. He absorbs life energy, but to dispel the energy he needs to be injured, or else he could explode. So he fills himself up with life energy, and jumps off a tree, shattering his legs arms, and ribs. The energy he collected is healing all his wounds, and every time he breaks a bone and heals it. The bone gets stronger, which is called Tempering. Shang has to temper all his organs, bones, skin, and muscles. This means Shang needs to shatter his body numerous times, well over 100 times.][2] After so long, [Shang is already very tolerant of pain, something humans all share, in fact, all mages even in higher realms still feel pain. So not only does Shang not empathize with the pain of others anymore because it doesn't hurt for him, but he also loses a portion of his emotions. After 6 months of human isolation, killing monsters who pose genuine danger to Shang leaving him in a constant state of fight or flight.][3] He leaves his forest and seeks to join an academy for warriors. [This academy is a safe haven for warriors called Warriors Paradise, in a world full of Mages who hate anything not a mage, the academy allows warriors to flourish.][4] On his way, he interacts with a village, and people for the first time, their views on murder and immoral acts are much different than Earth. [Shang is having identity problems, his mind has the morals of Earth, but he is thrust into a situation where it's kill or be killed. He comes across a group of bandits who are trying to steal his money. The law in this new world is to kill bandits as they are scum who are against other humans. It does not matter if they had lives, they are to be killed and turned in for a reward at a city. Shang doesn't want to kill the bandits, but if they take his money, he can't get into the warrior school, and he will die. So Shang kills the bandits, and as one runs away, Shang realizes if he gets away, he will tell his other buddies and possibly bring more bandits than Shang can handle, so Shang chases him down and beats him to the brink of death and on death's door, the bandit cries out for his mom before Shang slices his head off.][5] Shang is haunted by the image of that bandit every time he sleeps. So logically, Shang just stops sleeping. He stays up for multiple days in a row he is at a week of no sleep before he arrives at the academy.
The rule of the academy is no killing, but everything else is allowed. Maiming and bullying are completely allowed, and while frowned upon by the general populace, it is not punishable. If you are a victim of this then you have to get stronger than your oppressor and oppress them for how they treated you in the past. Shang had built his entire fighting style on becoming the perfect beast-killing machine, but since he has never faced another human, he sucks at it. All the warriors in the academy have trained all their lives at fighting humans, but they can't kill a beast on their level alone, they need a team of people to kill beasts of their levels. Shang is solo-killing a beast that would require multiple people from a second stage to kill. Shang as a Soldier Stage kills a General Stage Beast, and that beast is worth quite a bit of money for him. Unfortunately, some students covet his beast corpse and try to steal it from Shang. Shang is currently running off of two weeks of no sleep, his mind is slipping, and he can't recognize perilous danger for what it is. So when confronted with the possibility of losing something that costs so much, he thinks he needs to be extreme, to go above and beyond to tell people not to mess with him, using the three students as an example. He drops his stuff and runs into the middle student and Sparta kicks him in the chest. Shang's foot caves the kid's chest in, and the body goes flying into a wall, shattering his spine and skull. He's not dead, but very close. His body is a couple of levels above these students, with the other two students behind him, he headbutts a fist, shattering the fist. He catches a leg of the second, and while holding the child in his hands, he swings the body around and whacks the other student with a broken fist with the body, and he falls to the ground. Shang slams the kid in grasp's body into the ground shattering his skull his brain is visible. From 1:37 to 1:42 This is what Shang does to a 16-year-old child. He lets go of the leg and walks over to the kid with a broken hand, and while he begs for mercy, Shang punches down with full force, obliterating his face. While crying out for his mommy, which triggers Shang's PTSD, he deals a killing blow, before the chapter ends. Now, Shang doesn't kill anyone, someone stops him, but he does all this because they wouldn't leave him alone. He did all this because he didn't want to be annoyed by bullying while staying at the academy.
Shang's next bout of insanity happens a lot later. In chapter 364, Shang kills someone that he considers his friend, named Lash. Backing up to how this happened. Because Shang nearly killed this person, his brain got a little funky, the child is terrified of fighting, so Shang crippled his career. The mother of the child sends a Poison True Mage after Shang who finds Shang with his 3 friends who went on a hunting mission with. Shang had to reveal powers that if gotten out would paint him as the Child of Calamity, but Shang trusts his friends who he's known for about 4 months. They live through that ordeal, but the mother isn't happy so she sends her husband, a Commander Stage Warrior. Shang gets chased by the father and ends up running into something called a pylon, it keeps abomination under the True Path stage from Spawning near there. Shang uses an ability called Entropy, which is sacrificing part of his soul can create an attack that can kill something 4 realms above him, killing the commander stage warrior, but also entering the pylon which contains a portal. Shang finds a mage of immense power who because of racism or pathism, sends him through the portal that leads to an enemy kingdom because he needs to be punished for entering the pylon. He is completely alone with no help, so he changes his appearance to be that of a barbarian. Barbarians are a lesser version of warriors and as dumb as a bag of bricks, due to lack of education. Shang gets captured as a barbarian, which is good because they'd kill him if he were a warrior. Shang trains a group of barbarians he meets with techniques similar to a warrior, and his main student and friend is Lash, an above-average barbarian. He spends about 3 months with Lash, and Lash only knows Shang as "Leader", nothing else. For 4 more years Shang is experimented on with tattooed spells. This is insignificant for the plot and doesn't contribute to Shang's insanity as he is fine with it and studying the benefits. He spends a further 5 years in isolation. After a total of 10 years of being in an enemy kingdom, Shang is finally leaving to escape back to his original kingdom. He is being chased by many True and High Mages which can kill him. On his way through the kingdom, in his mad dash, he comes across Lash, who recognizes him. Instead of believing his friend would keep the fact that Shang is the one that the mages are chasing, Shang feels like the best course of action is to outright kill Lash. It is mentioned later that there would be no reason Shang needed to kill Lash since Shang had spared his friends previously when he was chased by a Poison True Mage.
Next up, Shang kills Jerald, his benefactor and friend. Jerald had been with Shang for over 40 years, he helped him numerous times, and even when Jerald knew Shang was the Child of Calamity, he still gave Shang a chance to explain himself. Jerald had his Mana Shield up, which is a spell that can be activated once, and until it is broken that person is protected from sneak attacks. After 130 years of isolation, Shang meets up with Jerald, and Jerald gives Shang a chance to explain why he would continue to grow stronger if it meant the possible eradication of human life. Shang convinces Jerald that getting powerful is the best idea since the previous Mage Emporer was a Child of Calamity as well and theorized that he could get rid of Abominations permanently, but he fails because he is too weak, so Shang plans to be better and get rid of the abominations, Shang, however, was not aware that Jerald had his mana shield up, which meant that Jerald was too indecisive, so Shang sacrifices his other eye, killing Jerald. Except the insanity gets turned up a notch when Shang purposefully misses his beam of death cutting off Jerald's hand. He takes the hand and puts it in his special world, NAILED TO THE PEDESTAL to remind him of why he can't have friends.
So far, Shang has been completely alienated from his original name and life, he is not allowed to tell anyone his true nature and is in a constant state of paranoia of being found out. He can't have friends because no one can decide one life versus the life of the world, completely isolated from Humanity, and even worse, beasts hate him on sight. After all, he feels like an abomination to them. Beasts don't have intelligence until they become beast lords, so they can't be friends with him. So all that's left are Shang, Evil Organizations, and Abominations. Except, Abominations can't be summoned in the open or people will find out who he is. So Shang leaves Area 23. Area 23 is the place he spawned in, it consists of 5 Kingdoms, and beyond the 5 kingdoms is a void, past the void is the rest of the world. In the outside world, Shang joins the Temple of Blood, which is a shady organization that does not care for morals. Temple of Blood is not necessary for the store, but I will briefly cover something. Shang joins the ToB revealing to them that he is a warrior who has theorized and carved a path to the 5th realm of warriors. Shang is currently the only 5th realm Warrior in existence. That means he has worth and they won't kill him. The ToB sends Shang on missions, but every time they do so, they give him a chaperone who watches to make sure Shang is trustworthy. Except, Shang kills every person who watches him because he can't let them know his abilities, and every time he returns to ToB, he tells them the same excuse that his chaperone got eaten by a wolf. The ToB realizes Shang's battle strength is very powerful. So they don't kill him whenever they send him on a mission, if they suspect that the person will betray them, they will send them on a mission with Shang, who kills them and tells the ToB that they got eaten by a wolf. After realizing his worth, the ToB tasks Shang with creating an Academy for warriors, teaching them to become 5th Realm Warriors. Shang gets traded to the Lightning Manor, which is the final organization that Shang will join.
Quite a bit later, roughly chapter 960, Shang is a Sword King, and he studying Abominations' souls so that he can repair his own, he finds out he can repair his soul by replacing it with a concept known as Entropy, unfortunately, if he puts more than 60% of his soul filled with Entropy, he would go "insane", so he keeps his soul 60% Entropy and 40% Mana. This alters Shang's personality a little, as it forces him to interact with Mana, which abominations hate. So now Shang hates all Mana, but he tolerates it. A little while later, Shang ascends to a Sword God, and separates Shang and Alex, Alex being his remaining good emotions which have been stuffed in a deep corner of his soul for his entire lifespan. Alex, a repressed ball of emotions that has been chained up for 50,000 years and compressed in a body that is only 17 years old, eradicates the entire world because Alex was blinded by anger. Meanwhile, Shang laughs with insanity before leaving the cosmos he's in and continuing on, to get more powerful. That is the end of the novel.
Warrior Path Realms
Soldier Stage | General Stage | Commander Stage | True Path Stage | Fusion | Void Break | Sword Lord | Sword King | Sword Emporer | Sword God
Mage Path Realms
Apprentice | Adept | True Mage | High Mage | Arch Mage | Ancestral | Mage Lord | Mage King | Mage Emporer | Mage God
Beast Realms
Soldier | General | True Beast | High Beast | Arch Beast | Ancestral Beast | Beast Lord | Beast King | Beast Emporer | Beast God
Abomination Realms
Soldier Stage Abomination | General Stage Abomination | Commander Stage Abomination | True Path Stage Abomination | Arch Abomination | Ancestral Abomination | Abomination Lord | Abomination King | Abomination God
Sword God in a World of Magic (Original Pay-Walled)
Sword God in a World of Magic (Pirated)
