539 Chapter 539 – Pathways
Shang sat down and closed his right eye.
His Spirit Sense was fully focusing on his Mana Pathways.
Over the past years, he had performed his attacks so many times that he perfectly knew where he would move his Mana.
Right now, Shang was checking which Mana pathways he needed and which weren’t in use.
Yes, there were several Mana pathways that hadn’t been used even once, but that didn’t mean that these Mana pathways were useless.
In fact, these Mana pathways would be used in his other three States. Not every state needed every single Mana pathway. Some of them even existed solely for a single attack.
In his Great Sword State, Shang was using around 70% of his Mana pathways.
He could theoretically create more attacks to use all his Mana pathways, but that would be a waste of time. Some Mana pathways would only be used if Shang swung his sword with one arm from his hip, which would be quite difficult to do in his Great Sword State.
After Shang checked all of his Mana pathways, he noted them down on a diagram. Luckily, there were a couple of magical artifacts that made it easy to project a picture onto a piece of paper. With Shang’s wealth, these artifacts didn’t cost a lot.
In just a couple of hours, Shang had created several intricately detailed diagrams of the Mana pathways inside his body.
Then, he went on to plan.
For now, he wouldn’t touch the shared Mana pathways. After all, he couldn’t be sure that any of his current changes wouldn’t interfere with any attacks from his other States.
Redrawing fitting Mana pathways that were only used for a few attacks wasn’t very difficult. Shang essentially only had to create the pathways according to a few guidelines.
But the further Shang progressed, the more difficult it got.
A lot of the pathways had to be used for several different attacks, which all had different conditions.
Even more, Shang noticed that some of the Mana pathways he was working on were also in use in the Colossal Sword State.
Changing his Mana pathways became more and more difficult the more he changed.
One change needed several other changes on several other Mana pathways.
Shang was essentially redesigning an entire network of intricate pathways and connections.
‘How am I supposed to give you such a sharp angle when the pathway leading into you requires such an intense speed and density of Mana?! It’s like you want me to create a normal roundabout on a highway! There are bound to be crashes!’ Shang thought in frustration.
‘I could create a sidelining pathway that throttles the speed of the Mana, but that would needlessly lengthen the pathway, making my attack need a bit more time to truly show its effect. I don’t really want to throttle my speed even more.’
‘Okay, and how can I give you that much speed when the location just before you is a complex intersection between several pathways? I mean, I could change the entrances of these two pathways so that this one leads directly into that one, but then I would need to make some more changes on the other one.’
Then, Shang focused on the next one.
And for several seconds, he only looked at the diagram.
‘What?’ he thought after some seconds.
Right now, Shang was looking at a complex intersection of pathways. The one coming from the core of his body led to one that needed a lot of speed, but the one Shang was looking at needed just as much speed.
However, Shang couldn’t use the same solution he had used before.
There was already a different pathway there that needed just as much speed.
‘But I need both of them for this attack,’ Shang thought as he scratched the back of his head in frustration. ‘It is literally impossible to get enough Mana to perform the attack with the current setup!’
‘What does the original look like in that spot?’
Shang looked at another diagram.
After having made so many changes, Shang noticed a couple of interesting things with the original design.
It was very simple.
It was smooth.
It delivered Mana equally to every part, and it allowed him to use every attack.
In a way, it was simple but effective.
Shang furrowed his brows as he looked at the intersection he was currently having problems with.
p Anda nOve1.cO,m ‘I mean, it’s working, but the intersection can’t possibly give enough Mana to make full use of the attack. I can still use it, but there’s a lot of wasted potential here.’
At that point, Shang stood up and grabbed Sword.
Then, he performed the attack.
During the attack, he also looked at the intersection inside his body.
It was flooded with Mana and flowed through his pathways as quickly as possible.
But with Shang’s new understanding, he could see that filling both of these wide highways of Mana was too much work for the single pathway before them.
The density of Mana lowered a bit, but just an instant later, Shang’s muscles along the two pathways were releasing their own Mana, filling the two pathways again.
Because of that, Shang had enough Mana to perfectly use that attack.
After Shang was no longer using any Mana, he saw the muscles absorb Mana again.
‘So that’s how my body does it,’ Shang thought. ‘In hypothetical numbers, I have an output of 100 Mana per second, but to perform this attack, I need 150 mana per second for only one second. I can’t deliver enough Mana, but the muscles on the way to the location of the attack act as temporary storage. They give 50 extra Mana for this second and take that Mana back from the following second.’
Shang rubbed his chin.
‘Does that have a disadvantage?’
‘Let’s see, when I perform this attack, I take Mana from these muscles. So, if I were to move like this directly after the attack, what would happen?’
Shang performed the attack and directly chained into a different attack.
That was when he noticed that his second attack was very sluggish.
In the past, he would have just assumed that it was the inertia from this previous attack, but Shang had seen the true cause this time.
His muscles didn’t have enough Mana to perform the attack with all of their power.
‘I would have never thought about using the attacks like this since it just felt impossible and wrong. However, if I can actually fix this mistake, I can combine my attacks even more freely.’
‘There’s definitely something I can improve.’
And then, Shang looked at the diagram riddled with changes and alterations.
‘But how?’