《Supreme Demon Sacred God External Tempering Physique》
"With a name like this, it definitely doesn't look simple."
Following the instructions in the book, Roland began to practice. This one was much more normal, though the word "death" popped up from time to time in the text. But for the King of Pride, it was all too easy; it was nothing more than spreading raw mana throughout his entire body, followed by the necrosis of his flesh and blood.
As he practiced, blood began to ooze from Roland's facial features.
"..."
【Store the absorbed raw mana in every inch of flesh and blood, allowing the body to truly adapt to the presence of raw mana. Let the raw mana destroy your body—or rather, not destroy, but transform it—returning raw mana to its primordial state, while the physical body attains new life through the thousandfold temperings of raw mana...】
Unbearable pain spread across every inch of his skin.
His skin likewise began to flush red, oozing blood.
Generally speaking, a mage's cultivation was nothing more than enhancing their soul strength and mental power, using them to drive the raw mana ambient in the air, and constructing simple conversion rituals to turn raw mana into natural elements—or directly driving pure elements. At the same time, there was one fatal condition.
That's right: the blue bar, commonly known as spell power.
And what spell power represented was elementless energy converted from raw mana. Simply put, raw mana could be converted into spell power—energy that could be safely absorbed by the human body—while raw mana could also be converted into elemental energy through conversion rituals. These three were the most fundamental sources of a mage's power.
This was one of the reasons why the threshold for mages was so high and why they were so rare.
Simply put, mages absorbed raw mana by converting it into body-harmless spell power, and then used that spell power to construct conversion rituals to turn raw mana back into elemental energy. This was a mage's most basic spellcasting process, but it was also their weakness: during the lengthy casting delay, a mage often struggled to beat a warrior of the same rank in a duel.
This disadvantage only began to improve after Sixth-Rank.
Yet in terms of versatility and destructive power, mages were second to none.
Thus, the idea behind 《Supreme Demon Sacred God External Tempering Physique》 was very simple.
It was to completely skip converting raw mana into spell power, directly absorbing raw mana instead and letting it remodel the physical body to gradually adapt to this primordial force. If successful, one would not only gain an extraordinary physical body, but also greatly increase magic resistance, alongside other wondrous effects.
Furthermore, according to the original author's vision, it could even eliminate a mage's damned casting delay.
Because rather than using spell power to drive raw mana, it was better to perform the conversion directly inside the body.
This bypassed the chain of raw mana → spell power → raw mana → elemental energy, simplifying it to raw mana → elemental energy. By skipping so many steps, it could not only strengthen the body, but also drastically boost magic efficiency and power.
If a normal person tried playing around with this, there was no other outcome besides death.
The reason there was only the author's theory without a single actual successful case was that the original author literally practiced himself to death. Furthermore, over the next thousand-plus years, not a single person had succeeded. To put it simply, the risk of death from this stuff was higher than that of taboo rituals; just thinking about it was insane.
It practically subverted all current magic theories.
If the old professors at the Imperial Academy saw this book, they would probably jump up, glare in fury, and turn red-faced as they shouted curses at how brain-dead and ignorant the author was.
It was only because the original author died early that he gave it such a cringe-worthy name like 《Supreme Demon Sacred God External Tempering Physique》, likely to bait future generations into continuing to refine it. But truth be told, we ought to thank the Survey Corps.
Roland, however, was different. The King of Pride rejected all forms of unnatural death.
"Interesting..."
【Spell Genius (Purple): Learning efficiency for all spells +100%, spell power +50%.】
【Spell Prodigy (Purple): You hold doubts toward all spells. Your spell integration ability is drastically increased, making it much easier for you to create miracles. Your spell development capability is drastically increased.】
【Physical Technique Genius (Purple)】
【Physical Technique Prodigy (Purple)】
Perhaps this thing really would be perfected by him.
At worst, he'd just die a few more times.
It wasn't like he would actually die anyway.
...
Roland woke up.
He looked around, somewhat dazed.
He was inside the Lucifiel treasury. Not long ago, as he was practicing, he had suddenly snapped and dropped dead onto the ground. He only remembered that before losing consciousness, his body felt as if it had been painted with a layer of pigment; blood oozing from his skin clung to him like a blood-soaked corpse, and his eyes had gone blind from severe congestion and raging raw mana.
"It really isn't simple. Looks like I've already kicked the bucket once."
With those words, Roland continued practicing.
Roland woke up again.
"..."
"Again."
Over and over again, his body's adaptability continuously increased. After several dozen attempts, his body began to fully adapt, and 【Original Sin · King of Pride · Lucifer】 began judging the conditions as negative states and directly granting immunity. As raw mana and his original spell power began to merge, his body began developing toward the mysterious side.
"Tsk. So absorbing raw mana wasn't judged as a negative state by 【Original Sin · King of Pride · Lucifer】 earlier?" Roland discovered a blind spot. "If it had been judged as a negative state right from the start and immediately exempted, I wouldn't have 'died' so many times."
"It seems voluntary states don't enter the scope of judgment."
"I just don't know if blood-rage type abilities fall under that judgment range."
As Roland cultivated and pondered, his consciousness went black, and he collapsed onto the ground once more.
"..."
This time, Roland focused all his attention on controlling the raw mana within his body.
Until it was perfectly distributed throughout his entire body, combined with his previous adaptation, Roland began to handle it with ease. 《Supreme Demon Sacred God External Tempering Physique》 finally arrived at its last step: directly converting raw mana into elemental energy. As long as this succeeded, it would be considered fully completed.
Soon, several ice crystals began to condense around him.
Carrying a frigid, icy chill.
"It worked!"
【Spell Conversion · Mana Origin (Prismatic): You have transcended the shackles of spell power. All spell power in your body is now completely replaced by raw mana. Your body has thoroughly adapted to raw mana. Casting speed +1000%, casting efficiency +800%, casting power +500%, mana cost -50%.】
【Body of Mana (Gold): Every inch of your skin is filled with the world's most foundational power. You can directly control natural elements using mental power. Resistance to all spells +100% (Note: This calculation method is additive, not a percentage exemption), overall physique +200%.】
"One Prismatic and one Gold. Not bad, not bad at all." Roland looked at the sky-defying stats. "It was worth hitting the deck so many times. Effort and reward are proportional after all."
In fact, what impressed Roland even more was the Gold trait 【Body of Mana】. Beyond those absurd stat stacks, what he valued most was the ability to directly control natural elements using mental power.
Isn't that basically telekinesis?
This thing doesn't even have a casting delay, right?
If mental power is strong enough, it's literally a matter of brute-forcing victory, not to mention a premier tool for flexing.
Not to mention he still had 【Pride · Soul Forge】 to infinitely stack soul strength and mental power.
Factor in Soul Forge, and pairing the two together made calling 【Body of Mana】 a Prismatic trait anything but an exaggeration.
Rate on N.U.
