Andric walked slowly throughout the day. As he walked, he became hungry, and he headed into the forest to find an area where nobody would interrupt him. First, he cast a spell to detect eyesight being placed on him or around him. The spell cost a large amount of mana, so it was impractical to use as a continuous-type spell. Luckily, nobody was looking in Andric’s direction, and the spell disappeared without flashing a bright red light.

Next, Andric cast a spell on himself. His spell floated in front of his chest, then burst onto him. The mana inside it entered his body and converted the waste inside him into nutrients, which then recirculated through his body. A few seconds later, as his bloodstream received the nutrients, his hunger went away.

After that, Andric cast another eyesight detection spell. Again, there was nobody looking at him. He confirmed that he was still safe, then picked up a stick. He cast a spell at the stick, causing it to explode into millions of fragments. The fragments collected into a ball, and the mass changed composition. Transmuting mass required a huge amount of mana, but Andric didn’t have any shortage of mana. The fragments of wood transformed into droplets of water, which floated in the air in front of Andric. After the stick fully transformed, Andric cast a continuous-type spell to allow him to slowly drink the sphere of water.

Replacing a human’s need to eat and drink with magic was only slightly difficult. If Andric wanted to completely shift his body away from mortal nutrition, he could do so with only a few spells. However, to change back was much more difficult. For the sake of his growth and keeping up appearances in Einburg, Andric hadn’t changed his body to rely solely on mana for sustenance. Once his body required only mana to keep alive, ingesting normal food would become a hindrance.

A magician could engrave their arcane core with one spell that would be continuously activated. Some chose detection-type spells, but truly wise magicians engraved their arcane core with a spell to provide their body with all the necessities it required. The spell Andric knew would recycle his sweat, blood, and waste, and allow him to live for hundreds of years without breathing, eating, or sleeping. If he ate food when that spell was engraved in his arcane core, he would permanently gain weight. After a period of time, he would eventually need to cut out his flesh to maintain a proper weight.

Andric cast one more eyesight detection spell, and the results came up clean. He sat on a fallen tree trunk for a few minutes and finished drinking. In his growth period, he knew it was important to take in extra mass, so that was the only reason he continued to drink water after leaving Einburg. He estimated that he could stop in a few more years.

Andric returned to the road after about fifteen minutes of rest. He had walked for hours, and he was surprisingly tired. He silently cursed at the inefficiency of traveling without flying, then continued on his way, occasionally taking breaks to rest his legs.

The road through the forest was wide enough for three wagons to travel abreast. Over the years, the road had morphed from only a single-wagon width to three-wagons width. Although the road itself was nothing more than trampled dirt where no grass grew, it was a major road of Hochland.

And, along major roads, bandits were always patrolling. An hour after Andric stopped to satiate his hunger, he saw a man further up the road, walking toward him. The man was dressed similarly to Andric, with simple clothes and a straw hat, but he also had a sword on his waist. Andric glanced at the forest around him, but he didn’t see any bandits hiding in the shadows. He kept walking, getting closer to the man in the straw hat.

Andric wasn’t certain of how much time had passed between his original death and his reincarnation, but bandit techniques never changed. Andric and the man slowly approached each other, then passed each other. A second later, something sharp pressed against Andric’s back, and the man said, “Don’t make any moves.”

Andric didn’t listen to the man and ran forward. He quickly escaped the reach of the man’s weapon, and he turned around while raising his hands. The man nimbly approached Andric, slowing down when Andric turned around. The man didn’t see any weapon on Andric’s body, so he switched his knife to his left hand and drew his sword.

The man raised his sword in the air, as if he was about to chop it down onto Andric’s head. Andric backed up and created a spell in his hand, then tossed the spell out. The spell picked up speed on its own and crashed into the man, who panicked upon seeing the gaseous ball emerge from Andric’s hand.

The spell was too fast for the man to react to. He swung his sword in the spell’s path, but the spell had already hit his body. He paused, waiting to see what would happen. Andric only grinned and waited with him.

The next second, the man’s hands popped off at the wrists. They split off like chicken pulled from the bone, and two streams of blood erupted from the man’s arms.

“Ah!” he screamed and fell backward. When he initially spotted Andric, he saw his age and figured him to be an easy target. However, he never expected that he would lose his hands by some mysterious martial technique. To the man without hands, it never occurred to him that a young man like Andric could be an accomplished martialist, and he didn’t even know what a magician was, so it was impossible for him to make that connection.

Andric looked around and cast an eyesight detection spell. If there was someone watching him, the spell would send a ray of red light toward the person, making them easy to find. After Andric cast the spell, a single ray of light shone onto the man who lost his hands.

“You work alone?” Andric asked. The ray of red light disappeared after a second, but the man without hands continued to hall a slight red glow about him. Andric sent out a pulse of mana, making the red glow disappear as well.

“Yes!” the man painfully shouted. His arms were still bleeding, and he squirmed in pain. If given a few more seconds, he would die of blood loss.

“That’s too bad,” Andric frowned and said. Andric had hopped the man would have some reinforcements in the forest. Then, he would be able to kill them and loot all their bodies.

Andric waited for the man to pass out, then walked over to where the man’s hands fell. He picked up the hand that held the man’s sword, and he pried it from the man’s dead hand. The sword was made from cheap steel, but it would work as a weapon. Andric swung it a few times, but he didn’t feel comfortable with it. After all, even in his previous life, he had never used a sword.

He walked back to the man’s body and stabbed him in the neck, ensuring he was dead. Then, he used the sword to tap the man’s clothes. Coins were made from metal, so they were easy to find underneath clothing. Sure enough, the man had a pocket sewn on the inside of his jacket, and the pocket contained a few silver and copper coins.

The man had no luggage, making Andric think he wasn’t a simple traveler like himself. The man had no reinforcements waiting in the forest, but that wasn’t enough to rule out him being a bandit. It could be that he was going on his own for a little, or that he was a scout who was supposed to return somewhere if a merchant caravan was spotted. Because the man was dead, Andric couldn’t ask him any questions, so he had no way to know for sure. The man really could’ve been a traveler without any luggage who thought he could rob a stranger.

Andric took the sword and the coins and continued walking. He left the body where it was, allowing animals in the forest to clean up the mess. He briefly considered the possibility of some authority finding the body and tracing it back to him, but he remembered that he hadn’t seen a single authority during his thirty-some days of traveling with the merchant caravan.

For the first time in his new life, Andric had killed someone. He thought it would feel good, but, as he was walking away, he began to feel worse about it. The man deserved to die for the actions he took against Andric, but Andric’s mentality had unknowingly changed over the last fifteen years. His previous life had ended among scores of slaughter, but his new life was marked with a period of peace that lasted for fifteen years. After experiencing death, rebirth, and the unconditional love of a mother, it was impossible for Andric to remain unchanged.

Andric held the sword with one hand and loosely slashed the air in front of him. He didn’t know any sword techniques, but he had learned a few things about swords from Instructor Hubert’s lessons. In the martial world, swords were the prefered weapon for martialists. Although there were also spears, axes, hammers, crossbows, whips, and daggers, all of them added together could not compare with the number of sword users.

In the past, spears were the most famous weapon because of their ability to be used in army formations. Crossbows were also once famous, because they could be used to kill targets from a distance. Then, with the advent of martial techniques that allowed single martialists to contend with armies, army formations became less useful, and crossbows with a set limit to their power became too weak. Eventually, swords rose to become the dominant weapon across the world.

There were many martialists who used swords or other weapons, but there were also many who didn’t use weapons. Unarmed martial techniques were some of the ones with the longest histories, and they were sometimes the most powerful. But, they were difficult to master, and their use would result in heavy strain being applied to the body. If a sword technique was used in conjunction with a weak sword, the sword would break. If a fist technique was used in conjunction with a weak fist, the fist would break. Obviously, one of these things was more detrimental to the martialist practicing the technique.

Andric casually played with the sword. He didn’t expect to use it in actual combat. First of all, he was only at the third stage of the Human realm, placing him far below the strength of any Novice realm martialists. If there were two Human realm martialists trying to take his life, he had no confidence in being able to protect himself with his meager cultivation. He would need to rely on his magic, and he couldn’t use magic with a sword in his hand.

He walked for a long time, until he saw something glisten inside the forest. He immediately thought of light reflecting against armor or weapons, and he dashed to hide behind a tree. He waited a few seconds, but he didn’t hear anything, so he cast one of his eyesight detecting spells to figure out what was going on. After the spell activated, it detected nobody looking in his direction, and he confusedly walked out from behind the tree.

He slowly approached the location where he saw the flash of light. As he drew closer, he raised his guard. Once he arrived, a shiver ran down his spine. On the ground, under a thin cover of leaves, half a dozen mangled bodies were dumped into a pile. Their blood had long since washed away, and their flesh was rotting. Two of the bodies wore metal armor, which was what reflected the light that Andric saw.

They appeared to be a family of four and their two guards, who had been slaughtered and abandoned in the forest.