A Matter of Professions...

"What? Warriors don't wield Battle Qi? They use magic power too?"

Zheng Yichen stared at the contents of the second Primer as though he had seen a ghost.

"Battle Qi?" Lolise thought for a moment. "Some warriors can indeed train their bodies to produce a power that isn't magic. It's formidable, but it differs greatly from magic power."

"How so?"

"Magic power can reach elemental forces more easily and call upon them. That other power forcibly draws in energy, transforms it within the body, and releases it." Lolise had lived long enough to know far too much. She had no trouble clearing up Zheng Yichen's confusion. "This book covers it."

"I see..." Zheng Yichen tapped the ground, looking a little conflicted. So the warriors and mages of this world basically used the same power: magic...

He kept leafing through the second Primer and found an explanation. Mages and warriors both used magic power, but their methods were worlds apart. Put simply, it was the difference between firearms and cold steel.

Mages used array patterns to process magic power into all kinds of "ammunition." Warriors, on the other hand, mostly used it to strengthen themselves. By channeling magic power through different paths inside their bodies, they could perform a range of physical combat techniques. Those techniques demanded a great deal of bodily strength.

Magic, meanwhile, placed heavy demands on mental strength.

Anyone with some talent could possess magic power. If their mental potential or aptitude fell short, they simply could not become a mage. Even if they grew stronger later, the most they could hope for was to master a few low-level spells. They would never achieve much more in that field.

Someone who could accumulate magic power might still qualify as a warrior even if they could not become a mage. Those who could not even accumulate it had only one option: train their bodies relentlessly and try for a third path. That was what Zheng Yichen called "Battle Qi," though this world called it War Qi.

Magic-power warriors and War Qi warriors had once argued over which system represented the true path of the warrior. Magic-power warriors had a rich variety of developed techniques, while the power of War Qi warriors was brutally straightforward.

War Qi lacked the many techniques available to magic-power warriors, but it packed tremendous force. It was as though every last point had been spent on raw power, leaving little room for varied techniques.

For instance, a magic-power warrior might master a combat technique that let them fly. A War Qi warrior of equal strength could only fight on the ground. Even if they used that violent power to strengthen themselves and leaped dozens of meters, they were jumping high, not flying.

What was more, getting started with War Qi was extremely difficult and required punishing training.

In short, magic power was a general-purpose force, but different priorities had led the two paths down entirely different branches.

"War Qi is a peculiar power. Every person's War Qi is unique. Anyone injured by it continues to suffer damage because of its violent nature, and it's very hard to drive out."

After Zheng Yichen finished the book, Lolise saw that he still seemed interested in "Battle Qi," so she told him what the Primer had left out.

"If magic power is water, War Qi is oil. Its distinct nature makes it extremely difficult to blend with other forces for large-scale destruction, so War Qi warriors are poor at area attacks. But for direct lethality, only single-target magic can compare."

"War Qi also lets practitioners strengthen their bodies rapidly through its power and exercise, much like magic-power warriors do. But because it's so violent, it injures their bodies even as it strengthens them."

"War Qi grows stronger as a warrior's physique improves. That means War Qi warriors can never fully adapt to its power simply by strengthening their bodies, and its practitioners seldom live long. If a warrior can completely master War Qi's violent nature, they can eliminate the harm it does to them. It will then strengthen their body without injuring it, just like magic power... And because of War Qi's nature, their bodies will grow stronger even faster!"

"War Qi warriors like that are rarer still."

"Hmm... If mages trained the way warriors do, couldn't they strengthen their bodies too?" Zheng Yichen suddenly felt that every mage in this world had the potential to be a Gandalf!

"They could. You could even train as a mage and a warrior while also cultivating War Qi, provided you had enough time and energy. Humans don't live very long."

"Hmm, I shouldn't need to worry much about time right now, should I?" Zheng Yichen looked down at his dragon claws. Between the Primers and Lolise's detailed explanations, he now had a fairly clear understanding of the three professions.

A mage was a mage; that path depended on talent. A magic-power warrior could more or less be considered a spellblade, couldn't they? The bar for becoming one was much lower than for becoming a mage. A little magical aptitude would do, making it another path for those who could not become mages. But War Qi warriors... To Zheng Yichen, those were the real damn warriors!

No flashy tricks, just vicious attack power and a willingness to put their lives on the line. Given Lolise's assessment of War Qi warriors, the power itself had to be incredibly fierce.

This world had no rule against combining professions, but pursuing all of them would be a tremendous challenge for a human. The fact that becoming a mage depended on talent already showed how hard magic was to learn. Splitting one's attention while studying it would leave too little time to build a proper foundation. Even with enough talent, one would not get far.

Combat techniques sounded a little like martial-arts forms powered by internal energy. Even if they were less intricate and complicated than array patterns, they could hardly be easy to learn. War Qi warriors, meanwhile, needed to spend vast amounts of time training their bodies.

Each path demanded considerable time. For humans, whose lives lasted only a few decades, pursuing all three without extraordinary talent was practically a way of courting death.

"Not necessarily. Your growth rate is unusual," Lolise said calmly. "You've been growing dozens of times faster than a normal member of the Dragon Race. It wouldn't be strange if your lifespan were shorter. Besides, before you 'crossed over' into this dragon body, it was already dead."

"But I haven't grown at all for over half a month." Zheng Yichen scratched his head. Once he noticed how quickly he was growing, he had measured his height every two or three days whenever he had nothing better to do. He had practically changed from one day to the next. But a little over half a month ago, that rapid-growth buff had vanished.

"Perhaps you haven't gone through the Dragon Race's first growth slumber." Lolise considered this, then asked Zheng Yichen, "Have you ever felt like sleeping for a long time?"

"...Never."