Martial Arts vs Magic, Book 1

Mana Cultivation (A LitRP Progression Adventure)

De: The Veiled Man, Hikaru Genji

Narrado por: Sylvester Frost, Ellory Lane

Someone once asked: What is stronger? Martial arts or Magic?

I answered: Why not simply use both?

In a new world brimming with possibilities—Levels, Classes, Skills, Dungeons, and Monsters—I found myself reborn as a noble family’s troublemaker son.

As a gamer, a magical world and a lazy life as a rich noble's son should have been a dream come true. But there was a massive catch. An absurd quest threw everything into chaos.

[Quest: Make a cult; Save the World.]

How could I, in the body of a useless noble, survive in a world dominated by jealous Gods and nefarious Devils, while treading on their domains?

Thankfully not all hope is lost. A few things can help me accomplish my quest.

A fiancee that also happens to be a vampire. A Magic Academy where I can find minions and allies. Finally—A Mysterious System.

©2025 Hikaru Genji (P)2025 Royal Guard Publishing LLC

I can't believe it's not cultivation slop!

Avoids the issues I have with most stories that involve cultivation or RPG mechanics. The fact that the main character's trump card has major downsides that he needs to deal with ASAP is a nice touch. The ending feels like it happens in an awkward spot (it should have happened a bit earlier but whatever) and some of the dialog can get a bit screwed up (a few instances of odd sentence structure) but if the next books can keep this level of quality then I'll keep following it.

voice acting was great

so the story was good but it's nothing special or unique really. but if you like dying and being reborn in another world stories you'll like this. the performance was amazing and there was nothing specifically wrong with the story. I had a great amount of action. I just feel like this trope's been down a lot but they did it well

I really enjoyed the story.

Ok just to let you know this will be all FTB and not very spicy. But the story definitely is great. I enjoyed the Mc and the reincarnation aspect. Always love the useless or crippled body. The side characters could use some work on flushing them out. Great fight always epic big fights.

Immensely engaging

This felt like 3 books for the price of one. I’m very much looking forward to the next one! The narrators truly enhanced the story. I really liked it and it’s a decent amount of time for your money/credit!

Great book

the book itself was good overall, the narration and storyline both went together very well I like the plot with the marshal arts and magic system together. can't wait for the second book

really good

I cant wait for the future of the series. it has some real promise. Everything was really well executed

Not his best.

Parts had gawd awful writing. To start, the description is incredibly misleading. He doesn’t have magic at all. The financê is out of the story after the first 20mins except a few random mentions and then just a little in the end. The academy? He’s there only the last 10mins.

The fiancé’s mom mentions her once offhandedly like she had no clue about her then shortly after the mom somehow knows that the MC is engaged to her daughter…wtf. THEN without any development, everyone seems to know.
Then there’s the GRINGY names for every technique. These demigods “are so powerful they can destroy planets” yet their full power attacks just wreck a bunch of buildings.

The worst part of this all? The writer has a pretty good series going.

This is one series you will want to check out!

This series is what I imagine when I think cultivation series. There is great ground work laid in first book. I wouldn’t exactly say that it is FTB. I would generally say that there is no explicit scenes in this book. However, there is one or two love interest developing. If I had to peg it I would say maybe it’s a slow burn. I would say if you like the son of the hero king by the author, you’ll love this series.

Story

I want to say the story and characters were great and I enjoyed it but and big but trying understand where does the Marshall art vs magic is honestly this book sounds more like a cultivation novel then anything because mc keep describing everything Kai this and Kai that even the others people he is fighting ,describe as using Kai even though they are using mana, also mana user don’t have cores they have pools so that why I was confused because the author never try to make mana and Kai different 😀

Frustrating

There is SO MUCH pointless repetition/padding. The overall length of the book could literally be cut in half without losing any meaningful content. And from what is there, a considerable portion of it is mediocre, overblown pseudo-anime writing, replete with massive amounts of hand-waving to avoid real character development. This is particularly aggravating because at its core there's elements of a solid story here.

Also, the book description is wildly misleading. The notion of mana/martial arts never materializes. The academy only shows up in the last 20 minutes. The fiancée is barely present in the book after the initial introduction.

I'm checking the second book in hopes of some improvement because I really wanted to like it, but if it carries on in the same vein I'm probably done with the series. I genuinely cannot understand how anyone could give this a five star rating.