Martial Arts vs Magic, Book 1 cover art

Martial Arts vs Magic, Book 1

Mana Cultivation (A LitRP Progression Adventure)

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Martial Arts vs Magic, Book 1

By: The Veiled Man, Hikaru Genji
Narrated by: Sylvester Frost, Ellory Lane
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About this listen

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 Action & Adventure Fantasy Magic Martial Arts
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The narration has errors. Differences in pronouciation between the male and female narrators, 'wary' being pronounced as 'weary', several other consistent mispronunciations or incorrect tenses too. It's not even at a level of reasonable mistakes, they're things that are obviously and gratingly wrong even listening for the first time that make me wonder how little they were paying attention for them to slip through.

The story itself... like I try to be forgiving. This is a power fantasy, there are going to be things that are ridiculously contrived in order to help the main character aura farm. But all of the information he learned pointed to the werewolf matriach being in the city and heavily injured, somehow, he didn't realise this despite being beaten over the head with it, so the maguffin that could heal her didn't come into play until the last moment. Then, despite knowing that if she lost he was dead, his men were dead, the entire city was dead, he sat back and waited until she lost the fight. Even though it was obviously a losing battle the entire time. Why not use the OP-limit break ability while you still have an ally on the field unless you're lazy, a coward, or a dumbass. It just... it really makes the MC seem like a coward or a scumbag rather than a hero, he literally let everyone who could help him lose before he did anything.

Then in the aftermath, he freaks out about the lifespan cost despite that he knows he has ways to fix it. Instead of planning the methods and ingredients he'll need to obtain to fix things, he becomes irrationally obsessed with short-term goals. And when his new companion asks about it "can't tell her and ruin my image", as if telling her the truth about what it cost him to save her people wouldn't make her even more loyal? Just... I get that if their relationship jumped a level at the time it'd be too soon, but having him self-sabotage so badly for so long, for a completely irrational reason makes him seem like a moron.

I feel like there must be a big disconnect between what the worldbuilding was intended to convey, and how it actually came across. Because that whole arc of him hunting down ways to identify how much lifespan he has left was both super cringe, and a complete waste of time. Knowing how much time he has left doesn't increase his lifespan at all. And he wasted months of life on it. It's just... so irrational. And it was irrational from the beginning. Making the whole arc feel like a stupid waste of time that we're supposed to pretend makes sense.

The thought process behind the story seems like it has the wrong priorities. You can put what's 'appropriately dramatic' over what's logical to an extent, but if you lean into that too far it just crushes any suspension of disbelief and makes the characters feels like caricatures.

Bad on several levels

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I feel like the author skipped over too many details at the start. They never really explain how the protagonist ends up in the game world.
The narrators were okay but weren't a good fit for the characters they played.

Average

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I quite enjoyed this book even though I wasn’t too sure I would at the beginning, it was really entertaining and besides like 2 chapters near the middle that I think didn’t need to be that long I would highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy, cultivation or isekai
Good job

Surprisingly good

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