Steel Magician

Steel Mage is a fantasy novel by the web author Yuwan, totaling around 1.06 million Chinese characters and now complete. The story begins when a sixteen-year-old boy, drunk one night, stumbles into a strange realm and is told by a giant that he has become one of the Chosen—an intelligent being summoned with divine permission by an archmage from beyond another dimension, and bound to enter a pact with the summoner as a familiar. Faced with a long list of divine powers to choose from—the God of War, the Lord of Flame, the Lord of the Ocean, the Lord of Sky and Storm, and many more—he instead picks the one no one has chosen in a thousand years: the Humility of the Dark Lord. From then on, he embarks on a path utterly unlike anyone else's. In a continent where swords and sorcery coexist and pantheons abound, the protagonist travels under the name Lando the Mage. Unsatisfied with the usual path of mages who study only elemental spells and pursue destructive power, he turns his mind to the forging and reshaping of metal, researching enchanted weapons and metal golems, and carving out a unique magical path steeped in the essence of steel. He journeys through city-states, ventures into dwarven mines, elf forests, and ancient mage towers, and shares adventures with companions including a cat-eared girl. Drawn into conflicts among the Mages' Association, liches, divine servants, and various factions, he grows from a naive boy into someone who uncovers the secrets left behind by an ancient age of magic. The book has a brisk, vivid style with a strong comic-book flavor.