Sam roamed the realm of the Worldback Golems for the better part of a day, slowly but surely getting better at defeating them. All of them drew from the same playbook, summoning smaller elementals to deal with Sam’s assault. For most cultivators, the tens of thousands of D Rank monsters would have been overwhelming. For Sam, it was just a minor inconvenience on the way to a sure victory.
Each of the golems used different types of elements, though all of them used stone to some extent. Some summoned behemoths of moss covered rock, while others summoned entire walking forests, striding on stone plated roots.
After killing thirty of the Worldback Golems, leaving their shattered bodies strewn across the world, Sam had leveled up five times, including his first one. The essence from a level 400 monster was far far beyond anything he had experienced before, even from fighters like Zeredran.
Sam’s body was practically bulging with power, though he kept his stat points saved up, given that they were pretty minor compared to how much power he had already gained from D Rank. Until he was able to gain a D Rank class, the stats points provided would always lag far behind the ten times multiplier that his rank up had already provided.
After getting used to the stat boosts from the levels, Sam moved on, heading for the next group of planet sized golems.
Before he could reach it, a pillar of flame broke through the horizon, lancing up into the heavens above. In its center was a man, clad in a suit of golden armor that was almost a mile tall. Sam could still see him through the translucent panes of light making it up.
“Who dares to trespass upon the lands of my Lady?” the newcomer boomed. “Who dares to slay the scions of the Clans? Who dares to kill one of my daughters!”
Sam froze, suddenly feeling like he was the bad guy here. If this man truly was Alana’s father, nothing Sam could do would sway him from trying to kill him. He teleported behind one of the Worldback Golems, but it was already too late.
“I see you!” the golden armored man roared, his words shaking the air. With a speed that belied his size, he shot out of the pillar of flame, leaving it to break apart into ash behind him. A long spear of radiant energy formed within his right hand and he quickly gripped it with his other hand, pointing it directly at Sam.
Sam cursed and started to teleport around, trying to get out of his enemy’s line of sight. Even when he went beneath the ground, he could feel the unerring gaze of a Dao Skill pinning him down. There was no escape here. Only battle.
Sam emerged on top of one of the toppled Worldback Golems, standing his ground against the incoming threat. He planted Worldbreaker against the ground and as the titanic missile of a man came plummeting down from above, he anchored the massive weapon with his strength, holding it in place.
With a ringing boom, the enemy cultivator struck Worldbreaker so hard that both the weapon and Sam were forced almost a mile into the ground below. The rock around Sam heated up and began to flow as a merciless heat started to billow up around the golden armored man.
Sam teleported, compressing his hammer to a more manageable size, but was cut off halfway by pressure from his foe’s Dao. He instead was forced to use Dao Juggernaut, pushing himself out of the ground through brute force.
He emerged into a raging inferno, surrounded by lava and solar fire. A golden eye the size of a city glared down from the sky above, brighter than the sun a thousand times over. The enemy cultivator stood beneath it, his armor shining from the orb’s light.
Sam felt like a prey animal under the gaze, its very presence creating a narrative of hunter and hunted. Sam’s eyes narrowed as he detected subtle flows of Dao energy connecting the other cultivator and the orb. Not the huge, pulsating channels of power that sustained the orb in the first place, but the smaller ones that surrounded the larger ones.
From what Sam could tell, the eye acted as an active Dao dampening array, forcing the power of its creator’s concept upon everyone and everything within its range.
Sam couldn’t directly contest his enemy’s Sapling, which was at least three or four stages above his own, but what he could do was act in a manner contrary to its nature, and interfere with it. The Dao in question gained power from an archetypal predator and prey relationship between its wielder and his foes.
Instead of cowering, trying to run or evade or even attacking, Sam simply stood his ground, unconcerned. The shadow of his hammer “I’ve stopped running. What are you going to do now? Your little Dao game isn’t going to work anymore.”
“I don’t need my Dao to crush you, boy! My name is known across all the clans as a source of fear and as something to respect!”
“Yeah?” Sam asked derisively. “I haven’t heard your name before. It must not mean all that much.”
“I am the chieftain of the Ozeri Clan,” the gold armored man spat. “My name is Garev. Take it-”
“With me to my grave? I don’t know if the System translation just likes that phrase, but I’ve heard it way too much.”
Garev shook his head disapprovingly and twirled his spear, a gale forming around him. Sam felt intimidated by the giant standing before him, but didn’t show it. Instead, he pivoted and brought Worldbreaker whipping around. The amount of force that could be generated by a six mile long weapon whipping around at hypersonic speeds was incredible, especially when its wielder possessed the strength to keep control over its trajectory.
While Sam was weaker than Garev in both the world of the Dao and likely that of stats, the one place where Sam did have an edge was in his choice of weapon. Worldbreaker was one of the most powerful armaments Sam had ever seen, and was near the pinnacle of what could be created within the D Rank. Some paltry conjured energy spear couldn’t hold a candle to it.
Sam struggled against Garev for a moment, like an ant somehow holding back the finger of a man trying to crush it. Then, against all reason, he pushed through, forcing Garev’s spear apart into motes of shimmering light. His hammer slammed into the side of Garev’s helmet and shoulder, denting the entire piece of armor. Worldbreaker’s head was so large that it nearly took up half of Garev’s body, ensuring that the blow did maximum damage.
Garev took a tumble across the shattered ground, his armor sounding like a washing machine filled with rocks as it clattered against the rocks beneath. With a roar of rage, the man himself flew out of the suit of armor. He was of the same species as Alana, naturally, but that was where the similarities ended. He went shirtless, the entirety of his upper body covered in a silvery-white layer of scar tissue that spoke to decades of battle and a masochistic urge to display his injuries even after his regeneration should have closed them up.
Garev’s fists were wrapped in layers of glimmering cloth, speckled with emerald and golden light. His eyes were pools of liquid flame, positioned over a scowling, brutish face. His hair was close cropped and dark brown. The patriarch of the Ozeri clan slammed his fists together, and the icon of a clenched fist appeared above his head like a halo.
“I have more than one Dao, you fool,” Garev crooned.
The sing-songy tone was quite startling to hear coming from such a battle hardened warrior. Sam was beginning to suspect, as seemed to be the case with many of his enemies, that Garev wasn’t entirely there mentally. Not in terms of intelligence, but in development. Being taught from a young age that power was what determined worth tended to stick with people throughout their whole lives.
Sam gathered his Dao and, now that he was engaged in active battle, had a way to direct it. The threads of Karma that Sam was beginning to get used to seeing sprang to life in the air, linking him to Garev. While those threads were quite thin, they were still there, and would only get thicker as the battle went on.
He tugged on one of those threads with his Dao, directing a little pulse of power down it. Sam hadn’t fully explored the potential of the Karmic threads, originally seeing them as just an extension of Worldsense. After developing Descent of the Heavenly Judge, Sam had realized that there was far more to them than met the eye.
While the projectile was invisible to Garev, the effects were not. The chieftain flinched as a small wound opened up on his shoulder.
“I haven’t fought one of your lot in a while,” Garev remarked. “A Karmic Cultivator, huh? Almost as bad as those damn Fate Cultivators.” He shrugged. “Well, at least not being able to dodge isn’t as bad as waking up to find my entire life in ruins after I killed the wrong person.”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Sam didn’t respond. Instead he began to pluck the strings of Karma, directing more projectiles towards Garev. What he quickly learned put a bit of a damper on his expectations. Firstly, launching pellets of raw Dao energy was extremely power intensive, at least with the quantities needed to get the job done. Secondly, a D Ranker was basically invulnerable against sustained minor damage, as their regeneration would simply out pace it.
“I’m curious,” Sam called out, “as to why you aren’t more angry with me. You came blustering your way into the battlefield, raging about your daughter. She was the one to attack me, after she realized I wasn’t from one of your precious clans. Her death kind of erased her argument, though.”
“You are an idiot,” Garev replied. “I do not care for my family because they are my family. I care for them because of status and propriety. You killing my daughter makes it seem like my bloodline is weak. That cannot be allowed.”
Sam curled his lip. “I almost forget how sociopathic you higher level cultivators are. Then I keep running into you.”
“Sociopathic? You are simply delusional. Everybody learns to treat life this way if they want to continue having it. You are young and talented, but you will learn.” A wolfish grin stole over Garev’s features. “Well, you would, if you walked out of here alive.”
Garev gave Sam no time to reply, teleporting directly next to him. Garev drew back his fist and punched, the air around the strike collapsing in on itself. Sam felt a sudden and intense spike of gravity, pulling him towards the fist. A dense purple light surrounded Garev’s clenched hand, growing thicker as it went.
Sam shrunk Worldbreaker until it was the size of a normal carpentry hammer and parried Garev’s strike. Sam smiled. After months of battles that had depended on mastery of the Dao, he now had a chance to develop his mastery of the hammer.
Then, as Garev seamlessly used the momentum to whip his other fist around and into Sam’s jaw, he remembered why he hadn’t tried to rely on his weapon mastery recently. It was the one field in which he was unable to match older and more experienced cultivators.
“Damn it,” Sam cursed as he was forced to lean upon his energy mastery. “How the hell am I supposed to get better at combat if everyone outclasses me so much?
Garev laughed. “That’s the thing. You don’t. If you think you can barge your way into my world on account of talent and potential, without having actually put the work in, you have another thing coming.”
Sam scoffed, relying on the speed granted to him by Dao Juggernaut to strike back with his hammer. Garev tried to block, but Sam angled the hammer at just the right place than when he changed its size, he was able to slide the much larger head of the weapon around Garev’s hand and into his shoulder. Sam felt the dull thud of metal on flesh pulse up and down the length of his weapon, though Garev merely winced.
“You might have tricks, but that will never defeat a true master of martial arts. Every technique you reveal is one that will never work again in the future.”
Sam upped the assault as Garev talked, trying to find out where exactly they stood in terms of strength and speed. Garev was a bit stronger, but he wasn’t as fast as Sam. Most of the gap was made up for by his superior fighting abilities.
“How about we up the game a bit?” Garev asked. “No weapons. Just fist to fist.”
Sam felt a reverberation in the world as Garev spoke the word ‘fist’. A ripple of power exploded outwards from Garev, ripping the wrappings off of his hands. A moment later, Worldbreaker was torn from Sam’s, tumbling away through the air. A rift opened in space, swallowing the weapon whole.
Sam gritted his teeth, eyes burning with rage. “You’re going to regret that.”
“Why?” Garev asked insolently. “Because you don’t have your toy to rely upon any more?”
“Because I’m a Karmic Cultivator and you just stole something precious from me,” Sam shot back. His fists glowed with blood red light, and his eyes started to spark, his entire body now surrounded in a layer of Dao Armor.
Sam launched himself forward with all the speed he could muster, blitzing past Garev’s defence. Both of his fists landed at the same right, right over where Garev’s Dao core was. A wave of force passed through Garev’s chest and tore up the surface of the ground behind him.
Sam forced his Dao into Garev, trying to strike directly at the warrior’s Dao Core. Before he could achieve much, a hand clasped onto his right wrist and tore him away. Garev leered at Sam, before slamming him into the ground so fast that by the time Sam had registered it, he was already arcing into the ground on the other side.
In barely a second, Sam struck the stone beneath him thousands of times, leaving two craters on either side of Garev. His health dropped far faster than any contact with mere rock should have elicited. The Dao energy Garev used empowered the damage dealt by his bare hands, no matter what it was. In this case he was able to damage Sam in a way that a D Ranker would normally have been immune to.
By the time Sam was able to wrench himself free, tearing his hand free, he had lost a good chunk of his health. His body was covered in blood and flattened in some places, his nose nothing more than a smear on his face.
Garev laughed manically and moved in once more, his body swathed in purple light. His fists were like tiny meteors, inexorably descending towards Sam’s flesh.
Sam smiled grimly. “Descent of the Heavenly Judge,” he ground out between shattered teeth.
A suit of ancient, demonic armor formed around him and for a moment, lit up the sky with its crimson light. Then it shrunk to Sam’s body and he raced forwards, fists tracing along the Karmic threads that linked him to Garev.
“You’re going for a finisher this early?” Garev asked in disbelief. “Fine. I will return the favor. Fist of the Sundered Heavens!”
His purple fists changed color, turning into tiny suns, collapsing in on themselves. The orange fire quickly condensed into white then blue, and then finally purple once more.
Sam felt a heat unlike anything he had experienced before, trying to strip the flesh from his body like a sandstorm of pure fire. He pushed through and punched with all of his might, pumping as much power as he could into his Descent of the Heavenly Judge.
The Karmic threads flared and grew as Sam locked eyes with Garev, cataloguing the sins the chieftain had committed against him. The flames surrounding his fists grew into bonfires, larger than even Sam. Then they collapsed in on themselves, sinking beneath Sam’s flesh.
Sam and Garev’s fists met and with the roar of an dying star, a sea of flame was born between them. Sam felt his right fist forcing Garev’s out of the way, tearing apart the flesh as it went. Meanwhile, Garev’s left fist capitalized on Sam’s stance, forcing his weaker left arm back against his chest. The two techniques detonated at the same time, blasting their users backwards so fast that by the time their flight stopped, neither could see the other.
Sam’s chest was gone, though his Dao Core was still intact. It rotated within him, a few cracks marring its otherwise pristine surface. It was almost impossible to truly damage a Dao Core without first killing the cultivator that had it.
Thousands of miles distant, Garev rose from one of the Worldback Golem corpses, covered in blood. The right side of his body was gone, though it was growing back even as Sam watched.
Sam narrowed his eyes and surveyed the state of his Daos. His Dao Sapling was drained by his usage of Descent of the Heavenly Judge, though it was regenerating quickly enough to be of more limited use. His Dao Seed of Travel, meanwhile, hadn’t been touched yet.
Sam, taking advantage of his position outside of Garev’s Authority, opened a portal directly in front of the other cultivator’s domain. As Garev reacted, blasting out a spectral fist, Sam took advantage of his lack of Dao energy to open another portal right behind him. Normally this would have been impossible, but Sam had tricked Garev into thinking that his Authority was still unassailable. With a bit brute force, Sam was able to make it through.
Sam emerged from the portal, his fists shining with light. Both of them slammed into the center of Garev’s back, blowing a chunk out of his body that shot down towards the ground below. Sam pushed his fist into the wound and tried to immolate Garev from the inside out, fire turning the D Ranker’s flesh to ash.
Garev howled in agony and reached back, contorting his body beyond a mortal’s limits. His fist twisted around on itself and allowed him to punch Sam away, the strike so hard that it felt like a cannonball straight to the side of his face.
Sam righted himself midair, only to have another punch rocket straight into the center of his still regenerating chest. It struck his Dao Core directly, the infusion of Garev’s Dao energy sending a tremor through it. Sam felt his breath catch, even though he hadn’t needed to breathe since reaching E Rank. The cracks on his Core spread further and further.
Rather than respond, Sam continued to regenerate his energy, focusing on reclaiming the power for another Descent of the Heavenly Judge. It was the only way to win at this point, as the skill would be supercharged by all of the damage he had taken.
Garev didn’t ease up, sending a volley of punches towards Sam so quickly and accurately that he was frozen in place, trapped within a cage of fists. Sam hunkered down, shielding his core with his hands. While Garev burned his Dao energy, Sam saved his.
“Fight back, you worthless bastard!” Garev spat. “Make this battle fun for me! I want to humiliate you the way you humiliated me. There’s no honor in a one sided fight!”
“Shut the hell up!” Sam roared, galvanizing his Dao. His Dao Core had just ticked a bit over three quarters full. It was time.
Instead of shouting out his technique, Sam just went for it, transitioning through the stages of the Descent far quicker than he normally did. His fist cracked directly into Garev’s Dao Core, quickly followed by the another punch. Garev didn’t falter, his strikes coming harder and harder. Waves of rippling energy erased Garev from existence, but his arms kept pumping away.
Just as Sam’s health neared a quarter full, he felt something give underneath his hand. With the tinkling of broken glass, and the power of a nuclear bomb, Garev’s Dao Core detonated.
