The tree roared, apparently getting the threat for what it actually meant. Now that he had seen its magic, he inferred that it was using some sort of elemental power, perhaps that of Life. If there were people who could use the power of Death, then it made sense that there was an opposing element to it. In addition, he could not think of anything else that could create instant metastasis like that attack had. He could not succumb to another however.

Sam did not try to climb the tree again, instead gathering his Dao energy into his mace for a single devastating strike to one of its legs. If he got rid of two legs on the same side of the tree, then it would be unable to balance. With a splintering crack, he slammed his mace home into the base of a root, tearing off a chunk of wood. Thick green veins ran through the flesh underneath, and sticky sap like blood oozed out. The monster let out a cry of pain that sounded like the creaking of branches in the wind. It shot another barrage of spikes at Sam, but he used the shelter of its leg to block it. As he moved, he grunted in pain as his body told him that it was not happy with the abuse that he had been putting it through. He had been able to stop the spread of the cancer, but he had not reversed the damage that it had done. Using Girdings of the Arbiter was just adding insult to injury.

He pushed past the pain, and swung his mace again, using another chunk of his remaining Dao energy. Soon he would have to switch to using his elemental energy, which he suspected would not work as well against a creature that was part tree. The third strike made the leg crack down the middle, and the tree groaned as one final unenhanced strike broke it in two. There was only one leg left to go. The monster was not going to go quietly into that good night however, and it expelled a thick green mist from its underbelly, dousing Sam in whatever it was. His skin started to sizzle, and he watched as pustules and oozing wounds spread across his body. The tree was using the power of Life magic to supercharge the microbes and viruses that were naturally on Sam, making them powerful enough to both instantly work, and to get past his durability. This was just something that he was going to have to deal with, as it was not an intrusion of Dao or elemental energy. Luckily it was more distracting than actually dangerous, and after working past the revulsion that he felt, Sam went back to work.

He used half of his remaining Dao energy to blast a large piece of wood off of the nearest leg, and two more strikes shattered the limb. There was an ominous creaking noise, and the tree started to fall. With Sam standing directly underneath it. He pushed his enhancement skill to the limit, managing to shoot himself out of underneath the monster just in time. He spat up a wad of congealed blood from overtaxing himself so much, but it was worth it.

The tree landed heavily, knocking down other trees and tearing open its fleshy parts on the forest around them. Sam rested for a moment, trying to reclaim enough energy to finish the monster off, and after a few minutes he was ready. The tree struggled to get to its feet, but it was completely helpless. Sam made his way towards its head, and looked into its glassy green eyes. There was a spark of sapience in there that made Sam almost regret what he was about to do, but sapience was not an indicator of virtue, indeed the greatest monsters in existence were among those possessing it. Instead, he gave it the honor of finishing it with one attack. Pushing all of the energy that he could muster into his mace, he brought it down with the force of a falling star, crushing the monster’s head into paste. A rush of essence entered him, pushing him up another level.

You have killed a Juvenile Arboreal Defender!

You have leveled up!

It must have been weaker than the bear had been, seeing as he had only gotten a single level despite not having to share the essence, but every bit of power that he could get was welcome. Sam quickly opened his status screen and allocated his points into Resilience again, taking a moment to look at the new numbers. There would be a lot of this over the next few days it seemed.

Level 37

Strength

64

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1.48x

Constitution

59

1.48x

Resilience

43

1.48x

Dexterity

33

1.48x

Intelligence

61

1.48x

Wisdom

80

1.48x

Sam closed his status and smiled at how well his stats were progressing. He was getting closer and closer to the last two thresholds. The vague feeling that he should try to get the thresholds was getting stronger the closer that he was to them, and he was not going to deny them. It would give him great versatility and it would give him more power overall than if he had dumped his stats all in one stat.

Now that he had cleared out the main monster in that area, it was time to find something to eat. Luckily it seemed that his body did not need more food to support itself, as he had feared, so a simple meal of roasted rabbit sated his hunger. It was not roasted very well, with only access to mana the rabbit was more seared then roasted, but it was still edible. The rabbit had been curiously large, which could be chalked up to the fact that it had leveled up, although why it had, Sam had no idea. For that rabbit to both have survived the initial monster infestation, and for it to have survived so long, just for it to die to sate Sam’s hunger, was quite ironic. Sam tossed the bones into the woods, and he went on his way.

There were no more monsters for hours, and he sunk into a semi meditative state in which he continued to ponder his Dao. Progress was a lot slower than it had been before, because he had a Fragment level Dao now, but every little bit counted. Instead, he used it as a way to kill time, while nominally gaining something out of it. Being away from the Dao Tree was severely hurting his contemplation speed, and that was considering the fact that he had multiple bonuses already. How anyone else managed to gain a Dao and upgrade it to a decent level was beyond Sam. Although his viewpoint was a bit truncated, he supposed, because he was counting away the years as if the hundred year deadline would be the end of his life.

Sam snapped out of his meditation as he heard a stick crack near him. It was getting close to night time, and although his vision was a lot better now, it was nowhere near enough to have full night vision. It was between that of a human and an eagle, enough to be considered superhuman, but barely so.

As he looked out into the encroaching darkness, he saw a small speck of red light hovering off the ground. It drifted between the trees, and Sam started to wander near it without knowing why. It flew off, and he followed it, believing that there was something important that it was leading him to. There was a faint sense of unease that was getting stronger by the minute, and suddenly all of his senses screamed at him to stop. With a titanic effort of will, Sam forced his legs to stop moving. There was a gigantic canyon in front of him, and if he had kept going, then he would have fallen in. The ball of light pulsed a deeper shade of red, and then sped off, having given up on Sam. He looked down into the canyon and could not see the bottom. It extended for miles ahead of him, and he could barely see the other side. This was most definitely not a natural thing, as if something like this had been here before the initialization, then he would have known about it. It was probably a result of the expansion of the planet that Jeffrey had told him about.

He looked around, but there was no way past the canyon to get to the other side. In fact the subtle curve of the chasm made it seem like it ringed all the way around their faction headquarters. It was a very gradual ring, which meant that it probably extended for hundreds of miles, if not more, but it still was an obstacle to his path.

A faint heat drifted up from the bottom of the canyon, and he looked down at the faint red haze at the bottom. It seemed that it extended all the way down to a lava deposit, which meant that the canyon was even larger than he had expected, unless the crust of the Earth had not expanded with the rest of the planet. In any case, there was no way that he was going to get across that gulf in any reasonable amount of time. The only thing that he could think of was flying over with his enhancement skill, which would use thousands of times more mana than he had, as well as probably tearing apart his body before he had gone ten feet. No, he would have to limit his monster hunting to within the bounds of the canyon.