Sam turned around, giving the canyon one last look as he walked away. He would be returning to it eventually. Considering that the quest that he had been given implied that the Seven Seals were located in the countries that their myths originated from, it would be hard to get to, say, Europe with this canyon in the way. There must be a way out, and Sam would have to find it. Unless the System just didn't care about screwing him over. That was a distinct possibility. After all, he had chosen the place to set up the faction, and the System could easily defer responsibility. For now, it was in his interest to grow as powerful as possible.
Sam wandered through the woods, looking for more monsters to fight. What would have been very welcome at that moment would have been a dungeon, but he had already cleared one of those in this area, which meant that statistically there were no others around here. In addition, there was a dearth of monsters available, with a few strong ones having cleared out all the weak ones. It took a while for him to find another quarry, and as he hunted for monsters, he continued to work on his Dao as he walked. The rhythmic tread of his footsteps helped to ground himself in his meditation, which made it so that when the first monster came into view, he almost didn't catch it.
A tiny snake, colored a bright purple, hissed at him from beside a tree. Despite its diminutive appearance, it produced a strong aura of danger. As Sam started to draw his mace, the snake flashed forwards like a bullet, appearing in front of him. It sunk its teeth into his hastily raised mace, and the weapon creaked beneath the power of the bite. When the monster retreated, there were two fang marks on the previously inviolate weapon. There was no venom on it, but with a bite strength like that, there didn't need to be. If that snake latched onto him, his bones would break beneath its power.
As the snake flashed forwards for a second strike, Sam centered himself and used Girdings of the Arbiter to force himself out of the way. He snapped his hand up towards the snake, but it was too fast and all that happened was that he skinned his hands on its scales as it passed. Sam swore and swung his mace forwards as the snake flashed in again. This time he missed, and the snake sank its teeth into his left arm. His bone cracked, and almost broke, but he tore it off with his other hand. Gritting his teeth, he crushed it between his fingers. Luckily its talents for strength and speed did not extend to its durability, and it was quickly turned to a paste.
You have killed a Juvenile Crush Viper!
Sam did not level up from that, and he was starting to get a bit perturbed at how so many of these powerful creatures were only juveniles. Did that mean that the more powerful, mature, versions of these entities would be coming later? Sam was about to toss the snake to the side, but he saw something interesting. Its teeth were scintillating in the light of the sun, and they looked to be incredibly dense. Sam ripped them out of the snake, and was surprised at how heavy they were. They were both at least 10 pounds in weight, and they would probably make good weapon parts. He pocketed them, and kept on searching for more monsters.
The body of the snake twitched ominously behind him, but Sam did not look back, and thus missed the fact that the snake wriggled away into the undergrowth, despite being completely dead. A low noise, that almost sounded like a rumbling laugh, emanated from the earth. Sam looked down uneasily, but eventually chalked it up the trees around him or something. High up above him, a bird wheeled around, watching him intently. There was only one thing amiss. Both of its eyes were gone.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
The next day, Sam had killed three more of the vipers, netting himself yet another level. He had continued with his idea of dumping points into one stat over the others, bringing his Resilience up to 47. One more level, and he would have yet another threshold stat. It had been a bit since he had gone through a threshold, and he was not looking forward to the experience. However, he had access to the best painkiller in the world, the promise of power.
On the last viper, he had noticed something strange, which was that it had disappeared after he had killed it, but he had dismissed it as a fault in his memories. That was more to convince himself that nothing uncanny was going on, seeing as his memory at this point was almost perfect.
Sam had tested out his new durability, and it was quite satisfying to do things like jumping off of twenty foot trees, and only feeling like he had stepped out of a car. In addition, he made his hands like weapons in their own right, as he would be able to punch things without hurting himself as much.
As he was getting near the top of G Rank, if he was not already at it, his weapon was starting to hold him back. It felt far too light, which made it harder to control it than he was used to. It still worked fine, but it was weird to have the feeling of waving a stick around. The weapon was probably about 50 pounds in weight, which was more than a normal person could use effectively, but it would have had to be closer to 250 pounds for Sam to feel the weight now. Perhaps one of the Seven Seal weapons would help him out with that. Mjolnir was a hammer after all, which was something like a mace, assuming that it would actually be constructed like how he expected.
A creaking noise sounded behind him, and Sam turned around sharply. There was something walking through the woods towards him, and it was large. By the noises that it was making, it was another arboreal defender.
Sam readied himself for battle, but then paused as it came into view. It was the same one that he had fought earlier, and it was clearly dead. Its body was broken and was covered in sticky sap, but it moved like none of its injuries were present. Sam’s hair stood up on end, and he gulped. There was something sinister going on here. If he didn't know better, this looked like the work of a necromancer. None that he knew of were powerful enough to animate this huge monster however, or even had the power to animate any dead thing for that matter. This was something else entirely.
The monster opened its mouth and let out a wheezing gasp, that seemed to be in the impression of a roar. Sam frowned, and then spotted a cloud of dark particles pouring out of it. They whirled around in the air, creating a whirlwind of darkness. A spear made up of those particles streaked down towards Sam, and struck the ground next to him. Its effect was the polar opposite of the arboreal defender’s previous attack, withering the life within the area to nothing. It was still equally deadly however. The entire monster had been corrupted by Death energy, which was likely how it was moving. Sam could feel something odd about its aura however, and there was a strange nugget of blazing power at the center that did not belong to the monster itself. Sam scanned the creature, and found that its suspicions were correct.
Juvenile Arboreal Defender Thrall
Level 46
The new addition to its name meant that it was no longer a free monster, instead a slave to something else. Its level was still the same as it had been before, not that Sam had actually scanned it, but he was getting good at estimating levels. It was a lot stronger than Sam, at least on paper, but his stat bonuses evened the gap. All that it had on him was its size and exotic abilities. Sam was not sure how exactly levels factored into the size of a monster, after all there were creatures that were just as powerful as this thing, but far smaller, but it didn't really make sense that it would be exactly the same strength as something the same level of it. That would mean that a level one version of this monster, while remaining the same size, would be just as weak as a level one human. No, there was something else at play here.