Sam moved over to its corpse, and tore it apart with his mace, not wanting to have to fight it again if it was resurrected like the defender had been. Sam then added his stat points, bringing up his Dexterity to 37. He could feel a faint difference in his movements, and he swung his hand in front of him to test its speed. The gust of wind that it produced told him that it had indeed made a tangible difference.

Sam dragged the remains of the boar over to the defender corpse, laying it to make it look like they had fought to the death. That would attract even more monsters that just the defender alone had. He climbed back up into the tree, and waited.

Barely 30 minutes later, a small pack of wolves paced into the clearing. They were all individually weak, barely level 30, but in a pack they were strong. There were 7 wolves, with one larger one leading them. That wolf was level 32, and it was clearly the pack alpha. This would make it so that he could only get one attack off on the wolves, so he would have to make it count. He decided on the alpha, not a difficult decision, and waited until it passed underneath him. It looked up into the trees, sniffing suspiciously, but then looked back down. Sam grinned and launched himself out of the tree. The wolf splattered beneath his mace, even without any sort of imbuement. The other wolves howled in alarm, and Sam took another life with an overhead smash of his mace. The remaining wolves all howled again, and this time there was a different effect. A red aura surrounded them, and their movements sped up. The wolves were drawing power from each other somehow, but they were still nothing compared to Sam.

He dodged to the side as the first wolf snapped its jaws at him, and reached out with his hand, grabbing onto its tail. It seemed that his expertise with blunt weapons applied to a wolf being used as a flail, and he swung it up and over towards one of the other wolves. Both wolves struck each other with a dull thud, and broke on each other like two rocks smashing into each other. The remaining wolves snarled, and started to run.

Sam shook his head and bounded forwards, smashing them into the ground. They all died a moment later, and Sam had a strange feeling. It was almost like his Dao was having a moment of ambiguity. Was it really morally right for him to be doing something like this, even to monsters? It wasn't really wrong either, seeing as monsters had no sense of justice, and thus would act in an evil manner as soon as they had the opportunity, but had these ones done that yet? It was an age-old philosophical problem. At what point did prevention of an act eclipse the probable act in evil? Countries had struggled with this, trying to eliminate crime through sharp crackdowns before a person had really done anything wrong. It had become even worse in the internet age, with government surveillance and other such invasions of privacy. It was a question that transcended all of those things, and still remained relevant after the apocalypse. It was one that Sam had no answer to. He shook his head, and dismissed the thought. The possible good that he could do by killing a few potentially evil monsters for levels was far more than enough to offset the guilt. With his Dao appeased, Sam set up his trap again.

A day, and two levels later, Sam was on the cusp of his final threshold. The only problem was that no more monsters seemed to be interested in the gore soaked wasteland that the clearing had become. Sam was starting to become impatient, and he did something that he would later regret. He howled into the sky, imbuing the cry with his Dao. Immediately, the roar of a titan answered him. The noise was so strong that it made Sam cover his ears. The ground began to rumble, and a shadow stretched over the woods. There was something coming. Something big.

The noise was emanating from the canyon, and Sam saw what the source of the shadow was. A one eyed giant, easily two or three hundred feet tall, was looking directly at him. It grinned, revealing chipped teeth and it breathed out, wafting a malodorous stench into the forest. With three mighty leaps, it was a quarter of the way to Sam. There was no way for him to outrun the thing, so his only hope was to defeat it. He scanned it, but what he saw gave him pause.

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Juvenile Cyclops

Level ???

He had never seen a question mark on his analysis skill before, which could only mean one thing. The monster was F Rank. Its aura could be felt from where Sam was, but there was one grain of hope in the whole thing. It did not feel that much stronger than his own, despite belonging to a beast as intimidating as the cyclops. Still, it was like comparing an experienced weightlifter to an elite one. Relatively they were not that different, but practically they were a world apart.

The monster reached him a few moments later, and it grinned at him with an evil look in its one eye. This was most definitely a creature that had committed great sins before. Sure of this, Sam used Eyes of Judgement to gain an edge against the cyclops. It lit up with a dark energy, and Sam felt his body fill with power.

The beast roared and jumped up into the air before slamming down like a fleshy meteor. Sam leaped off the tree just in time to avoid its strike, but he was bowled over by the earthquake that soon started. The cyclops laughed nastily, and reached down with its hand to grab at Sam.

Sam leaped over its ponderous strike, and landed on its arm. He clambered up it, using its gigantic hairs to keep a grip. It withdrew its hand, unable to see Sam among the thick bush of hair, and it wiped its nose with it. Sam jumped off and grabbed onto its greasy hair, climbing up to the top of its head. There was a prominent bald spot there, and Sam gathered his energy before lifting his mace and bringing it down on the cyclops’ head. It was like a lightning bolt had landed there, and a pillar of energy briefly lanced up into the air as his supercharged attack landed. The cyclops screamed in pain as a ten foot crater was blasted into its cranium, and it slapped at the top of its head ineffectively.

Sam was narrowly missed by one of its fingers because he had crouched down low in its wound. The cyclops then did something unexpected. It started to glow with a yellow light, and its skin rippled as a stony layer of armor surged out of its skin. Sam was caught unawares, and he was pushed off into the air. The cyclops spotted him and it swatted Sam out of the air.

Sam screamed as his bones broke and he was flattened into the ground by the attack. Coughing up blood, he rose to his feet shakily. Knowing that this would hurt, Sam grabbed ahold of his bones and torn muscles with his enhancement skill, and forced them back together. Holding them there with his will, he created an agonizing cradle of energy that held his broken body together long enough for him to get away from the next strike. He had vastly underestimated the cyclops, and he was now paying the price. His only chance was to attack it in the weakened area of its head, which would be hard to do with the armor in place.

Sam grabbed onto its arm as it passed by, groaning as his bones were almost wrenched out of their tenuous connection. He clambered up and made his way towards the beast’s shoulder. It failed to notice him, and Sam climbed up its hair again. He almost slipped halfway up, but he managed to stay connected. That alerted the cyclops to his presence however, and Sam had to contort to avoid a poke of its rocky finger. Luckily the monster’s hair had not been calcified by its ability, otherwise he would have had no way to get up here. As it was, Sam managed to climb up to the creature’s bald spot again, and he noticed that there was a significant dent there, and the stone was cracked.

Sam rushed over, trying desperately to hold himself together long enough to strike, and swung his mace down into the largest crack. He wanted to save his energy for the killing blow, so this one was unenhanced. It was enough to break apart the weakened layer of stone, and it sent shards of rock into the cyclops’ skull. It cried out in pain, and Sam swung again, this time imbuing it with the preliminary aspects of his finisher. His mace detonated against its head, and the cyclops let out a low groan. It fell to its knees, stunned.

Sam swung in a frenzy of motion, his body filled with burning pain as his tenuously connected ligaments and bones tore apart. A minute later however, it was done. The cyclops fell over, Sam’s mace buried in its brain. A rush of essence unlike anything he had ever experienced surged into him, and Sam tumbled backwards off the cyclops’ head, unconscious before he even hit the ground.