It only took them a few minutes to track down one of the larger species of spider monkeys, and everyone except for Rax flitted away into the trees so as not to distract Rax from his fight. The monkey cautiously approached the herpetopede, with its teeth bared in apprehension. It could sense that Rax was lower level than it, but it was still wary. As it finally found its courage and charged in, Rax’s body started to glow with faint brown light. It was only an illusion, but his body seemed to grow in size, and he pawed at the ground like an enraged bull. A moment later he was off.

Each step cracked the ground beneath him, and before the monkey could do anything, Rax whipped his tail around, transferring all the momentum into it. The bony end struck the monster like a hammer, pulping its head into bloody fragments. It slumped down to the ground, leaking blood all over the earth. Rax shook his tail to clean off the thin patina of blood still left on it, and bellowed in triumph.

Behind her tree, Jane shivered slightly. She knew that it was nothing close to the power that Sam could put out, but Rax was intimidating in a different, more primal way. It was like comparing a demigod to a force of nature. At least the demigod would have the decency to tell you that you were about to die.

This image was dispelled as Rax charged over towards where Sam was standing, and then started rolling on the ground in front of him. It seemed that some of his ingrained traits were not gone yet. The only problem was that Sam was unable to reach the correct spot on the herpetopede’s belly to scratch anymore, and the kicking legs posed a slight threat to him as he tried to get in. Sighing, Sam shook his head.

“You’re a big boy now, Rax, and you don’t need to act like a dog anymore. It only demeans you. Imagine fighting alongside me, and then you suddenly roll over, looking for scratches. What do you think our enemies would say about that, huh?”

“You’re right,” Rax said sheepishly as he rolled back over. “I should start acting in accordance with my true power. I am far out of the developmental stage of my species anyway. I am not a child anymore.”

"Well, how about we prove that then? It’s time to start making our way towards the center,” Sam said, before being interrupted by Claude.

"Hey, what about us? Why is Rax the only one who gets to test his new power? We all formed our Daos too.”

Sam turned to them, surprised.

“Never took you lot for the egotistical sort,” he said, grinning, “but I can’t fault you for that. Very well. Stay here, and I’ll find something for you to test it on.”

“No need,” Jane signed. “We can all test it here. As our new abilities are mana based ones, and not a simple bodily enhancement like with Rax, we can just use a tree or something.”

“Oh. Good idea. Well, how about we see what you got then?” Sam said, smiling at the woman. She nodded, and pulled her daggers out.

With a slight flick of her wrists, both of them burst into crackling fire, tinged with a metallic color. She raised both of them above her head, and then threw them into the ground a dozen feet away. A moment later, the earth erupted as the daggers exploded, sending a rain of dirt towards the party. The daggers zipped back into her hand a moment later, and she tucked them away.

“That’s all for now, as I’m unable to actually imbue my weapon with my Dao, but it’s still a nice boost to my strength.” The woman paused for a moment. "Well, there is something else, but it’s not as flashy as the other one. It’s called Bodily Return, and it says that it will temporarily revert my body to its natural state, thus acting as a pseudo healing effect. But…”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Wait, you think that it can repair your tongue?” Ava asked. “That would be incredible! I have no idea how there have been no ways to do so thus far, even in a world of magic.”

“Perhaps. I would be best not to get your hopes up though, sis. Here goes.” Jane started to glow faintly, but other than that, there was no other change. The glow quickly vanished, leaving her standing there.

“Well, did it work?” Ava said impatiently.

Jane opened her mouth, revealing a healthy looking pink tongue.

“It looks like it did,” Jane said in an incredibly melodic voice. Perhaps it was only because Sam had never heard it before, but it seemed almost magical. Then the light reappeared, and the tongue vanished like it had never been there. Jane sighed, and shook her head.

“Damn, that was short,” she signed, looking disconsolate. Nobody else knew what to say, so they left it as it was. Jane cheered up a bit later though, as Ava walked up to the plate to test her own new abilities.

She pulled out her axes, and held them out to the side, before slashing towards a nearby tree. Thin lines of light shot out of the ends of the axes, and bit into the tree trunk. They cut all the way through, and the tree fell forwards with a splintering groan. Sam walked up as it was falling, and planted his feet before swinging his hammer in an upwards arc, shattering the tree into harmless shards.

“Nice skill, Ava,” he said. “Ranged skills are always useful, especially for us melee fighters. Would you believe it if I told you that I’m finding it almost impossible to create one of my own?” Sam said this to instill confidence in the woman. Sam hated to admit it, but he knew that all of his followers, save perhaps for Eduardo, Lao, Jeffrey and Rax, viewed him as something larger than life. If Ava could do something that he could not, then in her mind that would be extremely impressive. Sam had long since figured out that leadership was ten percent inspiration, and 90 percent manipulation. It grated on him having to use such tactics, but until he was strong enough to protect all of his followers by himself, he would have to do so. Besides, the look of happiness on Ava’s face was all worth it.

The last person up was Claude, who was looking a bit apprehensive. Upon being questioned by Sam, he shook his head, and simply started to use the skill. Dark energy slithered along the ground towards the man, and wrapped itself around his body. The energy winked out, and so did Claude. All that was left of him was a faint shimmer of aura presence, which would have been virtually undetectable to anyone except for Sam. The haze moved around the clearing, and then up to Ava, laying a hand on her shoulder. The woman jumped and whirled around.

“Was that you, Claude? What the hell kind of skill is that?”

Claude appeared out of thin air, banishing his skill.

“It is a lesser invisibility skill. It seems to work quite well, although the boss here wasn't affected by it as much. I saw you tracking my movements with your eyes.”

“That seems like a potentially useful skill. Can you mask your presence even more? I could see some of your aura leaking out,” Sam queried.

“So that’s how you were able to see me. No, I don’t think that I can. The skill is only an Epic one at this point. Maybe if I upgrade it, it will become better.”

“Huh. Well, Daos are more useful than just creating new skills. You've all already seen me doing this before, but you can imbue your Dao into your attacks. It might take a while to get used to, but once you can do so, it will be quite powerful. As for you, Rax, it looked like you were already doing that. Is that right?” Sam asked.

“What do you mean? I was just enhancing my body with my Dao. As it is spread throughout all of it, of course I can use it for enhancing myself,” Rax answered, looking a bit confused.

“Sapients keep their Daos within a special core in their body, rather than having it spread throughout it. It’s a lot harder to manipulate the energy for us. You can’t use it for any skills though, right? It all went towards your body.”

“Yeah, that’s right. I wonder why there are different ways of wielding a Dao…” Rax said, nodding.

“I have a tentative idea,’ Sam replied. “I think that it is because most monsters are not intelligent enough to create skills of their own, and instead their instincts manipulate the Dao to simply enhance them. Remember that angler troll in the mountains? It was using its Dao like a lure, but that was all that it could do with it. It had evolved that way. A human would have been able to adapt when their attack failed. It seems that you are getting the best of both worlds.”

Rax nodded, and considered this. The herpetopede was quite a unique being, at least for his level. Sam was sure that there were plenty of sapient monsters in the higher ranks, but surely not in G Rank.The only thing to be concerned about now was making sure that Rax eked out every bit of power that he could.