Johannes ripped the staff out of his body, showering the area with tiny flecks of grayish flesh. The Sage stumbled backwards as Johannes took control of his weapon, and was flung off the end. The monkey flew towards Sam, momentarily stunned. If Sam had wished to do so, it would have been child’s play for him to stave in the monkey’s skull and kill him. However, he knew that he would never be able to defeat the monstrosity in front of him, even if he had been at full strength.
Sam caught the Sage in midair, and placed him down on the ground next to him. The creature was shockingly light for something that contained so much power. As the Sage came to, he instinctively realized what had happened. He nodded once at Sam, and faced Johannes. The only way either of them were getting out of this alive was to fight together.
Sam took a deep breath, and temporarily banished all of his ongoing effects. He needed to regenerate a little bit of power if he was to be able to continue. It seemed that Johannes was content to gloat as he did not move from his spot as Sam was doing this.
“I would recommend that you run, Sam Atlas. Your monkey friend here is already dead, but that doesn’t have to be the case for you. I would prefer to crush you when you are in your prime, not as some child.”
“What kind of asshole are you to still be like this after bonding with all the other Legion members? Are you the sole reason why they are like this?” Sam said acerbically. Taunting the other man was not exactly one of Sam’s brightest ideas, but it bought him some time.
Johannes tensed, and started to field his aura. It was filled with a cold sense of nothingness, masked by a thin veneer of emotions. If this man had ever been human, he certainly was not now. It was all a front, and Sam saw straight through it. There was nobody in that grotesque suit of gray flesh save for a ghost of a ghost.
Sam shivered slightly and he suddenly understood the full horror of the Legion. It was utter submission to something greater than yourself. There was no freedom, only eternal loyalty. It was like the ultimate version of a totalitarian state. Not only was dissent not allowed, it was actually impossible to express. Sam wrinkled his lip as he looked upon the creature in front of him. All of the monsters that he had fought so far were more human than this thing.
“Oh, Sam, Sam, Sam. Don’t tell me I disgust you? You and your petty, meaningless morals. I am the pinnacle of life, its true endpoint,” Johannes said.
The man took a step forwards, and his gargantuan feet caused the earth to tremble. Every few feet along his body, spikes of dark metal poked out, and his sword rested in his right palm, looking like a child’s toy next to his new size. The staff was in his left. Sam almost shivered, but he reined himself in. He had faced down living gods. This monster would not break him.
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Sam began to draw upon the conceptual power of his Dao to bolster himself, using Mantle of the Arbiter, his aura skill. The effect extended to the Sage as well, and the monkey stiffened, seeming to find a new surge of energy. Sam looked off briefly towards where Rax and the others were, noting that they were busy fighting off monsters. He smiled, and resolved to win this fight. He would not leave his people without a leader.
Johannes roared, and lumbered forwards, each step taking the man twenty feet. He ate up the distance with hungry strides, leaving giant footsteps where he struck the ground. Sam roared in response, and flared his power to its fullest, drawing on the last dregs. He had enough for one last stand, and he would have to make it count.
Sam breathed in and out, faint streams of mana leaking out the sides of his mouth. Beside him, the Sage prepared as well, the monkey readying himself for the fight of his life. He seemed to understand that even if they won, he and Sam would still have to fight for the staff. The Sage seemed a lot more amiable than the Hammerwraith had been, but he was still bound by the System. He could no more relinquish his staff than he could give up his heart or brain. For now however, he put aside his differences to ally with Sam against the greater threat. Then there was no more time for thought as Johannes brought his sword down.
The man whipped the staff around with his other arm as well, but the Sage snapped his fingers, and the weapon suddenly shrunk to the size of a pin. It tumbled end over end out of the man’s gigantic palm, and the Sage caught it, restoring it to its full size. Johannes snarled, and tore up a great clod of earth with his sword, before batting it at Sam with a powerful backhand. The piece of dirt glowed faintly as it struggled against the air in front of it, moving faster than it had any right to. Sam could barely see the thing, relying solely on instinct to roll out of the way.
The projectile whistled past, slamming into a nearby corpse, splattering it into a thousand pieces of gore flecked bone. Sam resummoned his shield, going back to a single handed grasp. The slightly lessened attack potency was a fair trade for an extra modicum of safety.
Sam advanced cautiously, watching as Johannes attacked the Sage. The man was moving disturbingly fast for his size, and each sweep of his sword moved like a bolt of black lightning, crashing into the Sage’s desperate defense. It was watching an elephant assault a fly, except for the fact that the fly could take more than a single hit. Even after all this time, seeing a fifteen foot tall gray skinned humanoid was quite strange to Sam. He had fully acclimated, sure, but there was a difference between that and nonchalance.
Sam held his shield up in a warding gesture as he made his way across the shattered ground towards the main part of the battle. He intended to support the Sage, but had no idea where he could engage. Although one might have expected for such a large creature as Johannes to have many blind spots, he was moving far too quickly to exploit any of them. Instead, Sam decided to play the role of ranged support, at least for a while. It would drain his energy at a prodigious rate, but he was confident that his projectiles would be able to do some good damage. Any injuries that he suffered while doing so would be worth it in the long run. This time however, Sam was going to do his damndest to make his attack as powerful as possible.