This place seemed ripe with opportunity, and Sam had already noticed a few monsters slinking around the outskirts of the valley. They were tempted by the presence of the tree and he would use that to his advantage. For now, he would wait until Jeffrey was ready to proceed.
The man took hours in his Dao epiphany and Sam wondered why it was taking him so long. He had only taken a few seconds in objective time for his ones. Jeffrey had mentioned that he had already had a Dao, but had lost it. Perhaps it took longer to reclaim a Dao than to form it? Finally, the man woke up with a gasp and a triumphant smile on his face. Sam was waiting below the tree, meditating on the nature of his Dao. He had gained quite an esoteric Dao, and it was quite hard to define what an arbiter was past a few basic interpretations. He sensed that as the upgraded the Dao, it would not stay as the Dao of the Arbiter, but would upgrade to higher ranked concepts. Jeffrey laughed out loud, obviously happy about what he had achieved.
“So you managed to reclaim your Dao?” Sam asked.
“Sadly not in its entirety. I was forced to reset it back to its basic form, the Dao Mote of Accuracy. I used to possess a fully fledged Dao Fragment, but coming to this universe reset it. Still, it will help a lot.”
Sam nodded in agreement, his Dao had been a game changer as well.
“The tournaments are coming up, and I need a way to get my class before they start. The top ranked people on the levels leaderboard were getting pretty close last time I checked and if I don’t have a class I’m going to get steamrolled, Dao or not.”
“Agreed. I don’t know if you saw this, but the monsters are already returning,” Jeffrey said with a pointed look at the outskirts of the valley.
“I did. In fact, I probably have the same idea that you have. You’re planning on luring them in to kill them, right?”
Jeffrey nodded and laughed.
“Great minds think alike, I guess.” They put together their plan over the next thirty minutes. It was a simple plan but one that would hopefully be effective. Sam would pretend to have a falling out with Jeffrey and the man would pretend to kill him. He and Rex would walk off, miming leaving the glade, but would actually hide in one of the trees. When the monsters came to investigate, Jeffrey would snipe them from the trees and Rax would jump down to support Sam.
They began and Jeffrey shouted angrily at Sam. Sam punched the man, putting enough force into it to make it realistic. Jeffrey snarled and picked up a gnarled branch from the ground. He whipped it around and slammed Sam in the head with it. Even with his enhanced durability, he still felt the attack and he barely had to pretend to slump down to the ground. Jeffrey spat next to his body, a bit overkill in Sam’s mind and ran off with Rex.
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Ten minutes later, the first monsters warily trickled in. Sam smiled but tried to hide it as the creak of a paw on wood sounded next to him. His breathing became even more shallow as he felt a rough tongue lick his arm. The monster made a puzzled noise and left him there. It made its way over to the tree and lay down on the ground. Sam felt almost bad for what he was going to do to these creatures but he knew that if they had thought he was worth killing, he would have been already attacked. As he waited, he wondered how exactly monster ecosystems worked. Surely at higher levels, the need for food and the like was lessened.That might have been why none of the monsters had bothered to take a bite out of him. Corpses were useless to them because they contained no essence.
He lay there for hours, waiting as the glade filled up with hundreds of monsters. He thanked his enhanced body for allowing him to remain in one position for so long, even after all this time, he only had the slightest of cramps.
When the noise of monster footsteps ceased, he waited for a minute then leaped to his feet with his mace ready. The monsters erupted into a sudden chorus of surprise, fear and hunger. They all charged him at the same time, but Sam was ready. Each swing of his mace reaped a steady harvest of death and small trickles of essence poured in. This time, there was no draw on the essence into his body, which had happened last time. Perhaps he had been burning essence to artificially stimulate his Dao growth. That was a question for another time though.
The balls of blood from Jeffrey’s gun started to rain down and a howl erupted from the forest. Rax trundled out, sinking his teeth into a gremlin. The unfortunate creature was instantly bisected, no match for the strength of Rex combined with his weapon. Despite only being the size of a small pony, the herpetepede packed a punch. Every level that he gained increased his size by a large amount and soon he would be a true menace on the battlefield.
Sam continued his bloody work, beginning to succumb to the sleeping monster buried deep within him. He tried to hold the influence of his Dao in check for as long as he could, but it eventually got the better of him. The force of the Dao of Anger coursed through his body as his swings sped up. A rabid howl erupted from his lips and he flung himself heedless of the danger into the fray. Monsters exploded as he struck them, his mace tearing right through their bodies. It was gruesome work, and his body was soon covered in streaks of blood, some of it his own. Eventually, his mace struck something hard and he came to his senses. A tree stood in front of him, cracked around its circumference, and his mace was buried deep inside it. For a heart stopping moment, he thought that he had struck the Dao Tree, but luckily it was only a normal oak. The surging power of multiple level ups beckoned to him and he parsed his options. He was now level 18, only seven levels away from gaining a class.
He also checked his skill point total, but it was too low to get anything good. He really wanted the Dao Resonance ability, now that he had seen that Dao creation speed multipliers stacked with his Mark, but it was very far away. For now, he decided to hold onto his points for a rainy day.
Jeffrey walked into the blood soaked clearing a few minutes later, and the smile on his face told Sam that he had leveled up as well.