With a crack, he raced towards his enemy, his feet ringing out a staccato beat of shattering rock as he moved. With his hammer raised high over his head, Sam let out a wordless cry as he attacked. His opponent grunted and grasped his ax tightly, sending waves of dark power into it. The weapon was soon coated in an ominous haze and as Sam neared, he swung.
Time seemed to slow down for a moment, as it often did in situations like this, and Sam took in the sight of their clash. He was midair, wielding a weapon limned in otherworldly power. Beneath him, the gray skinned behemoth whirled his ax around, cutting a line through the air. Then time returned to its normal flow, and all was consumed with a blast of energy. The ax crunched into Sam’s side, denting his armor and shattering his bones. That damage was nothing compared to what his attack did to his opponent however. Sam was quite a bit stronger than he had been while fighting Johannes, taking his armor into account, and this was not the one sided fight that it had been before. This Sword of the Legion was stronger, sure, but only by a tiny amount. In comparison, Sam was far stronger than before.
His hammer seemed to explode, the shockwave of red energy pulverizing flesh and bone alike. The side of the attack shattered the street below, but Sam’s eyes were locked on the damage that it dealt to his enemy. There was a brief pause as the attack continued, and then the ground beneath them cracked open, forming a deep crater. The Legion commander was blasted down into it, his bones and flesh bending and tearing. Sam in turn was caught by the momentum of his opponent’s attack, and he barely managed to keep a cry of pain from leaking out as he was blasted across the ground.
Something deep within him had burst open, and he could feel a sense of wrongness from the area. Sam coughed up thick, bright red arterial blood, and he grimaced. This was not something that could be easily fixed. Even worse, his enemy was not yet dead, and as such there was no hope of him leveling up, which would heal most of his injuries. Instead, Sam focused all of his energies on sealing the damage, using Girdings of the Arbiter to its utmost potential.
The agony was immense, and he briefly blacked out, quickly coming back to reality as he heard Lao scream in pain. Sam’s vision was blurry, but he somehow forced himself to his feet, gritting his teeth against the wave of pain that ensued. He was strong enough now to override his body’s natural responses to severe injury, although he almost wished that he wasn't. Sam had noticed that his body parts were starting to change a little, and his bones seemed to be closer together than they had been before F Rank. In addition, his heart beat far more often than it had during G Rank. it seemed that every level in F Rank was not only increasing his strength in a basic level, but upgrading his body to new heights as well. If not for this, he would have been too damaged to move right now.
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“Hey! Get away from them,” Sam shouted in the direction of the other fight. His voice was weak, but still audible.
“You're still alive? The General will be pleased. He will want to kill you all personally,” the other Legion commander said, seemingly indifferent to the plight of her comrade.
Sam could see Eduardo sending off an attack at his enemy, which was blocked by a shield of dark light. The creature whirled around and swung her staff at Eduardo, sending him flying backwards in a spray of blood. Sam grunted, and began to move. His feet shuffled beneath him, and his body was burning with intense pain. Within him, his Mantra and Dao of resolve started to glow, filling him with enough mental conviction to keep moving. He would reach that monster, no matter what happened in the meantime.
He spat up blood every few steps, and his bones crunched within his torso, but still he walked. As he went, he tightened the control of his skill over his body, easing into the pain. By the time that he was halfway there, he could move a bit faster than before. He started to glow with the light of his Daos, and although he could not see this, a faint halo of light formed over his head. As he walked, his Daos burned brighter and brighter, turning him into a beacon of light. The pain started to fade away, turning into a profound feeling of euphoria, of connectedness to everything. It was an ineffable feeling, one that Sam could barely understand, let alone quantify, but it was allowing him to move.
As Sam focused on his Daos, they kept growing brighter and brighter until they looked like stars within him. Suddenly, something cracked within him and a tiny droplet of pure power appeared within his core. There was a brief lull, and then Sam’s body exploded from the inside. Shafts of white light rammed through his muscles and bones, perforating him a thousand times over. If he had been fully conscious, he would have been screaming at that point. As it was, all he felt was more of the euphoria. In addition to that, he was consumed by a wave of what felt to be infinite power, rushing through his veins.
His body moved forwards, almost of its own accord, his hammer drawn. Before him the Legion commander snarled, raising her staff to ward off his blow.A titanic surge of energy rushed into his weapon, and as it fell, it blinded everyone in the vicinity. A moment later there was a noise like a thundercrack as it slammed home, shattering the staff in an instant. The female Sword of the Legion let out a single cry as her body was turned into a pile of shattered bone and twisted meat beneath Sam’s almighty blow. A beam of pure white light shot up into the air from the impact point, and parted the clouds above. A moment later, all was blackness.
Sam woke up some time later, feeling strong arms holding his body securely. He cracked one eye open, wincing as a lance of pain was driven into his skull. Sam quickly closed his eyes, focusing on the rest of his body. He was bleeding all over, and his bones were like piles of splinters within him. Whatever he had done had injured him to such a degree that he was unable to even move. Sam could feel essence pushing on the walls of his nodes, and with a smile he sent it crashing into his next node, one in between his eyes. A wave of agony overtook him as he did so, causing him to succumb to unconsciousness once more.