The fish aliens had eventually decided to brave the sphere of conflict surrounding Sam, and had changed in, wielding swords of light as they danced in and out of the half dozen or so lizardmen surrounding Sam. The aliens made a good effort to not target one another, but Sam noticed a few moments where liberties were taken, when the perpetrators thought they could get away with it. It was a battle that should have been impossible for Sam, but he was a true elite in every sense of the word, and although his level was barely higher than that of his assailants, he was more than capable of holding his own.
Sam stood in the center of their circle, and parried blows left and right, creating an impenetrable dome of metal and pure skill around him that rendered their attacks useless. However, the mage was slowly coming back around, and she cast another spell, this time a bolt of lightning that streaked down from the heavens, using her staff as a focus point. The lightning bolt struck the tip of Mjolnir, but rather than coursing through the metal and into his flesh, as the women had likely expected, the energy instead created a nimbus of light around his hammer, empowering it beyond its normal state.
Imbuing it with Dao energy, Sam raised it above his head, ignoring the attacks that came in, and then brought it down with a single deafening shout. It hit the ground with every last drop of his power, mingled with the Dao. A rippling wave of light burst outwards from his weapon, tossing aside the heavily built reptilian fighters as if they were ragdolls. The fish men were torn off their feet and tossed into the atmosphere, writhing as they tried to get their balance.
When the dust cleared, a fifty feet wide crater was revealed, sunk two feet into the ground. Sam tossed his hammer up into the air then caught it, smiling broadly as he did so. As the aliens began to recover, the mage sent a barrage of pure mana bolts towards Sam, using her Dao to empower them. The blue spears of energy contained a pitiful amount of energy, at least compared to Sam’s own projectile attacks, but there were a lot of them. Sam weaved around the bolts of death, and watched as they slammed into the scorched earth around him, eating away at the ground like acid. The mage lowered her disk of energy, and started to weave together an even more powerful attack, one that Sam would be hard pressed to ignore.
All of his resources were starting to drop precipitously at this point, and he needed to find a way to extend his staying power. Gordanus would not be here to help him like last time, and it was entirely on him to find his way out of here.
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As the woman neared him, Sam suddenly teleported to her side, surprising her with his ability. He whipped his hammer around in a tight arc, slamming it into the force field that blossomed into life around her. His grip tightened as his weapon tried to jerk out of his grasp. His strength was more than enough to control the recoil however, and he maintained his grasp. Spiderweb cracks raced across its form and the woman snarled, her face twisting in fear. Sam used his hammer again, using the momentum of his strike to keep him up in the air. As the shield cracked further, Sam smiled.
Girdings of the Arbiter did the rest, and Sam began to whale upon the shield, cracking it further and further with every strike. The woman began to desperately gather power in her hands, and then thrust them out at him, dispelling the shield in the process. Her bolt of mana met his hammer, and the two strikes collided mid air, sending bolts of light zigzagging across the sky. A roiling ball of power blossomed into the space between their strikes, and Sam realized that it was about to detonate with untold amounts of force. A crackling hum resounded through the air, heralding something devastating.
He teleported away just in time, and the ball exploded, knocking him backwards, even at this distance. The mage was far less lucky, and her body broke in front of the force of the explosion, tossing her backwards through the air like a broken toy. Sam teleported forwards once more, frowning as he felt the strain upon his Dao reserves deepen. He had about one more in the tank before he would have to stop, out of fear of cracking his Dao. If he conserved it, he would be able to regenerate enough energy in time for the rest of the battle.
He appeared above the woman, and then came crashing down, his hammer striking her in her stomach. A severely weakened shield flashed into being, but it was too little to stop him.There was a deafening crack, and the mage broke in half beneath his strike, exploding into pieces. Shards of shattered mana drifted down with the flesh, glistening in the light of the sun.The blood rained down on the ground beneath, causing the fighters below to look up in fear at Sam.
As she fell, they scattered, preferring to run than to face him. Then Sam saw the real reason, and he swore. A crackling beam of light, easily a dozen feet wide, was heading his way, streaking down from one of the ships parked in the atmosphere above. He had no time to get out of the way, save for with his new ability. Straining himself like he had never before, he used every last bit of his Dao energy to tear a hole in space, and ducked through it, appearing fifty feet away. He vomited up blood as he appeared, having overtaxed himself. The beam of light struck the ground a moment later, fracturing it for almost a mile in every direction. Then it exploded, and a shockwave carried him away, sending Sam streaking through the heavens like a meteor.