Behind him, the ball of energy made landfall, and the ground cracked beneath it, sending out veins of red energy that tore through the enemy ranks, sending corpses flying up into the air. Sam increased his speed, moving at hundreds of miles per hour, and he eventually cleared the radius of the bomb, but not without injury to himself. One of the veins of light had caught him, exploding underneath him, and had broken his left leg. However, it was nothing more than a minor concern to someone like him, and he could already feel the bone knitting back together.
He let out a whoop of exhilaration as he ran. He felt truly alive. A nearby contingent of the lizard aliens, who had managed to avoid the main brunt of the blast, milled around nearby, and as he approached, they seemed to notice him, changing directions to head his way. Sam met their charge with one of his own, smashing into their ranks like a cannonball. Bones were smashed by his hammer and flesh tore, unable to withstand his assault.
Sam tore through the almost endless lines of the nearby aliens who had survived the blast as they scurried towards him, almost like ants seeking to repel an attacker seeking entry to their nest. The massive, sun-like blast of the energy orb had wiped out tens of thousands of the aliens in one go, and the ones that remained were reeling from the blast, their movements sluggish and disorientated. They were all weaker than Sam, and their faculties were severely diminished in comparison to him, not least because they had been facing the blast.
Sam’s hammer reaped lives with every blow, and his heavily damaged armor did not inhibit his movements, despite its poor condition. It had been designed to fold outwards rather than inwards with severe damage, to prevent its wearer from being immobilized. This allowed Sam to fight almost as well without it in proper shape as with it undamaged, and he mostly ignored the consequences of having his armor torn apart in many places.
Most of the damage had been dealt by the energy beam that had caught him midair. While his skill had worked to repair a bit of the flesh, his armor was sadly still torn. However, he had better things to do than to lament things that he had no control over, and his only imperative here was to grow stronger.
He fought without his Dao abilities for a bit, wanting to recover enough strength for a final stand if the enemies started to send more powerful attacks his way once more. He didn’t exactly want to fight these aliens per se, and his Dao was a bit leery of him having provoked them in order to reap their lives, but mostly this had been Gordanus’ idea, and he had little choice in the matter. As it was, they were trying to kill him, and there was little he could do but repay the sentiment. Besides, free levels made up for the rest of his ideological dismay.
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Sam recovered the rest of his lost resources over the next fifteen minutes, and he began to experiment with his teleportation abilities once more, using the ranks surrounding him as chaff for his scythe to sharpen itself on. Progression seemed to have a lot of farming related concepts, such as cultivation, which had never really occurred to Sam before. Now that he noticed it however, he let out a small chuckle. The idea that the grand factions of the Multiverse were really nothing more than glorified farmers was quite funny to him, in a bitter sort of way.
In any case, using his Dao like this was rapidly increasing his comprehension of his new Dao Fragment, seeking to increase its level to that of his other Dao. He knew that he could not pull off the same trick that he had with his initial Dao Motes, where he had fused them after having broken their paths, but he was still advancing rapidly. In order to form a Dao Seed, he would need to upgrade these two Daos to their max, and then fuse them in order to gain the most powerful Seed possible, unless he managed to comprehend an inkling of his Dao Seed beforehand, which would let him use a non max Fragment to empower it.
Daos all seemed to give the same stat bonus within their tier, but there were still different levels of Dao. Having the Dao of Strength would always be far more valuable than possessing the Dao of Gardening, or the like, even if they were of the same rank. Mainly these differences were to do with personal power however, and if Sam was a specialist in the field of plants, the latter of the options might have been more enticing to him. One could not water a field by flexing at it.
As Sam pondered these concepts, he could feel a multitude of Dao Motes calling out for him, sensing his potential in that area. However, he could feel that forming another Dao now would only muddy the waters of his path, and he was better served forming a Seed before seeking out more power in that regard. Although more Daos would mean more power, there was such a thing as too much power, and Sam did not wish for his body and mind to burst apart under a sudden deluge of energy. That was not his preferred means of egress from this life, if one could even be said to have such a thing.
Eventually, Sam leveled yet again, and he banked the points like before, waiting for the glorious day that he could invest them all in one go. As he gained power, starting to edge away from the norm, he needed these stat points more for exceptional fights than in normal ones. Sam was undoubtedly far more powerful for his level than almost anyone, and assuredly so within this universe. He did not know how powerful he was compared to the various alien races out there, but he knew that he had to be near the top, if not at the top. There were sure to be higher leveled beings out there, but he knew for a fact that he was by far the greatest master of the Dao that there was within this universe. Others undoubtedly possessed Dao Fragments, but the odds of them having two were little to none, and the odds of them having one of them nearing ranking up was nonexistent.