However, before Sam could pet his ego any more, a new challenger arrived, landing in front of him with a massive spume of dust. It was a titan of a lizardman, standing at almost twelve feet tall. A flowing cape of red cloth fluttered behind him on the breeze, hugging his intimidating suit of ebony armor, and a golden crown sat upon his horned head, contrasting with the pebbly green skin of his body. As he landed, the nearby fighters scattered, realizing the carnage that was about to descend on their heads.
He wielded a ten foot sword, crackling with energy, and the weapon resonated with the same energy as Mjolnir, telling Sam that this was one of the premier rewards for the initialization process on this alien’s home planet. With a lazy flick of his wrist, the man sent out a crescent of crimson energy, decapitating a hundred of the fish aliens in the blink of an eye. It was an impressive display of his might, and Sam raised an eyebrow in response.
“Who are you?” The man asked in surprisingly convivial tones, in a gruff, raspy voice. “You appeared a few days ago, wreaked havoc among some of my minor officers, and then returned days later, veritably glowing with power. You have evaded the strongest weaponry of both sides, and slew one of my mates. Before you die, do you have anything to say?”
“Let me guess. Are you the leader of the faction with the spaceships? Did I become too much of a problem for your armies to deal with?” Sam said, strangely pleased that he had merited the attention of such a powerful foe. The man was surrounded with a blood red aura of profound Dao insight, telling Sam that he had an advanced Fragment. This was clearly someone of great import.
“I am the Conqueror General Manarox, brother to the Scaled Emperor Elvaron, first of our people! My strength has been honed in the fires of war, catalyzed and refined by the System. I am the man who will claim your head, interloper!”
“An impressive statement. I am Sam Atlas, the first being to form a Dao in this universe,” Sam replied, seized by a sudden compulsion to boast. There was no reason to hide his true strength after all, and only one of them would be making it out of here alive.
Manarox froze, his scaly head tilting, and he regarded Sam with a Dao ability, raking his hungry gaze across Sam’s form. With a snort, he seemed to realize that Sam was telling the truth. A moment later, he fielded his Dao, filling the world around him with a concentrated domain of carnage, redolent of the stench of blood and the screams of the dying. Sam sent out his own Dao field, and a massive dome of red light, mingled with steely blue energy, met Manarox’s aura head on, instantly pushing it back. The other man took a step backwards, and used his sword as a shield, tanking the brunt of Sam’s aura.
“You possess tricks, it seems. However, your Dao is nothing before my martial prowess.” In the blink of an eye, Manarox slashed the air in front of him with his sword, sending a bevy of crescents towards Sam, mingling with each other in a display reminiscent of a flower. “Rose of the Victor!”
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The man screamed along with his technique, pushing it along with an exhalation of his Dao. However, he had underestimated the sheer might of Sam’s twinned Dao Fragments. Sam gritted his teeth and forcefully suppressed the Dao contained within the technique, causing its motive power to falter. It still raced towards him, but some of its power had been lost. Manarox’s face creased in pure disbelief, but the man remained focused, charging in the wake of his skill.
Sam smiled, girding his form with his many skills. One that he had not used in quite some time, Eyes of Judgement, triggered, increasing his power slightly. However, it had seemed to trigger off some of the other fighters in the area rather than against Manarox. The other man was strangely without sin, and Sam would have to parse that strangeness later. He had found the skill to poorly scale as he gained power, but any edge was welcome in a battle of titans like this. Sam was easily as strong as Hugo Mar had been now, at least in destructive potential if not raw might, but he could sense that this man was also a true prodigy. It was a fight that he was looking forward to.
Sam gathered up power in his hammer and brought it up and over his head, aiming for the center of the energy construct that was racing his way. Manarox’s face was twisted in a rictus of effort as he empowered the skill more and more, managing to evade Sam’s Dao superiority by virtue of being closer to his own skill. It raced forwards, but Sam was ready, and his hammer came down in an instant, smashing into the very center of the flower-like construction of mana and Dao energy. Sam poured his own power into the weapon, using it as a conduit to overpower the other man’s attack.
A moment later, the technique shattered, revealing Manarox barely twenty feet away from Sam, and closing fast. Sam dodged the man’s first blow, which came barely half a second later, and the man’s sword came whistling by, leaving a trail of lightning behind. Mjolnir hummed in Sam’s hands, as if responding to the challenge, and lightning began to crackle along its length. Sam drove the weapon towards Manarox, landing a hit.
The man grunted and took a few steps backwards, but his hulking form resisted the effects of the blow, and he rooted himself, rather than being sent flying away. There might have been a skill involved there, but Sam was unsure. It would be useful for him to create such a skill in the future, to make up for his lack of size or weight. He could already see the framework for such an ability, rooted within his mastery over the Earth. However, this was not the time or the place for such idle thoughts.
Manarox roared and whipped his blade around faster than Sam could blink, using a skill to increase the muscle mass of his arms. Even if his Dao was lacking, Manarox was still extremely powerful.
Sam brought up Mjolnir just in time, but he was knocked backwards, his hammer striking his own chest painfully. Most of the force was blunted, but the small amount that did make it through was enough to break one of his ribs. Looking at Manarox with a new appreciation of the man’s strength, Sam started to layer his various enhancements upon himself. Over the span of the second or so that he was in the air, all of his buffs were activated, and he felt his form explode with power. He used Girdings of the Arbiter to arrest his momentum, surprising Manarox, who was aiming a powerful strike for the place where Sam should have been. Sam opened up a portal beneath himself and fell through it, appearing above Manarox’s head.
With a roar, he brought his hammer down, imbuing it with his Dao energy. He would have added some of his mana, but he was still trying to purify it enough to use in battle. For now, his Dao energy was enough.