In the Grand Canyon

The Overlord had done it. Having claimed the final one of the Seven Seals, getting to it before any of the other factions had, he had fused his four Seals into the most powerful weapon in the history of his planet. Of course, its power was like a candle in the face of the final forms of all of the weapons fused together, but seeing as he possessed more than half of them, there would be no way for anyone to gain a more powerful weapon unless they defeated him.

He was sitting cross legged in his meditation room, holding his weapon in his hands. A titanic halberd like armament, it was almost ten feet in length, and crackled with pure power. If one looked closely enough, they could see the different weapons that had been fused into it. The Sickle of Cronos’ onyx blade made up half of the halberd’s tip, while its handle mixed with those of the Spear of Longinus, Gungnir, and the Lightning Bolt of Zeus. All four weapons ran up the length of the halberd, with their various materials fusing as they went.

He got to his feet and picked up the halberd, smiling as he felt the power course into his veins. The Overlord walked out into the dusty air of the canyon, and looked up at the sky above. Channeling his power into the weapon, he refracted it along the lines of power that ran through it, creating a crackling orb of pure energy that flew up into the sky a moment later. When it reached a suitable altitude, it detonated, blasting the clouds apart. A disk of red light sliced across the heavens, and then faded away. With a smile, the Overlord twirled his weapon. This would suit him well in the coming weeks.

Back on the Training Planet

As these developments unfolded on Earth, Sam was left mostly oblivious to them. He was focusing on his own growth. Of course, thoughts of home were circling through his mind at all times of the day, but he managed to ignore them for the most part. He could not do anything about it from here. He only hoped that there was a home left to go back to once this was all over.

Although he was powerful in his own right, his faction was just as important as he was, at least in his eyes, and if it was gone, he had no idea what he would do. Well, he did have an idea. He could throw everything away to get his revenge. Perhaps one day he would stand, hammer dripping with blood, over the corpses of the gods, but the far more likely outcome was that he would die a quick and inglorious death somewhere in the universe, before even a year was up.

Understandably, such thoughts were not conducive to effective training. Sam and Manarox were in the middle of leading a charge towards the gates of one of the fish man forts, this one a few dozen miles away from the center of the battlefield. A crack team of high leveled Grakoth followed them, armed heavily.

With twinned roars of rage, Manarox and Sam barreled into the gates, both of them bringing their weapons around in a tight arc, expending their power on the sturdy gates. The first strike caused the gates to creak, and the second, to buckle. The third strike took them off their hinges, and propelled them into the waiting throng of alien fighters waiting for them. A moment later, they were upon the enemy.

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Sam and Manarox unleashed their pent up energy, and started to tear through the aliens. However, these ones were from the elite cohorts of the fish men armies, and as a result they were a lot harder to get through than the normal ones. In addition, a few of the hulking genetically engineered beasts that Manarox had warned him about were lurking behind the ranks, cracking their joints menacingly.

This was the first time that Sam had seen them in real life, and he was looking forward to fighting them. He could sense that there was something wrong with their Dao however, and he could just about tell why they were so abnormally powerful. As they were on the level of an elite, it was staggering to think that the allies had been a powerful enough faction to create hundreds of creatures on that level.

What Sam actually saw was that they had sacrificed their long term gain for short term power, and it seemed that they would never reach E Rank. They had compressed their Daos to the point that they had shattered, spreading the power throughout their body. In their current state, their power sets were more akin to that of monsters, which explained the lack of skills. In addition, their temperaments had been rendered far more bestial than normal, and Sam could see the barely contained aggression shining in their eyes.

None of them had any sort of weapons either, simply hands that were tipped with long talons that looked to be capable of slicing through steel. Given the level of the monsters, they probably were. As Sam butchered his way through the masses in front of him, tossing broken corpses to every direction with the strength of his blows, one of the mutated fish men finally had enough of waiting and surged into the fray, leaping over the heads of its brethren.

Its fist came down like a meteor, and Sam got his hammer up just in time to block. The stroke was so powerful that it actually drove him to one knee, and the ground beneath him shattered. Sam roared and pushed back, rocking the monster off him and into the air.As it came down, he teleported to its side and hammered it away. He had discovered an interesting synergy between his Justice is Best Served Cold skill and his teleportation one, and it allowed him to prolong the chain for longer than he could normally.

Hammer glowing with Dao energy and elemental power, he battered the alien juggernaut around the confines of the square, not letting it reach the ground. FInally, after about a dozen strikes, he raised his hammer above his head and brought it down like the fist of god, slamming it into his enemy’s stomach. There was a blinding flash of light, and the air ruptured, burning away before the intense power of the fully realized skill usage. This was the true power of his main fighting skill, and it grew with the number of times that he was able to use it. With his far deeper Dao reserves and power since he had created the skill, it was even more potent than it had been before. Skills under the System were not static, and the rankings were only loose guidelines. Skills varied in power and usefulness, and depending on the cultivator, a Legendary skill that focused on their powerset could easily be more useful than a Mythical one that did not.

The alien was blasted into the street below, causing the ground to erupt around it, and a shockwave spread in every direction from the sheer power of Sam’s blow. The ground shook and shattered for dozens of feet in every direction, and the alien screeched in pain as its bones broke. However even with that titanic strike, it was still not dead, as its durability was off the charts. In exchange for mindless rage and a lack of skills, the monsters were able to increase their durability and physical parameters to unheard levels. They were even stronger than Sam, and a lot more durable to boot. In short, they were a great training exercise.