They slowly pushed forwards, with Sam’s strikes clearing the way for Manarox’s powerful slashes to swipe through the ranks of weaker fish men without being caught by the Dao enhanced ones. Manarox had less stopping power than Sam in an individual sense, but what he excelled at was wide ranging, area of effect skills. Sam was more of a duelist than anything else, and he was able to fight against individuals much higher than his level as a result. Because of this, working in unison with Manarox brought greater results than either could have achieved alone. However, it was barely enough to even move forwards, let alone make any sort of meaningful headway.
More and more reinforcements kept pouring out of the central area of the fort, backing up their allies. Eventually, Sam decided that it was time to bring out the big guns. He teleported into the air, threw his hammer upwards, and summoned twin lances of elemental energy to his hands. Throwing them into the masses, he caught Mjolnir as it fell, and used to accelerate his descent, heading for the center of the alien lines. The two lances of power struck before him, detonating with the force of a bomb. Corpses were tossed high into the air, and the front lines staggered. Sam came down a moment later and pulverized one of the enhanced fish men with his hammer, condensing his energy into it as much as he could. The explosion blasted away the nearest enemies, and for a few moments, a massive bite was taken out of the enemy formation.
With a roar, Manarox and his followers rushed in, taking advantage of this. Sam followed behind them, and swung his hammer wildly, taking out the aliens trying to encircle his allies. They had made a lot of headway with that maneuver, but it was now up to Sam to defend the back lines.
It took them four more grueling hours to eventually reach the center of the fort, and as they entered the tower that the endless streams of reinforcements were coming out of, Sam saw where they were coming from. A large portal hung in the air in the middle of the tower, and aliens kept streaming out of it. These ones were just the basic footsoldiers, but it was still possible for them to be overwhelmed by numbers.
A few of the fish men manned a control station near the center, evidently keeping the portal running at full capacity. Sam leaped over the heads of the nearest aliens, and teleported towards the control center, bringing his hammer down in a whipping arc that obliterated two of the aliens in one motion. He looked over at the control station and slammed his fist down on a large red button that was marked as an emergency shutdown interface. As soon as he pressed it, the portal shut, cutting the aliens coming through it in half. Sam winced. That had been a lot gorier than he had expected. He had decided to deactivate the portal rather than destroy it, seeing as that would allow them to use it to invade wherever the other end of the portal led to. As Manarox and the others butchered their way through the enemy ranks, Sam took a quick breather. This mission had been a success.
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With the first fort conquered, the tide of the battle slowly began to turn against the fish men. The fight had been locked in a standstill for the last few weeks, but it was finally starting to move now. Sam’s arrival had made all the difference.
Although he was not powerful enough to simply defeat the enemy army by himself, or even an appreciable portion of it, his effects of the battle had shown just how much of a difference an elite could have on the field of battle. One could target key objectives, or assassinate enemy leaders. It opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
Unlike battles on Earth, where everyone was the same, at least to a degree, personal power made a difference here. It showed just how different war was in the wider Multiverse to anything that Sam was used to. In any case, his personal power was skyrocketing as he fought. That one assault had let him reach level 78, a marked increase from where he had been before. His power was now both high for his level, and high in general, as he was rapidly approaching the upper echelons of levels in this universe. Coupled with his own power, he would be head and shoulders above most other fighters.
By the time he got back to Earth, if everything went well, he would be strong enough to achieve almost all of his goals.
Sam sighed, and sat back in his chair on the command deck of the Grakoth flagship, the name of which he had learned was Conquest. He had been expecting something along those lines in any case.
Manarox was training in another corner of the ship, but Sam had decided to take the time to contemplate his Daos rather than engage in any sort of physical development. He had been subjected to enough of that with Gordanus. The full potential of his stats had been unlocked for his level, which meant that further training would have little to no impact. The only thing he could really do, other than develop his martial prowess or his levels, was train his Dao. Seeing as he was getting closer and closer to reaching the next level of his Dao progression, he valued that as higher than his other strengths for now. Who knew how much power a Dao Seed would give him? Just the stat bonuses alone were probably immense. The progression curve in this world was exponential, and although it was slow at the beginning, it would start to speed up soon enough, likely when he hit E Rank.