Sam kept an eye on the man from then on, making sure that he was not planning anything. As he studied him, he realized that Reaper could not be more than 16 or 17 years old. He hid his face well, but he had the telltale wispy mustache and beard of a boy of that age.
Sam chuckled. He could guess why he had gained the power set that he had. He had probably been some sort of edgelord or weeb before the System came and he naturally gravitated towards death. Sam did not know how he accessed those powers without a Dao, but that was a question for later. For now, his Daos were enough and he did not need to go chasing alternate routes to power. Besides, it was very unlikely that he would tell Sam anyway.
They made their way through the trees softly, watching out for any monsters. The first one appeared about 10 minutes into the journey. It targeted the weakest of the fighters, a mage who specialized in the manipulation of air. The monster looked like a twisted version of an elf, with long ears and a grotesquely elongated body. It was about 10 feet tall and it had to hunch over to walk under the branches. The woman screamed as it approached her, and she desperately cast a spell, but the monster dodged it and lashed out with razor sharp talons.
Sam rushed forwards to protect her, but Eduardo got there first, his rapier outstretched. The exorcist weaved around the flashing talons of the monster and opened up a series of deep wounds on its side. The monster, realizing that it was outclassed, tried to run away, but Reaper finished it off with a bolt of ectoplasmic energy.
Sam fell back and nodded in approval of the teamwork. He scanned the corpse and found out that it was a mutated troll, and that it had been level 17. The levels of the monsters in this arena were far higher than most of the humans here and Sam gnashed his teeth as he thought about the evil of Berrigious. How had the man transitioned from seeming so nice, perhaps a little eccentric, into this machiavellian mastermind? Perhaps it was the effects of a drastically raised Intelligence score as well as a history in deception.
They cautiously edged around the woods and encountered many more of the trolls, but nothing else. In the beginning, they came one by one and were easily dealt with by Sam, Eduardo and Reaper, but the quantity and quality of the trolls began to tick up over time. Sam screamed in rage as the first of his teammates died to a troll that he was unable to kill in time.
His entire body began to burn up as the untrammeled effects of his Dao of Anger showed, and the darkness around him briefly retreated, revealing a sunlit forest floor. A pillar of red energy shot up into the sky from Sam’s body and he exploded into action. There were six more trolls in the woods around them, but they all met a quick and bloody end within a matter of seconds. Sam did not bother to even use his mace, instead tearing at them with his nails and in one case his teeth.
The trolls crumpled under his blows and he was left panting and snarling at a tree, which he punched as the last vestiges of his rage left him. With a resounding crack, the tree split in half and fell over. He walked back over to his shocked companions and refused to say a word to them about it. His Dao was beginning to become somewhat concerning. It had a strong grasp over his mental state, and even though he could somewhat contain it, it had an undeniable allure to it. Why shouldn’t he unleash his rage upon those who wronged him? His other Dao had no quarrel with it, and as a barometer of virtue, it should tell him something about the morality of using his anger to benefit himself in battle. Perhaps he was just being naive about a new tool in his arsenal, but it still felt wrong in some way.
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Luckily, he had no reason to use it again for the next few hours as they trekked along the forest floor and hopefully towards greater leveling opportunities. All of the lower leveled members of the team had leveled up by now, and the lowest level one had gained two levels from the fights. After the first death, Eduardo had decided to add everyone except for Sam to his party. The man had no trouble with revealing his name to the others, but Sam did not want to have his name exposed. Doing this allowed the weaker people to gain essence from the exploits of the strong.
Sam was beginning to grow tired of the endless monotony of the forest and when the first new enemy arrived, he felt a surge of elation. It was shaped like a pixie, a small winged creature with humanoid proportions. Unlike most pixies, it had sharp fangs and demonic facial features, with curled horns rising from above its brow. It hissed at them as it arrived and clapped its palms together. A massive ball of fire roared into life above its head, but it was not normal fire. Instead of glowing with a flickering orange light, it was a dark brown color, and exuded an aura of cold rather than heat. The pixie threw it at them with a maniacal chuckle and they scattered out of the way.
Where it landed, the entire area was turned into a frozen mass of churned earth and weeds. It cackled again and prepared to launch another fireball, but Eduardo stabbed it through the throat, cutting off its spellcasting and its life. What the creature possessed with its spellcasting, it lacked in durability and it only took a single hit to kill it.
The demonic pixie gave enough essence to take the three lowest leveled members up by another level. Now, the average level of the party was standing at around 17, the level of the weaker monsters. It surprised Sam just how weak most humans were compared to him and the rest of the top rankers.
Most of the group was on edge by this point and Sam had to maintain appearance to prevent them from bolting. Despite how much the forest and its creepy atmosphere bothered him, he had to keep it together for them. He was sure that the oppressive atmosphere was a deliberate effect of the trail, and not an incidental one.
“Alright. I have an idea,” Sam said. “Reaper and Angel, go to the other side of our group. We should move in a circle rather than in a straight line.” Nobody questioned his judgment. It made sense all of the immediately. If the strongest members of the party were on the edges of the group, then they could watch out for monsters far more easily than if they were all at the front or back. Using this strategy, they made it safely through the next segment of the arena, the one with the pixies. After they had adjusted to fighting an enemy that used ranged attacks, they found them an easier prey than the trolls. Firstly, they were nowhere near as fast as the trolls, despite their ability to fly and they were so weak that once one was in range, they could easily kill them.