Sam entered the city hall, and headed towards the meeting room, where there were always a few captains waiting. This time, they were the ones that he was looking for. Over the last thirty minutes, the shifts had changed, and Lao, Eduardo and Jeffrey were sitting in the room, writing down reports.
“Hey there,” Sam said nonchalantly, as he entered the room.
“Hey yourself,” Jeffrey replied, not looking up from his work.
“Do you have something important to say to us, or are you just here to chat?” Eduardo asked, a look of concentration on his face. The man made the process of doing paperwork look like he was fighting a hard won battle.
“I have a plan that I want to submit to you, about how we can deal with the Titans.”
“How exactly do you propose to do so?” Eduardo asked curiously.
“Last time we fought one, well, the only time, it was weakened by the city defenses. If we are able to lure them back to the city, then we can obliterate them with the defenses.”
Eduardo blinked.
“Yes… that was what we were already planning,” Lao replied, hiding a smile.
“Oh…” Sam trailed off. “Well, I thought that my ship would be good for luring them in.”
The other men nodded. It seemed like they had thought about this before. It made sense in any case, given that Sam was the most durable of the faction members. It was better for him to take the brunt of the force from an attack, should he get caught. With a nod, he left the room, inwardly embarrassed. He had gotten a habit of assuming that he was the one with all of the good ideas, mainly because he was the one who ended up enacting them. However, others were still wiser than him in many ways. He let out a forced chuckle as he left the city hall. The only thing that would get rid of his annoyance was training.
Over the next week, Sam cultivated his Dao every day, in between sparring matches with Sarge. His skills rose and rose, but were still hovering below a bottleneck. His Dao Fragment of Righteous Anger was taking a while to fully upgrade, which was annoying. To take the final step to the ultimate stage of the Fragment Stage was a lot harder than any previous one. It required full understanding over the concept, as it was the last thing standing between a Dao user and a Seed. All he would need to do was to fuse his Daos once he had gotten to that level, and presumably gain the next stage of Dao. All he would need was a bit of conceptual finagling to make them fit. His Dao of Resolution would provide the final kick to the Seed Stage.
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Judging by the way that the Daos worked, as well as their concepts, the next one would likely be some sort of avenger related concept, blending the righteous anger that fueled such a person with the resolve to do what was necessary. Sam was already visualizing this, in order to prepare for what was to come. His own understanding of the concept was useful in creating it.
On the more martial side of things, he was able to eke out another rank in his weapon mastery. Sarge was a stern teacher, but a good one, and although Sam was invariably covered in bruises, he was getting better at using his weapon. The only thing that was stagnating were his stats, which were unable to rise, given his lack of leveling opportunity. None of his other abilities were able to increase his stats, seeing as he had not improved any of them to a requisite level. Improving his Daos would have given him a boatload of stat points, but unfortunately, that was a bit away. However, he was happy in general with his progress. His skills were progressing in all areas, and his weight training was helping him get a grip on his threshold enhanced strength. Gordanus’ exercises still worked no matter how strong someone was. They simply had to do them with higher weights. He had been forced to order some special weights from the Interweb, each of which weighed thousands of pounds.
Lifting them tore his muscles and fractured his bones, but because of his healing rate, it was completely fine. In fact, it taught his body to use his strength more effectively. Although it might seem that the stats provided by the System were natural, they were anything but. The System provided its users with the basic knowledge of how to use their superhuman strength and agility, but nothing beyond that. As a result, they were limited to a level below what they actually possessed.
It was similar to how humans were only able to use a fraction of their actual strength most of the time, because their bodies would tear themselves apart otherwise. Stories of mothers lifting cars off of their children had abounded on the internet, and some of them had been true. When every muscle in a body fired at once, it was able to achieve great things. Because of Sam’s durability and regeneration, he was able to take far more damage than a normal person could in the pursuit of his own power. His body might have torn itself every time he lifted the ridiculously heavy weights, ones that cratered the ground when they landed, but every return stroke, he was fine once more. It was a brutal, and highly painful method of training, but the most effective one that he knew.