“Finally. I was wondering when it would come out,” Sarge said. “I could sense a roiling rage in you, waiting to be released. It is good that it was let loose in a safe environment.”

Sam bit his lip, ashamed of his outburst. Now that the anger was gone, his actions felt foolish. Childish even. “I apologize. I should not have lost control over my emotions like that.”

“No worries. That was the entire purpose of this. All cultivators of an emotionally charged Dao path run into problems like this. Ones of Anger related paths most of all. You do a far better job channeling it than most. Many of your ilk turn into nothing more than petty tyrants, or impotent dwarves of power, raging against the implacable will of the cosmos.”

Sam let this sink in, and then nodded, seeing the wisdom in Sarge’s words. The robot was surprisingly wise for, well, a robot. Sam raised his hammer with a cocking of his head, causing Sarge to smile. It seemed that the robot was down for another sparring match.

Over the next week, Sam prepared for his upcoming mission. He practiced with his weapons and his Daos, managing to make progress in both. He was hovering on the cusp of ranking up his Dao of Resolution, and had improved his weapon mastery by two entire points. Now that he was actually focusing on improving his mastery, rather than simply relying on his weapon imprint, he was making far more progress. Small progress, sure, but his rate of improvement was monstrous by a normal person’s standards.

When the day finally came, Sam was as ready as he could be. He and the rest of his captains met in the city hall, plotting the downfall of another Titan. A map of the United States, or what was left of them at least, was projected by some sort of array over the table in the center of the room, showing the current locations of the Solar Titan, and the Flood Titan. Apparently another Titan had migrated from southern Africa to South America, posing another threat to their location.

The Titans were drawn by concentrations of power, and Sam’s city was by far the largest on the planet right now. The new Titan was fairly mysterious, but their intelligence gathering systems had told them that it was an amorphous mass of swirling wind. They were calling it the Hurricane Titan. Everywhere it went, it left a path of pure devastation. Mountains were turned to heaps of rubble, and the rainforests were reduced to splinters. Slowly but surely, it was heading up through Brazil and towards their city. However, killing one of the Titans would loosen up the danger posed by them.

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“We have two options here,” Talnor said, addressing the room. “We can aim for the Flood Titan, which is the closer of the options, or the Solar Titan. Both of them have their merits, and disadvantages. The Flood Titan could potentially get through our shield if it was smart enough about using its power, but that is only a conjecture on our part. On the other hand, the Solar Titan will be harder to damage, given that it is pure energy.”

“I say that we go for the Flood Titan first,” Addas said, the man glowing faintly with the light of the tarot cards that now orbited his form. “It makes more sense. We are far more familiar with the nature of water than the nature of something like light. Who knows what the Solar Titan can do to our defenses?”

“I disagree,” Jeffrey replied. “Letting something like the Solar Titan get more powerful would be a mistake. With how hard it is to deal with now, imagine how much worse it would be a few levels higher. The Titans might have started off at the base of E Rank, but they can level up, and do so from cultivation of their elements.”

Sam simply listened as his captains argued. He was the one with the final say after all. As the group eventually came to an impasse, he sighed, standing up.

“Personally, I agree with Jeffrey. We have never been a faction to back down from danger, and there is no guarantee that the Solar Titan is much more dangerous than the other ones. They are supposed to be equal after all. We should deal with the more dangerous option before it becomes too strong.”

He could tell that some of the others disagreed, but in the end, he was the one who was going on the mission. He did not trust anyone else to survive such a dangerous journey. With his teleportation abilities, he would be able to escape, in the likely situation that his ship was destroyed. With that settled, it was time for him to leave. There was no need to linger any longer than necessary, seeing as he had the ship tucked away into his storage device. The item that Gordanus had given him was constantly proving its worth. He did not need any supplies either, simply the strength of his body and his ship.

He walked outside of the city hall, waving to his allies, and took off, heading towards the dome of the shield above. As the ship built up speed, he buckled himself in and watched through the glass underside as they rocketed through the shield, the dome of energy recognizing the mana signature. Then they were off.

“Pilot the ship towards the Solar Titan,” Sam ordered, knowing that the ship was more than capable of doing such a thing.

Rather than answer, the ship simply turned to the left, and began to accelerate to its full speed. The last known location of the Titan in question was near Yellowstone, and the ship seemed to know that. Likely it was using the intense thermal signature of the Titan to find it.