By the time that Sam leveled up for the first time, it felt like they had been in the dungeon for the better part of the day. As he leveled, the System told him just how many monsters he had slain over the day. It was a staggering total for a single member of a party to kill, and the fact sunk into him that he might very well die here, stuck forever in this endless maze of trees and darkness.

You have killed a Juvenile Mutated Fell Troll(x124)

You have killed a Darkwood Pixie Peon(x113)

You have leveled up!

For the first time, Sam saw a new descriptor of a monster’s strength. It seemed that for normal monsters, the System used the names juvenile and mature to describe their power, but now it used something different for the pixies. He remembered that word being used in the scan of the hot tub back in his room and the idea that the pixies might be just as sapient as them surfaced.

He had heard them chattering in the shadows, and had thought that it was just normal monster noise, but what if it was words that were too high pitched for him to hear? Was he now a mass murderer? At any rate, it didn't matter right now. The pixies were trying to kill them, so it was just self defense. It wasn't like they had any choice in the matter. To distract himself, Sam pulled up his status sheet to allocate his points.

Sam Atlas

Human

Mortal Tier

G Rank

Class:Dao Visionary

Level 26

(3 free stat points)

Strength

40

1.325x

Constitution

26

1.325x

Resilience

28

1.325x

Dexterity

17

1.325x

Intelligence

18

1.325x

Wisdom

23

1.325x

* Health 260/260

* Mana 180/180

* Stamina 400/400

* Dao

Dao Mote of The Arbiter

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Dao Mote of Anger

* Skills

1x Common, 1x Rare,1x Epic, 1x Legendary

* Titles

1x Celestial

* Temporary Titles

1x Epic, 1x Legendary, 1x Mythical

* Dao Heritage

Dao Incarnation of Existence

* Party

Torturna Salvinii-Brescon: Level 24. Health 310/310

Rax:Level 23. Health 320/320

* Skill Branches

Muscle Density Enhancement(Level 1)

Sam had gained his class stat points, but he had three unallocated. Wondering what would be the best choice in this situation, Sam decided to go for something different this time. He had focused on Strength for quite a while now, and it was time to branch out a little. In these woods, reaction time was king. It was the difference between dying to a fireball or a slash from a troll’s claws.

With that in mind, Sam put every point that he had into Dexterity. By this point, he barely felt the bodily changes brought on by adding stat points to a physical stat and all he sensed was a faint tingling in his muscles. Before he tested out his new power, he saw something new on his stat sheet. Since he had left them, Jeffrey and Rax had been leveling up, and at quite a good rate too. They were both almost at the level where one gained a class and Sam was glad for anything that would increase their power after the tournament. He planned on winning, or at least placing in the top three, which would allow him to create a faction.

Sam needed to start cultivating alliances between himself and other influential humans in order to create a power structure after the tournament. He had already been approached by Okita, but he wasn't sure if the man was or would be still alive after this part of the tournament. He knew that he could leverage his reputation against people to gain favors, but that sort of behavior left a bad taste in his mouth and more importantly a twinge in his Dao.

As Sam and his diminished band of fighters aimlessly wandered through the woods, the top two teams made their way towards the center of the arena, where the final boss was. Both of them had their own ways of finding the center, but one of the groups was closer than the others. As soon as they had gotten out of sight, the Overlord had killed every member of his team and gone out solo. This made it so that he would move at his full speed and that he would get every last drop of essence that he could lay his hands on.

The other group had been more peaceful in its establishment of a hierarchy, but not by much. Only two of the weak members of Rodney’s team had survived and they had pledged undying service to the man. The Scourge of New York, contrary to his name, was not much of a fighter by himself, but was an invaluable support member of the team, and his level gave him an edge. He had access to a hidden web of microscopic satellites that had spread across the world upon the arrival of the System.

Unlike anyone else so far on Earth, Andrew Munro had been contacted by a faction from outside of the universe. He had been walking home from his office as the first of the monsters spawned and he had run in terror, tumbling off the side of the Brooklyn Bridge as he ran across it. As he entered the water, he had felt a massive tentacle close around him, and he had prepared for death, but rather than some kraken from the depths, come to kill humanity, it was an envoy of the Prophets of the Machine God.

Over the next few days, they had altered Andrew in their image, creating a technological marvel of biological engineering, close enough to human that none would know how to tell the difference. This had warped his mind to the point of insanity, but he was very good at hiding it. His mind could work far more efficiently than any other human’s and he could track down anyone on the planet if he had a fragment of some technology that they had gotten their hands on. His creators had implanted a string of code into him that made it impossible for him to betray them in any way, not that he wanted to anyway. If any of the multiversal factions found out that there was a servant of one of the most reviled powers in existence hiding out on Earth, the planet would be no more, the ambitions of Tantalos Veruvax be damned. He had inveigled himself with the number two ranker on Earth and laid the foundations for the takeover of the universe by his faction.

The Overlord on the other hand possessed a different type of power. It was a natural one, sanctioned by the System. He possessed the first stages of what would eventually blossom into a full bloodline, a genetic imprint stored within the System that it implanted into the bodies of promising cultivators. He had earned it through trials that no human should ever have had to endure, at one point being reduced to nothing more than a disembodied head. His bloodline was of a species of draconic wolf that was renowned for its keen senses, some of them beyond the physical. The Overlord had gained the ability to see raw mana, and this had directed him to the sites of many natural treasures across the Earth. Accessing these had allowed for his levels to skyrocket, beyond anyone else. Now he used his talents to search for the greatest concentration of power within the arena, as that would lead him to his quarry. Upon sensing a blazing beacon of power dwelling in the center of the woods, he had dismissed the normal enemies as a red herring, which they were, and made his way straight for the prize.