He had not expected him to be like this however. Behind him, the branches quivered as Eduardo stepped out.
“Sam? What’s going on-” Eduardo ducked to avoid a lunging gremlin, beheading it as it passed with a swift cut of his rapier. Behind him, Reaper emerged, his hands glowing with gray light. The ectoplasm master snapped his hands together and sent out a beam of gray energy that hollowed out the head of one of the gremlins.
Elminster Judge started to cackle madly and started to dance on the forest floor. There was something deeply disturbing about the cabalistic scene, a man surrounded with monsters, acting without a care in the world.
The three allies fought against the gremlins, killing them in a steady stream of essence, but barely making a dent in the massive horde. As they died, their bodies disappeared and Sam saw something strange happen. Their bodies reappeared next to Elminster, but noticeably smaller than before. He was resurrecting the dead gremlins and sending them back at them to fight. That explained why he still had so many of them at this stage of the forest. How he had gotten them into the arena was a mystery however.
Eventually, they had whittled the gremlins’ strength down to about that of a normal, one foot tall, gremlin and they dispatched them with ease. There seemed to be a limit to the number of times that they could be resurrected, and they had reached that.
Elminster stood there in the middle of the clearing seemingly unaware that his creatures had died. Sam shared a meaningful look with Eduardo and they advanced, ready to kill the man. Anyone who allied with monsters was not a threat that should be suffered to live. As they neared, the madman seemed to wake up and see the corpses around him.
“What? No. No! MY FAMILY! ALL DEAD! You will pay!” His voice began to grow deeper as he spoke and his body began to bulge. The gremlin corpses began to sizzle and small streams of green light erupted out of their bodies and swarmed Elminster like a flock of tiny stars. They plunged into his flesh and he began to turn green. His body had bulked up to over ten feet tall and his musculature was ridiculously embiggened, making him look like a certain green comic character.
“I WILL KILL YOU!” The Elminster turned massive gremlin said, his voice distorted. The man leapt into the air and came down like a luchador, hands outstretched behind his head. Both of them landed in a devastating hammer fist, slamming Sam into the ground. He struggled against the force pressing down on him, but somehow this man was even stronger than him.
Sam grunted and began to channel his Dao of Anger, making sure not to lose himself in it. A flood of incandescent rage coursed through his body and he began to bulk up as well. Nowhere near as much as Elminster, but enough to be noticeable. His hair stood up on end, wreathed in an orange light. He lifted his knee and brought it up, crashing into Elmister’s solar plexus. The massive man was knocked backwards with a whoosh of expelled breath, knocking over a tree as he flew.
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Sam was nowhere near spent yet however and he stalked across the ground, leaving small scorch marks on the earth. Elminster staggered to his feet, growling in a bestial timbre. Eduardo and Reaper cautiously approached and stood next to Sam, ready to assist him. Sam was beginning to lose himself in his rage. He had just lost two of his teammates to monsters and now there was this human traitor who sided with them? That would not be allowed to exist. Somewhere deep down, his Dao of the Arbiter was screaming at him that his motivations were not right, but he forced it down by using Eyes of Judgement on the man. He was as black as sin.
Sam beat his chest in a fit of animal rage and charged forwards, with his mace held high. He leaped ten feet into the air and began to pump raw Dao energy into the weapon. It did not want to go in, but he pushed and pushed until some barrier deep within him cracked and the mace flooded with pure rage. It glowed with a bright orange light, looking for all the world like a chunk of lava, dragged out of the chthonic depths of the Earth. Sam brought it down on Elminster and the head of the mace seemed to detonate with a fiery explosion of pure conceptual rage.
A shockwave of heat and light exploded outwards from the mace and obliterated Elminster utterly, but also sending Sam flying backwards, the last of his rage leaving him. A System notification blared in his vision, but he could not click it because of how tired he was. Everything faded away and he lost track of reality.
“Arbiter? Are you alive?” A weak slap connected with his cheek, snapping him out of his slumber.
“Wha-what’s happening?” The hazy figures of his surviving teammates swam in his vision, staring down at him. He immediately reached for his mask to make sure that it was on. It was. Eduardo chuckled.
“A few of these lads wanted to take it off, but after that little display with your mace, they decided that it was best to just speculate who was under it.” Sam clasped hands with the Italian exorcist and was pulled to his feet with a strong yank. A little bit dizzy, Sam swayed on his feet before he found his balance. Sitting back down again, he checked his notifications.
You have killed Elminster Judge!
You have leveled up!
Sam quickly allocated his points, sinking another three into Dexterity. He had still been too slow to avoid that smash from Elminster, which the others had dodged easily. Now he felt like he could have done so if he wanted to, with the newfound speed filling his body. There was another notification as well underneath it.
You have gained the skill [Basic Dao Channeling:Legendary].
The Dao is the Way. The Way is everything. You can channel an infinitesimal fraction of everything, and now you can channel some of that fraction into your weapons. Use this skill cautiously, for too much Dao expenditure without a means of recouping it can be fatal. Using your Dao for this purpose will imbue your weapon with a small portion of its concept, empowering it beyond its normal parameters.