The battle began with a mighty blast of energy and potency as the nearest of the monsters unleashed devastating bolts of lightning from their twisted arms, combining into a barrage of destruction. The bone beneath the stream of energy blistered and bubbled as the heat cooked it into a pool of viscous liquid.
Sam greeted the blast with his hammer, bringing it down upon the twisting arc of lightning. His hammer absorbed the blast, his Dao subsuming and enslaving the energy to his own will. With a cry, he loosed it, sending a wave of Dao empowered lightning racing forward. Normally, the elementals would have been unharmed by their own power, but with the addition of a Dao Seed, it turned into a wave of potency with the power to level a city.
The elementals were washed away, the five or so closest to Sam turning into miniature stars as their energy matrices were overloaded by the lightning.
Then the rest of them reached him, using their jerky teleportation to close the gap. Sam found himself in a melee brawl, fighting against beings of pure energy with nothing but his hammer, his Dao and his will. In such a battle, even with all of his power, he eventually was cornered, and a dozen of the monsters transfixed him with lightning at once. The power scorched his skin, rippling through his body. At E Rank, it was an assault of all aspects of his being, rather than simply his body. However, as soon as it tried to assault his soul, a wave of Dao energy cleansed his body of the hostile energy, sending a nova of power cascading from his form. He breathed out smoke, and snarled in rage.
“That hurt!” He spat in anger, before loosing that anger upon his enemies.
By the time the dust settled, an area of the dome the size of a town had been turned into a scorched wasteland, filled with lingering clouds of Dao energy. Sam stood there, panting slightly. Even his monumental stamina pool had limitations.
Essence had piled up within his body, a significant sum. If he had to guess, he was about a quarter of the way to the next level. By the end of this set of ten floors, he would have reached his goal.
There were still about ten of the Storm Hunters left alive, but Sam decided that they could wait for him to recover. He took a deep breath, and gathered his Dao energy anew, preparing for the final push. The last battle, while easy enough, had been a good enough warm up for what was to come later. If was to fight a D Ranker by the end of the tower, he would need to be in top shape. The first step to that was continuing to experiment with his Dao energy until he could banish his elemental enemies at will.
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By the time he was ready, the rest of the Storm Hunters had spotted him, drawn by the deaths of their fellows. He lifted his hammer, and cycled his Dao and mana within it. When he brought it down, nothing remained, save for a silent scream etched into the firmament, and a lingering scent of ozone. He was coming close to a breakthrough with his Dao, and how he could use it to affect the world around him.
Everything was permeated by the Dao, and to some extent, was part of it. All living beings were filled with Dao energy, and so was reality itself. The power of a Dao Seed was that it touched upon a layer of reality powerful enough to overwhelm the local, uncontrolled Dao energy.
In this case, what he was doing with it was akin to creating antimatter. His Dao energy was made up of infinitesimal particles, each of which represented a concrete amount of energy. What he was doing with that energy was using it to unbind the power of his enemies, particle by particle. It was the most basic expression of reality warping that he could touch upon, but it was the start of something greater. He could only imagine the wonders he could achieve with the next stage of Dao development.
The now familiar floor clear notification greeted him, but he pushed it to the side, hungering for more elementals to test his new insight upon.
The seventh and eighth floors were the same as the previous in many ways, with only the number and potency of his enemies changing. The seventh floor had been populated with ten higher level Storm Hunters, bigger in size and greater in power. The eighth had been home to five beings that Sam could only describe as loci of the storm itself. They were unable to move, but could control the skies above, bringing down the wrath of the heavens upon their enemies.
They had formed cages of lightning around themselves, and had provided a workout for Sam’s Dao as he struggled to unbind them. They had been connected to the clouds above, providing a constant stream of Dao energy. Eventually, he had discovered that leaving a portion of his will behind in the gap left by his unbinding gave him a window of opportunity. The monsters had fallen in short order after that.
Now on the ninth floor, he only had two opponents to defeat. Only, they were far different from the previous floors. These ones were sapient, at least to a degree. They looked more like anthropomorphic lions than monsters, standing fully on two legs. One of them even carried a spear in one hand. It was nothing more than a lightning bolt condensed into a solid shape, but it looked dangerous.
“Enemy?” one of them said, tilting its head.
“Not one of us. Enemy,” the other concurred.
Surprised by their conversational abilities, Sam paused before striking.
“Can you understand me?” Sam asked.
The two monsters ignored him, and started to circle, their posture shifting down as they reverted to their more animalistic instincts. Sam sighed, and sent power into his hammer, focusing on creating a plane of Dao energy that would unbind any opposing Daos that it came into contact with.