Sam began to cycle his Dao within his body and attempted to mimic the movements that Profound Visionary had made. To his horror, his Arbiter Mote had a small crack running through it. As he drew energy from it, the crack widened and as he tried to turn it off, his Dao of Anger began to pour more and more power into his body. As it did so, the crack grew and grew, threatening to split his Dao in half. Sam screamed as a wave of white hot pain ran over him and he desperately tried to shut down his Daos.
Sam slammed his metaphysical fist on them, pushing his Daos into the deepest recess of his soul. Their presence began to recede and he sighed in relief as he stemmed the flow of pain for now. That was a huge problem however as it meant that his Daos were useless to him at the moment. He did not dare to siphon any more power out of them and was now almost completely defenseless.
He moved backwards slowly to avoid the attention of the monster, but it seemed to home in on the fact that he was weaker now and it sent one of its tentacles towards him. Sam rolled to the side, dodging it, but only barely. He still had all of his stats like before, but he felt strange being cut off from his Dao in the way that he was. It was like losing an organ that you had never noticed before and then feeling the loss more strongly than the actual effects of losing that organ.
Sam held his mace in front of himself protectively and used his skill to create some shields around him. He was going to need them. Unfortunately, someone else had other ideas. As Sam retreated from the fight, Andrew Munro saw his weakness and began to close in on him. In the chaos of the fight, nobody even noticed and Sam was forced to stay and stand his ground. On even ground, he was not confident about his chances to outrun the number three ranker in the world.
Sam gritted his teeth and raised his mace, waiting for the fight to commence. Munro walked in without a care in the world, summoning a small dagger to his hands. A strange glint of light reflected off of his eye, almost appearing as if the sunlight had caught a piece of metal. Sam thought nothing of it and strode forwards, to close the distance. The other man cocked his hand back and threw his dagger, his motions a blur.
Sam shot his head to the side, narrowly avoiding it, but then he heard a faint whistling noise behind him and the knife buried itself in his spine. Munro held his hand up and jerked it to the right, making the knife move with it. At this point, the others had caught on to what was happening and they rushed towards them, but then Rodney Kane awoke with a gasp. Miraculously healed from his injuries, it almost looked convincing that he had resisted the effects of the poison all along if it was not for the surreptitiously grasped remains of a healing crystal. Now just any healing crystal, but an F Rank one, something that he had picked up from a black market dealer from another universe who was looking to make a quick profit on something that was like pocket change to him.
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“Not so fast, you bastards. This man is ours,” he said with a laugh as he summoned a greatsword out of thin air. It was constructed entirely out of what appeared to be obsidian, and the air around it sagged, as if under the effect of a heat haze. One slash of the weapon created a tear in the air in front of it, summoning a massive wave of black light that streaked through the air towards them. The man had clearly been holding back in order to create an advantage for himself when the actual fight started.
The Overlord was seemingly unperturbed, continuing to fight the monster. With a glance backward, Profound Visionary raised one hand, coating it in a layer of blue light. Next to him, a shimmering figure of light appeared, looking almost exactly like him except for its transparent nature. It ran across the grass, almost gliding rather than walking and rushed Sam’s assailant. Profound Visionary sagged, as if the attack had taken a lot out of him, but ultimately remained standing.
The whole time, Sam was trying to mitigate the damage that had been dealt to him by the knife. Luckily, he had thought ahead and had created a barrier on his most vulnerable areas, the small of his back being one of them. The knife had still penetrated quite deeply into him and it was creating a small torrent of blood that dripped down his back. Cursing as he removed it, Sam dropped the knife to the ground and set his eyes on Andrew Munro. They were glistening with rage and as he stumbled forwards, his Dao of Anger ignited. All of his attempts to control it had fallen to the wayside and it blazed like a second sun in the center of his being, causing a wave of fiery light to rise up around his entire body. Sam roared, the sound imbued with the power of pure Anger, creating a shockwave of force that knocked Andrew Munro backwards, the Scourge of New York no match for such a raw expression of the Dao. Sam’s body began to fall apart and his other Dao cracked even further. In his heart of hearts, Sam watched with mounting dread as his body tore itself apart on the blades of its own wrath and damned him to an eternity of evil. Such blind rage was the opposite of what his original Dao had stood for and it chafed against the nugget of himself that was encapsulated in the soul of Sam Atlas.
A booming, mocking laugh echoed out over the arena, from somewhere above them. Sam was the only one who appeared to hear it, the rest of the fighters too embroiled in their battles to register the sound.
Sam screamed again as his Dao fractured further and the light of Anger began to corrupt it. It was breaking apart under the strain, and there was nothing that he could do to stop it. It was like there was a raging inferno inside him, and all that he had to stop it was a single drop of water, a drop that was swiftly evaporating before his very eyes. Just when he thought that he was about to pass the point of no return, time stopped. All around him, the movements of all life simply ceased to be. The air around him was frozen in a snapshot of eternity, creating a tableau of strangely distorted images. Out of a rent in the air, a being emerged. It was created from an impossible color, one that had a meaning more spiritual than visual, something that broadcasted its meaning of every wavelength, and some more besides. This was something that had existed since the Beginning, and perhaps even before that. With a voice like the sundering of planets, and the softest whisper of a child at night, the being spoke.