“SAM ATLAS-” Upon seeing that Sam had clapped his hands to his ears at the sound, the being stopped. “Oh, right. I apologize for my misjudgement of your power. Wait, you are barely beyond mortal at all! How can this be? My progeny have been seeded across the Multiverse and the rest of the Boundless Expanse by now. Why are you the only one left? How can this be…” The being’s voice morphed into a poignant paean of loss as it said the last words, the sorrow of all of existence seemingly contained within its words. It stared at Sam with blazing eyes, a confused expression on its indescribable face. It reached down with one of its hands and laid it on Sam’s face. A feeling of warmth suffused his body and he leaned into the hand, searching for more of that warmth. It spread throughout his body, bringing a feeling of contentment and bliss with it.
The figure withdrew its hands far too quickly, and Sam desperately reached for them. But they were already out of reach, seemingly a universe away. The eyes of mortals were not meant to see something of this power and as a result of its safeguards to prevent the immediate dissolution of Sam’s very being, he was blinded from the truth of its movements. To Sam’s surprise, his Daos had been fixed, for now. They were still heavily damaged, but the taint had stopped spreading. After a moment of contemplative silence, the figure spoke again.
“That might be why my other children are no longer with us. I made them to parse and control a certain Dao, but in their journey, they must have touched upon other, similar concepts. That created something similar to what happened to you, creating a fracture in their soul. You however are different somehow. What exactly is it that is so special about you?”
Sam tried to answer, but his voice would not leave him and instead he was left looking up at the creature with boundless admiration. A moment later, the being froze.
“No, it cannot be. Has it really been that long since I last checked in? What has the System done to me? My old friend, where are you?” High up above, a crack formed in creation, showing a sliver of something that blasted Sam’s mind like a close range nuclear explosion. It was wiped completely blank by the sight of higher dimensional constructs and the raw power of a System Overseer.
A booming voice rang out, but Sam could not hear it, lost in a white fog of complete brain death. The being that had appeared in front of Sam gave him one last look and tapped his forehead, before leaving the way he had come, narrowly avoiding a lance of energy that stabbed down at it. Just before it hit the ground, it was redirected through a portal to avoid any contact with the lower order matter that this universe was made up of.
Sam remembered nothing of this encounter, instead coming to awareness with a strange ringing sensation in his head and the indescribable relief of his Daos being stabilized once more. All around him, the other fighters were still embroiled in battle, and Sam had the vaguest sense that something important had happened but a moment ago. But for the life of him, he could not remember what. Remembering something more important in the moment, that he was in the middle of a fight, he narrowly avoided another throwing dagger sent his way by Andrew Munro. Now that he had seen his tricks before, Sam knew what was going on. The man had some sort of magnetic control over his weapons allowing him to control them from a distance. The reason that Sam knew that it was not telekinetic control was that only the knife was affected.
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As the man threw it again, Sam raised his mace and blocked it with the hilt. The other man smiled and thrust his hand to the side, sending the weapon around the mace, and towards Sam’s eye. He had been banking on this the entire time and now with his vastly increased Dexterity since entering the forest, he caught it. The dagger struggled against him, but it was no match for someone with over 40 Strength. That level of power put him far above a normal human and there was only so much magnetism could do without the presence of a magnet that was inconveniently large. In the end, the magnet size was limited to something that the other man could carry and use effectively to control the dagger. Munro’s face lit up with rage when he realized that his trick had been stymied and he moved in to engage in melee combat. Sam let out a breath to steady himself and he held his mace in a tight grip, ready for some more magnetic trickery. Luckily, his mace was not made of metal so it would be immune to the other man’s abilities. Sam wondered how he had found magnets powerful enough to work from so far away, and then realized that he could have just gained an ability from the System. However, he had never heard of such a thing, so it was clear that the man had a few secrets.
Sam waited until the last moment and then made his move. He swung his mace in a horizontal arc, creating a small zone of control for himself. As Munro stepped backwards, Sam pressed his advantage. The other man twisted around his weapon like oil around a patch of water, and then struck with the speed of lightning. Not just figuratively, but literally as well. A small spark formed in his hand, and then grew and grew until the dagger was surrounded by a halo of electricity. With the sharp scent of ozone, his hand thrust forwards, too fast for Sam to see. It was only pure luck that the attack glanced off his mace, hitting him in the arm instead of the body. It seemed that his opponent was unable to control the attack very well, and it took a toll on his body as well. The faint smell of burning flesh came from his hand and it was charred slightly around his fingertips. The man growled at Sam and stopped using his abilities, instead relying on his martial prowess. He had clearly been trained in the use of his weapon before the System arrived and he was far more proficient in it than Sam was with his mace. The dagger seemed like a poor choice against a weapon with such power and reach as a mace, but Munro made it look like it was the other way around with how skillful he was.
Wounds slowly started to mount on Sam’s body as he tried to land a strike on his opponent, not succeeding even once. The other man was too skilled for Sam to deal with, and his higher stats on account of his level were edging the fight even further into his favor. This fight was not sustainable, unless Sam found some way to tip the scales a little. None of his friends and allies were available to help as they were all tied up with their fight with the tree monster. It was just him and him alone. Racking his brain for any way out of this situation, he remembered something that he had seen a while ago. In his skill branch area, he could gain a certain degree of weapon proficiency for 50 points. He had wanted to save up his point for something better, but there was no choice. He dumped the points into the skill and immediately seized up as an electric current of information entered his brain. Countless stances and attacks vied for his attention in his mind and after a brief moment, he knew how to perform them. As his enemy moved in to capitalize on what looked like a lapse in attention, Sam shut his eyes and moved.