Glakassa gazed at the strangely powerful human with a look of trepidation on her face. As the odd one out, she waited in the stands. So far, she had gone through the tower basically unchallenged. Her water elementalism had swept through the floors like an invincible tidal wave, carrying her to the heights of the Tower’s current crop. However, this time, there was a wildcard. Coming from seemingly nowhere, a man unsponsored by the greater sects of the Multiverse and of a race that was considered to be sub par in terms of natural advantages, Sam Atlas had shaken up the order of things in the Tower.
As the man shifted from foot to foot, he hardly put off the aura of a consummate warrior, honed by decades of experience like most in this competition. It was almost as if he was new to the System. Normal E Rankers had almost complete control over their bodies, and eliminated the majority of unnecessary movements. The only time that did not happen was when someone came from a newly initialized universe. Could it be? Those universes were famed for creating prodigies, but this seemed to be beyond belief. Even more strikingly, his companion was almost as powerful as he was. They were quite similar in appearance, almost as if they were related.
On a whim, Glakassa scanned the latter of them, the pugilist with the ego based Dao. To her shock, he bore the same last name as the other man. There was no doubt about it now. They were the products of an initialization.
Suddenly, all of her myriad accomplishments, all of the accolades that she had earned, her reputation as a genius, seemed like nothing but ash in the wind. Even if she was stronger than them, they had likely been cultivating for a far shorter amount of time. Anything short of total victory would be a loss in her eyes, and that of her sect. The elders were watching, and with the amount of resources placed in her, she represented a good chunk of the disposable income of the faction. It wasn’t like she would be killed if she lost, as that would be a waste, but unless she managed to claw her way to a decent floor, at least over fifty, she would be cast aside in favor of the new generation.
Unaware of the crisis he was causing in the mind of Glakassa, Sam simply waited for his opponent to make a move. To him, it seemed that the longer he waited, the more unsure his opponent became. Then he realized that the reptilian man was waiting for his sister to attack the Overlord.
“Ah, I see. You’re trying to delay so that you scrape by a higher place on the leaderboard,” Sam declared. “Let’s change that, shall we?”
Sam began to walk forwards. Each step was normal, but to the cowering mage facing him, they seemed like death knells. Dao energy began to cycle around Sam, and his body glowed with red and blue light. The ground began to smoke beneath his feet, and he smiled grimly, the rictus grin splitting his face like an ax had been taken to it.
His hammer lit up along with the rest of his body, and he held it out to the side, telling his opponent and everyone watching that he was confident enough to open himself up to attack. Then again, there were only five people left in the entire arena. Sam found it a bit strange that the System had banished the losers from the arena, but then he realized that it probably wanted to prevent the losers from seeing aspects of the higher placers’ powers that they could use against them in later events.
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It was an unusual form of consideration from the System, but one not unwelcome. The only person it impacted negatively was the Overlord, who was unable to cultivate his Dao from the admiration of the spectators.
With a burst of motion, his opponent finally lost his nerve and struck. Waves of molten Dao energy coursed through the air, forming into a lance of burnished power. Sam continued to stride forwards, not faltering for a moment. With the majority of the spectators gone, he could use a greater fraction of his potency.
The lance was loosed with a thunderous boom as it superheated the air, blasting the molecules apart. The resulting vacuum snapped back, providing impetus for the strike. Rather than dodge the bolt of energy, Sam raised one hand, and returned fire. About a quarter of his reserves were woven into the pattern of his projectile skill, and a beam of multihued light erupted from his palm, impacting the lava lance. There was barely a contest. Sam’s higher order Dao Seed, coupled with his immense personal potency, was able to shatter the comparatively flimsy construct with ease.
The mage teleported away, but the aspect of Vengeance continued within the attack causing it to arc towards the man’s new position, unerring in its aim. The mage faltered for a moment, and his shield snapped up a little too late. A thread of potency speared past the burgeoning disc of lava, slamming into his chest. Rather than stopping, it simply went straight through, carving a hole through him.
Sam then snapped his fingers, and the bolt erupted into a conflagration of rampant energy. Of course, by that point, the mage had already been removed from the battle. Now, once the Overlord finished up, the final ranking would be decided between the three remaining fighters.
The Overlord was steadily dismantling the defenses of his opponent, each strike chipping away at her defenses. He could have gone all out, but he wanted to save energy for the final battles, which were the most important. A sense of anger was beginning to rise within him at the thought of facing Sam for what felt like the hundredth time, and likely losing once more. If not for his altering of his Dao at the Seed stage, it would likely be the moment that his Dao broke irrevocably.
He was still dancing on a razor edge, but he was a bit more satisfied with the security of his path. Now he understood why every other Dao Incarnation had failed to go anywhere during their lives. It was almost impossible to lovingly follow a single ideal without either losing yourself, or failing to understand it. Of course, both spelled ruin.
He began to fall into a trance, using his unwilling test subject as a means to hone himself. He knew that any lethal blow would end in his enemy being teleported away, so he refrained. Instead, he trained his Dao energy, trying to find new ways to use it in battle. Supremacy was a double edged sword, one that was exceedingly sharp. However, he only ever seemed to use it to bludgeon his opponents. Why not use its conceptual nature in reality, cutting with his ego’s edge?