As the surface of Vallenar flashed by, Sam took the opportunity to size up his opponent a bit more. The Voidrot was increasingly visible the further they went, a blot upon the surface of the planet. It went beyond simple darkness, instead taking root in the ground itself. The tree Sam had freed had been on the edge of its domain, but as they headed further towards the true border between the Voidrot and the uncorrupted lands, the entirety of the soil turned to the color of a fresh bruise, purple and pregnant with pain and misery. Nothing living stirred within its domain, and nothing dead either. It was a zone of entropy, where life could not exist save for the Voidrot Guardians, which were more like expressions of a powerful Dao than anything else. It was an affront to nature itself.
Sam found himself imagining what Earth would have been like had it been assaulted by such a force. It would have stood a chance, given his own presence and that of the Overlord, but eventually, they would have fallen, and the darkness of a decay that stretched beyond the stars would take root. For the first time in the Tower, Sam actually felt something for the inhabitants of a floor, if an entire planet could even be considered such.
How powerful was the System to create such a thing as the Tower, something capable of breaching the walls not between universes, but between entire multiverses? Or, even more frighteningly, what if it was not a construct of the System, but rather some unfathomably powerful cultivator from a higher plane of existence? Every time Sam grew complacent with his own power, he was immediately greeted by something else that showed his position on the very bottom of the pyramid that made up all of Creation.
The first of his targets appeared about thirty minutes later, a massive tree absolutely dripping with rot.
“What exactly do your people call the trees that you call home?” Sam asked, blurring as he teleported dozens of times in the span of a second.
“I am surprised by your interest, outsider. We call them Anavri’s Sentinels, the last relics left behind by our god before she was slain by interlopers from the wider Multiverse. She was the spirit of our planet, awoken through the concentrated elemental power of an entire race of beings intimately in touch with nature. Even before the World Tree came, she had the power of a Third Sprouting existence. Of course, the invaders used this as an excuse to obliterate her.”
“In my universe, there was another species called the Grakoth. They had a similar situation. A few beings they referred to as Ancestors had guarded their worlds before the System came, but they were separated from them afterwards.” Sam noted the grimace that Dranus made when he said the word ‘System’, but he ignored it.
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“Luckier than us, to be sure,” Dranus replied ruefully. “Anavri was too rooted to the fabric of our planet to be removed by the World Tree, so it simply allowed her corpse to keep Vallenar intact instead of her living form. If she had been removed, that would have spelled the end of life on this world.”
Sam shook his head slightly at the experiences of these people, so different from his own, yet so similar. Thinking of them as simply inhabitants of a sector of the Tower, an obstacle to be cleared, felt wrong to him. They were just as real as he was, unlike the monsters that had inhabited the earlier floors.
They came to a stop shortly after, Dranus hovering a few feet above the ground, unwilling to touch the Voidrot with his feet. Sam had no such qualms, and simply dropped out of the sky, landing with a squelch. He set his eyes upon the nearest of Anavri’s Sentinels, the titanic tree festooned with ribbons of filth and entropy. He could feel the corruption with his Dao sight, a palpable field of conceptual power that created the perfect environment for the Voidrot to spread.
“I’m going to withdraw to a safer distance,” Dranus said a moment later. “It pains me to admit it, but I would only be a nuisance in this fight, if you really do possess the strength you claim.”
Sam didn’t deign to respond to this, instead waving the other man off. He hefted his hammer on his shoulder, and then teleported to the nearest branch.
The wood creaked beneath him, the mushy bark depressing around his feet. As he walked forwards, he gathered power to his hammer, ready to kill the Guardian of the tree.
Dranus watched Sam from a distance, wondering just how the man would deal with his foe. He knew that the outsider was far stronger than he was, but he wasn’t sure how much. Much of the cantankerous atmosphere he projected around the man was more of a way to test limits than anything else.
The Forest Folk had less of a sense of individuality than other sapient races, and one of their number would gladly sacrifice themselves for the betterment of the others. It was why he and the Chieftain had created a double act of opposition and acceptance for Sam, seeing if his mind was stable. Luckily enough, it was, but had it not been, they would have been forced to summon one of the elites among their race to deal with him. The presence of the Voidrot was bad enough, but that of a rogue E Ranker roaming the planet was even worse.
He gazed down as Sam approached the trunk of Anavri’s Sentinel, the massive tree beginning to vibrate and creak as the Voidrot was channeled through it. A whirlpool of corruption formed on the center of the trunk facing Sam, and a monster stepped through. It was one intensely familiar, yet just as strange as the day Dranus had first set eyes upon one of its number. A colossal humanoid made from twisted roots and wood, completely shrouded in the energies of decay and death.
Sam marched on, oblivious to the thoughts racing through his companion’s head. He had a simple enough task here, to kill the Voidrot Guardian. Now that he knew how they worked, it would be far easier than last time.