Then the air whistled above him and Bronvar brought his ax down upon the monster to Sam’s left, cleaving a dozen feet into its E Rank flesh. There was a groan of pain and creaking wood, and the beast fell to one knee. Sam gave the newcomer an appreciative nod, and continued his work. As the other members of the Forest Folk’s defenders focused on saving the inhabitants of the tree city, Sam and Bronvar danced around the strikes of the Guardians, their speed keeping them out of range of the spears of darkness that threatened to skewer them, sending waves of rot into their vulnerable flesh.
Sam focused on his own battle, with him having to take the brunt of two of the monsters, with Bronvar keeping pace with the last one. He had to leap off the head of the submerged Guardian, its Dao-burnt flesh rising from the deep mud below. With his teleportation, he was like a gnat carrying a gun, able to dart in and injure his foes with consummate ease. While the Guardians could also teleport, he had a superior Dao, as they were simply drawing upon a tiny fraction of their patron Voidrot’s power. He was unable to completely keep them locked in space, but he was able to severely hamper their abilities in the field of teleportation, leaving him the dominant force on the battlefield.
His hammer pulped wood and rot into sprays of mulch, each strike tearing a hole through his foes. His recent levels had increased his potency by a noticeable amount, especially considering his bonuses as an E Ranker, and his titles. Now that he had been an E Ranker for more than a month, he had a better idea of how much of a boost his Perfect Ascension had granted him.
It was hard to tell, given that his mind automatically adjusted his perception and reaction speed to his current situation, but he was multiple times stronger and faster. Going by logic, the boost seemed to be by a factor of five, representing the five stages of ascension. That also brought his first true battle with an E Ranker into perspective.
Jakoss, the leader of the three Athari Sect powerhouses, had probably been at an average level of ascension, maybe around the second or third stage. That would have made his strength and speed far higher than Sam’s, which they were. However, it would have only been by a factor of two or so, because of Sam’s titles.
Although the bonus did not show up on his stat sheet, his working theory was that it was the result of his ascension adjusting not his current state, but his base parameters. It was mostly likely linked to his racial evolution. Because his health, mana and stamina values remained the same, but drained far slower, he suspected that they were worth more now. It was as if he had started cultivation as a member of a superhuman race, one that gained more from leveling than all others.
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Using this strength in battle was intoxicating, and he soon fell into a trance, more aiming to train than anything else. By this point, the Sentinel Tree had been cleared, and he could fight in earnest. He could have ended the battle with his Primal skill, but he had a Dao to upgrade, and martial prowess to train.
Every Dao upgrade added more and more stat points, at an almost exponential rate. The only reason he couldn’t simply cultivate hundreds of Daos and become a god of an E Ranker was because of the time required, and because of his natural limits. While he did have the capacity to have many more Daos than he currently did, it was an investment of time he simply did not have, not with how rapid his growth was.
Once he settled down, after the Universal Tournament, it would be time to shore up his cultivation base, either for a suicidal fight with Tantalos after a century, or to bring the most he could to the Adventurers’ Guild, if everything worked out.
As he fought, he focused on his Dao, currently at the second level of the Seed stage. His mastery was immense, but he was entering the realm of Dao cultivation where improvements became increasingly hard to find. There was no way to make concrete improvements on timescales less than a month, no matter how talented he was in the field.
His raw talent was presumably the greatest in existence, not factoring in things like System boosts and titles. The only people he had seen to have matched him, at least in speed, were his father, Lao and Eduardo. The clear connecting factor was that they were inhabitants of Earth. Jeffrey had already been touched by Sam’s immense conceptual importance, gaining a Legendary class. Perhaps his presence had blessed all of his allies.
Cultivating his ideal of vengeance against monsters in a Multiverse far removed from his own produced a muted effect, as just in the same way Karma had no effect here, his presence here was limited. He was so removed from reality here that all he could take charge of was the actions of the Voidrot against himself, which had been mostly defensive. Normally his Dao would have blazed like a bonfire at the nature of the conflict between the interstellar plague and the innocent citizens of Vallenar, but there was almost nothing there. It was intensely aggravating, but also completely insurmountable.
Eventually, the monsters fell to his hammer and Bronvar’s ax. At the very end, the remainder of the Forest Folk elites had descended from the Sentinel Tree and lent their aid, bringing the battle to an immediate halt. The twisted corpses of the arboreal juggernauts rested on the ground, sinking into the fast receding ooze of the Voidrot.