Apparently, all of them wanted a piece of him, as they charged in unison. A few teleported ahead of the pack, triggering the rest to do so. Sam was treated to the quite terrifying sight of over thirty colossi appearing in the air before him, their claws hissing down through the air. The rot was palpable at this point, and a dense aura of pure decay had spread to the air itself. So powerful was it that Sam had started to take damage. He used his Stoneskin ability to wall off his flesh from the decay, and teleported high into the air.
With his power set, it was most efficient to lead with his most powerful skill. At E Rank, there was no such thing as a finisher anymore, as energy pools recovered quickly enough for one’s most powerful techniques to be used multiple times in a single fight.
The Voidrot Guardians were loath to let him carry out his plan, and they weaved their prodigious elemental pools into one, summoning a half dome of shadowy decay above them. Sam let out a roar and brought his weapon down, turning his normally untrammeled energy into a spike on its end, made for the purpose of hammering through defences. It really was quite something, the way one could alter a skill without actually changing anything on a stat sheet. In any case, it felt far more natural than a video game, where skills generally were earned at level milestones, rather than through one’s own intellect.
The tip of the spike was covered in the dense yellow energy of Earth, and was closely followed by his Dao energy, with a final charge of purified mana behind it. If all went well, the charge of mana would act like gunpowder, shooting down the Dao energy, which contained the bulk of the technique’s destructive potential.
The spike struck the purple dome, and cracks immediately spread across its surface. The tiny point of yellow broke through, and a thin beam of red and blue shot down behind it as the Dao energy was accelerated. There was a thunderous boom as the mana detonated, and the beam widened into a river of tempestuous might, slamming down into the center of the Guardians’ array. Their dome worked against them as the explosion went off, funneling the shockwaves back into itself, creating a crucible of explosions.
Sam watched with a slight smile as the impact of his skill subsided, before teleporting down through the hole in the dome, taking in the sight below him. As expected, none of the monsters had died, propping one another up like a twisted facsimile of a forest. However, one was critically wounded, almost half of its body missing. Even as Sam watched, the Voidrot below started to seep up, healing it. So he stopped watching.
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He teleported, and teleported again as a claw tipped hand streaked towards him, Then he brought his hammer down on the wounded monster, sending a pulse of his Dao through it. As he did so, he tried to utilize his nascent domain, commanding the flesh to become softer and more permeable. If it worked, its effects were drowned out by the rest of his attack, which blasted the Guardian apart into shards of wood.
Before he could move again, he felt the air around him grow soggy, a wave of corruption spreading through the world around him. The monsters had combined their power to lock down space, and for once, he was unable to contest it. Each of the creatures channeled a portion of the Voidrot’s power, and stacked together like this, they represented a Dao of a higher order than his own. He was back to using his stats.
Sam cracked his knuckles, still surprised that his E Rank body was comprehensive enough in its replacement of his human form to maintain the noise of that action without the presence of knuckles, and got to work. Like a streak of dark lightning, he sped in and out of the feet of the creatures, landing blows on their ankles that cracked wood. Even then, his movements were slowing as the Guardians continued to enhance their control over the fabric of local reality. Sam wondered how the monsters were so clever in one area, while being completely unable to tell that his appearance had been a trap.
Soon he was struck in a limbo, unable to do any lasting damage, while being able to avoid injury. His elemental mastery was high enough to ward off the corruption of the Voidrot at least within his own body, and his stats were enough to deal with the battle itself.
Minutes passed, an eternity in E Rank battles, and Sam started to find his stamina flagging. Constantly moving at top speed was exhausting, even for an E Ranker. Eventually, this battle would come to an end, and it would be one he had no wish to see happen. Against a legion of mid E Rankers, with immense regenerative capabilities, he would fall. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, as he could end the fight with Dao Juggernaut. However, he wanted to save that for the final battle. Even though he could use it without fear of death now, it still took a toll.
Before that happened though, he felt the ground beneath him shake, and on the distant horizon, a shining beacon of light erupted in the middle of the stream of decay coming down from the Voidrot. A shaft of radiant brown wood shot up into the sky, and branches appeared within seconds, covered in green foliage. The sky above shuddered as the Voidrot was forcibly pulled back, and around Sam, Guardians died in droves. The ground turned back to verdant meadows and grassland as the Voidrot receded, streaking back towards the Astral Pit.