Responding to the taunt immediately, two boosters of gray energy formed on the man’s calves and he sped across the arena at high speeds. Sam rooted himself in place with a side stance and swung his mace as the man came within ten feet of him. Reaper created a massive sword of energy that projected from his left arm and the two weapons met in the center, creating an expanding bow wave of force. They struggled against each other until Sam had an idea. He had wanted to save them for his rematch with the robot, but oh well. This was a lot more important. Dumping all of his free points into Strength, Sam watched as his mace instantly slammed Reaper’s weapon out of the way and homed in on the man’s throat. A rush of power coursed through Sam’s muscles and he clenched his free fist in exultation. With the benefits of his titles, he had just gained an almost 25 percent increase in his stat and it showed.

Reaper narrowly ducked under the mace strike and it powered through the air above him, but then Sam did something unexpected. Leveraging his new power to its fullest, he aborted the strike and slammed it down onto Reaper. Unprepared for this, the man was caught flat footed and his was smashed into the sand, creating a crater underneath him. All of his ectoplasm rushed up to his head and thickened drastically, pushing back against Sam’s strike. Even with his strength, the attack came to a standstill. Sam roared as he tried to force his way down, but he was stuck. Even worse, a spike of ectoplasm formed out of the ground underneath his foot and impaled it, rooting him in place. Stifling a groan, Sam thought desperately for a way to increase his power. If he had access to his Dao of Anger, he would have been able to trigger his skill and end the battle in a matter of seconds, but he did not have access to it. Remembering the feeling of his mana forming into a shield, Sam tried to do the same thing with his mace. It tried to resist him, but Sam was adept at forcing energy into places that it did not wish to go because of his Dao imbuement skill and as such he was able to make it work.

A mote of energy drifted down from his hand into his mace, completely at odds with what was about to happen. The tip of his weapon detonated in an explosion of blue light, blasting him off of the spike and away from Reaper. The scream of pain from the rapid removal of the spike was torn away from him by the winds of his passage. Sam mustered the presence of mind to check on Reaper and to his stratification, the man was lying comatose on the ground. Small pools of an oil-like substance, which Sam recognized to be non-enervated ectoplasm, surrounded him, leaking into the ground. With a grunt, Sam landed , throwing up his hands to the crowd. The deafening cheers made him feel a little bit better, but only marginally so.

Returning to his seat in the waiting area, Sam was met with a storm of booing. A few people were more silent in their protests, but he could tell anyway. Ignoring them, he sat down in his seat and felt a squelch underneath him. A gale of laughter swept through the room as he slowly stood up and felt the remainder of a pastry underneath him. Somebody had left that there for him as a little present, but compared to everything that had already happened, such a childish prank was not exactly on the top of his priorities. With a smile, he picked up the pastry and stuffed it into his mouth, flashing a thumbs up to the crowd. That was clearly not what they had expected and the crowd went silent. After a moment, they pretended that the entire incident had never happened and Sam nodded to himself in satisfaction. After a moment’s pause, Berrigious reappeared and announced the next fight.

“Up next, we will have the ineffable mystic Profound Visionary heading off against the mysterious fighter known only as Anonymous!” The narration was a lot more enthusiastic this time now that Sam was out of the picture and the two fighters stood up to deafening applause. Walking out into the arena, the live footage of the fight appeared on the camera of the screens. Sam sat back on his slightly sticky seat and watched. This was the first time that he would see Profound Visionary fight in a situation where he was able to fully enjoy the sight. Last time he had been embroiled in a fight, which was not exactly the best place to study someone’s fighting style. The man’s face creased into a benevolent smile and he bowed towards Anonymous. The other fighter did not return the gesture and instead got into a fighting stance. Profound Visionary sighed and turned to the crowd.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“This wayward youth knows not the correct means to engage in a match of honor. I pity them,” the man said with a wry lilt in his voice. His accent made everything that he said sound like some sort of nirvanic proclamation, sent from on high by the agents of enlightenment. In reality, he was just a wise old man. One that could bench press a horse. That probably made quite a lot of difference to be honest, but he still looked the part. Flowing robes of beige cloth hung loosely over his ascetic’s body and his face was a lined statue of age and experience. In comparison, the masked fighter that stood opposite him looked like a novice, fresh out of the rookie league. Anonymous was dressed in a nondescript outfit of black pants and a shirt and they loosely held a pair of kukri. The knives could be used for both melee combat and for throwing, but the latter form was more effective. Wondering which one Anonymous would use, Sam waited for the fight to kick off.

Profound Visionary began by bowing to the four corners of the arena and began to flow into a martial arts position in a leisurely manner. The man was unarmed and his hands were wrapped in linen bandages, like in some of the martial arts movies that Sam had watched. Anonymous threw their right hand kukri, triggering a skill as they did so. A nearly invisible layer of air formed over the weapon and its effective cutting edge elongated until it was over a meter in length. Profound Visionary calmly waited for it to approach, bringing one hand back as he did so. The spinning blade of air approached him and he thrust out a hand suddenly, grasping it by the hilt and plucking it out of the air. With a dismissive flick, he sent the weapon flying off into the far wall. Moving forwards at a deceptively slow pace, he suddenly vanished into a puff of smoke, appearing in front of Anonymous. As he appeared, the faint trace of a line of blue light vanished. It appeared to have been connecting the two together and it was almost as if it had contracted as its user had teleported. Sam was coming closer to finding out what Profound Visionary's Dao was, and this was yet another clue. For some reason, it was hard to detect the man’s Dao, almost as if he was hiding it. The more that Sam saw however, the closer he got. It was something to do with the interactions between people, that much was clear, and it manifested itself with a blue light. The light was not that helpful, as there were an infinite number of possible Daos, of all sorts of concepts, but the fact that it created a tether between them was useful. Sam watched as the battle continued, but he was half out of it, speculating about the mystery Dao.

Anonymous lashed out with their knife again, creating a sharp strip of air that sped through the medium between the two fighters, going faster than the eye could easily track. Profound Visionary lifted his hand like an image of some transcendent bodhisattva and caught it. A welter of blood coursed out of the appendage, but the air was rapidly drained of its motive power and dissipated into its surroundings. The older man took a deep breath and then exhaled. As he did so, his wound began to close over. Because Sam was so focused on the concepts that he felt emanating from the man, he caught the tiniest of energy trails leaking out of his own body and towards the man. Now that he had seen it, he saw it connecting the man to everyone in the audience, extracting the equivalent of a millijoule of energy from them. Individually it was not much, but between millions of people it was enough to heal his wound completely. Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place when Sam saw that his own energy stream was almost 50 percent bigger than that of the other people. Immediately, he thought of the concept of Connection, but then saw that it was too grand of a Dao for anyone at this stage to form. It was some lower form of the concept that the man had, and it had been deepened at least once.