“Hey, Eduardo, what about the Overlord? What’s he doing?”
Eduardo shrugged at the question.
“I’m not sure. He seems to be working by himself, without any allies. Not that a monster like him needs any.” Sam was perplexed by the man’s choice of words.
“What do you mean? He’s strong, sure, but not that powerful.”
Eduardo shook his head.
“When you were gone, he had his first serious arena match. He fought against another of the top ten rankers, a woman known as Phoenix. She actually was able to hurt him, and he decided to go all out. Suffice to say, there wasn't enough left of her afterwards to fill a matchbox with. The rest of the unaligned top ten are sitting on the fence, unsure of which side to join. Anonymous seems to be leaning towards the enemy, but a few others are considering us. After that accursed monster hunt, the rankings changed up a little bit. Reaper is one of the top ten now, as well as the Bear. Both of them grew much more powerful after the hunt, having passed their first thresholds in their relevant stats.”
Sam nodded. He understood that at least. After having gone through it for himself, he knew just how much of a boost doing so was.
“So are they something to worry about in the future?” Sam asked, wondering how he would face up against them, especially without the help of his Dao. Eduardo shrugged.
“Perhaps. It depends on if you can access your Dao. It seems as if you have been having issues with that. Even then, you might have the raw stats to overwhelm them. You were able to do that with Reaper already in the tournament, but if he manages to make his way out of the losers’ bracket, which I am sure that he will, then you will have to face him, or someone else of his level, again. He seems to still retain some animosity for you, not because of Berrigious, but because of how you bested him. He thinks that you were mocking him by not going all out.”
Sam sighed and let out a wry laugh. He was just having the worst of luck these days it seemed. First he had earned the attention of Berrigious which had ended up making him a scapegoat for the other people in the tournament. Now he was still suffering under the legacy of Berrigious, despite the fact that the man was now gone. Sam briefly wondered what was happening to the man now, but dismissed the thought. He was getting his just desserts no matter what. Sam doubted that someone as ruthless as Tantalos would just let someone go like that.
Settling back into the bed, he closed his eyes, trusting in his companions to protect him. He was still exhausted by what had happened to him with his Dao and he needed to rest. The rest of the people in the room trooped out and into the hallways, except for Eduardo and Profound Visionary. They stayed by his bedside, protecting him from anything that could come to hurt him. Eduardo flashed a glance over to the remnants of the robot that they had found in Sam’s room. The hunk of scrap metal that they had turned it into was now serving as a very interesting looking piece of modern art.
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Sam was thrust into a strange vision as soon as slumber overtook him. He could tell that it was not a normal dream, mainly because he was fully aware of it. Sam was, as it seemed he had a penchant for doing, floating in the middle of space. This time, there were no stars, just a small ball of condensed matter that exuded such a vast gravitational field that if Sam was not there in spirit, he would have been reduced to mere atoms floating in the void. As it began to expand, he realized what it was. He was witnessing the birth of the Multiverse, or perhaps even existence itself.
As the ball expanded, it split into four smaller balls of matter, each far weaker than the first. They continued to divide like cells going through mitosis until there was a tapestry of millions of softly glowing balls of light hanging in the firmament. With a dull roar of power, they exploded outwards in size, going from the size of grains of sand to the size of a galaxy in an instant. Sam didn't know how he knew any of these measurements, but it just seemed to be natural to him. It was part of the vision, it seemed
Over time, they kept expanding and eventually they revealed themselves to be the size of full universes. Small streams of matter started to drift up from the nascent universes, and began to clump into pockets of matter. As they coalesced, they grew brighter and brighter until they formed into a human shape, and took their first breaths. There were two figures present, one that was instantly reminiscent of the System Overseers, except with the patterns of galaxies and universes on their skin instead of stars. As he took in the scale of the vision, he saw that those were actual universes and galaxies on it, not just images of them. That was not the most intriguing thing however.
The other figure was far more of an enigma than the starry one. It was made out of an indescribable light that seemed to be made up of both everything and nothing at the same time. As Sam peered closer, he saw that was literally the case. Small motes of varying energies drifted around it like a cloak and, altering his perspective of the figure, he moved even closer, seeing a tiny image in them. Feeling them resonate with him, he saw that they were fully formed Daos. With a jolt, he was torn away from the scene and instead was held in place to witness what happened next.
Two colossal fists, one from each entity, streaked across the void, moving faster than light, faster than thought, even faster than the concept of Speed itself. With a crash, they struck together in the middle of the void, sending out a shockwave of pure energy. This energy slammed into the universes, imbuing them with the first seeds of life and being. Each of them started to glow with a different hue, and he watched as tiny dots of energy formed within them, each the seeds of a new universe. Just as Sam saw this, the vision went black and the voice of a god began to speak.
“AND THAT WAS WHEN IT ALL STARTED. THE ETERNAL WAR BETWEEN THE DAO AND THE SYSTEM.”