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Chapter 72

He weaved between grasping tentacles, his agility and weapon prowess on full display as he used his mace like a third arm, vaulting over it and swinging it to gain momentum. A key part of his weapon style was high mobility, as suitied a practitioner of an art that revolved around the movements of water. He could flow like the most placid of rivers, but also strike like the most unexpected of waves. Combined, this was a deadly combination.

The plant encrusted women started to back away as he approached and opened her hands wide, releasing a cloud of green pollen. It didn't take a genius to figure out that it was toxic, so Sam used his aura, wondering if it would work like this. If not, he could always hold his breath. With a higher Constitution, doing so for entire minutes at a time was not out of reach.

As it turned out, his aura did affect the light and drifting pollen, preventing it from reaching him. With one last skip, he was there, with his mace overhead. He smiled and whispered one last thing to the woman before he swung down.

“Who’s compensating now?”

With an explosion of blue light, her reply, if indeed there was one, was cut off and the plants were forcibly blasted off of her body. The unconscious form of Emily fell to the ground, where she lay until the match end announcement rang out. Sam walked back into the room, and hammed it up for the audience, both for his adoring fans, and for his enemies. Strangely enough, the System seemed to be placing people of the same faction against opposing faction members, rather than against each other. It wasn't every time, but it was more than half of the time.

Ignoring the customary snarls from the two stooges over on the other side of the room, Sam sat down, wincing as his overused muscles twinged. All of that gymnastics had been rough on his body, even if he had not taken a single serious blow the entire battle. Enjoying the congratulations of his allies, he watched the next fight begin. Sam smiled. This one would be interesting.

Eduardo and Rodney Kane walked up to the front of the room and up the ramp to the arena, glaring daggers at each other the entire time. Beneath the bravado, Sam could tell that Eduardo knew that he was going to lose, but he would give the arrogant scarred man a few more scars to remember. Sam only hoped that Eduardo would yield before he died.

They readied themselves to fight, and with a smug grin on his face, Rodney raised his hand and slammed it down into his palm. With the reverberation of a thousand belfrys, something started to rise out of the ground behind him. It looked like a demonic creature made out of earth and dark light, with streams of fluid running off between its joints. Rodney hopped backwards and landed in the middle of the creature, sinking into it like it was some sort of mech. The gloves were really coming off during this match. It seemed that almost everyone had held back during the monster hunt, and now that the stakes were high, their true power was being revealed.

Sam really needed to get to fixing his Dao, and he used the words of both Profound Visionary and of the voice in the dream to try and get a heading to follow. Still, it was extremely hard work, and all of the stuff that he had achieved so far was purely conceptual. Sending his attention back to the fight, Sam watched as it began in earnest.

The creature of darkness leaped into the air and towards Eduardo, landing with a thud and creating a pool of noxious vapors where it landed. Sam could see Eduardo covering his mouth and nose as some of the vapor reached him. Rather than attack his lungs however, the black gas acted like an acid, rapidly eating away at his flesh. With a cry of alarm, the man jumped backwards and landed out of the range of the cloud. A menacing laugh emanated from the cloud, and Rodney exited it, now clutching a massive sword in a two handed grip. With a whoosh of metal through air, the sword came down, far faster than something of its size had any right to do. A thunderous tearing noise echoed through the arena as a ten foot wide strip of sand just vanished beneath the onslaught. It sped towards Eduardo, who narrowly missed it. With a frown, the man began to counterattack, sending multiple light attacks towards his enemy. They seemed weaker than before, but with Sam’s new elemental sight, he was able to see that there was a new force in with the unattributed mana, a green energy that was subtly woven within the attack. He could see that the energy came from a small pendant that the man wore around his neck, and he realized that had been Eduardo’s reward for defeating the tree monster during the monster hunt.

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As the attacks landed, large roots burst out of the ground and wrapped around Rodney and his living suit of armor. He pulled on them with his hands, but they held firm. The roots started to contract, but they would not get any headway on the highly durable and strong construct that they held in their grasp, and what sounded like a lazy sigh came out of the helm of the creature. With a dull roar of metal creaking off of metal, Rodney pushed his construct to its limits, tearing free from the roots. A few scratches marred its surface, but that was all. Eduardo paled a little and then resumed his attack, this time not landing a single one as the large metal creature somehow avoided them all with a speed that belied its size. As it closed in and struck Eduardo with a right jab, Sam saw why it was so fast. The punch was far weaker than it should have been coming from a creature of that size, which meant that it was light enough to move elegantly, but not heavy enough to be especially tough. That must have been what the sword was for, although the armor was now too close to use it properly.

Eduardo dodged the next blow by the narrowest of margins, with a piece of his hair drifting to the ground after the razor edge of the greatsword gave him a close shave. What Sam wondered was what had happened to the sword that the man had used during the fight with the tree? That had been a completely different style and make than this one, and it had been bright as well, a marked contrast with this stygian greatsword. What had happened to the light based attacks that he had used before? Was that just a front to distract against this true moveset, or was it in fact an integral part of it? In any case, Eduardo was flagging. He was taking hits left and right, and only his skill with his rapier allowed him to use it to turn away the greatsword. Rather than trying to block it, which would have been an exercise in futility and broken bones, he turned it away from him, redirecting the force rather than opposing it. For all of his brute strength and speed, Rodney Kane seemed to lack any sort of deeper mastery of his weapon, instead relying on his stats to fight. If not for the fact that there was a vast gulf of power between the two men, it would have been a much different fight. As it was, it was more of a one sided beatdown than anything else, and Rodney hadn't even taken a single wound yet.

Eventually acknowledging that he was going to lose, Eduardo did something that Sam had never seen before. Raising his hands as if praying for benediction, he dropped his blade. Taking a direct hit from the greatsword, his body folded over it, spurting blood. Instead of falling over onto the ground after he had been torn off of the blade, he stood up tall, a white light shining from his eyes. Then he spoke, with a resounding, booming voice.

“Ave Maria!”

Two lightning fast punches, each covered in white light, slammed into Rodney, breaking through his armor and actually touching his flesh for the first time in the battle. The man stumbled and rocked back as another series of blows hit him. The light that blazed within Eduardo’s eyes started to dim, and his blows gradually grew weaker. Eventually, the onslaught diminished to the point that Rodney was able to get back up. His armor was in tatters, and his flesh was broken, but still he stood. In reality, the damage looked far worse than it actually was and the man was just pretending to be more hurt than he really was, wanting to lull people into a false sense of security. He had passed his Resilience threshold a week ago, and now possessed an automatic healing effect that was working, even now, to repair his flesh.

Before he could do anything, Eduardo said in a broken voice, “I yield.” Then he fell over onto the ground. Rodney roared in rage, and it looked as if was going to strike the other man when he was down, but he then thought better of it and stormed off through the door.