As he entered the room where the rest of the fighters were waiting, the armor had come off and his face was dark with rage. He sat down by Andrew Munro, and they started to mutter to each other, sending meaningful glances over at Sam’s side of the room. Sam was just glad that Eduardo had been able to put up that much of a fight. That Ave Maria thing must have been a final skill of sorts, something that triggered when he was on the brink of death. Sam did not possess anything close to what would be considered a final skill, and he desperately needed it. He was good at fighting, but not especially good at finishing fights, especially against people of his level of power. Without his Daos, he would need to look to the boon of elemental energy. He still needed to connect with Earth properly, however, and he had a vague idea of how to do it. Seeing as most people still in the tournament already had an elemental connection, they must not take that long to form.
Sam walked out of the room, as he had already fought that day, and made his way back to his quarters. It was time to put his plan into action. Now that Berrigious had gone, there was nothing stopping anyone from leaving the arena and going out into the town. When he had been there last, Sam remembered that there had been a grassy strip of land that seemed perfect for what he was looking to do.
Exiting the now unlocked front door of the arena, he entered the deserted town. Now that everyone was watching the tournament, this was the perfect time to roam the streets of the city. He was not here to idly wander however, and he made his way to the park quickly. With a furtive glance around him, Sam began to dig. After he had reached a depth of about 10 feet, he started to collapse the walls around him. Dirt and rock rained down into the hole. If this didn't work, he would feel incredibly stupid. As the hole filled in, his breathing became more labored, and he started to close his mouth and nose, not wanting to ingest any more earth than necessary.
He stood there, entombed in soil, gradually beginning to feel a resonance with it. If not for his prior connection to Earth, this would all have been a colossal waste of time. As it was, the small nugget of power that orbited his core began to grow as the pure energies of Earth filled it. It was going too slowly however, and he gradually started to run out of air. Sensing that he would fail to connect with his element if he left now, he forced himself to remain there and suffer for greater power. The blackness of oxygen deprivation started to close in on him, and his health bar began to tick down. Seeing as he had quite a large one, it was going quite slowly, but he only had about two more minutes left to live, not least that the entire thing was incredibly uncomfortable. With a final surge of energy, his Meridian finished opening and he tore his way out of the earth, gasping for air. He flopped down onto the grass like a beached whale and looked inside himself, seeing that his Meridian was now far larger.
You have fully opened your Elemental Meridian of Earth. After submerging yourself in your element, you have fully awakened your connection to the element of Earth. Now you can use it in battle and to empower yourself with its elemental energy. Further your connection through meditation and more extreme physical connections to your element.
Current Mastery 1%
Sam was, of course, at the very beginning of opening his Meridian. Seeing that there was only 1 percent mastery logged in his System, that meant that he had another 99 percent to go. Also, judging by how progression worked, it would not be linear, but rather a long and exponentially growing slog to grow it.
Getting up after he had recovered from his ordeal, Sam ran back to the arena, wanting to return before anyone came out to challenge him. As he ran, he heard something strange coming out of an alleyway. A short and aborted scream rang out from behind a shop, and he faintly heard the noise of flesh striking flesh. Running to see what was going on, he saw a woman being assaulted by a group of five other people. She was clutching something in her hands, what looked to be a large crystal of roiling energy.
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“Give us that, you worthless piece of shit!” One of the assailants, a man, screamed at her. The woman, despite being covered in cuts and bruises, would not let go. Upon closer analysis, Sam saw that she was quite a bit younger than he had expected. She lashed out with her foot and struck one of the others in their kneecap, causing the woman to hop backwards in pain. Her face twisted in rage, she struck the girl with the crystal in the face.
“You’re going to pay for that, you little-”
“Something the matter here?” Sam said dryly. He wanted to see when these people would say to justify their actions. They turned to him and snarled.
“Eff off, you bastard. What the hell do you think you are? Some sort of white knight, here to save the princess? You get three seconds to go, or I’m going to kill you.” The man who said this looked like the leader of the group and he held a short sword that had the look of something mass produced. Sam snorted. This group was a joke. Anyone who preyed on defenseless people like this girl deserved to be sent straight to the lowest circles of hell. Sam couldn't assure that, but he could damn well make it feel like they were there.
As he stood his ground, with a cocky smile on his face, the man rushed him, sword raised high. Sam raised his hand and caught the blade, snapping it with a quick clench of his hand. The man blinked, before his right arm snapped. Screaming, he looked down at the mass of twisted flesh where Sam had punched. Sam looked down at his hand, surprised at how effective that had been. Reining in the power a little, he tossed the man into a wall, where he remained, pancaked there like a bug. The others paled in fear as they saw how easily Sam had dealt with their leader. One of them seemed to recognize him and all of the blood drained from their face.
“Oh, shit…”
Sam smiled even wider.
“So you recognize me, then?”
The man nodded apprehensively.
“You’re the Arbiter!” Upon hearing that, the other members of the gang fled. Sam picked up a few stones from the ground and sent them through the air at the retreating hoodlums, knocking them onto the ground. They did not get up. He made his way over to the girl and chuckled as she pulled out a dagger on him as he approached.
"Don’t get any closer! I’m warning you.” The effect was more cute than anything else, as she was barely five feet tall and looked to be about 13 years old. Sam wondered how exactly she had gotten into this situation and he analyzed the crystal that she was holding to see what exactly it was that the criminals were looking for.
Large G-Rank Essence Crystal
G-Rank Magical Item
A condensed crystal made out of the essence of G-Rank monsters. This crystal can either be made out of the byproduct of a hundred G-Rank monsters, or can occasionally be found in sites where there is a lot of ambient essence, such as near a fight between high level opponents. If you are level 1-25, it will give you 3 levels. If you are level 25-40, it will give you 2 levels. If you are level 40-45, it will give you 1 level, and if you are level 45-50, it will give you a half of a level(banking experience if you are too close to the bottleneck of G Rank.)
Sam now saw why those people had been so frantic in their acquisition of this crystal. It was quite useful, even to him, and he felt a small twinge of greed at the crystal. Quashing that, he started to walk away. It belonged to this girl, and she had every right to use it. Before he got more than a few steps away, the girl called out to him.
“Hey, why did you save me?”
Sam turned around in surprise.
“It was the right thing to do. Why would I have not done so?”
“You could have easily taken this crystal off of me. You were far stronger than those thugs,” the girl said.
“Then I would have been no better than them. What else would a good person do?” Unexpectedly, the girl smiled and then started to dissipate into the air.
“You passed the test. Congratulations.” Sam watched as the bodies of the things on the ground disappeared, and he was left in the middle of the alleyway with the essence crystal. He felt something like a tendril of pure heat enter his body, and he suppressed a scream as it lanced into his Dao. Then he stopped. It had actually repaired the Dao of the Arbiter by a small amount. Had that been some sort of tribulation, sent down to him by his Dao? It certainly seemed that way, as no trace of the event remained save for the orb. He picked it up and put it away in his clothes, deciding to wait until he was in safety to level up.