Sarge was waiting for him there, with a flustered expression on his face.

“Sam, there’s something happening at the arena. There was just an announcement made summoning all fighters there. You missed it because you were on the Interweb. You better hurry.”

“Damn it!” Sam exclaimed as he ran out the door, picking up his mace as he went. In case he had a fight going on soon, he needed to be ready. As he left, he took one look to make sure that everything was in order. At the exasperated waving of Sarge, he rushed out the door.

Sam ran down the hallway, not encountering a single person. When he entered the atrium, there were less than twenty people in there. The starry figure of the System Overseer stood at the front of the room, giving Sam a disapproving look.

“Now that everyone is here, we can finally begin. The formatting of the tournament is about to change somewhat. We are down to the final 16 fighters, eight in the losers’ bracket, and eight in the winner’s bracket. Today will be the final day of fighting, where we will crown a new winner of the tournament. There will be no killing allowed in this part of the match, and the rules are otherwise the same. Your positions at the end will be determined by an algorithm based on your performance and matchups to create a hierarchy despite the fact that some people will be at the same rank otherwise. The fights will occur within the brackets until the last match, which will be between the winners of both brackets. The first fight will be between Torchman and The Bear of the Motherland.”

Sam did not recognize the first name, and he took a look around. All of the fighters were from the upper echelons of the leaderboards, and Sam should have been a bit more attentive in reading them. Upon checking them, he saw that Torchman was the number 12 human in the world. Judging by his name, and the small sparks that danced around his body, he fought with fire. The Bear was the same as before, a massive, burly Russian man who lived up to his name.

They walked up together, Torchman with an easy, athletic gait, and the Bear with a lumbering one. They stopped in the middle of the arena, and paused as the System explained what was happening to the audience. There was a moment of silence and then a cheer. This was even more exciting than the normal matches. The best of the best, vying for supremacy.

The System finished up and announced the beginning of the battle. Sam wondered how exactly the System Overseer was able to be here, as well as supervising the rest of the universe. Was it omnipresent or something like that? Perhaps it was, which was a scary thought. That would equate its power with that of a god, which was not comforting in the slightest. If so, what did that say about the System as a whole? This Overseer might act with its authority, as a part of it itself, but it certainly possessed less power. Sure, it was a mostly benevolent god, but judging by Jeffrey’s stories, it was not towards those who displeased it. In fact, perhaps it had been there when Jeffrey had been recounting those stories, and even now Sam was on its watchlist. The worst thing was that he would never know.

As the two men got into position in the arena, Sam watched them slowly, feeling small sparks of Dao energy coming off them. In fact, the same could be said of most of the fighters here. They were all coming close to forming their Daos. Perhaps these would be the fights in which this finally happened.

Sam watched half heartedly as the two men fought, focused more on the figure of the Overlord. The man stared off into the distance, clearly in the middle of something. The small motes of Dao energy that were coming off him told Sam that whatever he was doing, it would be bad for Sam in the end. Wondering if he could do something about it, Sam drew on his new skill. It was extremely hard to do so, but he was able to enter the Dao space of the other man with his own. What he saw there was quite impressive. It was only a Dao Mote, sure, but one that glowed with the light of a much stronger Dao. It was perfectly compressed, and in far better shape than that of the boy from the Interweb.

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Sam gave the man a look to make sure that he had not been detected, and he sent a little spike of power into the man’s Dao. There was a small buzz, and then the production of Dao sparks stopped. The Overlord jolted in his seat, and then looked around himself in shock. His eyes locked on Sam, who returned in gaze with a cool state. If the Overlord said anything about this in a public setting, his status might take a hit, which would cause him to lose even more power. It was actually pretty fun playing with the man’s Dao.

Sam gave him a smile and then looked back at the fight. The Bear was absolutely dominating the battle, which was to be expected based on his position on the leaderboards. The fireballs that Torchman sent off were not very effective against the rocky armor of the Bear, and they only served to leave glassy patches of melted stone on it. However, it was a bit closer than it seemed on the outside. The mage was a bit more than just a normal mage, and his movements were a lot quicker than other mages of his level. He had weaker spells as a result, but he was able to use them a lot more efficiently. It seemed that Dexterity was a good addition to spellcasting prowess. If Sam had picked a different build, it might well have been this. However, the one downside of this was that you ended up with lower stamina and mana on average than if you had picked a pure physical or magical build.

Eventually, Torchman ran out of stamina, and he was forced to stand his ground in front of the charging form of the Bear. He was a lot braver than Sam would have been in that situation, and his face did not even flicker as he started to prepare a new spell.

With a shout that was whipped off his lips by a sudden gust of hot wind, he began to rapidly snap his fingers one after the other, creating tiny motes of red hot fire in the air. Ten, twenty, a hundred. They kept on forming, and then they formed into tiny arrowheads of fire. After what must have been almost a thousand floating motes began to rotate around him, which had all formed in a matter of seconds, Torchman thrust his hands forwards. The small flames, weak on their own, worked wonders in a large group. The first ones flickered out as soon as they struck the stony flesh of the Bear, but they made tiny dents in the rock that were unerringly targeted by the next ones, on and one until the first series of attacks got through the armor.

The Bear roared in bestial rage, and he smashed his free hand down to the ground in front of himself, creating a localized earthquake that knocked Torchman off of his feet. The man flipped through the air to land perfectly, but unfortunately for him, Dexterity was useless if there was nothing to push off of. A five foot long spear of rock, wrought from the Bear’s own armor, sped through the air and impaled the other man, causing him to let out a strangled cry as he was torn out of the air. With a pop, he was teleported out of the arena to receive medical aid.

The Bear raised his hands, waving his unused ax, and banished his armor, roaring with delight. A small sector of the arena started chanting something in Russian, and a few bare chested men with Russian flags tattooed on their torsos jumped up and down. After a few minutes of this, the Bear made his way back inside the arena waiting area.

“Congratulations to the winner of the first fight, the Bear of the Motherland! Next up will be the first delegates from the winners’ bracket, the Angel of Death, and Anonymous!”

Eduardo and the figure of Anonymous made their way into the arena, and the System signaled for the fight to begin. Anonymous wasted no time leaping forwards, her knife at the ready. She pulled back her hand midair, and thrust the knife forwards dozens of times in the span of a few seconds, creating blades and spears of wind that shot towards Eduardo.

With an artful flourish, he drew his rapier and brought it around in front of him in a semicircular arc, cutting the wind blades out of the air. He took a step back as Anonymous cut at the place where he had been standing, and then slashed his rapier towards her. A crescent of white light formed at the tip of the blade and gracefully peeled off, heading on a collision course with Anonymous’ head.

Sam lost focus a few minutes into the fight as he took a look around the room. He only knew a little over half of the faces there, and he decided to check the leaderboard for overall power, something that he had not done in a while. It would be important for determining who he might be up against. This time, he made it display the top 16 people, assuming that they would be who were here today.

Overall Power

1.The Overlord

2.Rodney Kane

3.The Arbiter

4. The Scourge of New York

5. Profound Visionary

6. Reaper

7. The Angel of Death

8.Anonymous

9.The Bear of the Motherland

10.Solitaire

11.Drake

12.Torchman

13.Starchild

14.Harry King

15.Marina Talbot

16.Thomas Aquinas