Lao entered the fortieth floor of the Tower of Transcendence without much in the way of injury. He was already stronger than most of the challengers, even in avenues of power that he wouldn’t consider himself especially capable. His physical strength was greater than many warriors, given his Perfect Ascension. The title bonuses from the Tower only served to accentuate that.
His journey through the Tower had been relatively uneventful, despite him entering Challenge Mode. Despite his strength, he wasn’t of the same caliber as people like Sam or Jacob, necessitating the System to create new challenges for them. Still, as he sliced his hand across the air, launching a guillotine blade of force at the horde of shambling undead before him, Lao wondered just how powerful he was compared to the average cultivator. He knew little of the outside Multiverse, at least, on a personal level. Every one of the faction captains had researched the great factions of the Multiverse, but knowing that a hegemonic order of A Rankers ruled over everything didn’t say much about the countless beings who lived and died beneath them.
Interestingly enough, Lao’s path through the Tower was a good deal quicker than that of Sam. This was because of two reasons. Firstly, he was able to clear floors the way they were meant to be, not embark upon missions out in the greater Multiverse. Secondly, the 25th floor hadn’t had the smithing challenge that Sam had been forced to go through. As a result, Lao was almost a month ahead. Still, he had been in the Tower for a significant amount of time, given the time dilation. The floors were growing larger and larger, and hordes of monsters that had once been the armies of entire layers of the Tower were now just sideshows in the greater fabric of the levels.
The current floor, called the Evergrave, was meant to be the ruins of a long gone civilization who had turned to necromancy in their wars against a long forgotten foe. While they had triumphed over their enemies, the people of Evergrave had turned to infighting, using their necromantic powers on one another. All that was left was a scarred world filled with legions of the undead. None of them were especially powerful, but there were so many of them that had Lao not been a ranged specialist, he would have had significant difficulty in killing them.
As more undead rose from the ground, clawing their way out of the entire country of catacombs and poorly covered tombs that made up the underworld of Evergrave, Lao finally used his newest, and most powerful skill. Honed during the previous floors, Lao had yet to find foes that he could demonstrate its full power against. Now, as millions of undead swarmed around him, it seemed he had a purpose for it.
Imperial Eulogy: Ancient
The threads of Karma and balance connect us all. However, some are more connected than others to greater networks of cause and effect, of loyalty and brotherhood. Using this skill will amplify those threads, allowing for the transmission of Karmic judgement to not only those who have wronged you, but those who share their goals and nature. The more similar your foes are to one another, the stronger this skill will become. This encompasses all aspects of being, from thoughts and aspirations to physical differences.
Against most enemies, the skill was a useful area of effect amplification, able to spread attacks across wider areas. However, because of the way the amplification was calculated, just geographical distance could weaken it if Lao’s foes were not sufficiently similar.
This floor was different, however. Every one of his foes were exactly the same. Without minds to produce differences in mentality and motivation, the first major barrier to his skill was gone. With a shared nature as undead, another disappeared. Finally, their nature as remnants of an ancient empire, binding them together by ties as strong as blood, Lao could use the full force of Imperial Eulogy.
Lightning started to strike the ground around him as Lao rose into the air, eyes beginning to shine with the light of his Dao. Each of the undead became a beacon of light in his eyes, connected to those around them with countless filaments of Karma.
Lao raised his right hand and a gavel of blinding azure light formed within his grasp. Like a judge proclaiming an execution, he brought it down on the air. A pillar of light descended upon the nearest undead, splitting into smaller beams as it went. As soon as it touched its target, recursive clusters of explosions went off across the entire army, tearing it apart in a matter of moments. Where once millions of zombies had stood, now there was just ash and torn earth.
Lao descended to the ground, but he felt no pleasure in his victory. All he felt was sorrow for the ancient kingdom that had doomed itself to an eternity of suffering. He intended to end that cycle and deliver them to the afterlife. Even if these creatures had been created by the System, it didn’t make them any less real, or erase the meaning of the message that the floor was supposed to send. Besides, Lao had no reverence or love for the System. As far as he knew, these were real people, and the System simply allowed the misconception of its omnipotence to spread.
The floor ended a moment later, but Lao’s journey to find the truth was only just beginning.
Venus, Upper Atmosphere
Sam floated before a pair of D Rank invaders, who, in a surprising turn of events, hadn't immediately attacked him. He wasn’t why they were there, rather than assaulting the much more sparsely defended Earth, but given that he could portal there from pretty much anywhere in the Solar System, that lack of protection was just an illusion.
“Who are you?” Sam asked. “Are you here to fight or just to watch me?”
“We were sent by our faction to gauge your strength,” one of them said, a slender, insectoid alien. “We do not wish to fight. Just to report back to our leaders.”
Sam raised an eyebrow. “And why should I let you do that? I don’t want enemies knowing my secrets. I have half a mind to kill you right now and be done with it.”
“But you won’t,” the other alien said smugly. She was a Teruvarian, and one even larger than was the norm for the brutish species. “Your Dao is related to Karma in some way. I cannot see its exact nature, but I know that you would much rather have an excuse to kill us than to simply attack.”
“You know a lot about me,” Sam replied. “Who do you work for?”
“You wouldn’t have heard of our faction,” the Teruvarian answered. “We go to great lengths to remain hidden. Which is why I will not tell you. All I will say is that we are information brokers. Our faction leader has no interest in claiming your head, only in aiding those who wish to do so.”
Sam frowned. “Why are you being so honest with me?”
“We are Fate cultivators,” she said simply. “We cannot lie while in pursuit of a fated end. Doing so would change the course of destiny, at least for us.”
“Right,” Sam said grudgingly. “I think I’ve heard something about that before. Still, I can’t let you leave.”
His Authority swept out, but before he could trap his foes, they vanished, popping out of existence with twinned flares of ethereal light. Sam used his Worldsense to scan the nearby Solar System, but they were either gone beyond the range of his perception, or had left the universe entirely.
Sighing, he allowed gravity to take him down to Venus’ surface. He had another World Dungeon to conquer, and little time to do so.
Now that he knew where the World Dungeon was, Sam quickly tunneled through Venus, reaching the dungeon entrance in a matter of seconds. He laid his hands on it and entered, phasing through reality.
You have entered Venus’ World Dungeon!
Garden of Serpents: Mid D Rank
The goddess Venus was renowned for her beauty and allure, luring men to war and death for a chance at her hand. Behind many beautiful things is a poisonous core, and the frenzied devotion of those men in the myths of your planet was hers. This dungeon has its own dark interior, but it is up to you to find it.
Sam stood upon a long brick path, surrounded by rose bushes. An endless, idyllic blue sky extended in every direction, rolling hills following it to the horizon.
There were no living things in sight save for the plants, though a faint sense of menace underpinned the beautiful scene. Sam could feel an undercurrent of strangeness coming from every part of the scene before him, though whether that was because of the impossible perfection of the world or some darker reason, he could not tell.
With nothing else to do, Sam started down the path. As he walked, he realized something odd. He didn’t seem like he was going anywhere. While his feet were moving and the ground passed by beneath him, his vision remained exactly the same. The hedges didn’t move with him and the horizon was in the same place.
Sam frowned and pushed out with his Authority, feeling out what was going on. A matrix of complicated Dao energy was woven through the entire realm, constantly transmitting him back to his starting point. While none of the Daos were of a higher level than his own, there were far more of them combining to create a greater effect.
“Huh,” he said, stopping in his tracks. With an effort of will, Sam dragged control over local reality back into his grasp, blocking out the spatial manipulation. Then he started down the path again, this time actually heading towards his destination.
Sam walked for what seemed like days, but judging by the landmarks around him, from minor variations in the hedges to marks on the ground, it hadn’t been very long at all. Not only was there active manipulation of space, but also of time. That too could be countered with Sam’s Authority, but not especially easily. As soon as he did this, however, everything around him started to change. The hedges withered and the skies turned grey, the pale blue color quickly overtaken by storm clouds. Cracks spread across the path and swarms of buzzing insects gathered around Sam.
This was the real dungeon now, and as the hills in the distance started to move, vast heads of earth and decaying grass pushing their way out of the ground, Sam grabbed Worldbreaker and prepared to fight.
The hedges twisted and writhed, turning into skeletal golems of thorny vines. Their heads were made up of grey roses that opened and shut like mouths, lined with yet more thorns. They turned to Sam and exploded into motion, far faster than he was expecting. They seemed to blur through the air, appearing where the ends of their questing thorns touched the ground. It was as if they were teleporting through a network of underground vines, transcending the limits of their physical speed.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Sam didn’t lose a beat, his hammer expanding as he whipped it through the air. The blunt head, wreathed in the flames of his Dao, blasted the monster to ash when it struck them. A few were able to phase past Sam’s attack, vines slicing towards him. Sam let them strike him, the thorns barely able to even scratch his skin.
Claws of light reached out from his body, carving through everything in their path. The elementals were fast, but nothing else. They weren’t especially strong, and very flimsy. Dozens of them uprooted themselves from the ground, but they all met the same fate as their predecessors.
Sam continued down the path, his eyes set on the earthen titans stomping across the landscape. They had formed into more humanoid shapes by this point, looking like especially crude versions of the Titans that had plagued Earth during the middle stages of the System’s arrival. The only difference was in power. Each of these creatures could have atomized the Titans with a single punch, and a good portion of the planet beneath them.
As of yet, Sam couldn’t tell what the end goal of the dungeon was. It seemed like a simple hack, slash and kill mission right now, but with the whole dungeon’s theme being one of concealed menace, there was probably something even deeper beneath the surface that he couldn’t see. The System loved its mythological parallels, and going by the description of the dungeon, some analogue of Venus was sure to show up at some point.
It was a bit odd that the Genesis Disc had been so different from this dungeon, both in content and complexity. Maybe the System had been trying to compare Mercury’s closeness to the Sun with the advent of life, but there hadn’t been any real comparison to the god that the planet had been named after.
Sam walked for hours, continuing to butcher the vine elementals that assaulted him. After the Genesis Disc, Sam was creeping up on the next level. He was sure to reach it within this dungeon, maybe even from the vine monsters, if there were enough of them. He had slain thousands of them now, making a sizable dent in the remaining essence to his upcoming level. While there wasn’t any difference in the amount of stat points he would receive, he would gain ten times more power from them because of his D Rank status.
At some point that Sam couldn’t pinpoint, the monsters began to change. At first the changes were small, ranging from different lengths of thorns to slightly different colorations of vines. Then they became far more noticeable, with different kinds of elementals developing. Some were shorter and stockier, with the vines arranged into patterns vaguely resembling human musculature. Others were like stick figures of their former selves, more like sculptures of barbed wire and air than any living creature. Each possessed the strengths of their previous forms, as well as new ones pertaining to their upgrades. The more compact elementals were much stronger than before, their punches and kicks sending tremors through the ground. The thinner ones were so fast that Sam actually couldn’t see them at times, though this was more the result of a development in their teleportation than an actual increase in speed.
In any case, Sam dealt with them easily enough. In the Genesis Disc, the only challenges had been the three rulers, and they had still been weaker than him. Here, the thorny elementals were similar to the basic soldiers of the Genesis Disc, of little concern to someone like Sam. Presumably, the later parts of this dungeon would be easier as well, both because of the rapidly approaching level up and because of Sam’s new skill, Descent of the Heavenly Judge.
Sam started to speed up, racing towards the end of the path. What had seemed thousands of miles long at the beginning was now revealed to be far longer than that. With Sam’s speed he could have raced around the entire Earth in seconds. This dungeon was far larger than that. The horizon was so far away that it could as well have not existed.
What that really meant was that the titanic earth elementals at the edge of the dungeon weren’t as large as Sam had originally thought. They were far bigger. Tens of thousands of miles tall at the very least. Bigger than many planets in fact. A single one of them could have cradled Earth in the palm of its rocky hand.
Sam found himself slipping to a trance, one that he suspected wasn’t entirely natural. The dungeon was beginning to blur, the edges of one moment seeping into the next. He could see the monsters beginning to transform back into their original forms, ghostly images of rose bushes and rolling hills superimposed on reality. The further he went, the worse this got.
Sam fought back with his Dao, but the pressure was mounting faster than he could fight back. If he didn’t escape soon, there would be no coming back.
Then he broke through an invisible wall and the drab landscape of the dungeon came back into focus. A rumbling roar surrounded him, so loud that he would have not only shattered the eardrums of any mortal, but probably killed them outright.
The ground beneath Sam’s feet bounced up and down. All around him were what looked like entire mountain ranges dancing on top of the earth.
At first he wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking at. While his D Rank sensory abilities were millions of times stronger than a mortal’s, they didn’t increase his ability to take in objects beyond the edges of his sight. That was what his Authority was for, but in this case, it was useless. With only six miles of range, Sam was just about able to figure out what was going on. The earth elementals were all around him, walking with such weight and force that they shook the entire world.
As Sam looked closer he realized that the mountain ranges were the golems’ feet, and each of them had entire biomes on them. Some were covered in forests, and others in icy tundra. Others still were deserts, sand falling off the edges like a waterfall.
The amount of detail that Sam could see now that had been invisible before made him think that his sight had been occluded somewhat by the strange nature of the dungeon. With his eyesight being so powerful, he certainly would have seen such details on the bodies of such massive creatures, even at the distances that he had been watching them.
None of the monsters were especially hostile, Sam observed as he watched them. Either because it wasn’t in their nature, or because they were simply too large to see him. That was if elementals could even see in the same way as normal people and monsters. Perhaps they tracked the world around them through elemental forms of fight, analyzing different concentrations of power.
Still, Sam had no idea what he was supposed to do here, despite the seeming lack of aggression from the elementals. Was he supposed to kill them? Avoid them? Run past them?
As he pondered, a flash of light caught his attention, coming from one of the nearest elementals. On one of the mountainous feet that contained entire landscapes, bolts of fire and lightning vied for dominance, scarring the heavily forested ground around them. Entire forests’ worth of trees detonated into showers of splinters and ash, while the sturdier ground beneath was cracked and broken. At the center of the conflagration were two tiny figures, each at an impasse.
With nothing better to do, and with this as his only lead, Sam teleported over to the battlefield, stopping a few dozen miles away from the center.
At this distance he could properly make out the two fighters. One was a mostly human woman in a suit of glimmering crystalline chain mail armor. In her hands she wielded a sword of pure lightning, constrained only by will alone. The only thing that gave Sam pause was the rapidly swishing tail that extended from her rear end, with a sharply barbed tip that kept slicing at her foe.
In comparison her enemy was far more alien in appearance. A hulking, troll-like man with three heads, he held twin maces. Their ends were made not from spheres of metal, but from what looked like tiny stars. Searing orbs of white hot fire, they set the very air on fire, serpentine trails of flames following their every sweep.
Both of them were level 325, revealed by a quick scan.
Alana Ozeri
Half-Ekran
Level 325
Torg Brukus
C’thoon
Level 325
Alana was the humanoid woman, while Torg was the trollish mace wielder. Sam probably could have told them apart by the names alone, to be honest.
He moved closer to the fight, not caring much about the environmental hazards. Rivers of flame and lightning were diverted by his Authority, and the few waves of heat or electricity that did make it through his defences were nothing before his Resilience.
The two warriors were so intent on their battle that if they even had noticed Sam, they didn’t look his way. Torg seemed to be gaining the upper hand, but at great cost. Alana’s lightning had a measure of regeneration negation, preventing Torg’s wounds from closing. The blackened scars that covered his body remained long past the point where a D Ranker’s regeneration should have repaired them.
Then again, Alana wasn’t any better off. Her skin was blistered and red, and one of her arms was charred to the elbow and bent out of shape, the chainmail melted into it. She was a lot faster than Torg, but that wound, most likely an indication of a direct hit, showed that he was physically stronger.
“Hello?” Sam called out, not sure of what else to say. He didn’t feel especially threatened by the two cultivators, even in the unlikely event that they decided to gang up on him. They were weakened, and likely had drained good portions of their Dao energy and other resource pools.
Alana and Torg came to a sudden halt, teleporting away from one another to a safe distance, turning towards Sam.
Both of their faces hardened and they fired beams of their respective elements towards Sam, which he simply parried with Worldbreaker. The immensely powerful D Rank hammer wasn’t left with even a scratch after the exchange.
“Who are you?” Alana asked cautiously. “There shouldn’t have been anyone else within a hundred thousand miles of the Worldback Golems. We booked this spot to train.”
Sam frowned. “To train? It looked like you were trying to kill one another. I’m sorry if I interrupted something between you two.”
An inexplicable look of guilt slid across their faces so quickly that Sam wasn’t sure if he had imagined it.
“No, not really. We’re trying to prepare for the upcoming tournament between the clans. To earn the favor of Lady Aphrodite.”
So the System prefers the Greek gods over the Roman ones, Sam thought. Interesting. Outloud, he said “Who is this Lady Aphrodite? I’m not from around here.”
“She is the ruler of this realm,” Alana answered. “She goes by many names. Few have ever seen her face. Only the clans, those who are fortunate enough to live in the center of the Garden, are worthy of even existing near her.”
Torg growled low in his throat. “Which raises the question that you still haven’t answered. Who the hell are you? Are you one of those filthy Downworlders from the Loam?”
Sensing that he was veering into dangerous waters in a realm completely alien to him, Sam forced out a laugh. “Of course not. I’m too powerful for that. You think people like them would be able to reach such heights?”
Alana raised an eyebrow. “When I analyze you, it says you are level two hundred. A mere E Ranker. What gives you the confidence to put on such airs around your betters?”
“Huh.” Sam raised an eyebrow. “I’m genuinely surprised. You’re the first person I’ve met that actually bothered to check my level. Most people just read auras. You might be a condescending asshole, but at least you’re thorough."
“What did you just call me?” Alana asked, nostrils flaring. Her tail picked up speed, thrashing back and forth. “I don’t know how you blocked our attacks, but it won’t happen again. We will carve you into little pieces and put them on stakes, before delivering them like a bouquet of flowers to our Lady.”
Sam shook his head sadly. “Why do I keep running into people like you? Everywhere I go, different universes, different multiverses, there’s always some arrogant idiot who doesn’t think before running their mouth. Levels aren’t everything, you know. You’re about to learn that lesson the hard way.”
Sam used Dao Juggernaut, and in a flash of movement so swift that he could see Alana and Torg’s hands moving to strike at him in slow motion, he leaped off a Dao energy construct and blitzed his enemies, Worldbreaker swinging twice so fast that it appeared to be a single strike.
He slowed down behind the two denizens of the World Dungeon, and turned to face them. “Not so cocky now, are you?”
Alana tried to answer, but before she could open her mouth, her entire head exploded, the lingering charge of Dao energy Sam had left behind turning it to ash. A rippling wave of destruction tore through her Dao Core a moment later and killed her in a nova of blinding light and heat that washed over Sam with little effect. Torg only fared a bit better, surviving the exchange, but at the price of the top half of his body. He writhed, trying to gather momentum to strike Sam once more.
Sam was already gone, Torg’s maces passing through the air he had just occupied. He paused above the C’thoon and then fell like a hammer onto an anvil, Worldbreaker splitting Torg in half down the middle.
