Sam had never been especially religious. He did believe in the existence of something greater than himself, but with the revelations brought by the coming of the System, that belief was essentially complete. There were cosmic beings out there, ones that could easily be called gods. However, there was none that he found worthy of being called God. No truly omniscient, omnipotent incarnation of power that was the sole progenitor of existence, in every facet of its meaning.
Despite this, Sam still found that some degree of sanctity and sacredness came from the natural world. The afterlife was one such example. It was the deserved resting spot of those who died, and for that to be taken away, and for those souls to be twisted into monsters was evil.
Still, Sam was apprehensive. According to the notification, he was in the private realm of a godlike entity. Something assuredly far beyond him. It was powerful enough to capture E Rank souls, and turn them into monsters. What else could it do?
There were two ways that this floor could go. Either it would be like Prax, in which Sam would have to solicit the help of higher Rank cultivators to take on something far beyond his own capabilities. Or, it would be like the Worldsea, in which he had an advantage over a higher Rank being that let him deal with the problem by himself. Whatever it was, though, he had some work to do.
Without a cloud to stand on, Sam was left in the void between the floating islands of pillowy white. To find more trapped souls, he needed to head to one of those clouds. Some of the larger ones had what looked like cities on them, vast constructions of stone suspended in an unlikely matter by the condensed water vapor below. Sam could feel powerful auras, even from here. A plethora of E Rankers, as expected, but also a D Rank aura coming from the largest of the nearby clouds. He mentally marked that as a location to avoid. Instead, Sam turned in the opposite direction. A nearby cloud floated by about a dozen miles away. It was covered in a forest, strangely colored trees growing straight out of the substrate. Three monsters dwelled there, making their home in the grove.
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Sam teleported to the cloud, getting a better look at the creatures. All three were elementals, like the first monster he had encountered. However, they had more concrete forms. There were two bears and one lion, each about the size of a small house. The lion looked incredibly familiar, almost an exact copy of the ones Sam had fought in the Fulmination Fields.
Out of the three, the lion was the most powerful, and had claimed an entire half of the island for itself. The bears lived on the other side. There was little else in the forest, but it seemed to be enough for the elementals. After all, they hardly lived like normal cultivators. Their minds were less than that of beasts, simple engines of control that impelled their bodies into movement. Still, they lived together peacefully enough.
Sam shattered this quiet Eden with a brutal descent from above. Manifestation of Vengeance filled Terra's Will with an apocalyptic level of power. Sam was almost invisible in comparison to the second sun that had seemingly replaced his hammer. A ring of light compressed around the weapon as Sam used his upgraded version of the skill, narrowing its power down. The island wasn't big enough to necessitate the generalized form of the skill.
Instead, he drove a spike of highly controlled Dao energy, elemental power and mana into the center of the island. The cloud imploded beneath the blow, and its entire center disappeared. The monsters rose to their feet, growling loudly. Then a wave of devastation tore through the cloud, the forest, and their bodies. Only, when the light faded, one still stood. The lion, battered and broken, but still alive, opened its mouth. A deafening howl rolled out like the bellows of an angry god.
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