With the last of the ten elementals freed, Sam's quest completed. He had only gained a single level for his troubles, with the System's pesky tampering with essence gains, but his title upgrade made up for it. He quickly opened his stat sheet. It had been quite a while since he had done so.

Sam Atlas

Human: E Rank

Enlightened Tier

E Rank

Class: Lesser Dao Paragon

Level 186

(536 stat points unspent)

Strength

8078

3.25x

Constitution

7161

3.20x

Resilience

9033

3.20x

Dexterity

7313

3.25x

Intelligence

6472

3.20x

Wisdom

6836

3.20x

Health 241691/241691

Mana 218433/218433

Stamina 272646/272646

Karma: 59

Road to Zenith

Stage 3

Dao

Dao Echo of Inspiration

Dao Seed of the Avenger(Fourth Step)

Dao Fragment of the Passage(First Step)

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Dao Fragment of Retaliation(First Step)

Skills

1x Rare, 3x Epic, 4x Legendary, 5x Mythical, 2x Ancient, 2x Primal, 1x Unique

Titles

1x Legendary, 3x Mythical, 2x Ancient, 1x Ethereal, 1x Transcendent

Temporary Titles

1x Epic, 1x Legendary, 1x Mythical

Dao Heritage

Dao Incarnation of Existence(Second Step)

Party

None

Skill Branches

Lightning Neurons (Level 2)

Iron Body(Level 2)

Iron Bones (Level 2)

Muscle Density Enhancement(Level 1)

Basic Weapon Knowledge: Blunt(Level 1)

Dao Resonance(Level 1)

Karmic Cycle(Level 1)

Lucky(Level 1)

Increased Blood Flow (Level 1)

Weapon Style

Flowing Water Style

Weapon Mastery: Brotherhood Stage 7

Elemental Affinities

Earth: 20% Mastery

Elemental Boons

Elemental Infusions: Stoneskin, Mountain's Flesh

Quests

The Sacred Bond: Impossible

Engines of the End Times: S

Professions

Smith: Apprentice Stage 9

Dao Smith: Apprentice Stage 9

It was almost hard to believe, but Sam was coming close to the end of the Tower. His stats certainly fit that, though. His level was rapidly approaching 200, which was the cutoff point for him to challenge the final floor. The System would limit his essence gains to make sure that he would end up reaching that point, and no further.

Luckily for him, that was the only form of progression that he was limited in. In many ways, it was the least of them. Levels were obviously important, but mainly as a way to Rank up rather than the sort of power he needed here. In the Tower, Sam needed something that would set him apart, something that gave him an edge over his foes who were not limited in their level.

His Daos fit this purpose, as well as his skills. He already had more powerful skills than most at his level, and he was sure that having three Daos was quite rare as well. The former was an immediate source of power, whereas the latter took a bit of time. He wanted to be able to get both of his Fragments up to Seeds before he reached the final layer of the Tower, and to upgrade his Seed as far as he could.

Sam shut his sheet, and moved on. With the way that the System was structuring these latest floors, he knew that the next missions would probably be a continuation of the first.

It wasn't for an hour that Sam found something to suggest more than the presence of monsters. Well, he had already seen cities in the distance, but he quickly discovered that distances were deceptive in this place. The Forbidden Heavens, when examined by his Worldsense skill, felt hollow in a way that the real world did not. It was hard to tell, but the Daos weren't in a natural balance. There was a preponderance of two specific Daos, almost a dozen times what they should have been. The Daos of Hegemony and Force. Sam assumed that these were the Daos that the creator of this realm cultivated. If that was the case, Sam had cause to be worried. Those two Daos had a depth to them that his own Dao did not.

In the Boundless Expanse, where every aspect of the natural world was imbued with the light of the Dao, those Daos were somewhat equal in strength. This was not because the actual Daos were equal, but because higher tier expressions of the Dao could only be conjured by powerful cultivators, or extraordinary natural events. For example, the Dao of Gravity could be found anywhere there was matter, but it would only be around places like black holes or neutron stars that it reached anything nearing its true power. Cultivators took this to the next level, bending the laws of nature in ways that nature itself could not.

In any case, Sam's mysterious foe was at least D Rank, or had cultivated their Dao for an inordinate amount of time. It was not an enemy that he could defeat right now. Judging by the scale of the realm, Sam would guess at high D Rank, or maybe even C Rank. After seeing a bare fraction of a C Ranker's power carve through an entire hemisphere of a planet, Sam wanted nothing to do with such beings on the battlefield.

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