Three days later, the last of the second tier of elementals died, shards of pure Darkness slicing across the realm as Sam obliterated it with a single swing of Terra’s Will.

  His title upgraded, and his body filled with the light of power itself, his stats bumping up from the sudden influx of the System’s blessings. Without bothering to check the rewards, he headed off to fulfil his next quest. As he already knew what it would be, there was no need for him to return to the Gemstone Spirits.

  The third and final tier of elementals awaited near the core of the realm, flying in great flocks around their progenitor. Even from where he was, Sam could see the jet sized birds flapping across the sky, the air around them looking like the ocean on a stormy day. With his purging of the lesser elementals, the corruption had noticeably dropped, but it was just as strong around the Shadow Raven and its eldest children.

  Now that the outer edges of the elemental plane had been cleared, the previously tempestuous skies were now clear enough to teleport safely. Sam flitted across the heavens, heading towards his prey. His previous foes had all been far too weak to pose any sort of threat, more of a nuisance from their immense mobility, but he had a feeling that these ones would be different.

  Stopping a thousand miles away from the realm’s core, with the obsidian monolith towering over all, Sam raised his left palm, and condensed his Dao into it. His Ancient Rank projectile skill, Rage of a World Unbound, was loosed upon the world. A spear of crimson and azure light lanced across the skies, locking in on one of the massive elementals.

  Reality folded before the attack, the air compressing as the massive beam of pure energy homed in on its target, driven by the might of a third stage Dao Seed. Sam watched as the target elemental wheeled around. It was too late, though, and the beam slammed into it. The monster immediately teleported, space warping around it in the blink of an eye, but not before Sam’s attack carved a thick line across it. It seemed that the higher rank elementals were tougher, but also slower.

  Sam’s only warning of an incoming attack was a slight flicker in the space before him, as the elemental forced its way through a tear in reality, and slammed into his chest. A blade of dark energy preceded the monster like the prow of a ship, carving into Sam’s armor. Space imploded around him, thousands of cubic feet of air forced down to a space confined within a meter around him, crushing his armor into his body, even as the elemental crumpled his chestplate.

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  Sam spat blood, before snapping out his hand, grabbing onto the shadowy flesh of the elemental. A layer of the Dao coated his fingers, letting him dig into the semi-conceptual form of the elemental. With it trapped, he discharged three bolts of concentrated Dao energy into its body. The creature’s flesh rippled, bulges of shadow exploding outwards, before tearing chunks of flesh off, which faded away. The internals of the elemental looked somewhat like meat, if it were tinted black, and squirmed constantly, in complicated patterns.

  Sam hammered it into a pulp with Terra’s Will, the weapon a blur of silver and lightning as it tore through the monster’s flesh. Sprays of dark blood doused the ground below. The monster tried to escape, but Sam locked down space, preventing its attunement to Space from working. He grinned, and with a single, thunderous explosion of the Dao, he used Manifestation of Vengeance, obliterating the entire monster, as well as a vast patch of the empty rock below. A sizeable portion of essence flowed into his core, bringing Sam ever closer to the next level.

  ***

  Sam took more injuries over the next few days that he would have cared to admit, but the fact of the matter was that he had successfully obliterated the rest of the higher Tier elementals. The land was scarred from his battles, canyons carved through the rock by blades of space. With the completion of his quest, Sam was now on the fifth layer objective. As there was no immediate quest, he assumed that he would have to return to the Gemstone Spirits for his instructions.

  As Sam flew across the markedly calmer skies, he heard a loud screech from the obelisk. Sam spare a glance back, watching as a beak the length of a football field pierced the top of the stone monument, as black as night itself. It opened bit by bit as its creaking moan rippled across the land. Sam shuddered, and sped up, trying to get away from the awakening Shadow Raven. Once he was about two thousand miles away, the beak closed, and receded into the obelisk. Had Sam still possessed the capacity to sweat, he would have been awash at that point. A bleak, alien aura of might had swept across the land at the Raven’s emergence, promising death, no matter the distance from its source. It was the power of a being, to some degree, beyond the constraints of space, able to write its will upon reality with the broad brushstrokes of elemental mastery.