All Sam could respond with was a burbled gasp, in too much pain to speak coherently. Instead, he chained teleports, racing through the sky and away from Granthar.
In response, the king bounded across the heavens, using his strength to propel himself by air pressure alone. The man raced alongside Sam, a cruel smile on his face as he kept pace with ease. Just before he struck, however, the man went stock still, snapping his eyes onto some distant point in the sky.
“Someone dares to ascend to D Rank in my domain?” The man shouted, forgetting about Sam for a moment.
A portal formed before him, but Sam interposed himself between the king and the swirling disk of energy. Despite being a D Ranker, the king couldn’t teleport across an entire solar system without preparation. While Spacetime Razor could have whisked him away from Sam faster than thought, his portal only worked if physically entered. In addition, it was quite fragile.
Sam grabbed onto the king, locking his arms and legs around the man, condensing his Domain down until it barely extended beyond his skin. The king bellowed in rage, and tried to force his way past. Sam projected a blade of the Dao behind him, and it impacted the portal with a shower of sparks, destabilizing its form. The gateway winked out, leaving an apoplectic Granthar staring at Sam like a mad beast.
He reached out, sinking his fingers into the back of Sam’s armor, pressing through the sheath of Dao energy and the metal with ease. Sam roared in agony as the man’s hand dug into his flesh. Rather than let go, he clung on tighter, and started to assault the king with his own Dao. It did little, save to annoy the man, but it distracted him.
Granthar tore his hand free, but rather than tugging Sam with it, instead he was met with a handful of flesh and metal. He tossed it to the side and wrapped his arms around Sam, squeezing in. Sam’s body warped beneath the D Ranker’s strength, and he felt the king’s Dao entering his body, tearing at the very fabric of his existence. Whatever the man had been doing earlier, he was serious about killing Sam now.
Just… a bit longer. Sam found himself thinking, over and over again. With a sickening lurch, he found his body disconnected from itself, split in half around the navel. His lower half fell to the ground, leaving a bloody torso still holding onto Granthar. Sam’s vision was beginning to go, blackness creeping in.
King Granthar summoned another portal, only to cry out in rage as yet another tendril of Sam’s Dao reached out to break it apart.
“Why won’t you die, you bastard worm!” The king screamed, expelling a nova of his Dao’s raw power into Sam’s body. Unable to hold on any longer, he was blasted away, his dismembered body hurtling through the air in a grotesque parody of a meteor. His regeneration attempted to kick in, but the savage threads of Granthar’s Dao still stuck within him refused to let go, steadily draining his health.
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Another portal snapped open, and this time, there was nothing to stop Granthar from stepping in. With a triumphant shout, the man took a step forward. Before he could enter the portal, the sky above lit up, and what looked like a bolt of lightning streaked down, slamming into the king.
The tyrant was catapulted down, only for another bolt to strike him, this time from below. Three figures floated down from on high, coronas of potency swirling around their forms. Sam let out a tiny, whimpering laugh, and succumbed to the darkness, just as he felt the ground impact him.
Out of the five would be D Rankers, only three had survived the ordeal. Even though they were hand picked to have the highest chance of success, the process was simply too dangerous for a hundred percent success rate. As it was, though, three were more than enough. One man and two women, each had their own specialities, with a martial artist, a mage and a Fate aligned diviner.
All members of the Darkan family, the branch family of nobles whose scion’s murder by Granthar had prompted the formation of the rebels millennia ago. Needless to say, all were eager to deliver vengeance unto the man who had slain their illustrious ancestor.
Granthar reeled from the lightning bolts, and before he could recover, one of the D Rankers swooped down, slamming a massive mace into the man’s torso. There was a sonic boom, and the king’s flesh warped beneath the strike, sending him hurtling down to the ground. A portal opened up beneath him, depositing the king miles up in the sky. Swirling eyes of elemental energy opened in the air around him, before sending beams of darkness down towards his assailants.
One of them, a massive man dressed in robes of crimson and purple, boomed out a laugh, and swung his open palm at the incoming strikes. A shockwave pulsed towards the heavens, a wave of boundless Dao energy coursing through it. The beams were slowed, but not halted. Although each of the warriors were powerful, Granthar was still stronger on an individual level.
“That gods-damned Sam Atlas!” The king screamed at the top of his lungs. “That’s what this whole farce was! He was working for you bastards all along!”
“Rich words coming from the man whose heritage is one of abandonment and dishonor,” the robed martial artist replied. “You are scum, not fit to breathe the air of those who can truly call themselves D Rankers. What have you spent these millenia on, whores and cheap thrills? You’ve barely advanced since you butchered my great grandmother!”
“So it’s all because of that bitch Alanah,” the king spat. “Don’t you people have better things to do with your time? She was a mongrel slut-”
“Watch your filthy mouth!” The other man screamed, before hurling himself up at the king, his feet rebounding off the air itself. “Unlike you, we have not spent this time idle!” A thousand spectral fists appeared in the sky around the man, each one the size of his body. They condensed down around his own fist, until a blindingly bright gauntlet of pure white surrounded his hand, blotting out the sun. “Solar Fist!” He shouted.
