His body burst into flame as his speed was translated into upwards momentum, and with a grin, he started to spin, wicking away that momentum into Terra's Will. He had no idea how he was supposed to elementally unbind the Shadow Raven, but was willing to learn.

The titanic raven swooped down, opening its beak wide. Within was a dark void of pure elemental darkness, threatening to engulf Sam. Even he, who had gone through so many trials and tribulations, pains and woes, felt a pang of fear at the sight of the abyss.

Curling his lip to push down the fear, Sam cloaked himself in a shield of dismissal. He continued on his celestial ascent, blazing a path through the sky towards his foe.

The Shadow Raven screeched, and layered waves of darkness cascaded down towards Sam. They covered the horizon, promising a swift end at the hands of the Night itself. Sam chuckled, trying to distract both himself and his foe. He pointed Terra's Will forwards, and summoned a massive spear of concentrated energy before it. A blinding lance of rainbow light coalesced, projected ahead of Sam for almost a hundred feet.

A moment later, it struck the waves of darkness, and pierced through. Reality, both the air itself and the waves of dark energy from above, sagged as the spear pierced through them, tearing apart the weave of elemental power making up the Shadow Raven's attack. Sam held his body as straight as an arrow, an incredibly easy task with his latest Threshold crossings. His entire body was of a different caliber to before, turning every part of his being into a living weapon.

The Raven paused, shocked at Sam's ability to contest its control. Before the bird could do anything more than flap once, Sam was already upon it, an inverted cone of layered energies trailing behind him as he pierced through the Dark elemental energy. Dimmed, but still present, his spear impacted the Shadow Raven's torso.

Its flesh shuddered like a trampoline under a bowling ball as Sam directly brought his might to bear, seeking to tear through the very concepts that underpinned the monster's existence. For a moment, it seemed that he had succeeded, as the ephemeral flesh broke beneath his strike, the spear piercing through. Then Sam realized his folly. The Shadow Raven was an elemental, unbound by the rules of a mortal form. It wasn't injured, not in the slightest. Instead, it had simply separated the energy that made it up, creating a hole that Sam was even now falling into, right behind his hammer.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

A powerful suction fought to tear his hammer out of his hands, but Sam ultimately resisted. Without teleportation, his descent into the elemental's dark heart was inevitable. However, that didn't mean that he couldn't make the most out of it.

Sending a full third of his remaining energy reserves, Sam empowered his energy spear until it looked like a shaft of light, plucked straight from the core of the Sun. As he was engulfed fully by the Shadow Raven's flesh, Sam detonated the spear, sending a sphere of raw energy in all directions. With the attack coming from the inside, and traveling in all directions, it was impossible for the monster to dodge. Like the night fading before the dawn, the elemental's body came apart. The attack wasn't powerful enough to kill the Shadow Raven in a single hit, far from it, but it was the first real damage dealt in the fight.

Sam took the opportunity to escape, rocketing through the patchy body of the Raven, before it could heal itself. A moment later, he felt a bloom of familiar energy on the horizon, followed by eleven more. The Foreman had returned, and he came bringing allies. Once more, Sam found himself wondering at the true scale of the System. Thus far in the Tower, it had predicted everything that had happened to him, structuring the real world as if it were merely another Tower floor. That level of control bordered on omniscience, at least at a universal level.

Those thoughts vanished as Sam exited the Shadow Raven, allowing him to see the newcomers. Twelve cultivators, each radiating the power of a specific element. Many of them, like the Foreman, had incorporated a smaller degree of another element. His magma was complemented by two others, an ice cultivator and a poison cultivator. The former wielded a mixture of Water and Fire, using the latter to remove heat from the former. The latter used a mix of Life and Darkness.

The twelve cultivators sped across the heavens, teleporting, flying, and in one case, running on a path of ice. Sam watched them come, and propelled himself towards the cultivators, wanting to draw the Shadow Raven into the battle. The massive elemental followed, stretching its chains out to pursue Sam. He paused just before the monster would have been unable to follow, and waited for the Foreman and his allies to arrive. As the magma cultivator arrived on pinions of flame, Sam grinned.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.