A deafening chime rang through the air, and Sam doubled over. The world around him started to warp and spin, strange flashing lights appearing, occluding his view of reality. A stinging pain seared across his left arm, quickly followed by a dozen more. He couldn't tell if they were real or not. When Sam looked down, there were two overlaid visions, one in which his armor was intact, and another in which it was not.

His vision swam, and the only constant in the layered realities was that his foe was drawing ever closer, her hands glowing with soft pink light. In this strange position, halfway through realities, Sam found himself seeing something far stranger overlayed over the cultist. Her cloak became part of her body, and the dagger in her hand became a talon, jutting out from the center of her palm. At its very end was an angular eye, staring directly at him. In that eye, Sam saw a hundred reflections, all different versions of him. There were so many layers to his sight that he couldn't tell what was real and what was an illusion. He supposed that was the point.

However, there was something that undergirded the entire experience. He could feel the weave of Dao energy that underlaid the entire technique. He could also feel that it was well within his power to break. His fused Dao Seed was already stronger than most, and with the addition of his Domain, it could match far higher order Daos. Then he had to consider Dao Juggernaut.

"You're pathetic. I could see the estimation that Elvras had of you through my scryings into his soul. He thought of you as an equal. You don't seem like one to me." The woman's voice was mocking, and self assured.

"I simply haven't had much of a chance to deal with attacks of this nature," Sam said, marshaling his will. He already knew how to break free. He was just biding his time.

As the dagger came streaking in from a hundred dimensions, times and places, Sam acted. A pulse of radiant red and blue light exploded outwards as he used his Dao to cleanse his body of the foreign energies. Then he used Dao Juggernaut. Crystalline spears of a higher order of energy impaled him. Underneath the armor, veins of white light spread across his flesh. He could feel illusions coming from all directions, trying to cloud his thoughts. They broke upon his shield, scattering like dust in the skies of the metaphysical realm.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

His left hand snapped out faster than a bullet, faster than a missile. It grabbed the cultist's dagger-wielding hand, and with a sudden surge of strength, Sam leveraged his third Threshold to crush the woman's arm. Her dagger dropped from her fingers as Sam pulled back, ripping her hand off her body. She screamed in pain, withdrawing the stump, cradling it to her body.

"I would call to your Dreamer for help," Sam said caustically. "The only way you're going to win this battle is in a dream."

The pain filled gaze of the cult leader transformed into… something else. An odd mix of agony and rapture. "I already did. He's close. Close to the universal partition. Are you ready to face a god?"

Sam sighed. "Already have. I'm still here, aren't I?"

Terra's Will lanced out, shrinking horizontally until it was like a spear. It pierced through the cultist's robes, and through a secondary layer of conceptual protection. At the last moment, Sam's senses tried to deceive him, telling him that his target had already evaded the attack. He knew that to be a lie. A split second later, Terra's Will protruded out of the illusionist's back. Sam wasted no time, and expanded his hammer to its full size. With a shower of gore, the cultist exploded.

"I don't know what Elvras was having so much trouble with," Sam muttered.

Before he could say anything else, the blood burst into rose colored flame. The sigil in the sky above exploded in power. Trails of rosy fire spread across the sky, and the rift in the center burst open. The eyelid opened in tandem, a mad, hazy eye glaring at the world.

Sam paused. "Right. I suppose I deserved that."

His quest completed, but the next appeared a moment later. He didn't even have to look at the notification to see what it was. Dozens of serpentine elementals threaded their way out of the portal and into the air. Each was about a hundred feet long, but their forms shifted even as he looked at them. They were hard to make out, wrought from matter not of this world. Each of them radiated the power of a high E Ranker.

The rings of ritual circles surrounding the towering keep in the background flared alongside the eye in the sky, and the summoned spirits caught fire. The same fire that now covered the heavens above.

"Welcome, my god!" a hissing, ethereal voice said from the general vicinity of the cultist leader's burning blood.

Each of the serpents gathered around the central pupil of the eye, starting to rotate in a great circle. Each of them chimed like celestial bells. Sam had the immediate thought that letting them finish whatever they were doing was a terrible idea.

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.