In the main entrance to Sessus, an especially bored guard lounged against a wall, waiting for the next people to come through. He was powerful, mid D Rank in strength, but had been struck on guard duty as punishment for insubordination on the front lines.

"Anything exciting?" he asked his companion, picking his teeth absently with a claw.

She gave him a withering glare. "Slazz! Will you stop asking that? Do your job and stay still. This position is an honor!'

"Honor my ass, Jessa. None of our enemies come here anyway. Who would be foolish enough to assault our capital?"

"Coming through," a platoon of Seshari warriors said blandly as they marched through the vast archway that led into the capital.

The leader flashed a Dao infused identity pass, letting the guards know they were allowed through. Without even a hitch in their stride, the soldiers entered.

Slazz waited a moment before striking up the conversation again. "Come on then. Who?"

Jessa snarled. "I don't know! Fine. This job is a bit pointless. Happy now?"

Neither of the two guards noticed the pocket of Dao shielded space passing through them warp slightly as Sam stifled a laugh. It would have taken senses far beyond that of a D Ranker to break through the manifestation of an Authority with brute strength.

The archway that stood between Sam and Sessus was shaped vaguely like a serpent, with the entire body coiled around itself. The jaws protruded down from the center of the arch, as if to devour those who passed through. Considering that the archway was hundreds of feet wide, it made for an intimidating sight.

There was only darkness beyond, but as Sam and Graxus passed through, reality broke through the illusion and revealed the city beyond. A winding road plunged down into the ground, about a mile to the base where the capital was. Dozens of miles of low lying buildings made out of stone stretched to the edge of the immense cavern.

Honestly, Sam might have once considered it impressive, but he had visited a city the size of a world already. Prax had been far more eye catching than this city, especially considering how much weaker it have been. The average fighter from the Genesis Disc could have annihilated Granthar in a fair fight and he had been the only D Ranker on Prax.

Power might change but the world rarely does, Sam mused as he took in the capital beneath. Society will always be recognizable to some extent. Cities are still cities and people are still people. In the end, even the largest planet in this Multiverse is probably only different in appearance, and the same in substance.

"Introspective today, are we?" Graxus said through the Authority link, a bit amused. "I can still perceive your thoughts, you know."

Sam blinked. "Right. Sorry. I have a tendency to think a lot about things like this."

Graxus shook his head. "No worries. It doesn't make you any less of a warrior. You defeated me so as a baseline you are only worthy of my respect."

Something seemed a little off to Sam about that sentiment, but he kept his opinions to himself. If Graxus noticed them, the Gytharki leader didn't comment on it.

The serpentine road leading down to the city was like a clogged artery leading into the slowly beating heart of the city below. Even though it was filled with people, the city was oddly silent. Nobody talked in much more than a whisper and the noises of industry were absent. In fact, the more Sam looked, a strange feeling of suppression started to worm its way into his mind. It was as if some vast spider lurked at the center of the city and everyone around was wary of attracting its notice.

"Giressa, the Broodmother," Graxus said after a short pause. "If you're wondering what the source of the suppression is. Her Dao is strengthened by deference and quietude. It's quite odd, but undeniably powerful."

Sam extended his senses into the air, trying to feel out what exactly the foreign Dao was. His Dao senses were far greater than most at his rank and his instincts were better than anyone on account of his Dao Heritage. He found the Dao in question after a few seconds. It seemed like Giressa followed the Dao of the Lonely Throne, a very strange and very specific concept. That of a ruler held in such regard by their subjects that none dared to even interact with them. Sam's senses reached further afield, a spike of Worldsense peering deeper into the capital. He found a vast font of power at the very center, coming from the only building taller than five stories.

"What else do you know about Giressa?" Sam asked Graxus as he continued to look.

"She's very perceptive. Before we go further into the city we should tighten up our defenses."

Sam tensed as he felt something grab onto his perception thread, a feeling he had never experienced before. "Shit. I think it's too late."

A wave of power swept across the city, a dark gold color that spoke of power and soul-wrenching loneliness. The power of a monarch elevated above her station through the loving cultivation of a warped and specific image. While most cultivators tried to maintain a wide Dao base, or in Sam's case, take in whatever concepts seemed most useful, some accepted that they would never progress beyond a certain rank and found Daos made more powerful by their truncated paths.

Above the city center, the shadow of a colossal snake rose from the glow, with eyes the color of rubies and scales as shiny as steel. It stared directly at Sam, fangs exposed menacingly.

"Intrudersss," Giressa hissed, her voice sibilant and inhuman. "Why do you enter my domain?"

Sam sighed and dropped his Authority, with Graxus quickly following suit. "To claim your loyalty. Will you surrender to me as the Gytharki already have?"

Giressa made a noise that Sam initially mistook for choking, though he quickly realized that she was laughing. "Never. Perhapsss my children would be ssso foolisssh, but not I."

All around Sam and Graxus, Seshari warriors were beginning to close in. Sam ignored them in favor of Giressa, knowing that she was the only real danger here.

"How did you find us?" Sam asked. "You must have incredibly powerful senses to punch through our Authority."

"Once you ssstepped foot into my city, you became a part of it," Giressa explained, rising higher and higher. As she did so, her body became more concrete, turning from shadow into steely scales. Her head was that of a cobra, her hood the size of a building.

"Sam…" Graxus said warningly. "Be careful." The Gytharki's body was tense as a steel rod, ready to react to whatever Giressa tried to do.

"It's alright," Sam replied with all the bravado he could muster. Winning this dungeon wasn't just a matter of brute strength. He had to not only defeat the Seshari people's kingdom, but their will as well. It was a grim task, but one Sam would undertake many times over for Earth.

Worldbreaker lifted up from Sam's back as he hefted the hammer, lightning beginning to crackle up and down its length. "I would prefer not to fight, but I can already tell that you will not see reason. Perhaps your children, as you mentioned, will."

Graxus gripped his own hammer, deciding to forgo using his titanic battle form in the cavern. It would only make him a bigger target for the thousands of D Rankers who made it home.

"You ready?" Sam asked out of the corner of his mouth as the first Seshari came barreling towards them, scaly feet pattering across the hard packed stone of the road.

"Of course," Graxus rumbled, launching himself into motion. Like a streak of grey lightning, he sliced through the air and attacked, amongst the Seshari in moments. His hammer was unstoppable, carving through everything that stood in its way. Soon the air was filled with a bloody mist that drifted around the Gytharki in fluttering tapestries of red.

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Giressa coiled up until she towered over the city, her eyes shining with scarlet light. "You are a fool if you think that ssslaughtering my people will sssave you. Their deathsss mean nothing to me." As she spoke, Giressa erupted out of the ground, her entire body uncoiling in an instant. Like a spring she shot through the air. Wings of ghostly flame unfurled from her back, two sets flapping to keep her body aloft.

Sam held Worldbreaker above his head with a single hand, using the other to gather a burning orb of raw Dao energy above it. With a flick of his fingers, the orb shot off. As it tore through the air, Sam started summoning portals, falling through one that opened beneath his feet. Another portal opened in front of his searing energy blast, two moves forming right in front of Giressa's head. Sam's hammer and the energy ball struck home at the same moment, surprising the Seshari queen.

Scales bent beneath the strikes, and Giressa's flight path ended abruptly. She nosedived into the city below, blasting through dozens of buildings before coming to a halt. Sam didn't waste the momentum and used Descent of the Heavenly Judge. For a few moments, his body was frozen in space as armor slotted into place around it, before shrinking down into Worldbreaker. The lines of karma binding Sam and Giressa came into view, and his Ethereal skill erupted from the end of Worldbreaker, following the karmic bond towards Giressa.

"I have not seen one of your ilk in quite sssome time," Giressa hissed malevolently. "However, your tricksss remain an open book."

The serpent rose from the ground and all across the city, sparks of golden flame were torn from the Seshari living there. Tens of thousands of sparks floated towards Giressa, forming into a curved shield standing in the path of Sam's technique. Assuming that his Karmic skill could break through the wall, Sam was shocked when it came to an abrupt halt, burning itself out on the golden flame.

"A leader isss more than an individual," Giressa gloated. "A leader takesss on the mantle of an entire sssociety and in doing so, becomesss one with her people'sss karma."

The golden shield rippled and in its center, an arrowhead of halcyon light emerged, about as large as a city bus. Sam felt a ringing sensation as Giressa locked onto his karma, the line of light connecting them reversing its direction.

Sam knew that he couldn't avoid the karmic attack and instead shielded himself with his own Dao Sapling of Karmic Retribution, trying to convince the universe that he had karmic precedence. Unfortunately, Sam couldn't match up to the karmic weight of an entire city, even if he had more karma overall than any individual. The beam sliced through his Dao manifestation and impacted his chest, tearing a hole not just through flesh but through the matrix of energy that made him up.

Sam fell from the air, pushed down by a sudden, monstrous weight. It felt like the finger of a cosmic judge, forcing him down towards Hell. Most cultivators of Sam's level would have died from that alone, but he could sense a secondary part that only now was coming into effect. A lingering taint of negative karma clinging to his body like acid. His clothes remained unharmed while his flesh disintegrated, layer after layer of skin and viscera melting away under the weight of his supposed sins.

Sam grinned, his teeth protruding beyond the flesh of his face as it was eaten away. Leaning upon an older, but nevertheless integral component of his Dao Sapling, Sam used the Dao Seed of the Avenger. While his Sapling of Karmic Retribution needed a more impersonal moral accounting to truly become powerful, Sam's previous Dao did not. All it needed was a wrong to have been committed against him and a way to address that wrong.

Focusing on the pain caused to him by Giressa, as well as the generally adversarial nature of their karmic relationship, Sam pushed back against the Seshari queen, his body covered in multicolored flame. Hovering there amidst the vast conflagration of conceptual power, Sam raised his left hand, pointing it directly at his foe.

"Burn," he spat, and a hurricane of flame erupted from his palm, spreading out across the city. Giressa bared her fangs, the serpent rising up to meet him. Two arms of light extended from her sides and reached up into the empty air. A sword emerged from the space above the Seshari's head and dropped into her hands like it had been made for that purpose alone.

A crack, like the sound of a lightning bolt, split the air as Graxus leaped from the overlook. He arced over the city and towards Giressa, hammer growing in tandem with his body. While he maintained his normal proportions, Graxus covered himself in Earth elemental energy, extending it to his hammer as well. Both grew dozens of times over until they matched Giressa's monolithic stature.

"Graxusss," Giressa crooned, her eyes still set on Sam as her sword sliced through his plume of fire. Some of it still reached her, crisping her scales. If she was bothered by it, she didn't show it. "You hitched your civilization to the risssing ssstar of an outsssider?"

"You would never understand," Graxus shouted as he came plummeting from the sky, the image of an avalanche forming around him from specks of Dao energy. "Better to ride that rising star as a passenger than fail to save a falling one as its driver."

"You are neither," Giressa said, chuckling. "You are already dead. Even if you do not yet know it."

With a sudden turn of speed, the Seshari queen pivoted, slicing her sword through the air so quickly that Sam could barely see it. Her energy arms were clearly much stronger and faster than her real body, as Giressa's eyes glazed over while she swung.

Graxus' hammer was already there to meet it, and the two weapons collided. Though, to be fair, Graxus hadn't responded on account of speed. His weapon was simply so large that it shielded his entire body. Neither budged for a few moments, before Giressa used the weight of her body touching the ground to force Graxus back. He landed in the midst of a neighborhood, crushing a few buildings as he rolled backwards.

"Can you afford to fight like this in your city?" Graxus taunted Giressa as he got to his feet. As Sam teleported next to the Seshari's head, knocking her back with a swing of Worldbreaker, Graxus smiled. "After all, it looks like you can't go all out."

Giressa hissed in anger and started to shrink. The air around her bent as she shrunk, as if compressing with her. A sudden wind picked up, pulling gently at Graxus and Sam. At least, it pulled gently at first. It grew exponentially until they were unable to resist. Sam opened portals before him and Graxus, but the portals snapped before they could reach them.

Giressa vanished into a crack in the air, with Sam and Graxus falling in right after her.

The two warriors passed through a tunnel of rainbow light, razor shards of energy ripping at their flesh as they went. Neither paid any attention, realizing that the energy blades were too weak to get through their defenses.

The glowing tunnel spat them out in a vast chamber of dimly lit stone columns and a neverending floor that extended out for what seemed like forever. In front of them was a throne as large as a skyscraper, built not for a humanoid but for a snake. The seat part curved around the throne, looking like a ramp attached to a large pillar. Giressa made full use of it, coiled up around the throne with only her head free to glare down.

The air hissed as tears opened all around Sam and Graxus, disgorging spectral Seshari soldiers. All of them were armed, and all of them gave off the spiritual pressure of Mid D Rankers. They threw themselves at Sam with wild abandon, forcing him to release a pulse of energy to hold them at bay. As the monsters reeled, Sam teleported, lashing out with his hammer. Even in its normal sized form, Worldbreaker contained all of the weight of its potential. Every blow of the mountainously heavy hammer flattened spirits, while the charge of Dao energy within finished them off.

"Deal with Giressa," Graxus grunted as he fended off a trio of archer Seshari, with surprising difficulty. "She's the reason all of this exists."

Sam didn't respond, instead opening a portal that led to the top of Giressa's throne. Or at least, he tried to. When he stepped through the portal, it dumped him out dozens of miles away, into a pit of snakes whose fangs were dripping with venom. It seemed like Giressa had some sort of control over the dimensions of this place.

Sam obliterated the snakes with a wave of his hand, but the damage was already done. A plume of vapor rose up from the corpses, far faster than it had any right to. He was bathed in the noxious purple gas, flesh beginning to bubble and melt. The pain was blinding, far greater than it should have been. Sam's D Rank body normally distributed pain across its entire form. Coupled with his high pain tolerance, most injuries didn't phase him any more. This one, however, did.

Knowing that teleportation was useless, Sam instead was forced to use an ability he rarely took advantage of. The malleability of his D Rank body. The top layer of his skin sloughed off like a snake's sheddings, and Sam slipped away from the poison cloud before it could reach him. His skin quickly grew back, now safe from the toxins that had been melting it.

Sam landed smoothly and took off, his first footstep shattering the stone beneath him. Dao Juggernaut triggered and his next step was even more powerful, launching him all the way to Giressa. Unprepared for his blow, the serpent queen was only able to uncoil a portion of her body from the throne before Sam struck. His hammer broke through stone, scales and flesh alike, blasting a hole through the Seshari and her throne.

Giressa cried out in pain, swiping out with one of her transparent arms towards Sam. Rather than flee, Sam stood his ground, using his Authority to build a platform to push off of. With one mighty swing of Worldbreaker, he burst Giressa's arm apart, before connecting with her body. This strike broke the throne entirely, and Giressa fell, bleeding profusely.

Graxus barreled through the legions of ghost soldiers, growing and growing until he crashed into Giressa like a wrecking ball. The Seshari cried out as she was pummeled into the ground, Graxus' hooves beating her into a pulp.

While Giressa had held her own for a little while, she was no match for Sam and Graxus in a pitched battle. While leaving her city had allowed for her to use a great portion of her power, it still wasn't that much compared to her foes. Only her use of karmic magic had allowed her to stand against Sam and now that he knew her tricks, he could simply use brute force.

Worldbreaker swelled in size until it hung poised over Giressa like an executioner's ax. A mantle of Dao energy, elemental power and mana surrounded it, promising death to the Seshari queen. So weakened was she that she barely moved.

Just as Sam was about to bring the hammer down, Graxus stiffened, looking up at the ceiling of the cavern. A crack spread across the stone, revealing an azure sky above. A clawed hand reached in, leveling a strangely fashioned gun at Sam. Behind it came a white feathered humanoid with a pair of angelic wings and a bird's head. One of the Calabrangi. Then it pulled the trigger and the entire world broke apart, a wave of white lightning ripping through it.

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