The next few weeks passed by without much incident. No visits from Tantalos, wide scale invasions or challenges from the System. Jacob finished up with Jupiter’s World Dungeon in the first week, returning to Earth shortly after. Most of what followed was administrative work, preparing the faction to assault the Selvans. Bringing all of the planets into the fold required settlement, meaning that delegations were sent off to set up bases on the planets. Each of the strongest captains took a division of high F Rank warriors to defend the Planetary Cores for long enough to set up defences.

  Meanwhile, Sam and his father trained, getting ready for the war to come. Due to the danger that their strength posed to not only Earth’s citizens but the planet itself, they spent most of their time on the Moon.

  While the Selvans were likely not that much of a threat, the upcoming Universal Tournament was a far greater concern. The fact of the matter was that there were beings in this universe stronger than Sam or Jacob, and that gap wasn’t going to get any smaller without intense effort on their part.

  Sam managed to get another level in his Dao, further increasing his strength. The difference between levels in a Dao Seed was not just one of quantity, as in the stat points granted, but one of quality.

  You have upgraded your Dao!

  Dao Sapling of Karmic Retribution(Second Step)

  In an ideal world, no evil deed goes unpunished, no sinner walks free and no innocent lives are taken by tyrants who do so simply because they can. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an ideal world. There is only power. You choose to take that power and wield it against your foes, especially those who have wronged you and those you hold close. Now your retribution goes beyond that of a mortal, tapping into the very threads of consequence and morality that underpin sapient interactions. By honing your Dao in battle, you have come to another conclusion. You stand alone in this battle for the morality of existence. No allies can help you fight against the very nature of the soul itself.

  +15000 to all physical stats

  +9000 to all mental stats

  He was in the process of developing a new skill, drawing upon what he had learned through cultivation. His current powerset was quite situational, depending on the initiation of a battle by a foe. It was only a temporary problem, given that he would eventually gain more Daos, but until he was able to create another Seed, the majority of his power came from the concept of Karmic Retribution.

  To fix this, Sam was trying to find a way to fuse his Dao with his other abilities, creating a skill that would use the other components to fill in the gaps. If he was successful, he would be able to respond to pretty much any situation, but there was one problem. Compared to the rest of his powerset, his Dao was far superior to the others. His mana had been neglected since his training with Gordanus, as there hadn’t really been any need to develop it. Sam had no doubt that there were oceans of untapped knowledge that he would eventually learn, but right now all he knew how to do was manifest purified mana.

  His elemental energy was a bit more developed, but it still paled in comparison to his Dao. With the existence of his Authority, Sam was able to do pretty much anything that he wanted to in terms of earth elemental manipulation without actually needing to use the element. He could tear up clumps of ground and manifest rock without needing anything other than his Dao and will.

  What Sam wanted to learn more about were the more esoteric applications of his element. At later stages of mastery, the element of Earth allowed the user to manipulate gravity on a small scale. That was something Sam wanted to learn how to do. He was able to affect weight, but that was only for himself. He couldn’t alter gravity, only artificially increase his own mass.

  Sam wasn’t going to be able to master gravity any time soon, but he could make a head start. Most of his elemental development had been quite short, all things considered. As with his Dao, he drew inspiration from battle. While most cultivators took the long, easier route, sitting in seclusion for centuries on end, Sam reaped the benefits of war.

  Outside of Sam’s training, there had been significant developments in the faction. Jeffrey, Eduardo and Talnor were all ready to ascend to E Rank, and were returning to Earth that day to ascend. Lao was also nearing the end of his Tower run at this point, and was set to return any day as well.

  Sam and Jacob waited on the steps of the city hall, looking out over the plaza before it. Thousands of people milled around, heading deeper into the city, or towards the city hall itself.

  A twinkle of light on the northern horizon signaled the captains’ arrival, as a small spacecraft jetted through the skies towards the city. The much larger craft that the faction used for interplanetary travel hovered in high orbit, still visible from the city below. Sam had tried offering the usage of his portals, but Eduardo had refused, saying that the captains needed to be able to make their way around without any outside aid. Sam hadn’t bothered pressing the point. If there was ever any sort of emergency that needed immediate transportation, he was waiting.

  Before the ship reached the ground, the three half step E Ranker leaped out from a door in the side, landing in the middle of the plaza. Sam could feel the qualitative leap in power they had all taken, upgrading their Daos as far as they could. While their levels hadn’t increased, their strength certainly had.

  “Welcome back,” Sam said, walking forwards to meet them. “You all ready to ascend?”

  Eduardo nodded calmly, but both Talnor and Jeffrey were far more animated.

  “To us, this is a dream come true,” Talnor explained. “Neither of us ever expected to reach E Rank. To almost every citizen of this Multiverse, F Rank is the peak of potential. E Rank is the realm of demigods.”

  “Now I can finally go back and beat the hell out of those bastards who kicked me out of the Salvinii system,” Jeffrey added, his own goals a bit darker. “One day…”

  “You can get your revenge after Earth has been secured,” Sam said sternly. “Right now we need all the help we can get. If you can all progress a good ways into E Rank, with the Tower bonuses, we will be in a good place for the Universal Tournament.”

  “What about the war with the Selvans?” Jeffrey asked. “Are we in a good place for that?”

  Sam laughed. “You already know the answer to that. You just want me to pad your ego a bit, don’t you?”

  “Yeah…” Jeffrey replied, grinning. “I suppose I don’t need an answer to that.”

  “Right. Now, was there anything you all wanted to do before breaking through?” Sam asked. “Any final tasks to complete before you shed your mortality?”

  “No,” Talnor answered. “We are as ready as we can be. Should we do it right here and now?”

  Sam nodded. “Sure. I wanted the city to get a bit of a show. It’s good for morale. The citizens reacted favorably to Lao’s ascension. There were a lot more breakthroughs in the few days after that. Maybe there’s some sort of effect when someone reaches E Rank. I don’t really know.”

  Not wanting to wait another second, Jeffrey, Eduardo and Talnor sat down in meditative positions, closing their eyes. All of the groundwork for their breakthrough had already been completed, meaning that a few seconds later, all three were actively ascending. Flesh and bone melded into one, the blinding light of Enlightenment surrounding all three cultivators. They rose up into the air, beacons of light that nearly drowned out the Sun itself.

  About a minute passed as they went through their respective trials, before sinking back down to the ground. While they had just gone through quite a lot of pain, if Sam had any sort of inkling about the stage of ascension they had reached, it was mostly absent from their faces. Instead, all three had wide, beaming smiles seemingly stuck into place.

  “How does it feel?” Jacob asked, a rare smile flickering into place. “E Rank, huh? It feels like so long ago that I broke through, but you all are in the same Rank now.”

  Jeffrey laughed. “We wouldn’t dare to compare ourselves to you. Even if all three of us reached your level, I’m not confident that we could win in a fight against you three on one.”

  “Good,” Jacob replied, a slight pulse of Dao Energy rippling out from his body. “That’s what I wanted to say. I just wanted to be more polite.”

  “Doesn’t admitting it kind of defeat the point?” Sam said.

  “Don’t ruin my fun, Sam. Let me have some small victories. You claim all the large ones these days.”

  “Well, unless there’s anything else you need us to do, we’ll be heading off to the Tower now,” Jeffrey informed Sam.

  “Alright. There was just one question I had. What level of ascension did you reach?”

  Jeffrey shared a look with the other two captains, before they spoke in unison. “Perfect.”

  “Really?” Sam said, a bit surprised. “So far everyone in the faction to break through has reached that stage. Isn’t it supposed to be nearly impossible to reach?”

  “No, it’s a bit more complicated,” Jeffrey said. “I’m not that well versed in the affairs of E Rankers, but I did some research when I was cultivating. The quicker someone reaches a Rank, the higher their stage of ascension will be. Anyone who reaches E Rank within six months is pretty much guaranteed to get a Perfect Ascension.”

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “How would that even happen outside of a newly initialized universe?” Sam asked. “There isn’t some sort of age limit on the System, right?”

  “You can simply choose not to level up. A lot of scions from powerful sects train for a few decades before they start leveling up. That gives them a nearly unmatched foundation for cultivation. Still, even amongst them, very few reach Perfect Ascension.”

  “Huh. You’ve given me a lot to think about,” Sam said. “But anyway, I’m sure you’re all itching to get to the Tower of Transcendence. Was there anything else you wanted to do before leaving?”

  “Well, we wanted to wait a bit for Lao to return. Isn’t he close to finishing?” Jeffrey asked. “We though it would be helpful to hear from someone who had a… somewhat more normal track through the Tower.”

  Sam laughed. “Right. I guess my experiences wouldn't be very helpful. He’ll probably be done in the next few days, but I don’t really know. Are you sure you want to wait that long?”

  “Why not? We have months until the Universal Tournament. Time is slowed down in the Tower anyway. That’s where most of our growth is going to come from.”

  “Now that we’re E Rankers,” Talnor said, “we also wanted to train with you and Jacob. I’m sure there are all sorts of valuable lessons you could teach us.”

  “Alright,” Sam said. “I guess we can give you all a head start on Domains. Maybe even sow the seeds for the creation of your Authority. It didn’t take me that long to develop my Domain. It’s essentially just a fusion of aura and Dao.”

  “You’ll have to show us then. Pass the time until Lao returns.”

  Sam nodded. “Ok. Are there any places in the city for training that we could use? Preferably ones that can take some punishment. I don’t know that much about the layout of Sanctum these days. I’m not around that much.”

  “Yeah, there’s plenty of training halls,” Jeffrey assured. “We can find one pretty easily. What exactly are you planning to do? What sort of punishment are we talking about?”

  “Well, to demonstrate my Authority to its proper extent, I need somewhere that can stand up to abuse. The reality manipulation that comes from Authority only transfigures mundane materials, so anything made out of stronger stuff should be fine.”

  “There is somewhere like that,” Eduardo answered. “A training room of sorts for the faction elites. It takes up most of one of the nearby skyscrapers. There are all kinds of amenities. A free weight room with enhanced gravity, a model dungeon that we keep monsters in to fight against.”

  Sam laughed. “Just how much development has gone down in my absence? It seems that every time I return to Earth, the city has doubled in size.”

  Jeffrey smiled. “Well, that particular training hall has been there for weeks. If you went looking, there’s probably others just like it. The Planetary Core means that construction happens pretty much as soon as someone suggests something, and the money is allocated to it by the bureaucrats.”

  “You can fill me in more as we walk,” Sam said. “I know you’ve all been away for a few weeks, but you still know a lot more about the city than I do. It’s time that I learned more about Sanctum. I’m supposed to be the faction leader, yet I don’t think I could name a single street.”

  “Oh,” Talnor said, a grin on his face. “I think you could guess.” he looked over at one of the main streets that led to the plaza. Nestled in the shadows of the skyscraper that towered over it was a street sign. On it was written “Atlas Street.”

  Sam looked at it for a moment, before shaking his head. “I will never understand this obsession with me. I’m not even on Earth most of the time. Why didn’t they pick something historical?”

  Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Who says they named this street after you? Maybe they named it after me…”

  Sam narrowed his eyes at his father in mock disapproval. “Has the Overlord returned? I thought you were getting better at reining in your ego.”

  “Oh, I am. But I still follow the path of Supremacy. I simply put that arrogance towards something constructive these days. If I don’t provide a few outlets, I might end up regressing.”

  Clearly uneasy about the prospect of the Overlord’s return, Talnor quickly changed the subject, returning to the earlier topic. “The reason the people of our faction view you so highly is because unlike most politicians and leaders, you actually earned their respect. You won the tournament. You defeated Hugo Mar. You slew Gaea. Earth would be a wasteland without you, filled only with corpses and monsters.”

  “I suppose that’s fair,” Sam admitted. “I just never expected that I would have millions of people seeing me that way when I was just a penniless diner worker. The System’s really changed everything. I’m not always sure if it's for the better, though.”

  “How about you take a tip from your old man and embrace your ego a bit more?” Jacob said playfully, giving Sam a pat on the shoulder.

  Sam smiled. “You’ve changed a lot. You never would have referred to yourself like that before. But yeah, maybe I should. I just don’t want to turn into an asshole.”

  “Am I an asshole?” Jacob asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Well….” Sam began.

  “You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know.”

  “The building we’re looking for is right there,” Talnor said, pointing to the nearest skyscraper. “Let’s head in.”

  The inside of the skyscraper was very at odds with the exterior. From the outside it looked like any other building in the city, built in the same pattern as most of the skyscrapers that had made up the cities of Old Earth. A rectangular, boxy design and a mixture of metal and glass. From the inside, it was a completely different story. The first floor was dominated by a bubbling pool of magma. The internal temperature was easily in the hundreds of degrees, though to the sorts of people who went to train there, it wasn’t much of an issue.

  A desk sat near the door, manned by a bored looking woman in a suit and pants. Despite the heat, she was completely composed, looking over a small tablet that she held in her hand.

  “Membership passes please,” she said as soon as the door opened, not bothering to look up.

  “I don’t think we’ll be needing those,” Talnor replied.

  “Everyone needs-” the woman looked up and realized who she was talking to. To her credit, her only reaction was a slight widening the eyes. “Never mind. You can head right through.”

  “Thank you,” Talnor responded, before turning back to Sam and Jacob. “For what you wanted to do, I think the eighteenth floor will be out best option.”

  “What’s on the eighteenth floor?” Sam asked.

  “It’s made up of meditation rooms and warded chambers where people can test out their Daos after new breakthroughs. You can buy cultivation supplements as well.”

  Sam shrugged. “Sounds good to me. Lead the way.”

  An elevator was half hidden within a small hillock of obsidian, set into the wall about a hundred feet away. Talnor headed over, pressing the button to call the lift. It arrived almost instantly, moving far faster than any normal life. Without needing to take delicate mortal bodies into account, the elevator could move far faster without causing any danger. Handles were on the wall, presumably to anchor oneself. While hitting the walls from the sudden acceleration wasn’t dangerous, it would still be uncomfortable.

  Everyone grabbed on, before Talnor pressed the eighteenth button. The elevator leapt into motion, stopping barely a few seconds later. The doors slid open, revealing a long hallway of white marble. Doors were spaced every ten feet. A pervasive aura of calmness suffused the air, cajoling Sam to sit down and meditate.

  “What’s causing that?” Sam asked.

  “Causing what?” Talnor said.

  “I feel really calm right now. I wasn’t feeling that until we stepped on this floor. Is it supposed to help with meditation?”

  “Oh, right. There’s an array covering this floor that boosts cultivation speed. There were a lot of options, but this one provided a compromise between expense and efficiency. There were some far higher end arrays on offer from the Interweb, but they were well out of our price range.”

  “How do you know so much about this building?” Sam asked.

  “I was involved in its creation,” Talnor explained. “Because the Planetary Core needs either the faction leader or the captains to operate, every time someone wants to build something, it needs to be run past one of us.”

  “Still, you know all this stuff about the floor layouts?”

  Talnor shrugged. “I’m a peak F Rank cultivator. My memory is essentially perfect for anything other than the most complicated tasks. I could read a book once or twice and recite it back word for word. I had to look over the blueprints for this building.”

  “I see,” Sam said. “I haven’t had to use my enhanced memory that much since the arrival of the System. My memory should be even greater than yours, but I guess it’s all about application.”

  “You’ve been off fighting for the faction,” Jeffrey interjected. “That’s an entirely different beast than trying to engage with the bureaucracy. You should be glad you don’t have to listen to the sorts of people that flock to those positions.”

  “How did those people even become so commonplace around the city?” Jacob asked. “Isn’t most of the construction and governance streamlined by the System?”

  “They are an unfortunate necessity,” Talnor explained. “With how few captains there are compared to citizens, it would be unfeasible to have to directly interact with them. We need intermediaries to convey requests and instructions.”

  “Couldn’t you just find competent people to fill the positions?” Jacob pressed.

  “Oh, competence is not the issue here, believe me. It’s their attitude,” Jeffrey said. “Imagine the sort of people who join HOA boards or make up the lower levels of local governments. All of them who survived the System’s arrival flocked to those positions as soon as Sanctum was created.”

  Sam grimaced. “I get it now. I’ve never really had to interact with people like that, but I do know what you’re talking about. I assume the more agreeable citizens don’t want to fill those positions theirselves?”

  “What is this “HOA”?” Talnor asked. “Some sort of bureaucratic cult?”

  Sam, Jeffrey and Jacob shared a look, and then burst out laughing. “Pretty much,” Sam replied. “Somebody decided that it would be a good idea to let random people control what they can do in their own homes.”

  “I’m pretty sure a lot of your thoughts about it came from my rants when you were younger,” Jacob said. “We were renting, so we didn’t have to deal with it then, but my father always complained about it when I lived with him. He said that he had to chase some representative off with his shotgun once after they tried to fine him over the color of his curtains.”

  “The color of his curtains?” Talnor responded, frowning. “What sort of fascist hell were you living in?”

  “That’s exactly the sort of things he would say,” Jacob admitted, smiling slightly. “He always said that he didn’t fight in World War Two to just come home to deal with more fascists.”

  Eduardo narrowed his eyes. “Weren’t we supposed to be coming here to train? How did we end up talking about the HOA of all things, no matter how accurate the conversation might be?”

  “I’m surprised you know what that is,” Sam said. “Do they have that in Italy?”

  Eduardo shrugged. “I have no idea. I lived with my brothers from the Church. I just know about it from books and films from the US. Those descriptions matched what you have been saying.”

  “Oh. I remember Lao talking about how he used to watch movies in his monastery,” Sam said with a chuckle. “That reminds me of that. But yeah, let’s keep moving. We are getting a bit sidetracked. It’s just so nice to be able to talk about trivial things without having to worry about the world ending.”

  “Agreed,” Eduardo said. “But if we want to ensure that the world never ends, we really should get to training.”

  Sam smiled. “Fine. Let’s go.”

  They headed down the hallway towards the final room, the door set into the wall at the end of the hallway rather than the sides. Talnor opened it, typing a code into a small keypad next to the door. It slid open, revealing a large white room. A few meditation mats lay next to the walls, while in the center was a glass cube filled with a strange blue mist.

  “That’s where you can practice with your Daos,” Talnor explained. “The blue mist absorbs energy and redirects it into the building to power it. You two probably shouldn’t try it, though,” he said, looking at Sam and Jacob. “It’s rated for E Rankers, but you're much stronger than any E Ranker.”

  “Right,” Sam said. “Let’s get started then. Show me what you got.”