Sam shared a glance with Jacob, then both broke out laughing. “You’re pretty damn arrogant for a chunk of sentient rock,” Sam said. “Were you born with that or are you really so self-centered that you came to that sort of conclusion about your strength within a few minutes of life?”

  Before the Gestalt Guardian could respond, Sam and Jacob teleported in unison, sandwiching the monster between two titanic blows. Worldbreaker arced in like a flaming comet, the torn edges of reality screaming as it forced its way through. Jacob’s fist, coated in the blazing red light of his ego brought to life, sent a shockwave hurtling through the firmament as it rocketed towards its target.

  As the two strikes met on opposite sides of the Gestalt Guardian, the world imploded. For a brief moment, physical reality and the world of the Dao touched and in the midst of that forbidden union, pure destruction was born.

  Sam and Jacob were blasted away by the shockwave, sending them spinning off into the void. Where the Gestalt Guardian had once stood was a cloud of ash, floating aimlessly in the midst of space.

  The Civilization Gestalt opened its mouth, the continent sized slit contorting into a grimace. Its eyes lit up once more, but rather than locking into Sam and Jacob, they narrowed in on the portal.

  “Shit,” Sam cursed. “It’s onto us.”

  “Can you hold it off for a few seconds?” Jacob asked. “You’re better at defending than I am. Trust me.”

  Sam sighed. “Ok.”

  He portaled over to the rift in space leading back to Earth, planting himself firmly in the path of the living planet’s attack.

  Worldbreaker grew and grew, blocking off the entrance. Already knowing what was coming, Sam braced himself, gathering as much power as he could spare in the moment.

  The hammer lit up like a star in the moment before impact, briefly repelling the gargantuan beam. Then Sam felt the full force of the impact, nearly driving him back into the portal.

  Meanwhile, Jacob gathered speed and power, flying around the Civilization Gestalt in ever swifter loops. His fist seemed to grow as he infused it with the power of his Dao, layering enough energy to destroy a country into each finger.

  As he passed into the atmosphere, the air itself detonated in the wake of his passing, transforming into a glistening ribbon of plasma leading all the way from outer space to the Gestalt’s surface.

  A wordless howl escaped Jacob’s lips, echoing for a brief moment before impact. Then he drove his fist into the ground between the Gestalt’s eyes. Jacob had long since vanished from view, a speck in comparison to the planet, but the effects of his punch quickly outshone even the blazing eyes of the monster.

  Two blades of force and light, each dozens of miles tall, sliced out from his fist, cutting through the ground and deep into the planet’s crust. They bisected the lakes of flaming lava that were the Gestalt’s eyes, cutting off the beams plaguing Sam. When the light faded, scars as long as a continent remained, etched indelibly into the monster’s face.

  Sam pushed back the faltering river of orange light, finally safeguarding the portal against the Gestalt. With its eyes gone, it wouldn’t be able to threaten Earth again. At least, not as easily.

  The monster let out a pained bellow, the sound echoing through space on waves of pure Dao energy. The Civilization Gestalt was angry, and it wanted everything within the solar system to know that. Its mouth hinged open wider and wider until it looked as if the planet were trying to turn itself inside out.

  In the depths of its maw, a long spike of molten lava forced its way towards the surface, hardening rapidly into obsidian. Arms started to form along its sides, pieces of rock moving like putty until they formed a monstrosity of waving appendages and nightmarishly contorted flesh.

  With a sharp crack, the construct broke away from the larger planet, speeding towards Sam and Jacob. Its arms gyrated, turning it like a drill faster and faster until it was just a blur. Loops and gyres of flaming plasma gathered around the arms until it was nearly impossible to look at, straining even the eyes of a D Ranker like Sam.

  Space flashed with the blinding light of a supernova as the spinning drill punctured the fabric of reality. Rifts opened up in space as the monster overloaded the local Dark elemental energy reserves keeping spatial anomalies at bay. Sam realized what the monster was trying to do as soon as the portal to Earth began to flicker and warp.

  “We need to deal with that thing now!” Sam roared at Jacob, already teleporting towards the latest of the Gestalt’s constructs. Only, when he tried to step through space, his portal ruptured. Only reflexes on his part allowed him to withdraw his legs before they were cut in half. Sam could have tried to force his way through, but because it was his own portal, the more power he put into forcing it open, the more power would be reflected back on him.

  Instead, he used every ounce of his stat based speed to race across the divide in the blink of an eye, wings of the glittering Dao unfolding into the inky darkness. Each beat sent him thousands of miles, closing the gap in an instant.

  Jacob came in from the other side, gathering power for a repeat performance of how the two men had taken out the Gestalt Guardian. His passage through the atmosphere sent shockwaves rippling across the entire hemisphere, clouds parting all around him. As Jacob’s fist grew and grew, Sam channeled his power into Worldbreaker, the hammer flying in like a comet through the heavens.

  The whirling aggregation of rock, lava and pure elemental Fire came to a sudden halt, and the loops of plasma shot outwards like whips, flashing through space. Sam reacted in an instant, contorting his body around the incoming projectiles, and shielding himself in the places he was too slow to protect. The whips of flame hit home like cannonballs, nearly shattering Sam’s protections. He flew backwards a few dozen miles before he regained control, spinning around a few times as he did so.

  Jacob had tried to punch his way through the tornado of fire, but had ultimately failed, his right arm bent at an odd angle. The flesh was blackened nearly all the way to the core of the limb, and his hand was missing. It wasn’t debilitating damage, and his regeneration was already patching it up, but it was a testimony to the power of the creature they faced.

  Realizing what the Civilization Gestalt was trying to do, Sam called out to Jacob. “If we keep fighting this battle on its terms, it’s going to win. One of us needs to take the fight to the Gestalt itself. If we keep wasting our power on these constructs, we’ll tire long before it does.”

  The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Go then,” Jacob hissed, shaking out his wounded arm. “I can deal with this thing in the meantime. You have higher single target damage than me. You can take out the Gestalt easier.”

  Sam nodded and flew towards the Gestalt, his eyes set on the monster’s core. What had once been the molten core of the Selvan homeworld was now a golem core the size of a small moon, similar to what the Titans had possessed but at a far larger scale. The opening of the Gestalt’s mouth had exposed it, and although it was already closing its maw once more, Sam was much faster.

  He pointed his hammer straight at the glowing core, the weapon growing larger and larger until it would have dwarfed many cities in size. Focusing all of his hatred for the Selvans into his strike, using the Gestalt created by their demise as a proxy, Sam channeled the karmic debt of an entire society into the most powerful Descent of the Heavenly Judge he had ever unleashed.

  Worldbreaker seemed to transform into a shaft of pure energy as it was imbued with more Dao energy than it had ever held before. It punched straight through the atmosphere, a wave of fire racing across the entire planet as every scrap of oxygen in the skies combusted within a fraction of a second. Sam descended, shrouded in a mantle of apocalyptic fire. His eyes glowed with the light of his Dao, one side blue and the other red.

  “Foolish creature,” the Civilization Gestalt rumbled, speaking for the first time in the battle. “Do you believe that a paltry strike like that can threaten a being as powerful as I?”

  Each of the teeth in the monster’s mouth shifted in position, angling themselves towards Sam. They shot out of their sockets, entire mountain ranges worth of rock hurtling through the vacuum Sam’s arrival had made of the atmosphere.

  As the might of an entire world converged on Sam, he merely smiled.

  He had a choice to make here. He could either continue on his current trajectory and smash through the Gestalt’s defences, but risk lacking enough power to actually finish the job. If that happened, the battle would come to an end swiftly. Either the Gestalt would strike back, killing Sam, or it would take the opportunity to shatter the portal. At that point, even if Sam and Jacob ended up winning, it would leave their faction bereft of its strongest fighters for at least a few weeks. That was assuming they could even find their way back to Earth through the vastness of outer space.

  All that was left in Sam’s mind was the other option. He shrunk Worldbreaker down to its smallest size, preserving all of the energy he had imbued into the weapon. It threaded the needle of converging rock, but left Sam open. His body was shredded apart as he passed through, smashing his way past the mountainous debris hurtling his way. All of his focus remained on the tip of his hammer, channeling the small amount of energy he had left into opening a path.

  Sam’s body elongated, stone pressing up against him until even his supernatural durability couldn’t hold it at bay. The only thing he could still see was the light of Worldbreaker tracing out the slim path before him. Then, suddenly, he broke through. The gaping maw of the Civilization Gestalt was almost closed, just a narrow crack a few miles wide remaining. Sam shot through faster than a meteor, plunging deep into the planet’s core.

  When Worldbreaker struck the Gestalt’s core, the explosion nearly tore Sam’s already weakened body to shreds. All of the power imploded in on itself, constrained by the durable innards of the planet-sized monster. What that meant in practice was that every last iota of the creature’s core was reduced to atoms. The detonation blasted Sam back out through the crust like a cork from a wine bottle, just in time for him to see the entire world collapse inwards, before shattering into countless fragments. Where an entire planet had once stood, now there was nothing but a rapidly dissipating asteroid field.

  An ocean of essence washed over Sam. When it came to monsters, most were not created equal. The Civilization Gestalt contained the latent power and will of an entire species, allowing a D Ranker to sustain that power across a body the size of a planet. Sam leveled up six times, a staggering amount considering how hard it was to do so as a D Ranker. Even the Worldback Golems hadn’t provided nearly as much essence, despite being similar in size.

  You have completed a quest!

  Dinner and a Show: S

  Not only did you utterly obliterate the entire Selvan species, nearly on your own, but you proceeded to defeat a monster beyond the abilities of almost every being in your universe. Your overlord Tantalos Veruvax is pleased, or at least he would be had your actions not led to his censureship by the System.

  *Note: The token reward provided by Veruvax in the form of “survival” has been upgraded at his expense. Do not expect such handouts in the future, but on this occasion, it is deserved.

  You have received a suit of D Rank armor as compensation, straight from your ruler’s own treasury.

  The void split in front of Sam, though he was in too much pain to pay much attention to it. It took almost a minute for his body to even begin to regenerate the substantial amount of damage. Had he still possessed the body of a mortal, he would have already been dead, no matter how much Constitution he had.

  “God-damn,” Jacob exclaimed as he arrived next to Sam. “The hell did that thing do to you? Put you through a meat grinder?”

  “Pretty close,” Sam groaned. “I had to sacrifice my body to make sure my attack actually landed. Despite my boasting earlier, I don’t think I could destroy an entire planet without hitting the core like I did.”

  “Better than most E Rankers,” Jacob said, shrugging.

  “Not an-” Sam began, before stopping himself.

  “What?” Jacob asked. “You’re not an E Ranker?’

  “Of course I am,” Sam assured Jacob. With Tantalos sure to be looking for revenge, Sam didn’t want to give him any ammunition. As far as he knew, the only other being to know that he was a D Ranker was the System, and for some reason, it wasn’t acting on it.

  “Alright,” Jacob replied, realizing that Sam didn’t want to talk about it. “It’s about time we get back to Earth. That whole thing barely took any time, but it feels like we’ve been here for days.”

  “Yeah, war under the System is very different,” Sam said. “Unless both sides are completely equal, a battle can end in a matter of minutes or even seconds.”

  “Doesn’t really matter to me as long as I’m the winner,” Jacob said with a smile. “And most of the time, I am.”

  “Sure…” Sam drawled. “Anyway, give me a second to fully recover. I don’t want to show up back on Earth with my arms twice the length they should be. I also want to check out that suit of armor the System gave me?”

  “Oh, that was from the System? For what, the quest? I didn’t get anything other than a sarcastic message that must have been pre-recorded by Tantalos.”

  “How did you know it was from Tantalos?” Sam asked.

  “Do you really think the System would start a sentence with “Good job, my favorite little monkey”?”

  “Oh… Yeah, I don’t think it would. Though he got what was coming to him. I managed to get the System involved when he attacked me. It did something to him, I’m not sure what exactly, but he won’t be bothering us for a bit.”

  Jacob raised an eyebrow. “Oh? That’s good. How long do you think that’ll last for?”

  Sam shrugged. “Hopefully until the Universal Tournament. After that, we’ll be able to leave, if the whole deal with the Adventurers’ Guild works out.”

  “And my own offer from the Isolationists,” Jacob added. “I’m intrigued by what I can learn from them.”

  The two men chatted amiably as they headed back through the portal, but ultimately had little time to speak. Sam stored away the suit of armor the System had given him, wanting to check it later. Miraculously, his storage device had survived mostly unscathed.They emerged from the Earth side of the portal, finding themselves surrounded by the battered fleet.

  A cheer rose up all across the city as the citizens realized that their guardians had returned. Sam smiled, raising his hammer above his head. Jacob slammed his fists together, a sharp crack racing across the city.

  “The Selvans are no more!” Sam shouted, projecting his voice across the city. “We won!”