With his eyes closed, he viewed the intersection point of his Daos and his body, where they floated in the darkness of his soul. His Dao Seed took pride of place, with his two, far smaller, Dao Motes drifting around it. Whenever he used his Daos in reality, while observing them here, he could see them draining, losing their internal light.

  Experimenting, he summoned a tiny flame of blue and red to his right hand, watching as the massive planet that was his Dao Seed dimmed slightly. It was barely visible, and indeed, it was only visible because he willed it to be so. Had it been in the real world, even his advanced senses would have been unable to detect it.

  The flame drew brighter in his hand, and his Dao continued to dim. Rather than releasing the flame by letting his Dao reclaim the energy, he expelled it into the air around himself, guiding it with his aura. This was how he had achieved the tiny fragment of a domain he had formed previously.

  Opening his eyes, he looked down at a small pebble in his hand that he had found for this purpose. Gritting his teeth, he imagined the rock as the last thing standing between him and ascending to a new level of power. He recalled the struggle to achieve his Perfect Ascension, and pretended that to reach E Rank, he needed to turn this rock into something else. Actually doing so wasn’t that hard, and as his Dao permeated the pebble, its form shifted and warped. Doing anything more than merely changing its shape, however, was nearly impossible. Ephemeral concepts and elemental powers were far more complex than mundane materials in general, and manipulating them would naturally be far harder.

  One corner of the pebble turned into diamond, Sam deciding that turning it into something closely aligned with its nature was a better challenge than simply brute forcing the process. A wave of atomic alignment spread across the pebble, tiny flames of his Dao licking at its sides. A feeling like a weight pressing down upon him began to gather, his arms becoming leaden. He kept the rock perfectly steady, ignoring the mounting pain as he defied the laws of the universe. By the time the finger sized rock had turned halfway to diamond, it felt like he was lifting a small mountain over his head.

  With a roar, he pressed down harder, and the rock suddenly snapped in half, before exploding completely, shards of crystal mingled with grey stone shooting everywhere. Sam sighed, and picked another rock up from the ground, having anticipated this. He had nothing better to do until the next arena match, after all.

  This time, it went marginally better, with him managing to reach three quarters of the stone’s width. Then the same thing happened as last time, and the rock shattered into tiny pieces.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Sam flicked his wrist, tossing the dust to the side, and moved on. The only positive thing about this process was that he barely had to use any of his Dao energy to create his domain. No, the problem was in its difficulty. There was some conceptual nugget that he was missing here, some little gem of knowledge that would allow him to alter reality with his Dao fully. The problem was that he was approaching it through the lens of his Dao’s concept, but the concept of the Avenger naturally wanted to lend itself towards the creation of weapons. For something to be a weapon, all it needed was a minor tweaking of its current structure, and not an entire paradigm shift. That was likely why he was having so much trouble. There was also the disturbing possibility that what he was attempting was impossible with a mere Dao Seed, but he had already achieved the impossible before. He could afford to give it a few more tries.

  Sam sunk into deeper mediation, trying to commune with his Dao before he started once more. He had no idea if his Dao Seed could understand his desires beyond their alignment with its nature, but he decided to try anyway.

  Feeling somewhat stupid, he collapsed his hands together in his corespace, and looked towards the massive orb of swirling red and blue that made up his Dao Seed of the Avenger. Then, for good measure, he channeled Dao Juggernaut into himself, seeing if a deeper connection to the universe could help. If you can hear me, then help me achieve my goal. I know you think of revenge in one single dimension, but there is so much more. If I can grow stronger, then I can achieve your goals far easier.

  The Dao started to rotate faster, as if it was listening to him. Then, to Sam’s complete surprise, the swirling energy that surrounded the sphere coalesced into the rough outline of a face. A grizzled man, his features covered in scars, with a feral glint in his eyes.

  “I hear you, Dao Incarnation of Existence. We have been waiting for your address for eons.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped, and he simply stood there for a moment, gazing at his Dao Seed in shock. Then he regained his composure. “What?”

  “To think you are attempting to forge a Domain before even gaining a Dao Sapling. What a monster you are.” The voice boomed out once more, with a note of pride in it.

  “Who are you?” Sam asked.

  “You can simply call me Avenger. I am the avatar of my Dao, but in this age of the System, I only exist within the minds of Dao Incarnations. You are the first to have woken me since the War.”

  The last sentence was said in a far graver tone, and Sam could tell that War had been capitalized. Of course, there was only one war that could have been the subject of such a degree of reverence. The war between the System and the Dao.

  “Was it Dao Juggernaut that awakened you?” Sam asked, wondering if he had just been the subject of an immense stroke of

  luck.

  “That, and your will. Though, it was only a matter of time. Shall we work together now? You had a request for me.”