A year passed since Sam started this vacation in which he fought different people. On the journey, he saw a lot of people apart from the one he fought.
He saw the life of normal people without any form of great responsibilities burdening them living their lives.
He saw people who have too much burden on them to carry it alone smilingly carry it.
In both his lives, Sam is not a 'normal' person. He has very limited emotions and he was exposed to very few of them. In both of his lives, he was in a race to gain more power, more recognition, more safety. He never stopped to think about what it is doing to his mental state.
He knew that in his current condition, he wouldn't lose that easily, but his mind doesn't change and it hinders his growth when he needed to grow the most? This is the question that came to his mind when he found out about his own inferiority complex when he lost to Gran and tamas.
He wanted to find an answer for that and that is why he took a vacation.
He wanted to not only find out all the flaws he has and also tried to eradicate them. He must say that he achieved great progress.
He managed to identify, the inferiority complex, the fear of being suppressed, his fear of being a puppet to someone else, his fear of being the weakest in the game, even his obsession with the research can only be considered as an escape for him to forget about these weaknesses and most dangerous of these mental weaknesses is his sensitivity to his birth status.
Being a bastard an abandoned one at that never sat well with him. Because every person who tortured him in order to train or for other purposes never stopped to mention it.
It was hammered into his very being and he believed that all the suffering he went through is because he was an abandoned bastard.
s
The rational part of his brain knew that it is not true. He suffered because he fell into the wrong side by accident. The birth might have some reason for it, but it is not the only reason.
Stella tried her best to make him understand that. But that didn't happen. He wasn't able to break out of that shell and that shell followed him even in this life.
In this journey, he wanted to get rid of that too, but it seems like the damage is too severe that it is almost impossible to change.
Sam is currently sitting on the peak of the mountain meditating. He opened his eyes and sighed.
Nali is standing beside him.
"AAAhh."
He shrieked in fright as soon as Sam moved.
Sam sighed once again and said.
"Don't worry. I won't do anything to you. Just stay calm. Here, this helps."
Sam threw a bottle of wine to Nali who caught it clumsily and gulped it down.
Sam turned around and looked at the rest of the mountain.
It is currently covered in blood and corpses. There are many signs of his elemental usage.
He walked down in the middle of all the corpses and reached a large plaque in the middle of it.
'Myriad Illusion sect'
The plaque was carved with these words.
Sam took out the reaper sword and swung it a few times.
The same three words.
'SAM WAS HERE.'
He took in the destruction he caused in the past two days once again.
"Let's go. It seems like I am on verge of a breakthrough. You can also calm down."
Sam led Nali along with him into the forest. They camped beside a stream.
Nali kept on cooking every beast that came there as he tried to calm his mind, while Sam sat inside the stream to calm his mind too as he slowly approached the breakthrough.
As he approached it, the hydra bloodline is getting a bit excited than normal. So, he knew that this time another metamorphosis might happen, so he felt like it is better to absorb water elemental energy for this breakthrough.
After calming his mind down, he let all the beasts out.
The beasts are also recovering from the battle two days ago.
It is very rare for Sam to use the beasts in his battles, particularly all of his beasts in a single battle, but he used it in the battle that lasted two days.
They looked at Sam's state and all of them started cultivating as they consumed the resources arranged to them.
After two days of cultivation and energy sharing, Sam finally started achieving the breakthrough along with the beasts and as he predicted as soon as the beasts broke through, he felt his organs burning again.
And once again, he has two organs burning up.
The salivary glands and the liver.
As Sam already experienced this burning sensation twice and he also stayed within a stream that has decent water elemental energy, he is barely able to hold on without yelling and screaming.
The process went on for a long while. But when it was done, Sam recovered a lot faster than the previous two times.
He rested for the next two days and finally started experimenting with the newfound powers.
The first change is to the salivary glands.
All this while the secretion of poisons happened mostly by converting the spiritual energy. But now, he can naturally secrete the poisons like an actual venomous creature.
The modification to the liver is a bit different.
It helps with the digestion of the different poisons that he could consume and collects them in the gall bladder which would be delivered to the salivary glands through the blood circulation system.
He felt like his body is becoming less and less human.
All these days, even if he has different bloodlines and muscle structures, the bone structures, the circulatory system are all still that of humans.
But with the appearance of the wings, one after the other is changing and he is moving far away from being a human.
At least when it is considered physically.
Sam then started checking the water elemental fusion. He cannot use the bloodline arts at the moment. Anyway, he still has to check the bloodline arts of the sky sovereign roc too.
But he didn't face any opponent that is strong enough to make him use these bloodline arts.
After checking all the changes and taking a look at his own power, he finally decided to get back to his original life.
It is about time he did so.
From the list he also found out that the team is almost done with the second phase plans.
If his guess is right, the rest of the players are all trying their best to finish off the rest of the organizations that Sam left off for them so that they wouldn't be left behind and keep the pace with him.
Even though he didn't have a great bond with them, he decided that he should climb the competition with them.
Anyway, even if not in the long term, at least in the short term, he would be needing their help to go after the third and fourth phase organizations.
So, the team would be going on another break at the moment.
Sam and Nali went back to the desolate, where the team is supposed to meet up after their assignment.
He sent Nali to Mackey's kitchen.
In this year, he picked up some progress in cooking and he might rival Mackey. The culinary circle is going to burn in chaos.
Due to Sam's way of ruling even though he is not exactly ruling, the professions which are not considered much are also garnering enough attention.
And being a chef is one of them.
At least now, he can expect more in terms of food, whenever he comes home.
After that, Sam visited the research departments to check the latest advancements and finally after everything was done, the teammates appeared.
When Sam saw them he was surprised.
Gran and Sia broke through to the Peak stage,
Saber Monarch broke through to the Transcendent realm of the Astral Plane.
Paras reached the border of breaking through to the next stage.
The rest of them also had great progress.
When looked at Sam's cultivation level, they are also equally surprised.
He is picking up faster and this caused them to face some invisible pressure on them.
Sam took the heirlooms and exchanged most of them for resources, leaving a dozen of them in case of emergencies.
s
He distributed most of them away and kept some as reserves.
The team went to train after the reports were given.
Sam looked at the list to take a look at the second phase organizations. It would take a few months for the rest of the players to finish them off.
So, Sam decided to go for the research.
The formation cylinders he got are still waiting for him to deconstruct them and use it for his own research.
