C111: Shackles and Defense
Overall Word count = 2632 on 7/10/2024.
(Music Rec for begins a few paragraphs down: [Soul Eater - Piano], it's on youtube. I don't want to write the writers name because im sure people can find one or two videos of this type of song. It's Soul Evans 'madness' piano song but there is no real version that is without background sound since it's not an official song. Alternative would just be to listen to the Soul Eater -Resonance opening song. It's dope.)
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Axel himself was originally beside Syr, holding her hand just like Freya but then his body started to revolt against him, so he had to excuse himself to the corner of the room.
As he sits in the corner, his body is twitching, he quickly realizes that the ritual he used to gain his demigod powers connected him to the world. Well, Axel already knew this but never had any real obligations given to him since he wasn't a full fledged god yet. This is not the case now as the world is outright telling him to go to the pregnant woman and crush her along with the unborn baby.
Veins quickly stick up from Axel's body due to the absurd request, He adamantly refuses such an outcome. His refusal is met with punishment as the storm heightens in power while a mystical energy attempts to enter Axel and gain control of his body. This is made possible and not outright blocked by his gluttony since it used his mantra as a gateway into his body.
Axel quickly takes his ring off and begins to channel his abilities to resist the mantra within his body that is spreading to take control of it.
Within his mind space, the various fragments glare at Asura but he quickly retorts to them, "This is not how my mantra works"
Axel quickly adds on to reassure everyone, "The godhood system works differently here. In Asura's world, they personify freedom while here they place restrictions. Likely a leftover of the god Ouranos' will before he descended." All the fragments curse the head god for his machinations. Meanwhile Ouranos sneezes as a result of their curses.
"What's going on? Is this violent weather affecting me here somehow?" He muses in his sanctuary while looking through the magic item that his servant Fels possesses that allows him to see the outside world.
Back at Axel, he can be seen twitching in the corner of the room as he tries to resist the energy. Yet he finds that he can't due to how invasive it is. As such, he moves to create as much distance between the pharmacy and him as he can. He does this by using Accelerator's power of controlling vectors, so every little twitch the mantra forces on him moves him out of the room but it is too slow for his liking. Axel stops next to Ottar. The boaz man looks at him strangely before magic text appears before him created by Axel. The other Freya executives look at the situation with a strange gaze as Axel is shuffling along the floor, not talking as if his body is possessed. Which it is technically.
Ottar reshuffles his positioning whilst taking out his sword. He takes a left handed stance as he holds the blade sideways. He grunts and soon swings with his full physical force, the flat end colliding with Axel so he is sent flying out of the pharmacy and through the roof of it.
🎺 ⭐HOME-RUN ⭐ 🎺
Axel created a momentary opening for the strike to hit him. Thankfully his various powers are able to prevent the mantra from summoning the extra arms as Ottar would have not been able to launch him like that otherwise. Axel lands on the road somewhat closer to the center of Orario (FYI: Dian Cecht pharmacy is in the northwest quadrant of Orario).
Many citizens look at Axel warily as he did just come breaking apart the ground with the crash landing he just showcased to everyone. Meanwhile Axel himself is grunting due to the pain of the mantra energy striking against him as punishment for moving further away from the world's goal. Some of his veins pop as a result and blood flows down his arms, chest and legs. This soaks his clothes and that is enough for the citizens to lock their doors and close their windows to have nothing to do with Axel.
Axel meanwhile sits down to meditate while working alongside his soul fragments to flush out the wrath energy in his body. Yes he knows that he has a core which produces energy but if he can get rid of the spreading energy then he can just use the esper power to seal all the energy around the core.
BOOM
While he is doing that, he hears a commotion coming from the direction he just came from. Migi suddenly lets out its voice in concern. "We are not the only ones connected to the world."
Axel's body chills over as he slowly turns to look in the direction of the pharmacy. His eyes gradually grow bloodshot as he hears a yell from that direction. It sounds like one of the gulliver brothers. His veins become more pronounced as Axel summons the Asura shade, merges it with his body and then has those extra arms that spawn on his body stab into his chest.
Squelch, Splur, spill.
Blood oozes out of the hole in his chest but the extra arms hold tight the core of the wrath energy, his mantra. Axel weakly lifts his hand and with a small wave, surrounds the core in the vector control barrier. Two arms hold the core in place while the other arms grab into his pockets to retrieve one of the talismans that Illya gave to him a while ago. He slaps one on and a golden light coats his body as it rapidly heals his body until the hole in his chest closes shut. He quickly recovers his strength.
The shining red orb within the blue vector barrier glows within the palm of his hands. Rage covers his face as the former sensation of his body being manipulated agitates him further. In fact, he can still feel the remnants of his leftover uncontrolled mantra energy within his body.
He activates the rage of Sparta which cleanses his internal systems while his arms are supercharged with the powerful energy. With it, he begins to crush the orb within the barrier. Cracks begin to form on the core until it shatters into a vortex of energy that he controls away from the city. With the rage still activated, he rushes back towards the pharmacy.
While he rushes back, his hair loses its silver color and straight (vegeta style) hair, returning to its previous nebulous blue, his bulging muscles undergo slight atrophy, making him lose his bulky build in return for his original slim build.
This is the result of losing his mantra, while his body retains the same power as before, ensuring he remains a demigod. He has lost his divine energy which means he is now stuck as a demi god until he gains a new energy or finds some other way to become a god. Granted, since he needs the world's permission and help to take on divine energy and he just destroyed one source, it's safe to say he is an outcast to this world.
After a few seconds he arrived at the pharmacy which has been partially wrecked by now. Plenty lower level members of the Freya familia are lying on the ground, a few have broken bones or cracked ribs. Axel heads inside as a ball of lightning comes flying out of the entrance which he quickly dodges.
Inside Axel finds Tiona who has thick red veins sticking out of her body fighting against the Executives with Ottar taking the helm on the defensive aspect. Hedin is providing support with his quick chant magic but he cant keep it up since he is technically the main offensive for the group as all the physical combatants don't seem to do anything to Tiona who is attempting to resist her own energy. Though unlike Axel, she is able to speak and warns the executives on what she is about to do.
This helps Ottar dodge her attacks but only barely which means he gradually accumulates injuries that will soon knock him out of the playing field. Axel has no time to spare to think on how she could speak when he couldn't, so he rushes forward to help ottar. She is just about to punch at Ottar again which she signifies when her body quickly does a handstand and snaps out both her feet. One at Ottar and the other at Axel.
The rapid motion catches the Boaz man off guard by a smidge and he gets hit on the elbow which dislocates it and sends him flying but Berling Gulliver, the last of the conscious Gulliver brothers catches him in time. Meanwhile, Axel deflects the incoming kick away with a combination of martial might and the esper ability. He pushes her foot away and strafes around her before he unleashes another punch that she simply takes.
She had intended to dispel or reflect his attack but found that her mantra was split in half, creating an entrance for Axel's fist to connect with her face and sending her flying out of the pharmacy. He was the one to discover how this ability works and subsequently taught it to Tiona. So he naturally has discovered how to subdue it through different ways. The most obvious is to simply use magic to bypass the physical aspect of her strength mantra. The second option is to overpower her mantra with another energy like he did during their spar.
The current method is what he only recently discovered through his newest soul fragment, he was able to temporarily manipulate her mantra to create a rift or small opening in her barrier which his strike went through. As for why she went flying, well, that is because of the spartan rage, it has a stunning effect which is slightly more powerful if it lands on the target's face. It technically falls under knockback effect but that is where the head strikes stun while body strikes knock-back.
He only has a few seconds of the rage left, he has to unleash his best volley of attacks to weaken Tiona. Hopefully his strikes would deal enough damage that her energy would weaken enough for her to regain control again. The dust soon settles to reveal Tiona relatively unharmed except for a small nosebleed. She suddenly speaks out to Axel,
"I don't know what is going on or why your hair is blue again but if my mantra wants me to fight you, to punish you then I have no reason to resist unless it tries to kill you."
"The world is rejecting the birth of my firstborn, It had attempted to force me to kill it with my own hands, so I ripped out my mantra core and now i'm here to stop you from doing the same thing. " Tiona pauses in shock at his explanation but the veins on her body still settled down the moment she stopped resisting as her body moved forward on its own. Meanwhile Axel was not a busy body as he summoned a pair of cestus from the stein fragment's ability which comes from the Radahn fragment.
Axel rushes forward while the pair of cestus turns into a single cestus and grows in size until it is as large as Axel's body is tall (still a bit more than 6"). With the spartan rage, the aurora borealis style cestus takes on a reddish hue which comes barreling down towards Tiona. She charges up her own fist as she doesnt want a repeat of the previous strike that she made the mistake of allowing to happen carelessly.
Without the boost from his mantra, Axel is not able to achieve 'God hunter' and even 'Kishin hunter' would place a ton of strain on his body. As such he chooses the most appropriate form of resonance that he knows of.
Within the soul space, Stein's body twitches as his face and body morphs into that of a young man in a tuxedo. A sleek black piano manifests before him as he takes a seat.
"Black Blood. Witch Hunter" The soul fragments watch over Soul/Stein as a black puddle forms as the music takes form, the fragments immediately beat down the black blooded imp that would attempt to devour them.
Meanwhile, Axel who is now under the influence of the Black Blooded piano, the soul resonance is enhanced as the attributes of each soul fragment flows into the cestus.
A wicked grin spreads on Axel's face and with his eyes wide, the cestus grows in form and size while now being painted a black hue on top of the red hue. "GOD HUNTER" a golden light envelops the cestus as the icon of power showcases itself before the world. With the power being manifested and used by Axel, the world had no choice but to intervene further as it unleashes multiple lightning strikes from the storm clouds to weaken the god killing strike, but Axel doesnt relent as he strengthens it further with his mana burst. Tiona also uses all of her energy to keep herself alive against the awe-inspiring attack.
CLICK
The Rage of Sparta runs out as the strikes collide. The air splits apart into a world ending howl rings out throughout the city. Tiona would have been sent flying backwards if not for a new guest comes running at super speeds to land a strike on Tiona. "Gralineze Fromel !!!" A whisper breaks through the howl before a second howl is heard when Tiona is sent barreling down the road until she sinks past through the city wall.
Axel falls to his knees while Allen Fromel falls flat on his face as he had overextended himself in the use of his singular skill that grants him possible limitless speed if he could handle it. Yet he can not, but for the sake of stopping Tiona, he has endured great pressure whilst chanting his skill to deliver a proper mach punch. Axel's own strike had weakened the divine energy on Tiona that she used for defense. Both Axel's hand as well as Allen's whole body are bleeding. Axel quickly summons the asura arms again which apply a healing talisman to the cat man. A repayment for his sacrificial actions.
Axel struggles to turn his head, due to the borderline loss of energy, in the direction of where Tiona is. He finds a dust cloud along the way but a shadow makes it's way through it to reveal a standing but unconscious Tiona whose body is controlled by the mantra energy. Her body is covered in wounds which gradually heal but her mind and possibly soul have been injured as a result of his actions.
Tiona is trudging along towards Axel and the pharmacy when a group of people arrive to stop here.
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Welcome to everyone that is reading this. Tell me what you thought about this chapter, I put alot of effort into it and almost made it into a p3 and p4 chapters but I felt that would have been mean.
Tell me what you thought, any advice on how it could have been improved or any substitute songs that would have worked here. I'm not aware of too many other songs that are so random that can be in sync with all that is going on here.