C144: Knowing Myself
Overall Word count = 6909 on 9/29-30/2024.
Alt Title Teaser: Tower
Greetings everyone to the 'season finale'. This chapter has been a few weeks in the making,I was really busy during this time, more info at the end. I could have, of course, continued releasing chapters with a bit more than 1k words but I felt it would have felt less…meaningful (currently 17 pages worth of writing for this chapter with me finishing this chapter when it was at 7 pages on sunday-monday transition, aka 2 hours worth of work. Skill issue for not being able to do this on normal days).
Also Webnovel/Inkstone has been giving me messages when I published the new character pics page in Aux about how I was reaching some sort of FF chapter limit and it would soon be automatically changed to 'Novel'. Disregarding any of that nonsense, Enjoy
Update as of 9/25/2024. My family, specifically my brother, has shared with me the glory of the pc master race with me (I had been away from its glory for some time now, hesitant to play any games on my laptops since they sucked). I should be able to set it up soon enough in my own room and soon finish this chapter which is about 3/4ths done.
More author notes at the end of the chapter as I have a lot to talk about.
Alt Title teaser: Tower
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The cannon that Koyanskaya had unleashed blasts Axel directly and he is sent flying back while the beam continues shooting at him. The first thing that Axel collides with is the entrance to the dungeon but as the cannon is quite wide, the entire entrance of it is vaporized as Axel begins to dig through the ground under the beam's force.
The combination of his stone skin and his esper ability makes it so that he is not too beat up but he is not able to fully redirect the beam with Accelerators ability, the beam has some sort of unique anti magic property that at the very least weakens his ability to reflect but it's at the very least enough for him to come up with ideas on how to escape or be unharmed by the beam further.
Yet these thoughts are slow until he thinks of a unique idea, he begins to channel his energy.
While he is doing that, the tower of babel's entire bottom has become vaporized by the beam, It begins to tilt and crack as it's entire purpose is to suppress the dungeon. What most people don't know is that the tower itself is a giant magic item that is linked to the dungeon, suppressing its energies and form to not spread more than it already has. Yet the tower does not shatter and instead falls over broken directly into the face of the beam but is instead being constantly vaporized into ashes. This gives a moment of breath for Axel to follow through with his plan but for everyone else it's not good as the dungeon is no longer restrained.
Ouranos, Filvis (the god's assistant), and Alaya rise in shock. They had still been reeling from the aftereffects of the first two mortals ascending to godhood when they suddenly sensed the Tower of Babel being brought to its destruction. Ouranos knows he has to move fast and speaks out to whomever can hear within the city, while most gods are drowsy, very few have fallen asleep by the sleeping mist.
"The tower has fallen, use of arcanum deemed unrestricted but only to protect thyself against the fiends that may approach."
His words could very well turn the city much more chaotic if there are any gods with bad intentions but those few like Ikelos (the god of Dix Perdix who bell fought during the Xenos arc) are too lazy to do things themselves and would rather watch the actions of their adventurers.
Yet for someone like Dionysus otherwise known as Enyo, this is the best thing that could have ever happened but he still needs a bit of time to make his preparations to create widespread destruction and potentially collaborate with/manipulate whoever destroyed the tower.
Alaya instead does not take any immediate actions except to attempt to foresee the fate of humanity, yet her efforts are in vain now as her every attempt is muffled by a black blue haze that seems to swallow fate itself. Alaya sweats but with her foresight failing, she can only extend her senses to see the situation of the city as a whole. She finds that the Saints and immortals are striving to defeat a metallic threat that outnumbers them and wields minor forms of mana burst.
Yet with her senses, she can find the signature of the mana burst and realizes that it's mimicry based on Tamamo Vitch, Koyanskaya. She finds that the very immortal is relatively close to the tower of babel with the source of a powerful magic item next to her.
Her face grows dark as she realizes that it's one of her people that could potentially bring about the end times but she has more to do. With a lock on Koyanskaya, she begins to gather information by tracing her magic signature to all the robots and then finally to Paradiso.
The former erotic building stationed within the red light district has been revamped into a giant factory style golem. A noble phantasm in its own right as it processes hundreds of monster cores to produce the metallic monstrosities that are attacking the city. The Grand Golem of creation, Iz Tulo-Paradiso and its offspring, the Stagnant Fractures.
Many gods and their familias are fighting off these creatures, more specifically the familias in based in specific regions but the most attacked is the Ganesha familia, Loki familia home and then the immortal sector.
Ganesha is holding his own as he was forced to release a few of the untamed beasts to fight the creatures, the tamers under the god directing the beasts to fight but they are too weak and only serve as momentary meatshields before their cores are somehow claimed, floating away from the battlefield. Yet they still have plenty in number to hold their own.
Loki instead is much more dire since their main fighting force is stuck within the dungeon at the moment, unaware of the circumstances. Yet with the lost dungeon floors beginning to crumble without the suppression of the tower, they would try to make their way out. The two new gods have not had a proper discussion with Ouranos yet, so they hold no restriction to their arcanum yet.
That is not to say that the Loki Familia is being overwhelmed. Under the 'ownerless' blessing of Finn/Dim, all the remaining members of the Loki familia that stayed behind to guard over their goddess, mostly level 1s and 2s with a single less talented or older level 3.
These people had all received this blessing and with how concentrated it is as well as the many Pallum that had already chosen to be part of the familia but lacked the talent to follow someone like Finn. These people all received one or both blessings and their power has soared greatly that they could overtake the Second string (pre-blessing group)
These people only lack proper teamwork and control over their newfound strength, otherwise they could begin to occupy the position above the Second String current members.
Fortunately an entourage of many random people who are Pallum rush towards the loki familia and offer their support. These ones are mostly from minor familias that were able to get into hiding as the strange mist hit the city. They instead rushed towards the Loki familia to repay the favor of Dim and Fianna (they assume that the 2 have a good relationship with Loki and her Familia, especially with Dim/Finn being the captain), as such they rushed towards the Twilight Manor and finally defeated the current wave of robots.
Back in the city , Lily buffs her teammates with her Arcanum as they split up in multiple directions. Ouka and the other 2 (Chigusa and Mikoto) move to their home to help their god and their possible neighbors to bring them to Axel's home that is either the first or second most defended place here.
Bell and the others instead moved to secure random parts of the city while traveling to Axel's home which is also considered their second home since Raikou has always been so welcoming to them.
Yet contrary to their thoughts, the place is quite hectic in its own right as it is discovered that Kaoruko is wearing a magical collar that controls her actions. Unbeknownst to many, she had herself been regularly poisoned by Circe to weaken her mind and actions which is why her last public appearance had been during the time that Axel reached level 8 and experienced the pain on his back.
Her movements had gradually become too mechanical which was why she had begun to seclude herself from everyone. Nobody had paid much attention as for the women, it simply meant more time they got to spend with Axel while Axel himself was busy with all sorts of things.
He first had the revelation of pain from leveling up to 8, then he had that desert exploration session where he fought the strange draconic monstrosity but not before facing the desert king himself and his trials.
After that he had the whole pregnancy debacle that caused him to purely focus on his newborn child while also managing all his woman's desires.
After that was his attempt to learn high grade magic which eventually introduced him to his own latent noble phantasm.
Learning spatial magic, other types of mental magics, then finally deciding to destroy the dungeon but finding out that it's actually impossible as the dungeon itself is split into two parts.
The first part is the dungeon everyone knows, all the monsters, many floors. Axel himself learned that there are a total of 80 of these floors so he was not too far from the end. But the second half of the dungeon is what scared him to escape.
The dungeon itself is an enormous golem. No Golem is not the right word, it's a tried and true Titan. Lying beneath the very earth, biding its time, creating monsters to extinguish all life here for 'it' to rebuild everything in its own image.
Axel had gleaned a bit of its thoughts from the reverse connection the [Great Sage] had utilized. He learned that the dungeon had itself created the first humans and other races but in an attempt to study how the species it created would behave without its influence.
It was gravely disappointed as all the races were far too weak for its liking, so it sought to exterminate them all with new creatures, monsters that it had more direct control over through their cores. And Thus the dark era of life was born.
Yet humanity remained strong through the obstacles as they had persevered and then the first immortals/saints rose up to combat the monsters but their strength was partially insufficient until Ouranos first descended and his divine energy was absorbed by these people who regained strength, immortality and a righteous vigor to maintain their stance to defend humanity.
Of course there were plenty of bad apples such as evil gods who thus corrupted the minds of a few immortals [1] to turn to evil but the larger majority of righteous or self-righteous people remained the majority and those evil ones laid low to not draw attention to themselves.
Of course the only reason the dungeon in the first place had chosen to respect Ouranos and their pact regarding Arcanum is due to the fact that the god was the first divine being born out of the thoughts and faith of man.
While various religions and gods had risen during the expansive human era. Most were destroyed when the dark era of monsters began. These destroyed religions had to be integrated into each other and thus the divine realm had settled for a neutral term for itself, Heaven.
This is the reason why there are gods with overlapping fields but differing personalities like Freya and Aphrodite. Both goddesses control the domain of love or lust but Freya is stronger because she was also the goddess of war amongst other things.
The combination of many of these factors is what convinced the dungeon to take an idle route as it gauged the mortal races' responses and how they evolved through the gods' influence/Falna. This became critical research for its next creation once all these pathetic mortals died.
Back at the hole where Vitch had released the camouflage cannon, Iz Tula: 5th Drive. An earlier prototype of the current Paradiso, but reconfigured to become a cannon. It was already stationary as the method of creating proper spider-like legs had not come to her before.
At least not until Antares besieged Orario and its Scorpion-like body served as an instrumental receptacle of knowledge of how a large construct could move around with such ease. As for where she got so many monster cores. Well, the answer is quite obvious. It's from Rakia. The sad little war-like country has nowhere to sell its magic cores at all since Orario and the guild hold all the business.
Nobody would willingly ally with Ares and his foolish brain if it potentially made them an enemy of Orario too. Everybody and their grandmas knows how much Ares desires the dungeon city, having only received scraps so far from the miniature exits in the far mountains north of the city to train his people.
As such, Koyanskaya had gotten hundreds of thousands of mana cores built up over many years of hard work and monster slaughter. She had also intercepted a few convoys transporting Orario's monster cores to their regular contacts. Of course while this might seem a lot, she has really only just attacked 4 convoys.
This still netted her a few hundred cores as the dungeon had already begun to weaken by this point. But She received something that she did not expect to collect. The Phoenix Monster Core that Axel had sold off but had been in storage as it took a while to sell off such a powerful core. Yet now that very core serves as the perfect power source for Iz Tula-Paradiso.
The Phoenix, as a spiritual creature, was able to derive more energy from its surroundings to fuel its fire. That very same ability now allows Vitch to use the core as a renewable energy source for her golem factory and golems as well. Granted the Stagnant Fractures are primarily powered by smaller cores from the dungeon. Yet the trace of Will left within them had already been extinguished before use as otherwise Vitch would lose her army to the Dungeon but she plans to destroy it herself.
Of course she does not know about the dungeon's true form and had even released its bindings in the form of the Tower of Babel.
The 5th Drive cannon soon stops firing its beam, the duo of Circe and Koyanskaya take a look into the hole they had made into the ground where Axel was. To their shock, they find the space empty except for the broken rocks, lava and a small human sized imprint into the wall.
"Was he vaporized?" Circe can't help but ask with melancholy as she wanted Axel to suffer more but when she looked at Vitch who was shaking her head she became puzzled.
"Did he teleport away, he has many abilities to shorten distance or maneuver about. Perhaps he used one of those. Mark 5, change shells, prepare for the next shot." At her command, the stationary floating cannon knocks out a heat composed metal casing with no mana cores inside. The chamber then rotates to load in the next shot while it goes invisible again. (imagine a magical 6 shooter/revolver. Except gunpowder is instead small magic cores. One shot has been fire but more remain)
Vitch pulls out a mysterious tablet from her pocket, and points it into the tunnel she made, activating the magic item; she soon can tell all the available magic sources and where these traces originated from. She finds two signals, one is from her cannon and the other is Axel's.
But what is strange to her is that his signal has not moved from the indent in the wall where the beam stopped. It's as if he is still there in the very same location but she can't find him. Her paranoia of the diversity of Axel's abilities reacts and she assumes that he must have gotten some sort of invisibility technique. Afterall, he had still been around level 5 or 6 when she had been kicked out.
She resummons the cannon to release another blast down the tunnel. Yet her efforts are in vain as Axel is currently undergoing a secondary metamorphosis at the moment.
During the initial bombardment, Axel got a moment of reprieve when the tower fell. He pondered his choice of actions. Sure he could have just teleported back up top, behind Vitch or something but from the initial exchange, he learned a few things.
With his peak Level 9 stats, she was still able to react to his movement and thus summon that cannon with ease. That means that she has likely broken her own seal and thus is powerful enough to contend with him. He needs some sort of new trump card that would allow him to overpower her. The beam only caused minor burns that healed immediately under his new healing factor.
A few ideas came to mind with shades being the simplest while either gravity or spatial magic could also allow him to stand toe to toe with her but who knows what other surprises she might have in store. As such, when he thought back to his spatial magic, he figured out the puzzle.
He made a portal in front of him that then absorbed a good chunk of the beam into his noble phantasm, the Village of Origin. As for where the portal came out, right next to his 'father'.
Axel quickly understood how the stage 3 shadow had killed him during their first encounter after he had defeated the stage 2 shadow. It releases bits of spatial magic in a pattern, evenly spaced out so that anything that entered it was in fact, displaced to another location.
It's like running straight into a hail of knives that are double-sided. No matter how you approach, the victim/target would just be ripped apart as if they jumped into a blender.
This displacement field was effective in blocking the first few seconds of the cannon's beam before it was forced to stop for some reason. The beam then hit the shadow but it was only knocked back a few feet as Axel learned its second ability, spatial armor.
A spatial magic coating around the body that seems to easily stop the beam. Axel was not sure why the shadow did not outright start from this but there should have been some sort of extra cost that made it hesitant. But Axel quickly notices a weak point in the armor, a spot where it's thinner due to his spatial sense.
He materializes behind the shadow and it begins to turn around but in that time, Axel summons a nen sword and coats it in spatial magic before unleashing a 'Judgment' cut upon the shadow. The rapid slashes of spatial energy instantly rends the armor and begins to tear apart the shadow. It shapeshifts into a black slime that then mana bursts away.
Yet its luck ran out as Axel simply respositions the portal so the continuous beam strikes the slime, stunning it as he himself follows up with another dimensional slash. The thick meter wide slash of spatial energy splits the slime directly in half. The slime is not even, which is the perfect indicator that it did not split itself but he split it. While the slime contains great power, it does have energy limits which is the only reason Axel was able to succeed in this.
"Not bad kid, gooooood ddd, luuuuuccccckkkk toooooo youuuuuuuuuu" The shadows last words are heard and Axel can't deny that he is not a fair bit emotional for this shadow who helped mend his soul into a new state and shared great sage with him. Yet he has little time to properly express his gratitude as the shadows ashes flow into him.
The village of Origin also begins to undergo a set of changes, one of which is that he can finally enter the noble phantasm with his original body too. This happens but just like Vitch found, he was still in the last place he was at before, it's where he will end up unless he chooses to teleport to another location through his Second Magic: Operation of Parallel Memories.
Yet the village is not the only thing that is changing, with the defeat of this shadow, the whole of Axel is changing as well. His [Devourer] and [Great Sage] are undergoing changes along with many of his other abilities. Comparable to the ascension that Lily and Finn had undergone, his is more comprehensive as his mind is filled with the final catalog of spatial abilities but also his new and improved mana burst.
In addition to all this, defeating this shadow, Axel had completed his Great Deed and received the informal status up to Level 10. The chains wrapped around his neck, forearms and ankles slowly wither away as even Vitch and Circe who are outside the Village of Origin can feel the dense magical energy originating from where Axel 'is'.
Now it has to be noted that after level 2 or 3, Axel had essentially been getting 3k points in each stat. Even after he was forcefully sealed away by Alaya and could only use a limit of 999. He was still grinding his stats up to 3k. His overall stats could be
Strength: ~26500
Agility: ~26500
Endurance:~26500
Magic:~26500
Dexterity: ~26500
( The stats are not exactly 1.5k or 3k. Especially level 3 which had all numbers a bit less than 1.5k like 1450 and whatnot. But after that they were all 3k each as that was his 'limit'. So with 3 levels worth of 1.5k, across 10 levels. 30k would be proper limit, meaning there is a 4.5k loss and that explains the stats.)
The overwhelming physical power actually burns Axels body which is inside the noble phantasm. Yet with his never sealed endurance and his new healing ability, the damage is immediately recovered until no signs of damage could appear. In a moment of clarity, Axel channels a smidge of spatial energy into his fist as he clenches and cracks appear in the space around him.
To anybody else, such spatial power would have damaged their reality marble space but Axel is somebody with affinity with Space and even to gain full access to it, he had to defeat its avatar who was a master of space. As such, the damages to the reality marble are also healed within moments. Yet Axel knows that his simple action is a proper reflection of the space in the outside world. Meaning with a simple clench of his fist he can shatter space.
He could likely do this with just his physical prowess but that would require him to waste energy to unleash his near full force.
With the pain of his body and mind finally subsiding, he examines what is the full benefit of his noble phantasm.
1: He may finally summon the village of Origin to the outside world and trap a certain number of targets alongside himself. Befitting of a complete Reality Marble. He also gained the incantation for it and even he feels weirded out by home pompous it is.
2: The absorption of energy is faster now, allowing him to grant complete godhood now to any he dictates as worthy. This means he has a proper solution to the question of longevity for his mortal lovers. This would also enhance their own power in any of the future journeys they would undertake together.
3: His mana burst has evolved. Previously he could complete short range teleportation but now that restriction is removed as long as he has enough energy for longer distance. But also his mana burst can allow him to enter something called the Veil of Space. This is essentially an illusionary space in between 'space' . This can allow him to be invisible for short periods of time but any attacks or outburst of energy would kick him out wherever he appeared.
4: His spatial abilities have risen: he gained the shadows' spatial dislocation and Spatial Suit, which as he surmised, was very energy heavy but such a worry is only fitting for the shadow. With both his ring of power and current stats, his energy reserves are enormous and he could use this spell all day long and even survive in space with it as it allows him flight as long as he is in zero gravity areas.
Amongst the other spells he gained was: Spatial reflection, Spatial puppet, and Boundary. With Spatial Reflection, he can cause space itself to be like glass or like Hisoka's Bungee Gum (which has both the properties of rubber and gum) to reflect projectiles, Physical and magical. If you wonder why the shadow didn't use this, it's because it's the equivalent of pouring an equal amount of magic to whatever he wanted to reflect but Axel has it different as he only has to pay half the price of the necessary energy to reflect it.
Spatial Puppet is a creation type spell where he gives birth to a void elemental to do his bidding, it has no proper sense of self or Will, similar to his version of flesh puppets when he used Migi to split his body into 'clones'. Except unlike the clones, this elemental is not physically tied to his body via a magically reinforced intestine. Axel also does not have to weaken himself physically to create these clones as he only has to use a portion of his energy which he can get back by reabsorbing the clones. In a sense, they are effectively drones that can absorb the surrounding dimensional energy to sustain themselves. Creating a near zero loss technique.
Boundary on the other hand is much simpler, it's a forcefield, but not a normal one as any attack that strikes this barrier is absorbed into it, if it's physical then it's only the pure force of it. This absorbed attack/energy is kept within a sealed space where he can freely use it to counter attack with. The only proper limit is that he has to spend a ton of energy to keep these attacks stored away. With his current energy reserves, he could likely contain 15 smaller scale nukes (like japans '2 Rising Sun'), or 1000 of those energy beams that Vitch had shot at him. Now these are nukes, which had been unleashed would be absorbed in its entirety and now just whatever portion affects him.
Onto the final object of his improvement.
5: Both his [Devourer] and [Great Sage] are undergoing transformations to become stronger. Though until Great Sage finishes its transformation, he has no clue on the exact details.
"Haaa" Axel lets out a deep breath which emits steam from the pure power being released from his body. He touches his neck and his arms, enjoying the clear sensation of his no longer marked skin. He has been holding in his annoyance about the seal for long enough. Once he is done with Vitch and things settle down, he will pay Alaya a visit [2].
He leisurely performs stretches and other exercises to get used to his newfound power. He then allows Alaba the Valgang Dragon/Drake to become his First full fledged god.
His small wings that were incapable of flight or anything other than being sharp (they were hidden by being pressed against the sides of his body, even Axel didn't know he had them), grow rapidly along with the rest of his body.
His bones stretch and balloon up until he is roughly 200 ft tall with a wingspan of 350 ft. Golden runes stretch across its body as they are imprinted onto every scale. It takes on a blue coloring as all its previously brown scales are shedded to give rise to the beautiful blue hue.
Its neck gains a spiky main that appears crystalline. With every breath Alaba releases blue magical mist. Axel had instilled into the dragon the pure worldly definition of Dragon. So it has every type of breath attack available and can even create its own draconic spells or learn other worlds. (imagine dnd Tiamat and Bahamut as one…I guess that would be their 'father' but i believe that is a creation god of the world so not quite the same.)
Alaba is also capable of learning human spells and Axel already passed over his own magical knowledge to the dragon as he can do that in his territory without any major fuss.
Alaba was in quite some pain due to the sudden transformation but as its body is strengthened, so is its mind and now it can even talk if it wishes to. Yet its mind is also overwhelmed with the dense magical knowledge and needs time to absorb it. So it rests in its semi-coma.
Axel then stirs his nen and summons Doctor Blythe, he begins to infuse the Nen puppet with divinity as well but he doesnt have enough to make a full god so he makes it a demi god spirit puppet. Capable of enough independent thought whilst being subservient to Axel himself. As it was infused with the aspect of healing and medicine.
It's entire body shape shifts into a copy of demi god Axel (buff with runic symbols on it's body which are actually miniature medical theories. Demi-god Blythe wears a doctor overcoat and belt with pants on, but remains shirtless. Overcoat is a simple white coat while the belt is adorned with various needles and healing cures. The previous nen spirit now has a proper corporeal form and has to live within the noble phantasm now like any living being.
Axel is now ready to fight, he uses nen to reapply some clothes to him as his previous ones were all turned into dust when he was unsealed.
Reappearing inside the tunnel that was created when he was struck by the energy beam. Axel looks through the hole and finds the duo still there with the cannon next to it, already switching out to its next round.
The duo are shocked by the changes to Axel as he has once again changed into his tall teenage form once more, the pressure they come under just by him looking at them is staggering but Circe has magical defensive objects which shield her from the pressure. But her worry grows as she can tell that they can only last a few minutes, and this is just his gaze, he hasn't unleashed his magical aura at all.
Vitch, who has been alive for hundreds of years suddenly gets a bad feeling and tosses out a bunch of defensive barriers that cover only her when before she could even blink, Axel is right next to them with his hand clenched at his waist.
Neither of them could sense Axel's movements at all. There was no spatial resonance or any sign of magic used at this moment. Axel crossed a distance of 2 miles (3.2k meters) in less than half a second. Circe is especially afraid as she only has a few trinkets that Vitch had given her for her defense but is not deserted by the same person when the threat actually arrives.
She attempts to escape but is too slow as the punch is released towards Vitch. The physical collision easily snaps the first few barriers but soon arrives at the last one. It surprisingly does not shatter but that is only because the previous barriers were actually linked with this one. They absorbed miniscule amounts of energy and fed it into this last barrier. It's on the brink of overcharge and as such releases some of that energy back at Axel but he just clenches harder and Vitch is sent flying far to the outskirts of the city as the last barrier shatters, pushing Vitch away as a final failsafe.
Yet the repercussions of this punch are not so simple. A giant windstorm covers the whole city, tearing apart various buildings that had been recently rebuilt, Circe herself was sent flying by this.
The shockwave of this attack had shattered her trinkets and broken 3/4th of all her bones, along with rupturing her muscles and skin. She would be bleeding out and dying if Axel had no use for her but he does and as such demi-god Blythe is summoned next to her and begins healing her injuries enough that she remains alive but immobile.
She coughs up tons of blood due to the various internal injuries on her but with a few quick injections of a medical replica of Axel's own healing factor, her wounds gradually recover, yet as the demi god has its orders, it rebreaks her limbs to keep her immobile. As this is its first time healing like this, it underestimates the dosage and thus has to snap her limbs a few times before they stay broken. She passed out from the pain after a few minutes of howling and groaning in agony.
Axel himself follows after Vitch, landing on the ground just a few feet away from her. Vitch herself has become a bit of a mess, her hair messed up all over her face which in any other circumstance would have inspired the hearts of man to give their lives for her. Or bend her over like the whore she is.
(finally using the scene for this moment that I had made roughly 2 months ago or so for this finale)
"Hahaha" Vitch laughs for some reason as Axel can only assume that her own desperation at her plans failing has given rise to some form of madness. Yet as he watches her, He senses many eyes have been attracted to this area from the surrounding people of Orario. Civilians and weaker adventurers who very likely could have woken up from the shockwave of his attack.
"What is so funny?" He questions.
"It all makes so much sense, You're just like that snake girl, her sisters and her vile roommates. You are not human, but an abomination created by some Idiotic immortal." She makes a strange outlandish claim as she grabs into her coat and throws out a bunch of polaroid photos of him across all his various transformations (child, teen, demi-god).
These hundreds of photos fly all over the place and Axel even catches one, of his child form. He compares his current form with this child one and enters deep thought while Vitch continues to embellish her words. His body begins to turn into his child form as he continues holding the picture in his hand.
"Trying to get sympathy from everyone, are you now? You are not a human, never was, never will be" Axel can only assume that somehow she hopes to gather public sentiment to get him to desert or turn evil against them if he does become ostracized.
If this was him from a few days ago then this might have been the case but he has already experienced proper parental love and acceptance. He drops the photo as he looks at Vitch.
"You are right, I'm not" he begins to slowly walk towards her while she shuffles backwards in fear of any sudden attack.
"But what I am, is Axel Gram, always was, has been and will be."
"I have never once declared myself a human in the whole year I've lived in Orario, but I finally know who and What I am. A Demon." he spreads his arms, "I Am the manifestation of a force unbeknownst to Humankind, a monster who devours other monsters."
"I am"
"A Slime"
[Ding Reboot complete, Great Sage has evolved. Raphael, Lord of Wisdom has been awakened.
[Ding, Error, Necessary Materials for Azathoth missing, Soul preference accepted, Beelzebuth has been renamed. Devourer has evolved into Great Devourer.]
[Ding, Unknown user detected, scanning]
[Ding, Analysis complete, Conclusion: Incomplete Reincarnation/scattered soul piece of original user detected. Will be fragmented Accepted. Raphael recognizes Axel Gram as a new user.
[Error: Barrier against Raphel detected. Analyzing 'Falna']
[Use Great Devourer to subsume Falna into Raphael?]
'As long as this does not cause instability in my soul then yes' Axel mentally warns while Vitch is confused by his words.
"A slime??" Her confusion is palpable in the air, all those who are viewing this share this sentiment.
Yet before their very eyes, Axel's body begins to melt and then collapse into a puddle of water that reforms into a translucent blue clear ball. Across the city, all his party members' rings blow up as the original Gluttony and [Devourer] flow and merge back into his, they are all greatly weakened but they are still high level adventurers. Their teamwork and nen abilities work the same as usual, allowing them still destroy the robots, just with more effort.
[Ding: Operation successful. Great Devourer has consumed the Falna, Raphael has taken over the soul stability procedure. Gained {unbound} and many other abilities from Falna.]
[Warning: ….]
Yes the reason he melted into a slime is because his falna was shattered and as such, he lost his original human form due to his soul instability which was remedied a moment later.
"What?" Vitch is still confused by actually seeing a proper slime outside the dungeon that had been living it's whole life as a human.
Axel 'looks' at Vitch with a certain gleam in his body, "Yes, this is who I am. And now it's your turn to pay for your sins against Humanity as a whole." his body suddenly blows up as the slime parts encircle Tamamo Vitch Koyanskaya. She is soon within Axel's 'body' when she is melted down and devoured by his ability.
[Ding: Gained {...} ]
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[1] evilus and BB-> implied person who created Passionlips and the snake Gorgon as experiments. Of course the Beasts also fall under this implication but they are more intune with a certain type of sin or aspect and that was even before gods descended, their actions were just amplified but some of them had greater willpower to resist these changes like Kiara.
[2] many had wondered if Axel had just 'accepted' the seal when it was placed on him. He didn't really have a choice. Through his spars back then, he knew how strong his 'goddess' Raikou was. But her fear of Alaya told him that this was not something he was ready to face. Yet he has no such fear now and can get revenge. He also at least considered himself human back then so he was under a suppression effect just from being in her presence. That is not the case now.
Alt Title: Unstable tower, Relinquished Seal, Full Force.
Final author's note for this chapter: Well writing this was fun. Before today, I wrote around 3.4k words and then wrote the next 3k words today in one go with no breaks and I'm not even tired. Goes to show how a proper computer does to my mentality. Shame it also makes me lazy as I just want to play all the games that I've bought over the course of a year or two because said games were not available on ps4 or my laptops were not good enough to run them smoothly (lagging like hell, yes, smoothly no).
One last mention, I am changing my work schedule from every 2 days to every 3 days, 2 reasons for this. (so the next chapter will actually be on Wednesday the 3rd. Making it 2-3 chapters a week instead of my previous 3-4 chapters a week. If I feel good then i'll post early to replicate my previous 2 day schedule but that depends on a lot of factors right now.
1: work decided to increase my work hours so I now Only have Sunday and Wednesday as days off
2: I am trying to get a promotion but that means I have to undergo some sort of bs 30 day observation to show that I am worthy of this promotion. This means I will be even more tired on my work days, which is almost every day.
Next chapter will likely be part 2 of this final moment. I'll try to release a status page of all Axels current abilities that have been modified heavily since we no longer have the falna and its restrictions/abilities. Then there will be one or two more chapters before we finally leave Danmachi. Enjoy