C147: Gaia
Alt Title Teaser: Confidence
Overall Word count = 1320 on 10/8/2024. Cheers
"Now where was that entrance?" He muses to himself as he looks for the entrance to the True Dungeon's Body. He plans to harass it from the inside and buy time so that it wouldn't break out immediately.
Yet as he approaches the end of the arena and where the entrance is. The ground shakes with a resounding cracking tremor, to Axel's horror a part of the wall shifts to reveal a giant eye covered in bark but the shining green pupil attracts his attention.
"YOOOOOUUUUUUU"
The resounding voice comes from a seemingly unseen mouth that echoes the very dungeon around Axel.
'Well, that plan fell through instantly' Axel muses to himself but he isn't panicking as he is confident in his power, especially since [Raphael] 'knows' almost everything about the dungeon itself otherwise known as Gaia.
Which is why he was not surprised when the walls near him from all directions began to morph like mud and a new set of creatures was unleashed upon the dungeon.
The first type will be called revenants, they are ghost-like, that means they float, with swaying claw-like appendages for arms. From the memories of Rimuru, they would look like Harry Potter's Dementors.
As for the second type of creature, He sees them as miniature versions of the dungeon's own full body except without heads. They are stone based golems with a humanoid shape but again, without a head. Imagine a body builder was petrified and made into a stone puppet.
Both types of creatures rush towards him and he easily dodges all their attacks by just flicking his head around as they all try to finish him off quickly via decapitation, or simply head trauma. Anyone else would have gotten whiplash due to shifting their head around this fast but he remained rooted to his spot as he took to observing them for weaknesses.
At the same time he finds it, they also shift their attacks to his body to at least wound him. As both their attacks come at him, he coats himself in [Spirit Energy], an advanced application of his former Soul Resonance ability which was improved to simply be another type of energy that he can freely manipulate.
Sure he can still use the same previous ability but with a complete soul, he no longer has access to all the other forms but can just like his [Shapeshift], simply change his weapon form to whatever suits him at the moment without weakening him since he is technically turning his body into a puppet that wields his soul.
Weird huh?
While he coats his arms in this energy, he strikes out at one of the incoming Revenant's claws while the others are simply reflected back onto themselves. The one he punches dissipates into ectoplasm while the others either shatter in the case of the lesser Golems or also turn into goo like the one he punched.
["Analysis complete. These new creatures are teeming with the dungeons mana. Making them traps should you try to absorb them slowly"] Raphael warns Axel and he doesnt really need to absorb them as they are both too weak and provide him with very little.
["you could absorb a single revenant for a possible flight ability. We know how Gaia might try to access your body and I can block it now since you were previously overdependent on Gluttony"] one thing that Axel himself noticed is that none of these monsters dropped any sort of cores. He is sad that he cant make money like this but is not fully dispirited as he tries to at least absorb the ectoplasm left behind.
["You have obtained Ghost Form. Will you be going Ghost?"] Axel shivers at the reference as he did not expect it from the literal soul Ai inside him. 'Not right now' he simply says.
While he ponders to himself and with the first set of enemies down, a new set arrives from the walls but with one newer addition. It's another type of golem but this one is much larger and bulkier. Reminiscent of the Hulk Buster armor, Axel decides to refer to this as the 'Greater Golem'. Only a single one spawns but it immediately charges at Axel ahead of the others.
Axel stretches out his right arm to the side as he cracks his fingers in preparation but also for a shocking new change to occur to him.
Scales begin to cover said extended arm while his fingertips turn into claws. His new draconic features are blue, seemingly the same shade as Alaba's new dragon state. This is a result of an ability from his noble phantasm called [Divine Territory-Village of Origin].
It is already known about this but through the process of gathering world energy into his reality marble, he could bestow this energy onto others and make them demigods, or even gods of various levels. Yet what was not mentioned was how any gods that rest within his reality marble, he can call upon those same divinites even though he does not have it merged within himself.
As such, he currently has 2 divinities available to him. The first is from Alaba which is the divinity of dragonhood. This is how he transformed. While the second is from Blythe who has granted Axel access to healing magic and medical knowledge. He already knew he had access to this ability back when he was still in the second stage of unlocking his reality marble (will refer to this now as RM to shorten it down).
With [Spirit energy] still coating his body, he sweeps his hand around him. His claws glow silver as a sharp thread like tendril is swept out and severs all the creatures into 5 chunks due to all his 5 fingers. The golems and new hulkbuster are severed while the Revenants turn into goo again.
Gaia begins to send many more waves like this with various variants of these same 3 monsters. Some lesser golems have spike hands while the revenants have proper hands and cast their own type of unique ghost magic like ghost beams and whatnot. As for the Greater Golems, they sometimes turn quadrupedal (like centaurs) and try to crush him under their 4 stone feet. Some even have stone weaponry to bash his body with.
Yet all their efforts are for naught as he either repels them with [Reflection], one of two forms that his esper power from Accelerator comes in or he just swipes his hand again and destroys each wave.
His reasoning is quite simple as he is buying time for everyone up top. Through The latest wave, he learned from his [Doppelgangers] that roughly 85% of the citizens have been moved outside the city.
Which is quite fortunate as he finds that the space around him begins to crumble away due to Gaia herself moving. The dungeon has found its meager attempts lackluster and seeks to destroy Axel with their own might. Yet it can not do that while it is still buried under ground. It had also been stalling for time as it had to purge the remnant energy from the Tower of Babel that originally kept it sealed away.
As it turns out, both sides had been stalling for time. Gaia to be allowed free movement while Axel to ensure the safety of all the citizens since he knew that with its full size, it could easily destroy the whole city in a single stomp of its foot.
Up top, the first casualty of the environment is the guild which was the closest to the tower of Babel. Then was the surrounding open space and it gradually begun to spread further and further as the whole of the dungeon, aka Gaia began to rise up.
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Alt Title: Confidence, Fighting the Dungeon, Fracture.