C149: Epic battle of unknown Proportions: Titan V Titan
Alt Title Teaser: "I welcome thee"
Overall Word count = 2848 on 10/14/2024.
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Having blown out the knee of Gaia, forcing it to bend over also caused plenty of rubble to come falling down. This serves as a few extra platforms for Axel to speed up as he jumps away from the leg he was on, onto said falling platforms.
He uses his [Elemental Manipulation] to create a wind cone in front of them that creates a sort of slipstream as he cuts through the wind, allowing him to theoretically move faster than he was before since he faces less air resistance thanks to the wind cone acting as a barrier to it.
While he travels upwards, Gaia recovers from the knee injury and stands up tall and proud before multiple hill-like spikes are formed around its thighs that then shoot out at Axel. He jumps off the current falling platform he was on and lands on top of one of the spikes, Slides on it and under another spike next to it.
He grabs the spikes behind the one he just went under as he repositions it towards Gaia. The wind Guard changes shape to act like a stool to hold the spike in place along with the one Axel is standing on.
Axel accumulates multiple powers with lightning coating his foot, his [spirit Energy] enveloping the spike and him utilizing his [War Gods Strike]. This is a skill that was created from the combination of Asura and Kratos' powers with a focus on their physical boost. This was condensed into a single attack format, as such, Axel's physical powers are enhanced exponentially so as a powerful kick is unleashed upon the base of the cone like spike. The wind guard dissipates as the strike connects.
BOOOM
This sends the spike flying back at Gaia with tons more force. It strikes into the Titan's thigh which causes it to be stunned as it had also been moving it's hand to outright slap Axel away when it noticed that he was just lying upon one of the spikes it just shot out.
A resounding crash is heard from the impact zone that causes massive wind storms to be made but Axel is quite disappointed with the results as the spike he shot back was reabsorbed for it's raw materials to rapidly mend the injury it made. Sure there is some damages still there but those are rapidly healing.
This provided Axel multiple insights into how well each of his powers reacts to Gaia's body. First and foremost, his lightning and spirit energy did not seem to do very much. He surmises that Gaia does have some sort of core or spot where it's energies are gathered and he has to hit that spot with his spirit energy for it to be effective while Elemental magics such as lightning are closer to physical attacks due to being purely made out of magical stone.
It is possible that his fire might be able to do something but only for a moment as his burning would work as it would be a tug of war between his fire and the titans regeneration. Granted he is still going to try as it would serve as a suitable distraction while he continues climbing up.
Conjuring a ball of fire within his hand. Axel notices that the fires quickly take on a mirage-like coloring as it constantly changes due to the variety of energies that Axel provides it. Its heat far surpasses the immolation capacity of the black flames he could summon before from one of his spells.
He launches the flames towards the same thigh that he had shot the spike at previously as the blast area surpasses greatly from the shockwave that was created from the spike as well. In fact, all the dust and rock particles that were flying around were quickly immolated and Axel nearly caught himself on fire too.
As he continued climbing up, he also controlled the flame to naturally flow 'deeper' into said thigh instead of simply spreading outward. His reasoning for that was quite simple. While spreading the flame out would certainly shave the outermost layer of stone into molten lava. If the titan was smart then it would simply knock that section of rock off itself then recover.
But by sending the fire deeper into its stone body, it would be stronger due to it being concentrated but also harder to get rid of unless it can somehow extinguish it but normal water or even its known magical water would be effectively useless against fire of this caliber.
His thoughts were made correct as he briefly noticed a long crack appear around the waist that then allowed water to flow down it as it tried to douse the flame. Only for those same flames to immolate the flowing water which provided it a second entry way into the Titans body. Both of these streams of fire now follow his command and seek to dive deeper into its body.
By this point, Axel has reached around Gaia's upper chest. It has tried to slap him away but every movement shakes rubble off its body which Axel happily uses to continue ascending. Eventually he runs out of footholds so as the newest slap comes at him which would surely land on him.
He jumps as high as he can and transforms back into a slime. This grants him higher physical resistance as he is finally struck by the mountainous stone hand.
"Fall" A deep echoing voice comes from the Titan as it smacks Axel away, only for nothing to shoot out from its hand.
Gaia turns its hand to face upward as it struggles to see Axel in his tiny slime form but with its senses, it can naturally sense Axel has gotten into one of the small cracks in its hand. Gaia raises its other hand and allows both hands to meet, hoping to crush Axel.
Just before the two hands come in contact, Axel reverts to human form as multiple arms are spawned all over his body (imagine the golden hippo from elden ring dlc except hands instead of spikes, even the hands have hands growing out of them).
With his main body parts, he catches the incoming left hand of Gaia and is pushed into the right hand he was already standing on. As he stands his ground, the various arms growing out of him begin to lash out against the left hand. Punch after punch from each strike utilizing his full power.
[Nen]- Enhancement, [War Gods Strike], [Shapeshifting] [Divine Territory: Dragon Aspect]. All these abilities are regularly reapplied on the arms as some break off only to regenerate and strike again.
Piece by pieces, stone by stone. Fracture after Fracture, Finger after Finger. The left hand is finally ground down into just its stump at the wrist.
"WROOOOO" Gaia lets out a groan or at least that is what Axel believes the sound was as it retracts it's left hand that quickly begins to mend itself while the right hand that Axel is on begins to clench in hopes of crushing Axel once more and that he ran out of energy but with his [divine territory] and [Great Devourer], he constantly gets energy back so it's only hope of him tiring out is only mentally.
Or rather that would be the case if Axel didn't have the healing divinity that could help his mind recover, or the fact that he is a slime which technically doesnt have a brain and is just all soul.
As the fingers of the right hand come down on him, Axel takes on a different approach as all the arms on him merge back into his body and his muscles bulk up like crazy. Reminiscent of a cheap crazy villain from a certain hero academy anime Axel knows next to nothing about except some random clips Rimuru had seen of it as he wasn't very interested in it except some of the girls (why you think he asked his kohai to delete his browser history before he died?)
With now super muscle arms, he strikes out like heracles does with his cestus as his arms are still infused with the previously mentioned buffs that allow him to directly snap off each finger.
Axel looks on higher up where Gaia's head is. Spotting his target, lightning covers his body as he activates God Speed from his nen as well as a variation of [War Gods Strike] called [Innate Speed]. Compressing the previous power of his punches into his legs and along with [Nen] -God Speed, he far surpasses early mach speeds and even creates a shockwave that cuts whatever is left of that right hand in half across the palm as it loses 4 of it's finger from the part that was broken off.
Within moments he reaches the elbow but a wall or rather a set of walls creating a tunnel appears in front of him. Wanting to see what Gaia has in store for him, he continues zooming right into it.
He finds spikes and monsters being thrown at him which he quickly kills by slamming his own body into them as his speed could not be stopped as all these monsters, be it goblins, orcs, Bugbears, Sword Stag, Crystal Tortoise, Power Bull (non-demi spirit), or even Fomorie. All these creatures, one by one with the exception of the tortoise, were all squashed into chunks of meat and their flimsy cores were released into the world but Axel paid them no mention as he is not blinded by money anymore.
As for the tortoise, he added that little critter into his territory as it's one of the more docile monsters, that only attacks you if it is stepped on or attacked first. It's also known for its defense which makes it a suitable candidate for a few divinities as he [Brands] it inside his territory with his mental avatar, surpassing the weak core that couldn't hold enough energy for Gaia to try invading his mind again.
In fact when it had previously chased him into the reality marble, the connection to its lesser dungeon form/mind was cut off, so it doesnt actually know how it was defeated then. One moment, it was kicking the asses of Axel and all his shades and the next moment it suddenly died.
Back to Axel's body, as he continues down the tunnel, he seems to find no end to it and using his magic, he quickly finds that he is actually traveling downward. Transferring the wind guard which had been previously transformed into a small wind cloak around himself (when he dismissed it, this happened). The wind now creates foot holds for him to no longer fall but regain his previous ascend direction.
He quickly collides into the ceiling of this proto-dungeon, reinforcing his arms again, he punches a whole new tunnel out from the dungeon and it takes a few seconds before he, at his mach speed, finally arrives back on the surface of the right arm. It seems he has crossed the elbow and likely if he had continued in his previous direction then he would have simply slipped off the entire arm and fallen off.
Returning back on course, Axel, after a brief minute of high speed travel, soon arrives at the neck. Gaia's gigantic head peers down at him with disgust as spikes and other slabs of stone are sent at him but Axel just creates [Doppelgangers] which handle these projectiles while he focuses on a spell.
Or something that is not quite a spell but has some cringe in it as he is definitely not used to something like this.
His aura seems to shift as it stops before rapidly rising while he extends his hand towards Gaia. "I welcome thee," his hands motion to himself, " Who art lesser than me", Extending his hands outwards to his sides in grandiose poise, "To witness, A land free of sickness," Waving his left hand up, "Draconic scenes," then the right hand to form a sort of 'U for Unity' pose, "And Beautiful Dreams,". Both hands sweeping down, "Filled with marvelous Beings," his hands rise to clasp together in the form of a prayer with his eyes closed, "Shall give rise to my true Feelings," He opens his eyes as he aggressively looks at Gaia who seems stumped by his actions and his mounting energy signature,
"Reality Marble, Village of Origin."
His clasped hands move toward and open up to a small orb that rapidly expands until it covers all of gaia as well as Axel and anyone else inside it as well that might be in the city.
With great finesse, Axel transports anyone that is inside the remnants of the city and doesn't die or fall off closer to the actual village itself while he and Gaia arrive in a vast desert. He had created this area after unleashing that previous fireball into the Titans body. It is still burning, draining both their energies but both are also uncaring of it.
The desert he created is more akin to the early stages of a desert when it was just a massive drought, split stones and dead earth. Axel has limited the amount of earth energy so there should be nothing to absorb from the ground underneath it which causes the fire to now spread much deeper and further into the Titans body.
"DIE!!!" Gaia roars and it stomps down, intending to create more spikes to ravage Axel's body but is surprised to find its action doing nothing except shattering the earth into sand.
"Yea no, I don't wanna. So you're gonna hafta" his body begins to rapidly expand and take on a full half dragon state as his size meets and is equal to Gaia's own.
The dungeon is surprised by this change and Axel capitalizes on this moment of surprise by socking it right in the jaw. The titans body falls backward but it shoots spears out of its back and chest. The back ones dive into the ground and support it from falling over while the front ones attempt to grab onto Axel but he just snaps them apart with a wave of his hand.
Twirling his body, his draconic tail sweeps the fellow Titans feet as it properly falls onto its back.
Axel summons a massive katana into his equally large hands as he takes a stance. "I name thee 'Yasutsuna'. He grants the nen sword a name and thus a partial divinity as he concentrates on what he must do. His action is interrupted as a massive pillar of stone erupts from Gaia's waist and stabs into his knee. A second one soon erupts from its chest and aims for Axel's own heart, but he remains resolute, even as his leg was just split apart by the first pillar. He simply uses that first pillar as an extension of his leg as he sweeps his sword across.
SWISH BOOOM RUMBLE
The sonic boom of his sword swing can be heard from the village itself as they all watch the massive fight from a distance but the village itself is protected by a barrier of Axel's making. The sword had severed this second pillar in half while also cutting off Gaia's head. It is sent flying quite a bit of distance and even bounces off of the reality marble walls before landing in front of Alaba with a crash.
The dragon awakes from its comprehensive nap as it looks at the disturbance with a look of annoyance on its scaly face. It accumulates flames before unleashing them upon the head that rapidly begins to melt the face. This was due to Axel sharing his energies and powers with the pet dragon god. Gaia's face is rapidly melted while the rest of its body remains comatose from the previous slashing attack.
The sword disappears from his hand and appears a distance away, stabbed into the head of the fallen Titan, helping end it's life as Alaba uses the part that he melted down as a head rest for it as it returns to it's sleep for further magic comprehension.
Axel's own body begins to break down into sludge and he tells [Raphael], 'Absorb the titan'
His giant body erupts into liquid as it encircles everything except it's head. Consuming it bit by bit until his, aka compressing it until only his basic slime size remains.
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Alt Title: Immolation, Reality Marble, Epic Battle of Unknown Proportions: First God Versus Last Immortal of Danmachi
whether you liked/disliked the chapter, drop a comment, I read everything anyways even though i plead yall to not comment so much early on. Granted it's fine whether you all wanna be lurkers or not.
We only have a handful of chapters left before we finally put the dungeon world behind us. Essentially 1 last final boss and a mini boss
(the following part is a repeat of the noble phantasm phrase and will not be added to word count, simply for clarity if anyone struggled to read the mix of action and words)
I welcome thee,
who is lesser than me,
To witness,
A land free of sickness,
Draconic scenes,
And Beautiful Queens,
Filled with marvelous Beings,
Shall give rise to my true Feelings,
Village of Origin.