C48: Unknown Hydra, Soul Shock 4, Battle of Giants
Word count = 3216 on 3/8/2024
Continue playing the same music as last chapter as both were inspired by it. Alternative music would be Gods from LoL. Not recommending original video or game itself but music slaps Another recommendation would be Wrong side of Heaven by Five Finger Death Punch.
On a side note: the left hydra head will be referred to as the 1st head. Middle is 2nd. And right is 3rd. Also this is the main Course if not obvious.
A warning that the last 3rd of the chapter is fueled by rage and reason is at the end.
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The hydra roars and Axel summons a flame wave to dry himself off as he won't be harmed by his own magic but the same can't be said for his armor which gets burn a little. This is after it had already been dunked, along with Axel in the cold water which affects how brittle it is but only minisculely.
Axel was still walking towards his giant sword when he had to run back to protect his group which was trying to sneak out as they were already close to the entrance. The first head which was initially blocking the path begins to jab forward to bite the group when Axel collides with the head with all 6 arms coated in black aura and manifesting gluttonous vortex punches at once.
The first head is sent rebounding against the wall where it breaks off and falls down blocking half the path but they can still squeeze through but Axel has a bit of Deja Vu of the goliath fight as the doorways were blocked last time too but not fully.
"Go, get out. Ill hold it off and then follow after. Not sure I can beat this one either since it regenerates so quickly." Axel tells the group who quickly begin squeezing through the gap one by one. Ouka and Welf are blocking the group with the shields they have. Meanwhile the 2nd and 3rd heads are observing Axel. Possibly getting feedback from the first head which raises back up and lets out lesser screechs and roars at the other heads who ignore it.
The hydra moves forward in an attempts to step on them but Axel tanks the strike with 4 arms as the final 2 arms keep punching out to knock the foot back. Eventually it has to step back as it waves it's leg a bit. Seemingly realizing that it feels weaker from Axel's gluttony.
ROOOOOAAAAAARR, SCREEEEECCHHHHH. The heads yell out in conjunction which forces the group to cover their ears in pain as the 1st head once again goes for the bite. The third instead slams down itself in Axel's direction.
Axel first uses vortex punches to knock aside the first head before he dodges the 3rd head since he has a brief moment where he cant use the vortex punch or other gluttony skills but it's negligible to a half second but the 3rd head came in that time frame which is why he had to dodge.
Seeing that he cant remain defensive for more. He tells Welf to get his other magic swords to protect the group while he charges towards the Hydra. It tries to step on him again but he side steps the giant flat feet as he gets under the hydra to begin wailing upon its belly. The heads growls as it jumps up to hopefully crush Axel but he tosses out a rock from his trusty pouch to teleport away from the collision zone.
BOOOOM . The hydra lands with a powerful crash as Axel considers it an impressive feat for it to be able to jump so high. He rushes back towards it when all three heads come jabbing at him to devour him but he jumps on the first head when it lands only to jump over the 2nd and and land on the third.
With parasyte active, he swings to swing out nimbly, inflicting rapid cuts along the entire length of the 3rds snakeheads 'neck'. He ends up on the back of the hydra. He begins to quickly inflict long cuts alongside its back before he uses his other arms to keep the wound open as he goes deeper and deeper into the Hydra's body. The hydra heads turn towards him in anger as they release a joint breath attack that looks like a noxious green purple mist towards Axel.
Axel has been constantly taking the poisons that Kaoruko had prepared for him as he was given a few for the expedition into the dungeon which he had been taking during their rests but he still lacks a poison resistance or immunity skill which means he can only instigate the asuran rage skin. Creating a clay like armor to coat his body as he continues tearing into the Hydra's body. His feet constantly absorb the hydras energy to fuel his burnt clay armor against the acidic/poisonous cloud covering him.
He soon punctures through the outer layer of skin and fatty tissue. He drops down into the hole and gets splashed with tons of blood that in itself is also acidic and wearing down his armor. He releases full powered flame waves to burn the blood away but more keeps pouring in.
His next choice of action is to create a gluttony vortex but not a punch, instead he revolves the gluttony aura around himself like a cyclone inside the hydras body. It begins to roar in pain as it's internal organs are shredded by Axels parasyte blades as well as weakened by the devouring cyclone located inside it's own body. Axel finds a complete lack of a monster core/crystal. He can only assume that it might be hidden on one of the heads but he has no clue where as it's for once not inside the chest of a monster.
One of the heads suddenly hovers over it's newfound hole where Axel is and opens it's mouth. Sparks of lightning are seen before it's shot out like a lightning bolt. The Hydra plans to take the self harm route to either get rid of axel or at least bring him out of it's body before biting him to death. Axel disengages the vortex but it still remains for a few seconds as it's momentum bound. He then creates a thick hazy barrier from his gluttony as the lightning bolt is sent down. It rapidly breaks through the gluttony cyclone and reaches the barrier. It stops it for a few seconds before it's broken through and collides with Axel's ceramic skin layer.
It's good for the hydra due to the fact that the ceramic layer is not conductive which means that until it breaks through, it itself won't feel pain. Axel himself is being pressed down by the powerful strike . As such, he can only restart his gluttony cyclone as it doesnt require and movement from him since it's closer to mental manipulation of it. He could do vortex punches the same way but his fist acts as a stabilizing agent for it's power.
Duh
Axel's cyclone isn't able to build up very much as it's constantly broken down and rebuilt but the gluttony is still hitting the insides of the flesh. Axel suddenly shakes as he feels a strange sensation. It's as if his body has reached a cap and won't be able to absorb more. He seems to have reached some sort of limit with the falna for his level or at least with his gluttony. He sends out Shades to confirm this but even his gluttony shade which had been overlaid causes no other changes for him. He still feels the absorption but it isn't enhancing his body anymore. He would worry more about it but with his ceramic armor finally giving him and Axel being shocked by the lightning. He can truly focus on this.
"AAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH" His shades work semi-independently to continue striking out to provide Axel energy to survive the lightning which is burning his body heavily. The other hydra heads also roar out in pain as the lightning finally strikes it's insides as well. But the primary head dispensing lightning shows no signs of struggle. Axel is relegated to roaring out his pain as he cycles between recovered and injured over and over again thanks to his Shades absorbed energies.
Axel collapses and the lightning finally stops, the hydra's own insides have also been charred and as if finally acknowledging the feeling. The lightning hydra head roars out in pain as it falls over. The other 2 slowly snake forward to the hole in their body to grab Axel and tear him apart before they can properly recover.
Axel himself is shaking as with his falna reaching it's limit, him unlocking his previous ability fairly early. His soul shakes as another 2 fragments synergize and roar out. Axel experiences the mythical life of a transcendental being who claims the title of demigod. The major shard reveals a being in question who fought against interstellar creatures and used his very will to halt the stars in the sky. This applied even when this beings mind fell due to an illness infected upon him by someone he used to consider a friend but his will also kept his body alive to continue fighting and protecting his world until he finally fell at the hands of a warrior who sought to change the world in their own manner.
The second fragment is more minor but shares a similar origin. It is one of the interstellar beasts who attempted to invade the world. It was slayed by the demigod and used as a model for his own attainments in gravity magic. Yet it could never use the beast's full skill set due to its mindless state or it had forgotten most of it when it's mind died but retained the simplest ones [1]. The beast is exceptionally talented in gravity magic and even minor teleportation through using gravity to create temporary wormholes for it to travel through. Unfortunately, these are both just fragments and offer not nearly the peak of power that both creates that reached but they are getting there.
"NOOOOOOOOOO" Axel's body at this moment is pulled out of the hole and devoured by the middle hydra head. Welf yells out in panic as he swings his fire magic sword but the middle head shrugs it off. Ouka tries to pull Welf back and into the crack so that he could finally escape. They would remember Axel's valiant sacrifice but halt as they witness something new.
GLURGLE
SPLURT.
The middle Hydras neck starts to distort around. Pushing and pulling every which way before it finally explodes out as a 25ft tall red bronze/gold armored figure with lion like emblems on it's shoulders and flowing red hair, It's sizable hands are holding the upper. Half of the hydra head it just ripped off. The figure appears ethereal as if a ghost with at the center of it is Axel with a puzzled expression on his face as he jumps out of the neck cavity. He lands on the ground beside the hydra who is roaring in pain. The hole on it's back is finally healing only to lose one of it's head but the roar is put short as the giant holds out it's hand in the opposite direction of the hydra. A purple aura manifests around the hand condensing into a purple star like pattern that causes the goliath blade to edge closer towards it before the purple aura is made manifest deeper which directly attracts the giant sword which the giant respectively uses with the attractive force to cut forward.
SWISH
The goliath blade is sent sweeping towards the 3rd hydra's head and it is cut off directly.
The 1st head which was responsible for the lightning, rises to dispense another blast of it towards Axel's giant blade swinging shade. The shade simply extends it's off hand to block the lightning while the other hand vertically (up down) slices the 1st head in half. The head collapses but the hydra doesnt disperse into smoke even though the monster should be dead.
Axel steps back and sees the middle head which was ripped apart is bubbling and creating new growths. The neck even splits into 2 as 2 more heads take the original heads place. Axel sees the other heads start to recover and split as well so he can only take the initiative by merging his Asura shade into his starscourge shade. The armor on the shade morphs as 2 new sets of arms are created and the legs disappear to create new cleaver like weapons into the hands of those new arms.
The newly born 6 heads roar at Axel before utilizing their own unique breath attacks. The first 2 (born from the first head) use lightning and fire. The 2nd set of two uses poison and acid while the third set of 2 uses some sort of dark smog that is different from poison and the other uses wind.
The wind breath creates a wind barrier similar to Axels own cyclone but it's used to capture the smog and acid within itself as the fire and lightning targets Axel himself. He can quickly tell that the smog is combustible. Axel braces himself for the fire and lightning.
BOOOM
An controlled explosion occurs as the room shakes and stone piece blocking the exit shatters which allows Ouka and Welf to properly escape as they had already retreated when the explosion was being set up.
When the dust clears, Axel is missing but suddenly appears above the group with a purple starry burst. Having teleported, he swings his multiple blades at the heads which bisects 3 of the heads while the 4th blade almost cut one off but was stopped by another head. The situation revolves into a contest of strength as the surviving heads bite down his armswhile all 3 heads he cut become 6 new heads, With a total of 9 heads now, they join into the struggle. Biting down Axels shades arms and legs. Axel simply smiles as the bites only hold him back but don't hurt him that bad.
(started with 3, became 6. Went down to 3. Those 3 generated and another 3 rose.)
Axel could very well dispell his shade and then resummon it again which would reset the strength contest but he has a better plan. The shade coats itself in purple energy and allows itself to be overpowered. So that when he falls over, the purple energy comes in contact with the ground and releases a gravity pulse x3 which brings the hydra heads down as well but they stay down while Axel frees himself as he mantains the current gravity pulse to keep the hydra down as he begins cutt the vertically to find the monster core.
One-wind head
Two-darkness head
Three-poison head
Four-acid head
Five-Fire head. Ahem, fifth head of fire
Sixth-Lightning head
7th light head
8th earth head
9th elementless head or pure mind/mana which sends out shockwaves and non elemental bullets
None of the heads have the core which is strange to him, so he cuts them all off while he starts randomly stabbing the body. With one free hand, he channels fire to start cooking the hydra's body as he starts cutting off various chunks like grilled beef.
His mind expenditure is reaching it's limit but with him being in constant contact with the hydra, he is making due for now but he cant support the gravity spell for more than five minutes.
After a few seconds, he finds the core and it was hidden in it's back right leg. Sneaky bitch. Also the other heads regenerated and now there is 18. Which means each element was doubled and the 2nd elementless head was replaced with a spatial head which allowed it to teleport as well.
"Fucker. Get back here. Im not done with you"
Axel uses his shade teleportation as it's less mind intensive as he closes the distance but he cant get the back leg as it keeps teleporting away. He has tried to use the gravity spell more but it can still teleport. At most parts of it's body is ripped off in the spatial travel it uses but that regenerates. Axel tries to stab the spatial head but the others keep him at bay.
Axel is down to the last action he could take. He overlays all his shades onto the pseudo divine shade. He channels the combined power through the giant blade as it is great for channeling energy which confused Axel more of what this was given to the goliath when it has no magic capabilities. It's possible he killed it to fast or he was too fast for it to use any form of magic but it's too late to know.
Blade moves to stab at the hydra, they release a combined breathe attack against the blade. The gluttony on the blade absorbs the energy and adds it to the blade. Cutting through the breathe attack. Then once it comes in contact with a random head, the explosive shockwave spreads out through the hydras body. Instantly crushing all the heads and the blade continues to stab the main body which releases the rest of the energy which explodes the hydras body into a fiery inferno before Axel finishes it off with a second cut onto the mana core itself which blows up the hydra into dust.
Axel dispels the shades and drops the sword as he collapses onto mind down since he used up all his mind in that last two strikes.
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[1] So to clear things up. The Major fragment is Starscourge Radahn of Elden Ring. The lore bits I included showcase my own theory that in the trailer fight between him and milenia is when his mind that originally died and he arose as a mindless beast. It was their final collision that had dislodged Milennia's arm and Radahn who was knocked out rose up again. The second fragment is one of the many Astel. Yes, their lore indicates that they are aliens and how they fought with Radahn before he sealed them away in the stars through his will.
I swear I am not trying to delay the NEN purposely. It just works out that way as I come up with new soul fragments which work better in the specific situation. I promise you do not have to wait until level 10 or whatever for it.
Second thing of note is to not buy the shitty overpriced egg chocolates in grocery stores. It's a fucking hollow egg with 4 fucking pieces of chocolate. It's a scam and the idiot manager broke it even more to ensure they couldn't buy it back. It's not even a good chocolate. Any other dark chocolate bar could have easily replaced this shit. (I was at 2.3k words when I found this out and the rest of the chapter is fueled by my rage. As such there is 900 words which contain the will of my rage.