C53: Antares Rematch, Battle of Giants P2. Orion's Arrow.
Word count = 2019 on 3/18/2024
Music comp: you can continue to listen to Graveyard by Neffex or Take You to Hell by Ava Max. (not sure how well it fits into this chapter but it hyped me up)
"Welf, I'm going to need your help. I need you to keep Antares in place for just a few seconds So I can get close" A white-haired boy asks the charging blacksmith as both their blades strike down the nearby scorpions as they rush to meet up with Axel and Ottar along with the other Freya familia members.
"Alright, easy enough, I just need an op-en…ing….." Welf responds but his attention is quickly attracted to the front where Axel is.
Back to Axel, The second giant soon comes charging in. It's maw open to try swallowing Axel. The person in question does the unthinkable. He does not move to stop it and is soon swallowed up before he slides down its throat. He soon halts himself halfway through by jamming his fist through the inner flesh. With the new hole in its neck, the giant scorpion roars while Axel can see Antares through the hole so he sticks a middle finger through the hole before summoning a gluttony cyclone around him that shreds the scorpion from the inside.
Ottar witnessed all this with a calm expression as he swung his blade to kill off the encroaching various small scorpions. He has his head when he sees how immature Axel is flipping off the monster Rex that roars out when it sees the movement. The final giant scorpion charges up an energy beam like its parent. Energy condensed around its mouth like a tailed beast bomb (naruto) before releasing the beam-like attack at Axel and Ottar.
Ottar is proud of his physical body but he has no reason to simply tank powerful attacks by the monsters before him and dodges the intense beam while Axel condenses a shockwave to simply offset the weaker beam as he has already seen what Antares could do with it and would dodge that but these weaker newborns aren't worth that extra effort. After deflecting the beam, He gathers gravity onto his fist and punches out with an uppercut punch that with the gravity magic mixed into the vortex punch,
The result is a messy but glorious scene when the gluttonous force connects. The gravity hits hard to tear through the scorpion monster before the vortex twists everything including the gravity energy. As a result, chunks of the giant child are ripped off and sent swirling around before the upper half of its body is disassembled. Axel is about to finish off the rest of this corpse when a much stronger laser comes blowing through it and towards Axel.
Axel dodges by leaning to the side as the beam nearly clips his right arm, he skips just out of range before Antares can move the beam in his direction. It still tries but only a bit before it dissipates the beam. Its 6 thin shadowy arms come thrusting in his direction.
"Handle the kids, I'll beat up the daddy," Axel tells Ottar as more come to surround him. Axel himself has to dodge the various arms but he does so in a refined manner as he does a barrel roll under the first 2 arms before jumping over 3 and mixing in gluttony with the normal shockwaves to reveal and injure the last arm as he rushes towards Antares.
Ottar originally wanted to refute this but soon a pincer grabs his leg from underground. Hundreds more scorpions break out through the ground to surround Ottar and the other Freya familia as well as Ais and a few others who joined the outside war. Antares originally wanted its children to burrow under the city and break out inside to divide the defenses but the dungeon itself prevented them from entering the city.
They had attempted to break the walls but they either regenerated or spawned more monsters until the invading force had to give up and the walls were sealed and the spawned beasts suffocated to death and reabsorbed by the dungeon. The dungeon itself desires to conjure the destruction of humans and gods and cares not for Antares and its brood. It had failed to exterminate humanity and gods before and it could very well be stopped again. Which is why the dungeon will protect itself from the destruction caused by its children.
After dodging the shadow arms, Axel rushed forward before activating his asura state to grow extra arms before coating himself in gluttony. He rams Antares on its legs which makes them be lifted in recoil or fall under threat of being ripped off. The less it is injured, the better, is Antares' thought process but by lifting its legs, it has also revealed an opening. Axel moves forward underneath Antares and punches out with all 6 arms which knocks Antares flying. It had also partially jumped with its pincers slamming against the ground and the other half of its legs to reduce the damage it took but the strike it took was enough to reveal its surprise at Axel's growth.
After it lands a few dozen feet away, the two charge at each other, and Antares' pincer connects with Axel's fist. The result was that Axel was knocked back dozens of feet while Antares had also slid back 5 feet away. The weight difference between the two, also paints a vivid scene in the onlooker's eyes.
Axel soon dispels the asura state, his arms disappearing as his hair fully turns red[1] and a 25 ft tall armored shade with it's red hair appears standing just above Axel. It mimics Axel's action of cracking its neck. Resounding snapping is heard from their joint movement but Antares simply sees an opening. As such, when Axel goes for the other side of his neck to crack, Antares lunges forward.Its shadow arms hold onto various parts of the giant shade as the great rex bites down upon the neck of the giant.
Antares uses its pincers to hold the red-haired giant shade around the shoulders to restrict movement but as its maw is around the shade's neck, it finds that it can't tear apart its throat. The shade finishes its snapping motion and a second snap is heard as the bottom part of its jaw is broken into chunks. Antares attempts to move back to recover but with its jaw broken, the shade moves its neck back to the first direction which catches the upper half of its mouth.
Antares begins to thrash around, using its arms and pincers, and finally its stinger to strike at the armored shade to knock it off. It had originally intended to hold it in place but now it's the one in trouble. Cracks appear on its face before the shade lets it go, only to head-butt it which sends Antares flying back a dozen feet. Granted such a distance is nothing to their size and soon enough a fist comes flying into the giant scorpion's face which sends it sliding back 100 feet.
Antares quickly regenerates its face and then charges up its laser beam to shoot at Axel and the giant Shade. Axel himself tosses a rock at Antares' head which it can't very well dodge. The rock itself does not hurt but Axel himself disappears. Only to reappear above Antares as the shade's fist knocks the rex's head down. This action cancels the beam as it goes out of control and blows up the rex's face quite a bit.
Antares quickly regenerates but when it lifts itself again, it spots a second 6-armed Shade standing at 6ft 6" with its arm crossed just underneath it. This shade glows in purple anti-gravity aura which boosts its speed as the red giant punches Antares backward only for Asura to show up behind it and with half its arms. It punches out which sends it flying forward again into Radahns arm.
SCREEEEE
The two shades begin to pummel the prestigious Rex until Antares screeches and tries to spin to knock back both its abusers with its tail but the Asura shade quickly merges with Radahn to grant it 6 armored arms as well which it then uses to grab the tail. A stomp of the shade's foot upon the lower end of the tail ensures the tail is properly gripped as he begins to pull with its full might.
RIPPPPP, SQUELCH , ROOOOOAAAAARRR
The tail is soon ripped off and Antares groans in pain as the two shades separate again. Radahn, now outfitted with Antares' tail, begins to channel its gravity magic, Nebula at the tip of the tail as it swipes it across the scorpion's body as Asura restarts its own action of returning it to its original position which works out well as it's body is barraged by the nebula exploding on it directly.
Left to right, Up to down, and vice versa, Axel's shade wields the heavy tail against its owner. This beatdown continues for a few seconds until the magic on Asura ends which makes it too late to knock back the Rex. Antares is finally freed of its beating and a clear blue gem on its chest is revealed and energy soon condenses onto it. This shoots out a laser towards Axel who merges Asura, and the elf shades onto Radahn to create a 3 armed vortex punch that collides with the beam. The gluttonous aura staves off the laser beam only for two loud voices to suddenly call out and a heavy ringing sound echoes through the battlefield.
"NOW" "STRIKA", A lightning bolt collides with Antares which paralyzes it as the energy flow to the gem is Interrupted and stops. Axel also withdraws his fist as he sees Bell run up the stunned body of Antares with a now-revealed long pure white spear. A bright glow covers Bell's hand which Axel pinpoints as the origin of the resounding bell sound.
"ARROW OF ORION '', Bell calls out as the glow seeps into the long spear/arrow before it collides with the blue gemstone on its chest. A blinding light is shot out and pierces through the crystal and even the monster's enormous core. It blows up in monstrous levels of smoke and dust.
All scorpions on the battlefield cry out as random parts of their body also break down but the predominant change Is the loss of their tough outer shell which allows even level ones to kill them with ease.
Axel dispels his shades as he approaches the tired duo of Bell and Welf. "You stole my 'thunder' " he jokes. Axel also notices that Bell has a new spear tattoo on his wrist that looks similar to the arrow/spear
Bell scratches the back of his head as he says "Sorry about that. Had to fulfill my promise to Lady Artemis."
"Hmm? Does that mean the goddess has been hiding at your house instead of the guild?" Welf suddenly quests and Bell just nods. and tells them how Artemis and his goddess Hestia are close friends back in heaven. The trio begins to walk back as they talk. Axel summons his parasyte shade to handle any scorpions that come after them for some reason.
"So Bell, when are you going to put the moves out?" Axel asks
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[1] If it is not obvious yet. Each time Axel unlocks a fragment, his body partially transforms. That is why originally the asura arms had stuck around for a few hours. The buddhist chant had simply revealed a way to control this creation process. Same with the Radahn frag, it gave a few splotches of red hair but disappears after a day or two. Then it comes back in full force when summoned through its abilities or skills. The gravity magic itself is a product of Astel and some runoff from Radahn but is information based which means it's magic based and not a skill based change.