C83: Time, Magic and Growth
Overall Word count = 3193 on 5/15/2024.
(Warning: if anything here has the parenthesis tag of (ORI). it means that the creature of event is original to me as there are actually very few monsters in the danmachi page now)
Time began to move quickly and after Axel's group encounter with the Loki familia. After his 'session' with Tiona. He had quickly teleported around a bit to get his tools and had made her a basic enhancement ring. It's similar to the rings he gave his team but purely focused on enhancing strength, endurance and dexterity. Though the effect is weak at the moment as Tiona had never increased her magic stat before which means that Axel had to set it up so it could handle multiple levels of boosts. He made this clear to her and she didn't bother to complain.
She did ask about the ritual though and Axel informed her that he would need some time to properly think of the ritual she could actually handle and what materials she would need to gather to make it happen. She expected this as he did mention that this was a long term effort. After cleaning herself up, she had rejoined the rest of the Loki members who sighed a breath of relief upon finding that even after fighting against Axel she was fairly unharmed as she only had a strange limp. Riveria cast her healing spells on her until she was healed and well enough to join everyone who had finished resting and packed up to return to the city. They had asked about the new ring but she simply told them that she made a deal with Axel after she impressed him with her strength and tenacity. They have no reason to doubt this though Aisha and Haruhime are a bit more worried but say nothing as they mind their own business.
After the Loki familia left, Axels group hung around the coliseum for the next two days hunting the rapidly spawning monsters there. Axel gained what feels like 200 points in each stats from their rapid spawning. Aisha also seems to have noticed the patterns regarding how to get stronger through the gluttony imbued in her ring. She had initially not told anyone of her discovery but when Axel started to be more visibly affectionate with her for no reason. She was forced to give up the theory she had made when the others pestered her.
Everyone's growth after that rose rapidly due to 'taking their time' with not so dangerous monsters. Though of course it eventually came time to fight Udeaus. On their way, they finally entered the Throne room which had hidden the final monster of this floor. The Ooze, a liquid slime monster that slittered towards them but with all their magic items, they easily burned it to death. They soon found a giant hole in the floor which is the original entrance to the 38th floor and it's actually on the 39th, another safe zone that has the staircase leading back up to the 37th.
To be safe, Axel had entered the center crater of the 37th floor which led to the 38th floor. Cracks from underneath the floor show themselves until the very floor breaks to reveal half of a giant black skeleton body. Its appearance matches that of a Spartoi but bigger.
The Udeaus, upon seeing that Axel was by itself, began to drag something from below as it's skeleton hands shattered more of the ground until a sleek black sword. Smaller cracks appear in the walls and floors from which more regular spartoi emerge from.
"Oh I see. You have minions. That's cool. I'll be right back though" He disappears only to reappear a moment with a colossal flat sword with black and red sides. This is the original giant sword that the variant black goliath Axel first fought had provided to him.
"Sword fight time" Axel declares and immediately sweeps through the nearby spartoi before Udeaus' blade meets his own. The monster Rex itself is half buried which means that it was forced to slam it's blade into the ground to stop Axel's. Through his gluttony abilities, he was able to start weakening the black blade itself.
While he was fighting Udeaus, the rest of his team came down as well and began to fight the other spartoi. Axel's multiple Asura arms grip his sword in various ways to handle it better and thus he was not rebounded too much during the initial sword collision.
CLANG CLANG CLICK CLANG.
Multiple strikes between both sides swords until Axel heard an audible click which informed him that Udeaus' black sword had been weakened enough to start cracking and breaking apart under his onslaught.
CLANG CREAK
With one more impact, Axel's sword gets stuck halfway through the black sword as it partially snapped, the top half of the split bent at a 70 Degree angle from the impact but Udeaus seems to not notice as it initiates a test of strength against Axel. Axel mysteriously grins due to a sudden change that he finds quite interesting.
Due to his sword snapping into the black sword. It was thus considered an extension of Axel himself. Which means his gluttony layers had spread to cover the black sword as well as Udeaus. Since the gluttony devouring works based on his intent. Thus, with it covering Udeaus, Axel is currently draining it the longer this current situation is going on. he pumped up his gluttony layers to reach his overall max (50) and the black sword becomes greatly more brittle and cracks spread around it further so Axel goes on the backfoot of the confrontation so Udeaus is pushing into him instead of equal measure.
"I got this. All according to plan" He warns his team to ensure they don't interfere in the fight if they don't have to. Sure he could let them join in but that is still 5% of the overall stats that they take that Axel doesn't get back. Besides, he really wants to reach his stat limit again.
He can already feel the Eclipse seal activate which means that his stats had already surpassed 999 before he had even entered the 'tug of war' with Udeaus.
SNAP CLICK CLACK CLANG DRUMMMM
Udeaus kept forcing it's sword forward to push Axel's away so it could crush him when it's own sword finally gave out and snapped into two. The top half, which was already bent, went flying and hit the nearby walls a few times before it settled down flat on the floor.
With half a sword, Udeaus seems perplexed but it just starts to wield this sword one handed while its other hand breaks through the ground once more, but Axel has none of that and quickly overpowers the one handed broken sword before cutting off the buried arm. After snapping the arm off with his sword, he leaves it before he launches himself at Udaeus. Crossing the dark ditch from which Udeaus came from. He grabs onto its rib bones and climbs inside as he begins to climb up it's body but stops just below it's head which contains it's core as the skull fully blocks him from entering it's head.
The Monster Rex attempts to grab and drag him out from inside its rib cage but Axel has other plans now. He has gluttony flow all around him and layers after layers begin to cling to Udeaus as he uses it as the skeletal framework for the 'susanoo' imagery he uses. The further from Axel the gluttony gets, the more visible it becomes as it makes Udeaus appear as if it actually had skin and then small plates of japanese style samurai armor but it stops in just the first layers of armor as the skin and armor are actually made up of 20 layers of gluttony each.
Udeaus releases heavy groans as it more frantically tries to claw Axel out only to collide with the gluttony armor instead which protects it's body from itself. It resorts to thrashing around and hoping that will somehow shake Axel off so that it can survive but Axel's grip ensures that does not happen.
Aisha and the others have cleared out multiple waves of spartoi that have appeared. The longer the fight went on, the more skilled they became as they first appeared unskilled and then began to wear armor and use spears like the ones from the Warriors room before.
The Udeaus deserves its title of Rex as even after a few minutes of gluttony it still has not died. Axel feels budding love for it just like the variant Moss huge he encountered before. Axel affectionately strokes the bones he is hugging for support. Axel has currently coddled his whole body against the long giant ribs to keep him in place. Gluttony creates a loop at the moment. He uses mind to maintain gluttony which steals from Udeaus and protects him from it's own hands. The stolen stats feed him and replenish his energy to keep running gluttony.
It is only after half an hour of struggle that Udeaus finally falls over, collapsing onto the ground. Its head and remaining arm slumped over, Axel feels these tremors and can partially see through the gluttony. He quickly lets go of the rib to finally break through its skull and begin directly draining the monster core in Udeaus. Even after Udeaus shatters into dust. Axel is still draining the monster core. Veins appear all over his body in response to the hostile dungeon mana flowing through his body but he doesnt care. It is only when he gets halfway through the core that he stops absorbing it as his stats reach the limit and his mind begins to spiral again as his soul releases the restrictions upon the next fragment.
(Secwet. I tell loyalists in discord and even then only those who actually interacted with the roles and rules of the server. But the rest of yall will find out in a few more chapters)
It's a few minutes before Axel regains his mind and body functions. The rest of the gang had moved to the next floor which is the safe zone to finally rest and had even set him down as they are used to his antics at this point. How nice.
With Udeaus dead, the gang moved onto the next step of their plans. Which is to blindly rush forward while killing off every monster they meet. But for now, Axel had some shopping to do. He first delivered the udeaus core to Raikou as well as other excess materials to not bog them down before restocking their supplies.
During his little trip, he learned from Raikou that the joint owned sex house of Kiara and Vitch had disappeared with Kiara now staying at their home. He comforts her with his words as he is on a time limit. He checks up on Syr to see how she is doing and finds that she has begun to enter the third trimester of her pregnancy. She has become far more voluptuous around her belly and other spots that have gathered some excess fat from her obsessive diet. He spends a bit of time with her to show his affection as well as to see if he could actually feel the baby kick or anything under Syr's forceful insistence.
After coaxing her to rest a bit, he had met up with Gorgon who gave him a booklet on spells he should begin learning. She had prepared this in emergencies if she was held off by her sisters for any reason but they show no reaction to his presence. With Axel planning to spend a long time in the dungeon, she handed the book over to him for self study. He can afterall just pop by whenever he has questions.
Once he is back from his trip as well as leveling up and getting a new development skill by the name of Life resonance as he did not unlock any other new development abilities from last time.
As they bypass the 39th floor, the group is introduced to a giant volcano. From what Axel knows, the floors here work akin to circular layers where Axel and co have to climb down from the hill they are at to reach the 41st floor. Then continue further down until they reach the 42nd, they have one more layer to go down before they reach the bottom. Then their next goal is to reach the top of the volcano and go around it before they reach the 48th floor, a mini safe zone and then the 49th floor which holds the Balor.
Throughout their journey here, the team has been making steady pacing as they encounter a two-headed wolf monster that has fire-like veins on its body and vomits lava at them. Axel decided to name it Orthus (ORI). It's similar to the hellhound on the lower floors except it has two heads. Their bite is powerful and immediately leads to fire vomit as they try to melt down any limb they catch. Ouka had to work hard to shake them off so that Bell could kill them by cutting off one head then the other. Luckily they are not pack monsters like the Hellhound.
Progressing past these doggies, the gang encountered their second new monster which is simply called, The Flame Rock. a sizable golem that has similar lava like flames and can expel flames from its stump-like arms.
The group has to stop at the 43rd floor for a bit as on one hand, Welf found a small deposit of adamantium which Axel helped mine to resupply his own stash. He brought it back to Orario to their homes before returning. While he mined and stored it away, Welf quickly did maintenance on their weapons as the hot blood from the monsters and their fire/lava vomit has caused minor damage to their weapons. Axel set up his barrier while Welf repaired their gear.
At this time, Welf finally decided to achieve his personal goal of an eternal magic sword and what better environment than an actual volcano to craft this and with the few chunks of adamantium he reserved, he got to work on forging the ultimate frozen sword. Ironic since he used everything that is heat and fire to make it.
CLANK CLANK CLANK CLANG CLANG CLANG.
Initially Welf struggled a bit with refining the chunk of adamantium but he remembered his resolve and finally got to work on melting it down before using his bloodline to call upon the spirits of nature to augment his blade. It takes a while before a frost spirit would arrive before him and bless the indestructible blade.
Since it's just a bit of mind that is being used by the barrier, Axel decided to read the book he got from Gorgon. He begins to process the various large scale spells he could inflict if he learned them. Laser beams of mass destruction, Ravenous plagues, Apocalyptic fires that would ravage the world. Finally at the end of the book it begins to describe something that even makes Axel's breath hitch in response to his desires to achieve. The Reality Marble. The ultimate magic, manifestation of one's own desires or soul space.
He begins to meditate on his soul space to figure out how he could achieve this as he is already a skilled mage, it's simply his array of spells that is small.
He is soon forced to stop his meditation as Welf completes the frost sword and begins to bulldoze forward with it. Creating new paths that allow them to cut the distance of all the floors. Though this only applies as they go down and not up since it's still slippery and cracks still cause the ice to wholly shatter. The monsters and magma rivers become much less of a threat though the spawn rate of the local monsters increases rapidly as they move forward.
The group encounters plenty of other new monsters, First there is the Hell Imps (ORI) which are higher grade imp monsters with fire affinity and still being pack creatures. Their skin is slightly closer to charcoal and seemingly burnt flesh but they show no reaction to this while their horns which are droppable items are made of obsidian. Lily and Bell chronicle the various monsters and their drops from what they notice. Bell wants to give it to the guild to expand their monster archive as these were never listed there. Lily on the other hand would sell this information to any adventurer willing to buy it. A get rich quick scheme that doesnt interfere with Bell's pure action of simply giving it away.
Axel himself doesnt care about the info except how useful it is. He is curious why the Loki familia never provided the info unless they chose to keep a monopoly on it to suit their own needs instead of the needs of all adventurers. Granted very few people can actually reach here so Axel truly does not care what Bell or Lily do with it.
Once the group had begun to scale the volcano up, they encountered lava spearfish (ORI). A type of fish that somehow survives and thrives inside the lava. They move quickly with their long horn-like spears. They are quite powerful and one almost pierced into Axel's arm. He quickly found out that they dispense lava through their mouth if they get stuck in something but with his asura skin, he can simply negate the damage of the lava and beat the fish up. Granted it was almost dead from just the many layers of gluttony Axel is maintaining. He is using all the steam, heat and residual fires around himself to fuel his new growth, at least for his magic stat.
As the group reached what would be the 48th floor, Axel encountered his least favorite monster. Along the walls are various rocks which look like lava growths. Walking by a random one, it split open down the center to reveal that it was an obsidian shell on a plant monster that shoots out a fleshy cable which tried to swallow Mikoto whole if not for Welf sticking his sword in, to stop it from closing. Axel tore the monster cable vine apart before beating down the monster shell until it finally died. Axel decided to call these Mercurian Fire Traps (ORI) as they function under a similar premise as the venus fly traps.
The reason why Axel hates them as with the appearance of the first, they encounter tons more, Welf has to regularly use his new sword to freeze the walls as the entire 48th floor is bordering walls filled with these lava bubbles that could very well be the Mercurian traps.
Eventually the group arrives before the entrance of the 49th floor where they make another pit stop so that they can repair their gear as another Rex is on the horizon.