C33: End of the Middle Floors P1, Ambush, War Game

Word count = 1349 on 2/6/2024 (short chappy to build up the next one)

The next two days after the party went quite well. The trio of Axel, Welf and Daisy met up with both the Take familia members as well as Bell Cranel and his supporter Lily who Axel finds is a spiteful little Pallum and Welf is taking pleasure in teasing her all the time which Axel really doesnt mind. He passed on a warning that Raikou had told him to his teammates about keeping their distance from the immortal sector for a bit. Though everyone except Daisy could listen to this.

The entire group got to adventure together for the 2 days and Axels stats have already reached the 400s as they all have gone past Rivira finally though only to the 19th as Bell and the others struggle against some of the new monsters in the 'LargeTree Labyrinth' that makes up the 19th to 24th floor. The walls themselves give the impression that everyone is inside a tree. The primary source of light is the glowing moss spread around on most of the walls.

There are supposedly 7 new types of monsters that they encounter: the bugbear, the lizardmen who are stretched through the entire tree segment of the dungeon, the fire birds but those are rare. The mad beetles who are considered the strongest amongst the giant tree monsters or at least have the most potential. Vouivre which are female humanoid dragon monsters but are also super rare like unicorns. Then there are the two major annoyances that cause most adventurers to be heavily faltered in their progress.

The dark fungus, a mushroom like monster which constantly releases poison spores into the air which is why most adventurers need abnormal resistance to thrive past here and the other is the Gun Libellula, a dragonfly type monster that shoots stingers and poison from their abdomen.

Axel's endurance is surely increasing rapidly due to all the poison that is affecting him and then getting absorbed once it actually enters his body but the constant pain reminds him of how he originally felt when he absorbed dungeon mana but more stifling. Yet the increase in power gradually allows him to just overpower the poison due to his high stats. Eventually the group returned home and Axel got to enjoy the grape flavored antidote potion because why wouldn't it be. It did help against the remnant poison on him.

Axel himself made his way home after a long day of dungeoneering and he is fairly tired but he can't return home yet as he has a business to run. So at most he goes to get his falna updated by Raikou at her request and he finds that his stats have all risen to roughly around E rank which is in the 400s after the past 2 days. His speed has become much faster due to the overabundance of monsters as well as his new shades which devour far more than his normal gluttony contact.

As Axel is walking from his home to the store, he stops with a frown before jumping to the side and dodging a row of 5 arrows that landed around where he just was. He looks up to find a large gathering of adventurers, fully decked out in various armors and weapons, all trained on him. Amongst the archers, Axel recognizes one of the Apollo familias executives commanding people to encircle him while archers and mages coordinate to release various spells at Axel.

"Shade that I am" Axel states and his body glows before he splits into 4 and begins to systematically take down the various adventurers who are attacking him. He is still wearing his armor but Raikou gave him a robe to wear before he left home and that is making him look like he is unprotected. Axel quickly realizes that his goddess knew that the Apollo Familia had been lying in wait for him. He can only give thanks that they didn't try to foolishly try attacking her.

Axel is shaked out of his thoughts as he has to jump around a fair bit to dodge an earth spell and a few fire spells that come flying at him as well as arrows. He can tell that most of his attackers are just level 1 or 2 which means they can only cause minimal damage to him. But that damage can accumulate so he would prefer to save his strength for any surprises. They have surely done a bit of research if they are confident in achieving some form of goal.

Axel jumps up on the roof and begins to close the distance to the archers first as the executive is still with them. He finds that they have stationed a few guards in his way with tower shields to block him. He begins to unleash a flurry of blows upon the shields which rapidly dents them but Axel finds another executive, a female one with medium length red hair and a rapier. She is trying to attack him to stop his attacks from hitting the shields. Meanwhile another girl, one with long deep blue hair that covers one of her eyes raises a staff and heals the shield people of any injuries they might have accrued while fending him off.

Axel decides to back off so he can get a better view of his priorities but in doing so, he also has to dodge another set of magic attacks which are starting to annoy him but not for long as this is the immortal district. Many people here are peace loving but there are a few who have short tempers as Axel finds a set of long chains wrap around multiple mages and other folk from the streets and drags them off into the distance. A melodious laugh is heard before more grunts of anguish as various swordsmen and martial artists come out to sock the easy level 1 adventurers for destroying their property or just annoying them.

Though Axel notices that even a few far off immortals have joined in even when they werent involved. Very quickly the ambush is settled as Axel simply flicks the red headed executive on the head which sends her flying a bit back before the roundhouse kicks her off the roof. The healer yells out "DAPHNE" and goes to her rescue. Axel learns that not all Apollo familia members are blank faced idiots like their captain.

His shades return to his body as all the apollo people with the exception of the healer are knocked unconscious. She is trying to cure their wounds. Afterall, none of their actions were fatal. They looked down on the Apollo familia too much to leathaly hurt them.

"God Apollo, You have attacked us immortals so blatantly. To pursue reparations, I Minamoto-No-Raikou accepted your war game challenge!!" Axel hears Raikou's words and suddenly it dawns on him what the hell is the plan. Or at least part of it as he is unsure if she had anything else prepared for this situation.

Her plan seems to be to rope in her fellows to create a sense of justice in seeking reparations as a simple bar brawl can be excused by Axel was chased a bit around which caused some chaos in Orario, so not only did their actions offend the guild or any familia in charge of city defense like Ganesha. They also offended many 'level 3s' that make up the immortal district.

When grouped up like this, immortals could easily overwhelm most if not all gods and their familias' here. It is due to their morals and the agreements they accepted because of Alaya and Ouranos that they do not run over Orario and wantonly enter the dungeon in seeking to outright destroy it.

Overall, with Raikou's announcement that is reverberating throughout Orario. The entire city soon acknowledges that there will be a war game and the final prep for it needs to be made.

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