Danmachi: the Great Devourer

C34: War Game start and End

Word count = 4620 on 2/8/2024 (Hecking large chappy today, 2nd largest thus far. Hope yall enjoy)

The night passes quickly with Raikou and Apollo finalizing the details of the War game situation. At late evening, it is announced to all what type of war game will occur. It's a form of castle defense with a mix of capture the flag where one side has to defend their flag. The flag can be hidden anywhere but can't be moved once the war game officially starts. If the defending side is knocked out or the flag is stolen to a designated spot, then the defending team loses. The only time the flag could be moved is if it was stolen and then taken back. A new spot can be chosen then. On the other hand, if the offensive team is knocked out then it's a loss as they have no other benchmark for loss.

The other aspect is that one side gets to occupy the nearby castle ruins for their own protection. This also makes finding the flag a challenge but as long as one member of the defending team is still conscious then the game won't end which makes the game very favorable to the defending team and of course it ends up belonging to the Apollo familia. Many watchers boo as some assume it's rigged but when Axel hears the news. He just shrugs as he is confident in winning.

The defending team has 3 days to prepare and Axel couldn't enter the dungeon in that time so in that time, Axel has just been making artifacts for the store. Welf and Daisy had gone out of their way to stake out the castle for him so even though they couldn't enter the area. They could still scope out its outsides, their positioning, at least what is visible.

Axel appreciates the effort as he can tell that they are fixing up the castle as it is quite decrepit. They have patched up the major holes, set up traps or provided each other resources such as potions and fixed gear so that they are in their optimal situation.

The day of the event finally arrives and he learns from Raikou and many other immortals and Gods were invited to a rooftop party to watch over the war game. Axel gives her a hug for good luck and then takes his leave. Raikou has a smile on her face as the final details of her arrangements are finally underway.

Axel soon leaves Orario for the first time since he got here. On the other hand in the castle. The long black haired healer is pacing around nervously which prompts the red haired executive to speak up.

"Cassandra, calm down, everything will go fine."

"But it won't. I've had another dream. It depicts that we will lose." Cassandra the prophet speaks up and thinks back to the actual lines of the prophecy she had last night.

An entourage of all that is broken

Apocalyptic force gathered into one

Indomitable strength made manifest.

A legend in the making bringing about the next generation.

The sun falls out of the sky by the prestigious Oni

The great devourer makes his mark.

Cassandra has never had such a specific prophecy before. She can very well tell that the indomitable strength is likely related to Axel Gram but is there more than one line that is related to him? The sun is likely related to her god Apollo but who is the prestigious Oni?

She is used to each line of her prophecy depicting some form of horror with each line. Which is why she is confused as the first line means nothing to her as the scene she saw was of a giant beautiful river before it changed to the next line. She has already witnessed their defeat and hopes to convince Daphne Lauros, the red haired executive and her friend, of just handing over the flag so that they can suffer less but as usual, her response is always.

"Again with the dreams, this is reality, what can one person do? Even if he has admirable strength, he can't break through the walls at all. That's preposterous.``

Cassandra can only shake her head while Daphne is more worried about how some of their teammates never came back from the ambush operation. Specifically the ones who were captured by the chains. Through her god, she was able to tell that they were alive due to the link with their falna but anything else was a mystery.

Back to Axel, he can finally see the castle in sight after walking for 2 hours and in that time, the gods and immortals get comfortable at the rooftop they have designated. Amongst the crowd of immortals is Raikou, Kaoruko, Senji and a few unexpected faces which are Shuten Douji, the trio leaders of the knights of Camelot: Artoria, Morgan and Mordred. And amongst the gods is naturally Apollo, Ganesha, Loki, Miach, Hestia who is curious about the strength of the person who would be the leader of the team that her precious Bell would be joining. Hermes who has already asked Ouranos if he could use his Arcanum to broadcast the show which was granted and thus he is setting up the screens throughout Orario as the people mingle. Hephaestus is also here for the same reason as Hestia but for Welf instead. Takemikazuchi is here to support Axel as a friend and teacher. The last member of the gods is Kali (sword Orario), a shorter amazoness-like goddess who is the shared manager of the Orario Arena where she typically showcases many fights where life and death are undetermined. She has joined the party to witness a good fight.

All in attendance can see Axel walking towards the castle, unhurried. This continues until roughly half a mile from the castle he stumbles upon a group of differently armored people just idling about. Axel recognizes Daisy amongst the group so he approaches curiously.

"Daisy, what are you doing here? In fact, who is everyone?" Axel asks as he recognizes at least one other person and it was a level 2 knight who was riding just behind the level 4 captain of the Pendragon Familia. Surrounding this person are a few other knights but nothing very definitive about their looks as they all wear matching armors with just different weapons.

Daisy approaches Axel and reveals, "Everyone here including you is part of the Minamoto Familia. Raikou-san had enlisted the help of multiple immortals including my own to temporarily help you in this fight as she had predicted this ahead of time. Supposedly, the price is a part of the assets that would be won from the Apollo familia which includes their people as well. This would allow more immortals to finally set up their own familias or at least expand them. But half the price was already paid due to you selling magic items and gods rejecting common folk from their familias if they didn't want to enter the dungeon."

She reveals the few details that Axel couldn't figure out. This also explains why some non-involved immortals participated in the counter-ambush for a smoother resolution of events. Axel smiles as he can feel the care his goddess has for him. Daisy's words were not quiet so everyone here got to be a bit enlightened and they nod or wave towards Axel.

"Well, I definitely didn't expect this so I have no plans for you all to follow but you are welcome to attempt to find some castle weakpoint and blow it up to cause a distraction while I make my way in through my own methods." He quickly comes up with a plan that he tells the group and Daisy reveals that they already had a similar idea thanks to her and Welfs scouting. They planned to have the spellcasters bombard the weak point then the fighters would rush in to begin taking down the enemy.

With the plan set up, Axel leads the way for the rest of the group to finally arrive at the castle. Up at the gods party, Apollo begins to yell out about third party interlopers being against the rules of the War game.

"Ara, You may not know this but all the people down there had already been primary members of my familia for at least a week by now, or at least 4 days before the party. I have been listed as their primary caretaker. I had already approached the guild on this matter with the war game and their leader himself proclaimed it was legitimate. You have no ground to stand on Apollo" Raikou states with a smug tone as it is now understood why the other immortals are around as well since they have given one or more of their people over to Axel's familia for some reason.

The adventuring group soon splits into 2 again as Axel goes to the opposite side of where the weak point is. He has 2 pebbles in his hand which he is casually tossing up and down. He attracts plenty of attention from the defending side which splits into two groups as they have to beat down Axel who is considered the primary target of their offense but they don't want to take any risks with the unknown large group that is circling them.

The extended family sets up an arrangement of tower shields while Spellcasters begin to cast their spells to strike a wall that is split in two with the upper part just missing. This creates a U-shaped type hole that starts after 8 ft high up the wall. This was the area that was quickly blockaded with a few stones lazily set up to block the wall.

(A/N: a better description if anyone is confused is that the wall remains standing normally up to 8 ft high and then branches out in the U shaped hole which was sloppily plugged up with rocks, barrels and pallets or stone magic.

The Apollo familia uses their archers and mages to attempt to shoot down the enemy mages but the tower shield blocks all the spells and arrows but behind each shield is the owner who is supporting the shield so that they don't fall over or bend. Their job is to protect the spellcasters on their side until the wall collapses fully and they can charge in.

"Shade that I am" Axel speaks up as he can hear the fight going on the other side. His body glows a few colors with blue being the most prominent. He then casts reinforcement magic over his armor which causes his body to glow once more with circuit-like signs flowing through his armor. He then tosses up one rock before sharply throwing the 2nd at the wall which causes a powerful shockwave.

SCEEEEWWWW

CRASH BOOM

This knocks a dust cloud around the wall which hides the collision of the other rock that Axel throws in. When the dust is dispelled after a minute, the Apollo archers standing around the ramparts find that Axel himself is missing.

One leans over the edge to see if Axel is hiding by hugging the wall. The answer to his question is a fist to the face as a black shockwave flows over him which sends the person flying over the inner edge of the ramparts. Their body having undergone an extreme state of atrophy due to all the stats drained out of them. They fall upon a cart with a crash.

Axel pulls himself on top of the wall which surprises the group as during the few moments he had somehow climbed up the wall. What they don't know is that Axel actually teleported with the 2nd rock he threw. He decided to hide his teleporting powers by not throwing the 2nd rock at a person and directly teleporting on them. Sure he suddenly vanished but with him being on the wall when the dust settles, they can assume he quickly climbed up after dashing forward with reinforcement magic covering his body. It was all just a ruse to hide his teleporting abilities.

With him being on the ramparts now, a swordsman who is serving as the archers guard comes forward to attack Axel but he sidesteps the swing and punches the man in the jaw which stuns them before Axel sweeps their legs and then spins before unleashing a roundhouse kick that sends them off the wall with another gluttony shockwave on them.

The archers are stunned by his fast movements and they begin shuffling backwards when Axel rushes forward and chops their necks, knocking them out. Knowing that some of these people would be accepted as the children of other immortals, he doesnt want to cripple all of them. Though he does get some stats from them. As most of these people are just level 1s, they at most give 10 stats to all stats except magic unless they were a mage. Which means that with so many people, he could have easily raised his stats by at least 300-400 stats this day but that would be mean as someone has to pay for their health to recover and all the possible years of progress they lost from his simple attack.

Axel begins to search around, with the castle keep being the primary target he chooses.

Upon entering, he finds a few random apollo familia members before heading in deeper and he finds the pair of redhead executive and the black haired healer who are talking amongst themselves. The healer is trying to plead the executive into surrendering early but is only admonished time and time again which makes the healer depressed.

In fact upon entering the room itself, a strange aura covered Axel. It had no outright malicious actions but upon actually entering Axel's mind to influence his thoughts in relation to the seer's words so that he wouldn't believe her just like so many others[1]. Yet when it tried, many soul fragments flared their aura to stop its harm before Gluttony simply devoured it and used it as nutrients to allow the next soul fragment to awaken a bit earlier, stacking onto the Odr skill.

Axel gets to overhear the details of some prophecy about his existence and how he is pretty much destined to win. He finds this interesting enough to not outright attack them. As he continues to listen in, he overhears the far castle wall finally breaking down and a heavy collision between the temp members of his familia and Apollo Familia. He realizes that he cant really idle around so he comes out from his hiding spot.

"Young lady, you are actually quite accurate, I'm surprised by how you know so much about me when no one else does." He speaks out ambiguously at the prophecy he had overheard as he can quickly analyze that the aspects of the 'riddle' The apocalyptic force likely would elude to his strength in the future though he can already be considered in the upper management of Orario's adventurers with his powers and strength. The great devourer itself seems like a pretty cool nickname for himself.

"Cassandra, run!!" To say that both ladies are shocked is an understatement. Though their reactions differ: Cassandra is shocked that someone believed her prophecy, even if they are the primary subject of it, they have never believed her before. Daphne instead brings out her sword to ward off Axel in hopes of letting Cassandra escape.

Daphne rushes at Axel with her rapier, pointed to stab him in the chest, he doesnt move and for good reason as her rapier cant pierce into him. Though this was a partial usage of reinforcement magic on his armor again. Axel raises his hand and chops down on her neck which knocks her out. He then walks over to Cassandra and says.

"Sorry" and flicks her head which knocks her out. Reason it was that simple is because Axel has once again bulked up, so he had to hold back his strength a bit. He then searches the rest of the keep to no avail. As such he could only keep moving around to other locations such as the large towers. But before that he decides to help the temp family as they are still in the thick of the fight.

BOOOM

Axel lands with a loud crash in the middle of the enemy group. When the dust settles, they all see 2 shorter Axels. This is not a shade. This is an advanced application of his parasitic body to split his mass into 2 and essentially create a second body. There is a flesh link between the 2 bodies akin to an intestinal rope. The 2 bodies and 3 shades all move to begin making quick work of all the Apollo Familia members. He already splits his thoughts into multiple bodies because of the shades when they aren't merged into his body. Adding one more isn't too much of an issue. After half an hour the entire army is beaten down. Once they are, Axel stomps down to cause a small dust explosion around him as he reabsorbs the 2nd body back into his main self.

It is quite a grotesque looking scene if anyone saw it as his muscles and bones unnaturally morph and then return to the bulk state. In his base state he struggles to create this body clone and the cord between them isn't much of a weakness as nobody here could actually cut it. Not to mention he could temporarily strengthen it through reinforcement magic.

"Split up into small groups and find their familia captain, I haven't seen that guy yet. I've already checked the keep and took care of the executives there but the captain wasn't there." Axel gives out a command and they nod take healing potions before they begin to split into groups of 3 with 2 close combat and 1 mage/archers which actually creates a perfect set of 15 groups. They move out to scout while Axel returns to searching the tower he had designated.

Axel gets a strange feeling as he goes up the tower. His feeling turns out to be wariness as he finds a single familia member with a burning torch surrounded by red barrels. The person is shaking in fear as they yell out. "DON'T COME ANY CLOSER. JUST GIVE UP"

Axel finds that upon closer observation, even the ground is littered in strange dust that is black. He frowns as his blue shade comes out. The person raises his other hand, waving it about. "DON'T COME ANY CLOSER, ILL BLOW US BOTH UP. ILL DO IT FOR MY GOD.!!!!!!!!!!!!!" He yells out again but Axel just punches the nearby wall which causes it to collapse as the tower is already in a degraded state.

This creates a sizable hole in the wall that could let people pass through. Axel then turns to the person and speaks out. "I assume this is explosive powder? I shall have you know that I won't die from this. Afterall, this war game is going on to get me to join your familia. So killing me would go against your entire goal. So, I won't die but you will. Ill just be a bit injured if even that. I've had plenty of time to increase the power of my body. So would you like to see if my fist can snuff out an explosion?" Axel takes a different approach as he blatantly lies to the already paranoid person in hope of getting them to settle down but their actions backfire instead.

"THEN WITH MY SACRIFICE, THE GOAL WILL BE REACHED AND YOU WILL BELONG TO LORD APOLLO." He slams the torch down. Anticipating the moment of explosion he closes his eyes but when his hand itself reaches the ground and nothing happens he can only look around to find that a peach colored strange figure is attached to the roof of the current tower floor. Holding the torch in it's claw like hands before it throws it outside.

The person is reaching for the torch but it is out of reach completely as it leaves the tower. Axel wipes his sweat away before he chops the guy on his neck, knocking him out. "Alright, Super Bomb Boy, you've had your moment. I thank you for teaching me about how crazy some adventurers can be." He thanks his lucky stars that he sent out the parasitic shade when he punched the wall. The dust cloud created a blindspot for the apparition to lie in wait should anything drastic happen and it did.

Axel searches the rest of the tower just in case but finds nothing else. As he is walking back down stairs and to the same explosive floor. He finds a burning arrow fly into the room through the hole he made. Looking through the tiny airway holes, Axel finds the Apollo captain himself next to a crossbowman with a ditch of fire next to them. Hyakinthos Clio has a smile on his face while Axel reinforces himself as much as he can to boost his defenses and speed. He overlays parasitic chitin on his body as well. He is outside the tower through the hole when the explosion occurs.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

The explosion draws the eyes of all to the tower as the explosion shakes the very castle itself down to it's core. The tower itself collapses due to the massive explosion as Axel is covered in a wreath of fire and dust. No trace of his body is found.

"Hehehehehehe" the Apollo captain begins to maniacally laugh at the supposed death of Axel as they cant see his body at all falling out of the dust cloud since he was already midair when it happened.

"Let us return" He says to the solemn archer as this person was one of the participants of the ambush and thus clearly felt the power of immortals and thus feared the outcome of the match and whether they would survive.

Hyakinthos Clio on the other hand is in a good mood as he almost wants to charge forth and take care of the rest of the enemy troublemakers to end the match but he has a duty to uphold and that is protecting the flag. As such, once they return, he commands the others to take care of the remaining 'trash'.

On the city rooftop, a heavy atmosphere is flooding the area as thick killing intent is genuinely felt by all. The source of which is Raikou who is moments away from killing Apollo. She has already broken one of his arms the moment the explosion occurred. Artoria and Mordred are holding her back from killing the god who was also in a bad mood as the results are different than what he wanted.

Raikou is thrashing against the two immortals binding her, when Hermes comes in with hopes of mediation. "Ahem, lady Raikou, you should know my ability follows the life force of an individual. The screen has not changed positions thus far."

His words seem to attract all eyes to the floating glowing screen as they see the shattered tower and dust blowing around which blocks ones view of the area. Another screen follows the Apollo captain to their flag position which was actually in an adjacent tower but underground.

When the camera following the captain shows that they enter the tower and go down the stairs. The camera following Axel rapidly changes and it follows the captain itself. Raikou begins to thrash again but Hermes once again points out. "I have not felt the camera shift targets yet. He is still alive, I can only assume he rapidly closed the distance between where he was and the apollo Captain. "

His words get a few looks of confusion as they try to look around the screen to see where Axel could be but they struggle. The scene soon changes to the underground flag room on both cameras but this time one random god in attendance points to the ceiling of the room as he points out a black area with a few red splotches. They lightly see the area tremble and many come to the realization that Axel was so badly cooked he turned crispy.

They witness how the figure stays still as all the other people leave the room until it's just the captain by himself relaxing in his seat.

"Hyakinthos Clio. Are you ready to be level 1 again?" A hoarse voice is heard in the room which causes the captain in mention to look around in fear until he finally looks up to see a pair of glowing red eyes staring right at him.

He gets up, drawing his sword in a panic but is quickly disarmed as the burnt figure jumps on him and begins to wail upon his face.Punch after punch, shattering Hyrakinthos skull bone but not enough that it would be fatal. Once it is damaged enough, Axel begins to viciously strike down on every major bone that wouldn't cause immediate death. He wants this person to suffer as punch after punch he drains more stats from him using his base gluttony skill instead of the shade.

Another half hour later, Axel is satisfied with his work as even the wrist and finger bones have been broken. He has even ground some of the bones to dust from the continued attacks. Axel finally grabs the flag and begins to drag the broken body of the Apollo captain as he leaves the underground space. He finds that the temp members are finishing up the last of the Apollo Members when a loud voice from the god Hermes.

"The war game is over. The Apollo Familia has lost due to Elimination. Almost all members are unconscious. The flag has also been acquired and was a matter of time before it reached the destination. I repeat, the Apollo Familia has lost, no more fighting" The Apollo people that were not knocked out bring their weapons down as they surrender. But for the other side, they can hear a bit of desperation in the god's voice. As if afraid. They soon realize the reason as the well done figure of Axel comes in with the rag-dolled body of Hyakinthos Clio.

His movement was rigid as the damage to him was extensive and it didn't help he had no way to heal himself since when the explosion went off. What happened was that he tried to punch it with his gluttony shade but this created a vacuum that pulled him back in when the tower collapsed on top of him. As such, his potions all shattered and his armor melted to his skin.

Daisy and the others make a makeshift stretcher for Axel to lie down in as he tosses the body aside as well as the flag to flop over into the stretcher. They begin to help carry him to Dian Cecht as a final duty of their temporary arrangement.

**********************************************

[1] For those that don't know, Cassandra is based on a historical Greek princess who was willing to give herself to Apollo if he granted her the ability of foresight. He did but she did not hold up her end of the bargain so he cursed her so nobody would believe her. This curse persisting is the only reason I can think of why anybody would be dumb to not believe her. Because she has likely had multiple other dreams beforehand and tried to save people but they still don't believe her even now.