Danmachi: the Great Devourer

C37: Huntress, Journey to Elsos

Word count = 2143 on 2/14/2024

Axel's journey towards the next checkpoint was going smoothly. All the checkpoints are a day's journey away from each other which means the horses get to recover and return home quickly.

The Ganesha Familias reaction to his arrival is amusing to him as groups of them come forward at once, shoo Axel away and then begin to check the horse's health and how it was treated. It's not like Axel mistreated them. He took a break near streams or ponds he encountered along the way. Axel has to regularly emphasize that he had fed the horses with their prescribed food before they let him rest for the night.

As Axel is resting, he looks upon the map for the next checkpoint and finds the distance is shorter than usual. When he asked about this, it was revealed that more monsters have been active in this area. They had been clearing the area near the checkpoints but they cant maintain the entire route but at least they are confident that Axel won't let the horses be harmed by monsters but that their speed would be reduced regardless.

A few more days progress as Axel encounters various monsters but the very fact that they surface monsters means that they were even weaker than their dungeon version. A single shockwave could easily handle a group of them which had an interesting feeling to Axel as he had actually gained a few stats from this.

As such his speed does slow down but only b/c he is allowing the monsters to group up densely before he takes them down in one fell swoop to gain the max amount of stats he can from the absorbing shockwave.

His pace continues well until the end of the 6th day of his travels from Orario and he is finally seeing a dense forest with a single jutting tower in the distance. He finally sees the end location of his travels but it is likely going to take another day or two to reach it as the jutting tower is quite small from his point of view.

He begins to travel to the next checkpoint when he finds that there is a group moving towards him from off in the distance. He has the horse slow down as the two groups approach each other.

"Are you Ganesha's people?" Axel asks

"How can you tell? One responds.

"Well it's quite simple really. You all look as if you all share the exact same outfits just in different colors." Axel says sarcastically which causes a few of them in the back to laugh at their leaders for their sense of 'unified style'.

"Isn't that the Uchchaihshravas? Which means he is the Titan." One person points out but when Axel hears the horse's title, he is surprised the human tongue can even pronounce it as it sounded like gibberish to him and he is learning magic from an immortal which typically comes in the form of runic circles or drawn patterns.

On the other hand, upon hearing the titles, the rest have a look of recognition and dismount, throwing Axel off the horse to pamper it. One amongst them does not move and when Axel sees them, he finds a long ashen haired girl with one hand on the horse reins and the other on a sword. A bow and spear tied around her back. She has a lost look on her face and seems to not be aware of her surroundings. She is wearing a simple white dress with a mini vest on top that leaves the forward region open. Belts adorn her body to secure it in place. (image here)

Axel decides to take a break while the Ganesha familia panders over the horse. Feeding it, cleaning it, and other things that he didn't think would be included for a horse. Axel's gaze is focused on the girl when one person decides to come over to him and says.

"Don't be too smitten. Artemis familia members have sworn a vow of chastity along with their goddess."

"Not like that. Just curious. Does she still have her falna?" His words cause a hush to flow over the group as the girl lifts one of her hands, clenching and unclenching it. Light seems to return to her eyes as she turns the horse around and rides off back into the forest.

"Hey, thats suicide" One Ganesha member calls out after her but she ignores it and speeds up her horse.

"HYA"

"Well, ill take that as my cue to speed the fuck off. Make way" Axel hurries back to his horse again and gives his own "HYA" before rushing forward after her.

"Be gentle you bastard" The ganesha familia call out collectively after him but he ignores them and the horse seems to enjoy the faster speed as well, afterall, they had been traveling pretty slowly lately.

The huntress' horse starts to neigh in pain as a 'small' black scorpion breaks out through the ground to hit it with one of its pincers. The horse's leg is broken and it's quickly finished off by the scorpion while the huntress falls a few feet away. She has only recently recovered from her near fatal injuries and thus is still fairly weakened due to inactivity. She has a grave expression as the scorpion approaches her when a figure lands beside her and dashes forward with only their fists to begin beating down the scorpion.

Axel who is hitting the scorpion is surprised by its strength as it is clearly level 3 in strength but with exceptional defense which makes it just perfect for him. "Shade that I am" He calls out and begins to siphon its power chunk after chunk until the beast's body begins to collapse.

SCREEEEEEEEECH.

It releases a death howl before dying.The Uchchaihshravas releases a slightly panicked neigh as it can sense the incoming threat. Axel grabs the huntress by the neck when she begins to thrash around.

"UNHAND ME, I will not be touched by a man so willingly!" She yells at him but he offers a calm retort. As he throws her over the horse saddle.

"I won't manhandle you if you aren't so childish. Now stay on. You, if you can get her to the next checkpoint, that would be best but if it's too dangerous then retreat and meet up with those people just now. Ill keep them occupied. Go!" Axel first berates the useless huntress, still offering a bit of kindness to her by sending her back as she wanted but choosing to not endanger the horse by offering it a choice as well."

Spurrrrr. The horse retorts as he rushes off deeper into the forest, Axel nods as he can finally see a sizable group of 30 scorpions coming at him. Axel gets a grin on his face as he can tell that his stats will grow a lot as a result. Just the first scorpion offered him 50 stats in strength, endurance and agility, who is to say that this won't persist for much longer as they are obviously strong enough.

The next hour is filled with the screeching of scorpions, earth shattering explosions and human laughter that is obviously filled with madness. Kyrene herself had repositioned herself on the horse as it brought her deeper and deeper into the forest. It had to sidestep a few times to dodge or go around a group of scorpions that were scattered around. They naturally hear the sounds of fighting and screams which attract more monsters there.

Kyrene finally arrives at the checkpoint that had cared for her after she was found and the locals warned to evacuate. Unfortunately the set of huts are all crushed into fragments, a few monster corpses are scattered around but no human bodies. Luckily she remembers that she was told about a secret hatch for them to hide in if anything drastic happens. She gets off the horse and after moving a few planks of wood around, she finds the metallic door. She knocks a bit in an irregular pattern. Not any sort of code or anything but just something to make it seem like it was a scorpion just moving over the hatch.

It's a few moments later that a slit is opened up to showcase a pair of eyes looking at her.

"Golly girl, why are you back? What happened?" The door opens to reveal the female ganesha member who questioned her and Kyrene answers with a kinder tone.

"I am returning to the ruins, my lady might still be alive. I must try to save her even if I should die.

The woman shakes her head with a groan and says. "Is there anyone else?" she asks before finding the horse. "Oh, so the titan has arrived has he?" the horse flicks it's back left leg in Axel's direction and the woman nods. She gets out of the hole with a potion and some other things.

"I can't be giving you the proper grooming you deserve, you need to get out of here yourself as we have no way of housing you. Anav is also somewhere out here, but he'll be fine. So you best be going home now. Get your siblings and return to daddy now" She feeds the horse a potion and some soft liquid chews for it to munch on to restore its stamina. The horse runs off with a "Neigh" while the woman brings Kyrene inside and closes the hatch.

She leads Kyrene around and they arrive in the general bunker area where others are sitting around casually at that. Though they have their armor on and weapons nearby. They seem pretty confident in the walls of this bunker. Kyrene is given a bit of food and water.

"I've been meaning to ask, but why is that person called Titan? He is tall sure but nothing monstrous from what I could tell. If anything he was fairly rude" Kyrene asks as she remembers briefly hearing that title from the other ganesha people who were escorting her before hearing it again from the woman's own mouth.

With not much else to do, they begin to regale her with tales of a sword taller than all the huts here stacked on top of each other and heavier than this very bunker too. Yet Axel was able to lift it after a few moments of preparation. One of the smaller rumors is about how he just popped up just outside Orario but few can testify to this claim.

On the other hand he is considered a pseudo god of magic after freely and cheaply bestowing rings and other jewelry attuned to various magics with 'Create Water'[1] spells being the newest product available. That spell is how they can so easily share water here. Though their skin does get a bit dry so they are forced to open the hatch slit to let natural air in every once in a while.

As they are discussing, a reverberating clang is heard through the bunker. Someone else goes to the door while Kyrene proceeds to contemplate the essence of the rumors she heard. Super strong, Crazy magic item maker, Tall, Handsome. She has to stop herself as she blushes a bit while remembering one of her friends, Lante's words about love and romance. She shakes herself out of her stupor as Axel himself. His body is wet as he just took a dip into a pond but it was just his own Create Water spell. He had to clean off all the blue-green blood on him as fighting close quarters with giant scorpions is dirty work.

He sits down a bit from the group to rest though he does have a calm smile on his face as if in a good mood which creeps the others out as they consider this situation a disaster.

"Rest up for another hour or two, you have to continue on then. We have to evacuate."

"What about the promised horse?" Axel says simply out of curiosity, not expecting a horse as there is danger everywhere and hunting a lot more would be only beneficial to him.

"Anav is out and about. Here, this whistle will let you call them but it might take a while for him to reach you and also be prepared for a monster horde to come after you. It's recommended for you to…."

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[1] so create water is a pretty simple spell that Axel learned during the few days of lockdown he had before the war game. I haven't shown the status page in a while so you didn't know about it but it's not a game changing magic so i didn't bother to mention it.