Chapter 73: The Real Fight Starts Now
"Serious Table Flip!"
Steve pulled on the ground he dug his finger into, as if he had grabbed the edge of a table and overturned it. But instead of a slab of wood being flipped over, all the remaining ground not affected by the gravity spell on a normal level was uprooted in a tsunami of rock and debris as the earth within the domain Steve isolated began to pile out of the pocket and enter the range of the gravity of the spell.
More and more the earth was broken away as the adventurers clinging on to the pro-gravity chunks were peppered with rocks and dust as they saw the earth rush by them like geysers of water. Layers upon layers of the ground was removed using Steve's raw strength as a hole spanning the whole area of the 3 mile wide space became deeper and deeper.
The adventurer's ears were filled with nothing but the sound of rumbling earth as the light became blotted out for the adventurers. But those who were watching the broadcast were given a bird's eye view of what Steve had really accomplished through all of this. There was a reason he'd isolated this specific area in the piece of land. Because when the final layer of dirt was peeled away to reveal what was beneath, people stood up in from their seats in further disbelief.
In Babel, the god's eyes widened as in that huge hole in the ground, there was revealed lush forest, flowing rivers and white walls.
"That's...the 50th floor." Hermes said as the description matched exactly what was in the Dungeon handbooks. "He's ripped open a hole into the Dungeon!"
"Ptah, at this point it's ridiculous." Dionysus said. "We got the message, we've seen all we had to see, can you not just reign your children in before they tear the planet apart?!"
"And what do you expect me to do from here?" Ptah asked. "Shout all the way across to the battlefield and tell them to stop what they're doing?"
"You ARE able to do that." Loki commented. "You know, with that special power of yours."
"...Even if I did tell them, I cannot control them with my voice the same way I can control the lot of you." The Egyptian god said.
"You can't?"
"No. My children are somehow protected against my own power. Maybe because they carry my blessing but if not for that reason, the fact still remains that I cannot exert the same power over them."
"And why would they not just obey you?" Dian Cecht. "Don't tell me you took in a bunch of over powered otherworldly freaks and they don't listen to a word you say."
"NONE of our children do exactly what we say." Ptah said. "That's the point of free will. They're not going to follow us to the letter. But anyways...this is all of your fault. You pressed me for a War Game and you set my children on a war path with Freya's children. Now they're going to see it through and they're like forces of nature. You just have to wait until it's over."
"Freya, come on." A goddess pleaded with her. "Can't you get your kids to just throw in the towel...or rather, the flag?"
"And how would you suppose I do that, even if I wanted to?" Freya raised a brow. "What messenger can we send is fast enough to reach the battlefield now? And even if we had such a person, which of them is now going to enter the barrier. And anyway..." Freya stared at the magical screen, silently praying in her heart that Steve spared the lives of her children. Her wagers were the furthest thing at the back of her mind now...she just wanted her children home and safe and in full count when this whole debacle was over. "...my children are just as stubborn. They won't just give up like that. They'll fight till their last breath if they have to. It's just the way I raised them."
"Great, so we've got two stubborn gods with equally stubborn children at each other's throat and none want to just finish this." Goibniu said. "Meanwhile, Apollo and Ishtar's Familia are being trampled like ants just because they're in the way....what a War Game this turned out to be."
---
The Freya Familia opened their eyes as the chaos came to a stand still. All around them, they could see floating debris, ranging from small pebbles to mountain sized boulders that floated between the bubbles that were the chunks, suspended in an anti-gravitational field.
It was like the War Game was taking place in an asteroid belt where the rocks just floated around in zero gravity. Only where the chunks were concerned was there gravity keeping them rooted. They walked to the edge of the chunk they were situated on and looked down beneath them to see the surprise that Steve had in store for them.
"The 50th Floor." Hedin said. "From the sky to the Dungeon. This is the real battlefield. Not just a show of power, but intentionally making the playing field larger...they're about to get serious."
"Serious?" Alfrigg repeated. "SERIOUS? You mean everything they were doing before now was just them being casual?"
"Certainly didn't seem to cost them much." Hedin remarked before looking to the Boaz. "Ottar. What's our next move? We jump off this thing and we get caught floating in that nullification field. We stay here and we become idle targets for them."
Ottar stared as he watched the members of the Ptah Familia separate and land amongst different Familia groups stuck on different chunks. For instance, Kai landed on the chunk where Phryne was and the toad women clutched at her axe as she caught sight of the speedster on her platform.
...
"You bitch! You again?!" The toad screeched. "Where is the orange haired whore, the one that wrecked my beautiful face?!"
"Where she needs to be." Kai said. "Though I would advise you keep your eyes on me. I'm just as dangerous as she and the captain has ordered us to get serious."
"Piss off uggo!" Phryne shouted. "I'm gonna go find your friend and rip out her-"
Phryne was silenced as she found a fist buried in her nose which made a crater in her face and her head snapped back in a whiplash. Kai then span around and round house kicked her in the stomach so cleanly that the area beneath the toad's hips turned 360 degrees and the Amazons with Phryne heard the audible sound of a spine being broken. Phryne's face contorted in pain as she prepared to fall forwards having lost control and sensation of her lower half but Kai was suddenly standing on her face.
Surprisingly, the toad's face was so large that Kai was able to stand on it with both feet. But the expression on the speedster's face was enough to make the women shiver. Gone was the joyfulness and the childish grins. What had replaced all the joviality was stone cold resolve, and icy demeanour as the look in Kai's eye made it seem she was no longer dealing with another sentient being but a pest that needed to be exterminated. This was what happened when Steve ordered them to kill; their real god was not Ptah, but in their eyes the one that had made them his family.
"I told you, the captain has ordered me to get serious..." Kai said as she leaned down and grasped Phryne's eyeballs with her hand, no care at all for how the toad felt her grabbing it. With a swift pull, she tore out the eyeballs from Phryne's head until the optic nerves were all that was connecting the organs to the toad's skull. Kai faced the eyeballs towards her. "...so like I said. Keep your eyes on me!"
Phryne screamed bloody murder as Kai ripped out the woman's eyes and kicked off of the woman's face, backflipping onto the ground of the chunk and tossing the organs aside. Her kicking off from Phryne's face made the woman's flabby body bounce off the ground and into the anti-gravity field where she floated, still screeching like a strangled goat with her mouth wide open.
Kai withdrew an enchanted bow from her hotbar and pulled on the string, an arrow automatically being nocked in placed. With no time wasted and not a glance spared, Kai let off the arrow and it sailed through the air, swift and true as it lit on fire, a clear sign of the Flame enchantment on the bow. The arrow lodged itself in Phryne's throat, piercing the woman's uvula and burying the flaming tip into the woman's brain cell, roasting her nerves and her spinal cord as the brain died then and there.
There was a puff of confetti and the toad's body disappeared. It all happened so fast, it was barely more than the blink of an eye and the Amazon's which made up Phryne's posse could only watch and process it happening while their bodies were one; unable to move fast enough and keep up with Kai's speed, and two; they were paralysed by fear. Kai put the bow away into her inventory and called forth her sword.
"No more games." Kai muttered loud enough for them to hear.
Cold indifference was on her face, and for a moment the Amazons saw the illusion of a bloodthirsty giant she-wolf looming up behind Kai, telling them all they really needed to know in that instance and that moment in time...they were nothing but her prey.
Which was cemented by Kai blurring forward and gutting three Amazon's with her netherite sword at once. The heartless gamer persona that saw other living creatures besides her own family as nothing but NPCs and expendable livestock or entertainment was in full swing now as she mowed the women down mercilessly...she had her order, and she would do her job. As per Steve's programming.
...
Efe landed on the chunk where Luan Espel was cowering along with some other members of his pathetic Familia. She landed nimbly on her tip toes and put a finger to her chin and she wondered cutely as any typical little girl did.
"Hello." She said cutely. "You are members of the Apollo Familia right?"
"Get the HELL way from me!" Luan fell on his backside and scrambled away on his hands and feet like a retarded crab. "You're freaks the lot of you! You shouldn't even exist!"
"Well that's not a nice thing to say." Efe pouted. "I'm little girl. You shouldn't say mean things to me! You're supposed to call me cute and adorable and praise me with nice, pretty words. Not insult me!"
"You are anything but cute!" One of the adventurers said. "You're psychos! You're demons...here to torture us all! Go back to wherever you came from and tell your sick captain to take his hellspawn monster with him!"
Efe's eyes narrowed dangerously as the cute air around her vanished, leaving behind sharp, glinting purple eyes as the pupils dilated in ice cold anger.
"You can insult me all you want, and not call me the names I deserve to be called." Efe said before she gestured with a finger, purple mists of magic covering it. All carbon matter in the soil of the chunk beneath them condensed greatly under the high pressure of her magic while she simultaneous weaved it about to give the shape she wanted from it. Out of the ground itself shot a spike made out of diamond, stronger than the hardest metal and sharper than a seamstress's needle and impaled the adventurer through the throat. He gasped out blood and clawed at the structure that had penetrated his pipes.
"But you will not insult my Onii-chan in front of me." Efe's tone was full of warning and a challenge for them to say more.
"...She's just a mage brat. Get her before she can cast again." The other adventurers said as they pounced on her.
Efe just sidestepped them at the last millisecond and watched them as they sailed off the edge of the chunk and in the zero gravity field where they hovered as Ari picked them off from one of the floating boulders with an M2010, fatal and precise headshots each. It seemed that in some weird game logic, the null gravity didn't affect the speed, power and trajectory of a bullet.
Luan could only gape in horror as he was left all alone with this psycho girl who had just impaled a man in his throat and tricked more grown men to jump off a cliff. He pointed a shaky finger at Efe who only raised a brow at him in questioning.
"What?" She emphasised by opening her hands and looking down at herself. "Is there something on me? Oh please don't tell me there's a stain on my clothes! I can't stand them!"
"Monster." Luan gasped. "You're a sadistic f***ing monster, the lot of you! There's no humanity in you at all."
Efe gasped dramatically as her hands flew to her mouth while she stared at him bug-eyed. So ridiculous and outraged was her expression that Luan dropped his finger and rose a brow in confusion at her over-reaction.
"What? What did I say?" He asked.
"You...you naughty boy!" She said. "How can a kid like you curse like that in front of a young lady like me? That's very bad manners!"
"I'm not the kid! I'm a Pallum. You're the snotty kid here, a kid who thinks she's so powerful that she can do whatever sh*t she puts her mind to and its okay! Just like her goddamn Familia!"
"You did it again!" Efe exclaimed before she tutted. "My Onii-chan went through so much trouble to protect me from bad language like yours. He said I have to remain pure and innocent...and you're trying to ruin it!"
"Ruin what?" Luan asked in confusion, feeling as if he was poking a hornet's nest with this one. "Why exactly would hearing a bit of swearing taint you?! You're soul is already black with darkness!"
"I have to remain pure and lady like, uncorrupted by filthy language from lower class swine like you!" Efe put a hand on her hips. "How else will I become my Onii-chan's wife in the future!?"
Luan actually dead-panned at that, in spite of his growing fear.
"Oh, so it's one of THOSE situations is it? Wait, your big brother would be your captain right! And even at your age you're still thinking of marrying him? Don't they give up these kind of thoughts at like...four?"
"No, he's not my real brother." Efe said. "But even if he was, I would still do my best to try and marry him. Because he's the best Onii-chan in the world! He taught me a few important things." Efe pulled back a finger and the diamond spike collapsed into soil again, the impaled man breathing his last as his eyes rolled back and he collapsed onto his knees before his back leaned over the edge of the chunk and the weight of his head leaning in that direction eventually made the entire body tumble over. Efe then pulled out a rather large hammer from her inventory, not unlike Amy Rose's hammer. Luan turned paper white as Efe approached him.
"One of the lessons my Onii-chan taught me was this...to discipline other kids who use foul language." Efe said as she approached Luan who scrambled away from her but was then cornered as he dangled over the edge of the chunk, looking down into miles upon miles of a long fall where he would most certainly splat like an egg on the exposed 50th floor if the filed was deactivated. He looked at the purple haired girl who raised the large hammer above her head with a solemn expression on her face. "I will make my Onii-chan proud and teach you some manners!"
The air was filled with Luan's screams.
...
"Damn, she's enjoying this way too much." Ari said as she watched the scene with her scope and looked away from Efe bringing down the literal hammer of justice on Luan repeatedly, like one who was using a tenderising hammer in pounding meat.
Ari then activated her magic, which replaced all the rounds in her mags without her having to physically reload them, instead taking the rounds from her inventory straight into the gun and dumping the cartridges out.
"But then again, so am I. I'm just glad that the ban on me using guns on people was lifted for this stage of the fight. Better enjoy it while it lasts." Ari grinned as she leapt up onto a chunk where she knew some of the lesser members of the Freya Familia.
Her touch down on the ground startled them and made them spin around as they glared at her in both fear and anger. She merely grinned as she dismissed the rifle in her hands and switched it for a trench gun before aiming straight at a girl's face
"Surprise motherf***ers!" She said before splattering the other adventurers' faces with brain matter.
...
Zuri was on another chunk engaging Hyakinthos and his top adventurers in a physical fight. The fools had thought that just because Zuri was a mage that he would be easy picking...but they were dead wrong. Zuri was a better mage for sure, but he was a deadly combatant, enough that even Steve had to be careful. And thanks to the custom blade on his staff, he was able to utilise it like a scythe as he humiliated Hyankinthos.
Zuri butted one adventurer in the stomach with the end of his staff before ducking under a sword and kicking the one who swung it so hard in the chest that their heart exploded and their body disappeared into bursts of confetti. Zuri dodged an arrow that sped by his ear and grabbed an adventurer just as another came flying towards him and held him up as his meat shield.
Unfortunately the meat shield met the arrow with his crotch since Zuri didn't have time to adjust him properly. And so Zuri's ears were filled with screams like that of a woman...because the adventurer he'd indirectly castrated may as well have become one now.
Feeling bad that the adventurer would probably stay this way, Zuri flicked the body hard enough the neck broke from whiplash and killed the guy. He tossed the body in front of another approaching adventurer, and the burst of confetti customary of a dead body disappearing in Steve's domain blinded and confused the attacker long enough for Zuri to slash him across the eyes with the blade on his stuff, blinding him bloody.
Another adventurer approached from the side with an axe over-head like he wanted to bury it in Zuri's skull. But the mage simply pointed the staff at the guy and wordlessly fired a blast of magical energy. The attack hit the adventurer and vaporised all flesh and blood, leaving behind only bone as the skeleton dropped the axe and shattered into an arrangement of bones as that too disappeared in a burst of confetti. Another thunderclap sounded overhead as the resurrected adventurers were spat out of the cloud.
"Still not willing to let them die, eh Steve?" Zuri sighed wistfully.
"{Aro Zephyros}!" Zuri heard Hyakinthos shout behind him and without looking, he stretched a hand behind him and caught between his fingers a spinning blade of fire.
Zuri then turned around and examined the magic he caught in his hand before looking back at Hyakinthos.
"I'll have to give you points on the creativity." The scholar said as he stared at the one Steve referred to as nothing else but a 'poofta'. "But I'm afraid I'm a bit too high level to be caught out by magic like this. I've come across things much stronger and deadlier than your parlor tricks."
"H-how?" Hyakinthos asked. "How are you just able to catch my magical attack in your bare hand like it's nothing?"
"I've spent over a hundred years studying the finer bits of magic to be caught out by this pathetic attack. I've probably forgotten more about magic than all the scholars in Orario combined have learnt about it." Zuri huffed before smiling. "Though, there is 'one' who for certain doesn't fall into that category."
Hyakinthos grit his teeth at how this War Game had turned out for all of them, and hatred built up in his blood to the point that veins bulged out out of his face.
"We are the Apollo Familia." The ponytailed prat said. "We are guided by the Lord of Light himself, kissed by the sun and basked in all of its mighty glory. We will never be toppled by upstart heathens in a worthless Familia like yours." The hateful grimace turned to a smirk as Hyakinthos prepared his next move, making Zuri raise a brow. "We are certainly not arrogant enough to just fall into a trap. {Rubele}!"
The disk in Zuri's hand exploded in a storm of fire with power equivalent to that of a C4 as Hyakinthos grinned at what could be the undoing of the 'arrogant mage' in front of him. He sheathed his red Sun's Flamberge and scoffed.
"100 years my ass. All that time studying only to be caught out by an explosive attack. What a waste of my air." Hyakinthos began walking away to the edge of the chunk he was on, looking for a way to get off. "Now then, where are the rest of those fools? Especially those two whores, Daphne and Cassandra. When I find them, I'm going to make them pay for their treachery to Lord Apollo! I'll have them laid out for the horses to play with then. I'll flay them alive! I'll immolate them at noon in lawn of of our manor! I'll humiliate them! I'LL-BLURGH!"
Hyakinthos was cut off as something stabbed right through his back and he looked down to see the blade of Zuri's staff jammed right through his back and out his abdomen. Looking back, he saw Zuri with his arm outstretched holding he weapon in place while with the other arms, he was vacuuming all the dispersed fire magic from Hykanithos's magical explosion into a fire ball in his palm.
"Like I said, it would be embarrassing if I were to be caught out by such a circus trick." Zuri said as he condensed all the fire into the fireball in his palm. Not even his clothes were affected, let alone suffering any damage himself.
"How?" Hyakinthos spluttered out as blood poured from his mouth. "How did you survive?"
"I'm just better, and smarter than you." Zuri said. "You're just a pompous little boy toy of Apollo's that seems very proud of that fact. You're a taker through and through." Zuri leaned forwards and smirked cruelly. "And that last part doesn't extend just to the amount of L's you've taken in the past half hour."
Hyakinthos grunted as he tried to pull his body from the blade but Zuri held him fast.
"And what was that I heard about immolation?" Zuri asked as he pointed the fireball of the poofta's own fire magic right at him. "Perhaps for one to understand what he truly threatens with, he must experience if first hand."
The fireball became very much like a blowtorch as Hyakinthos shrieked in pain, his body becoming just one big bonfire as his clothes set alight and he dropped over the edge of the chunk. But not before Zuri caught ahold of the Flamberge gifted to Hyakinthos by Apollo and pulled the sword out of its sheath. Zuri held it aloft, not even caring as the flaming meatbag fell over the edge.
"Nice sword." The scholar said before tossing it in his inventory. "I might pick my teeth with it."
He then stared over at another chunk where he watched Sunny engage with another group of adventurers from Freya's bunch. One of them tried to ambush Sunny but the farmer rolled back out of the way of the lunge and grabbed the back of the guy's pants. Sunny quickly pulled the man's slacks down and flipped his hoe around so the butt-end of the tool was lined up with a brown eye. One smooth thrust and the adventurer went ram-rod straight as he screamed like a stuck pig.
Zuri shivered at his friend's behaviour. And Noor was nowhere to be seen.
"How uncouth." He commented before looking at the orb on his staff and watched a clock with its hand ticking down inside. "The gravity spell is about to wear off soon." He looked up at the highest chunk where he knew the Freya Familia executives were. "Hurry up and do what you must Steve. Even I'm starting to get bored."
---
"They're monsters." Ottar commented as he observed what the Ptah Familia was doing down below.
"That they are." Hogni said. "Yonder adventurers pose no threat to those great warriors, but merely provide fodder for sport. They are outmatched."
"That's an understatement." Allen muttered. "But they're weaklings. Why would would we be the same?"
"Because you're all piss poor and weak compared to us." Came a voice behind them and the Freya Familia executives turned quickly to see Steve standing there with his arms folded his fingers drumming as his armour glimmered with magic. "And no matter what you do, you will never overcome us. We are legion, we are great...we are inexorable."
They hadn't even registered him moving into their range, even with their advanced senses.
"Fancy words we couldn't give a sh*t about." Alfrigg said.
"Finally decided to stop running?" Dvalinn asked.
"No big monster to hide behind now, is there?" Berling taunted.
"Now it's just you versus all of us." Grer said as he tightened his grip on his greatsword. "And we're going to wreck you."
"You really are brothers." Steve commented. "You share the same level of stupidity as well. Too addled by your worthless love for your equally useless goddess."
""What?!" The Gulliver brothers roared in deep anger. The Freya Familia's hands all clenched as they heard this, even Ottar.
"You seem to have got the wrong idea." Steve explained. "It's not me versus all of you...it's all of YOU versus ME."
He paused to let those words sink into them, but at the same moment, Phryne respawned and dropped beside him, trying to get to her feet and shake off the disorientation. When she realized where she was and who she was standing by, she brandished her axe with a war cry and directed her impending attack at Steve.
He did not even spare her a glance before punching in her direction. The Freya Familia saw nothing but his arm blur out of its folded position towards Phryne, and a moment later the toad's body exploded into a bloody mist that dispersed into the air, followed by another crack of thunder from above. Now incensed as the Freya Familia was, even they knew they couldn't just vaporise a level 5 with a punch.
Hedin was smart enough to know what happened.
"He turned her into bloody mist...using just the pressure that his punch created." The light elf said under his breath.
"That's just a whole other level of bullsh*t." Allen said.
"But you'll be slapped with a whole lot more where you're heading." Steve said before he smiled. "I can feel your anger, your hatred. You revile me for how much I've humiliated you and put you off like feeble children who only need a bit of discipline at the end of the day." Steve tilted his head and grinned at them as he saw they did not react this time, especially Allen. Last time they'd responded to his poking, the big G vaporised them. "And like good children, it seems you're learning. Well I guess its time to stop faffing around." Steve unfolded his arms as he flexed his fingers. "Let's get this over with shall we?"
Ottar brandished his black sword and grunted. "Bring it!"
Both Steve and the Freya Familia leapt at each other. If this were Dragonball, the episode would have ended where Steve's face and the faces of the Freya Familia were caught close in one frame, expressions frozen at the exact moment before collision. But semantics and theatrics aside, one thing could not be denied...the most powerful forces of the mortal world were about to smash into one another.
And the impact would rip everything apart.
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