Danmachi: the Great Devourer

C181: Emergence of Mystery

Alt Title Teaser: Goodbye Corpo

Date published: 1/28/2025.

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Lucy is curious about two features and how they would manifest but Axel offers no information other than what she has already been told about the two titles. The options between being a goddess of the Unseen versus sharing the divinity of technology between herself and Sasha. 

To Lucy both options are viable, but she has very limited amount of knowledge regarding what such a title means, she can only try to exchange more information with Sasha since Axel doesnt stop her from doing that. 

"It's a bit weird but from what I was told, us sharing would mean we split the 'authority' to be more specialized in our own fields" From Sasha, Lucy learns that they could gain more intense knowledge regarding their own fields but one word she notices in Sasha's speech makes her question the 2nd choice, 'split'. 

To her, it seems that sharing the title would half its tangible power between them while having her own title would ensure they both have their own full powered title. If she does follow this logic then the result is obvious yet she still retains some doubts that she directs towards Axel.

"How does this godhood work? What benefit do you get from letting us live here or bestowing these titles?" Axel grins in response as he is about to mention it when he feels his phone buzz. He waves his hand to create a door that he walks out of and back into his apartment. 

"Maine, whats going on?" Axel speaks out loud as he connects his phone to 'himself'.

"Finally you're back on the grid, I assume Lucy is still with you but have you received any messages from Dorio? We got a call about some info for our next gig, so Dorio left with Falco. He dropped her off so she could go collect the chip when she never came back after an hour."

"I was hoping you and Lucy could try to search around the area while I have Kiwi do wide range scans for Dorio's signal. FUCK. where is she? She better be fine." Axel has a genuine look of surprise on his face as he begins to activate his powers to trace the location of where Dorio last was. From there he finds a trace of her naturally released energy. Using a combination of Air laws and Energy laws. He quickly tracks her down to an area outside the city. As he peers through a small portal, he frowns as he realizes who it was that captured Dorio.

"Maine, I found Dorio" 

"Oh thank goodness, where is she?" 

"Western Badlands"

"Bu.but. But that is Biotechnica territory. Why now and why Dorio?" he says with worry in his voice as he realizes that this is likely connected to Sasha.

"They likely ran out of patience or figured out some of my tricks" He says and then explains how they had approached him before to try to interrogate him but it didn't end well for them. He details how they likely stalling to figure out how Axel did everything he did. 

Maine is silent as he realizes that Axel has been protecting them for a while now, even against the Corps. With distress in his voice, he pleads. "Please get Dorio back"

"No problem, Just don't panic later when you see what Biotechnica forces me to do." Axel reassures Maine with a bloodthirsty tone to his voice. 

He closes the door to his territory as he teleports over to the night city border, summoning his car, he gets in and drives the final half an hour through a dustbowl styled area that is a massive trash can with scraps and hunks of old era tech scattered around making his car bounce up occasionally. 

While driving Axel decided to scan through Biotechnica's system to see what gave them the guts to try facing off against him after a few of their agents were killed and melted their vehicles like that. He found that they got to witness a new chemical that acts like a focused acid to destroy exposed metal. 

Their reasoning was him having sent out the staff and store owner was a signal to drop this acidic bomb onto the corpo cars as well as reinforce Axel's own system against any hacks.

 Then a unique cyber attack to cause those types of illusions they saw of being torn apart by beasts. Yet even they hold no knowledge of how Axel tore apart the guard leader with such apparent ease. But with the main clues handled they restarted their pursuit on Sasha by targeting someone else to hold hostage as Axel's actions made it most apparent he knows where Sasha is. 

Axel shakes his head as he finishes his scouting. At the end of the half hour trip he stops his car on top of a dune that allows him to overlook the main Biotechnica building in the Night City area. 

He gets out of the car as there is no point in getting closer. Biotechnica has been on high alert against any hackers or infiltrators upon starting the kidnapping operation. So even now, Axel can spot 12 soldiers with stealth modules embedded, they have 3 DS1 Pulsars, 2 DB-4 Igla shotguns, 4 Bio-link Gendoras (oc- imagine ak47), and the final 3 are snipers but Axel can only identify 2 of them being Kolacs' but the last seems to be a customized Sor-22. 

Even as they train their weapons upon Axel, his expressions don't change, though based on how his eyes move, they naturally assume that somehow they have been spotted. 

"Axel G. Ram, put your hands up and reveal where Sasha Yakovleva is. Choosing to not cooperate will force us to get a bit rough with you and the other one too. At least more than we already done to her" The leader of this squad of soldiers comes out of stealth or it runs out, they have their custom sniper pointed at Axel but the more the captain had spoken the colder the surroundings had gotten. He just raises his hands like he is surrendering.

A shimmer of color appears out of nowhere right next to Axel as it condenses into a door. It opens and the few soldiers who can see inside are shocked to spot a regular house on the other side. "Come out you two, we'll be fine. This should answer some of your questions." Axel says mysteriously as two figures make their way out of the door. The soldiers change their aim from Axel to Sasha who just left through the door.

The door stays open as Axel speaks up to the captain, "now sir, I request Dorios healthy return otherwise don't think any of you are leaving here alive." He announces and from his words the rest cancel their stealth modules, showing the full gravity of the situation to the two netrunners. Sasha is slightly scared but trusts Axel thus far. Lucy on the other hand is confident in her own survival thanks to her abilities but getting Sasha out of here would be hard unless she steals Axel's car. Yet her thoughts soon vanish as Axel speaks,

"Let me show you two what it means to be a god." He states and then lowers one of his hands down to be beside his own head. He then clenches his fist and all the surrounding soldiers find themselves disarmed and then crushed into paste with the exception of their heads and legs. 

"Biotechnica, you have 10 minutes to return the hostage otherwise face your doom" Axel gives his final declaration as he takes a seat on the sand dune. His message was physically heard by all people inside the building.

Yet the people did not heed his message as the operators inside were trying to figure out what happened to their assault team outside, how they died or even where Sasha and Lucy came from. They can only see something glowing purple-blue from their cameras. 

All the personal cameras on the soldiers stopped working the moment Axel arrived which was why they could not communicate properly. As a result the 10 minutes are completely wasted as people are running around like headless chickens. Though most remain ignorant as many don't take the threat seriously, the others are set on constantly worrying. 

Axel gets up from his spot, shaking off the sand stuck to his butt and then raises one hand to the sky. He first snaps his fingers which causes Dorio to appear next to the group of three, granted she is unconscious with various injuries on her. The ladies quickly cover her body and bring her inside the divine world. Then, with his hand still raised up, he extends his fingers like claws, he begins to bring it down as he speaks, words that echo to all areas, within Night City and even surrounding states and realities. 

"I welcome thee, who art lesser than me, to a manifestation of my Arrogance, with unparalleled Elegance. Earth's new Moon, your possible boon. Village of Origin, manifest"

With his words and the dragged down claw hand, a tear opens just outside earth and through that tear, an entire small sized world makes its appearance for all to see. The emergence of a new world is felt all over Earth but not in a disastrous way as Axel ensured a barrier covers his reality marble so its gravity does not impact Earth. 

Lucy and Sasha are wide-eyed as they look up and then back through the door that is still open. They momentarily head back inside and then from the windows, they can see Earth on the outside sky. They then come back outside but only have confused expressions as they don't know why Axel did all this.

"Aisha, please release a level 3 Hell Kaios 48* (degrees) north and 23* south from the entrance of your house." Axel's casual words are quickly met in response as through the open door, both outside the world and inside the inner worlds open door, they can hear a woman's voice saying "fine".

Moments later, an intense red light can be seen from the Orbit, originating from the newly found 'moon'. It keeps growing brighter as it even paints a bit of night city red, many across the state two states of California are confused by the event and entire situation, at least until a beam like a solar flare is shot out from the place of origin. 

With Dorio safe and sound, nothing stop Axel from having the biotechnica building from crumbling into dust. All personnel still inside turn to ash under the oppressive divine might that belongs to Aisha, Goddess of Victory.

"Thank you love" Axel says to the goddess while Lucy and Sasha feel chills up their spines as they process the absolute might required to do any of this. The level of destruction is comparable to a small scale nuke yet the real terror is that there might be more levels beyond '3' that they overheard Axel mention. 

Lucy has a better idea of how much power actually went into that type of attack. She gets a new impression on what it actually means to be a god which means that Axel has done his example correctly. She is astounded by the distance that much magical energy has to travel and then only destroy the single target that Axel had accurately pinpointed.

"You still haven't mentioned what you get from turning us into gods" Lucy cant help but bring it up as she all but made up her decision. Axel smiles as he spreads his hands out to his sides, completely horizontal to his own chest.

"Well is the result not obvious, I get everything you learn. Any skills you develop are shared with me." he says as if it's obvious while the duo are confused. "How is that fair, all our hard work would just belong to you?" Sasha cant help but ask.

"Well, when I and my world are the very source of energy and inspiration that your own divine powers are from, it's an even trade. I already possess both the technological and 'unseen' powers I mentioned to you both"

"I just don't have time to specialize in them for any random event like this one. So I branched out that task, originally to my wives but a few other individuals caught my eye and I shared this blessing with them."

"So your trying to get maximum effect from minimum work" Lucy says after some analysis. 

"Bingo" he points at Lucy, happy she is smart enough.

"And our freedom is not restricted?" 

"I have no reason to keep you here, even on the other side of this world or in different parallel realities, you can freely explore and still be linked to me through this bonding process, especially now that my world is out and about."

Lucy gets her final answer and decides to go through with it as it is her best bet for a free life and happiness. She sighs and declares, "Very well, ill become your goddess of the Unseen" 

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Alt Title: Manifested world, Power of a God, Acceptance

Word count: 2245

Drop a comment if you wanna judge my writing or the story. I'll try to respond, especially if you're confused or anything.