Hey guys, I'm back. Still not feeling all that good, but my days are getting easier. I miss Axel a lot, it's difficult adjusting. I still pick up his bowl to pour his breakfast into or grab two treats for my dogs out of the pantry instead of one, but it's just the way life is and it keeps moving, and so do I. I just have to keep going.
Anyway, I noticed in my previous chapters that I followed on with the anime and had the monsters evaporate into dust and Excilia after they were killed, but I'm going to fix that and just have them die and only turn to dust after their magic stones are destroyed or extracted from the corpse. Just a quick fix.
But for now, onto the story.
Its life was short. It repeated non-stop. It simply existed for merely a moment before dying once more, over and over again. Every once in a while, it would kill an invader, but sooner or later it would die to someone much more powerful than it, it's memories would be erased and it's be born once more from a wall in it's home.
Scurrying around on 6 legs, the Killer Ant wandered its way around Floor 9, looking for something to kill. Its base impulses demanded it, told it to kill anything that didn't belong in its home. All were invaders and all would die for daring to trespass in its domain.
There! Its time had come as it rounded a corner, looking at the thing that dared to intrude in its home. Letting out a killer screech, the Killer Ant charged at its opponent, its powerful mandibles snapping at the creature it intended to kill. The creature turned to the ant, taking out a shiny bit of metal that was sharp, before disappearing without a trace. The Killer Ant looked around, trying to figure out where the invader went.
It would never get the chance, as the sharp object became lodged in the brain of the Killer Ant, dissolving it to dust and a magic stone, to be born once more from the walls of the Dungeon.
Akihide picked up the magic stone, seemingly no different than the ones of the other 8 levels of the Dungeon above this one, before pocketing it. He sighed as he looked down the corridor to the place that had been forbidden from him. "Floor 10..." he muttered, remembering Riveria's stern warning that even if he was accompanied by the entirety of his party, he was not to approach Floor 10 before they had gone over the theory of it and got him adequately prepared for it. Akihide didn't really understand, since he felt that he was more than ready to take on Floor 10, since Kiddy Party did have someone who ventured down beyond Floor 10 before, and even down to Floor 18 at one point.
Kiddy Party as they were now 'officially' called, had been proactive ever since Riveria and Gareth had taken over their training. Sure, they were still slightly inexperienced, but compared to the two months ago when they first formed, they were more than ready for whatever Floor 9 and above had to throw at them. They had even managed to grab a new member for their party after the 'Floor 4 Incident' as it had been dubbed. Riveria, Shakti and Dian Cecht were concerned about how they would probably venture into the Dungeon all alone again should the occasion arise that no one was able to accompany them into the Dungeon, so they instead made a compromise with the three of them to allow another member to join their little party whenever they went into the Dungeon, someone with much more experience than them, who had been adventuring for half a year now and had done well as a result.
"Not bad, Akihide." called out said new member. Akihide turned to see the others approaching him. He had kind of left them at the corner after all when he used his skill to kill the Killer Ant. He smirked as the three girls joined him in the hallway. One was Airmid, still wearing her same clothes from their first adventurer, but having had her staff upgraded by Dian Cecht when he realised she was going into the Dungeon one way or another. The new staff even had a small magic stone made of a sea monster drop from Floor 27, which enhanced it's power and made Airmid a much more powerful mage.
Another, Ardee was fitted out with better equipment, fit for a member of the Ganesha Familia. She had equipped herself with a longer sword, reaching around 1 meter in length, made of a high-quality steel that made her the primary striker of the party. She had swapped out her old outfit for a black shirt and leggings, which were then covered by a dark blue reinforced jacket and skirt which was held in place by a combat belt with pouches for potions and her sword's sheath. She completed the look with a pair of white boots that really bought the whole outfit together with her greyish-blue hair.
And finally, their newest but most experienced member, as well as their leader, Ryuu Lion. It had taken the elf a fair bit of convincing to agree to come with this party into the Dungeon, but when Astraea asked her to do her the favour, Ryuu was in no way going to refuse her. Ryuu had taken to training the three with Shakti, Riveria and Gareth how to fight as a unit, with specialised combo attacks and battle formations in order to better prepare them for the Dungeon. She had also come completely geared out for the Dungeon, wearing a pair of brown shorts and a white shirt under a green cloak and mask, with matching brown gloves thar reached past her elbows and boots that reached past her knees. She wielded in combat a single handed sword decorated with an engravement of a beautiful tree with a green gem at the bottom of the handle that went well with her cloak.
Akihide smiled at the three of them, standing taller. He had not grown much in terms of height, but he had quickly become their fastest member with his skill, making him perfect for dealing damage to the monsters of the Dungeon quickly and efficiently by teleporting right on top of them or right behind them and attacking them from unknown points before they could react and kill them. It made him extraordinarily powerful for someone on the top 9 floors of the Dungeon. He had also slightly changed his Dungeon gear as well, opting for a more "Orarian" look than something from the Far East, but still having a few touches of his homeland. He kept his tantō, but had changed everything else, with a white buttoned shirt under a red haori, with black reinforced pants and brown boots reaching to his shins.
Akihide turned back to them, turning his back on the corridor that lead to the stairs to Floor 10. "Sorry to leave you guys in the dirt like that, but it's better if we kill them quickly, right?" asked Akihide, already knowing what the answer was going to be, since Ryuu was the one who told him to kill any monster he sees immediately.
Ryuu Lion could only sigh as she looked at the youngest in the party. "Yes, but don't leave your party behind like that, it could get them and you killed in here. Always stick together." she said, getting nothing but an accepting nod from the boy. She sighed once more. "I think that's enough for today. Let's just go home and we can do this again in two days. Sorry Akihide, but try and relax on your day off tomorrow."
As she said that, Akihide groaned. It was boring when he couldn't enter the Dungeon with 'Kiddy Party' because of their work. Ardee and Ryuu, as members of the Ganesha and Astraea Familias respectively, were expected to dedicate at least some of their time to patrolling the streets of Orario, keeping it safe. Whenever that came up, Airmid spent the day learning about potions and how to mix them with Dian Cecht and her familia. That left Akihide, who had no party to go into the Dungeon with, and it wasn't like the Loki Familia had some kind of side-gig he could spend his time doing instead. No, how he usually spent his days off were either training with Riveria or Kaguya, or just wandering around the city in search of entertainment.
With a heavy sigh, Akihide took one last look at where the staircase to Floor 10 was, before beginning to trudge back up to the surface.
Status:-
Level: 1
Strength: 534(E) → 535(E)
Endurance: 501(E) → 504(E)
Dexterity: 491(F) → 496(F)
Agility: 583(E) → 588(E)
Magic: 524(E) → 525(E)
Magic: Kaizen no Mon
Skills: Mico Grandus
Development Abilities: N/A
Akihide looked down at the piece of paper and frowned. "Slow..." he muttered looking at his basic abilities and cursing them. He needed to get stronger a lot quicker if he wanted to reach level 5 before Ottar did and kill the Lambton that destroyed his home, but he was becoming slower and slower as time went on. Recently, he was only able to gain a couple of points between his weeks of adventuring, and this was an all time low. He only went up a total of 15 points over a two week period. The Excilia he was gaining simply wasn't good enough to help him reach that high improvement he wanted, no matter how much he trained on the side.
There was only one solution, as he turned to Loki. "I need to go to Floor 10."
Loki sighed. "Akihide, it isn't that easy. Sure, you're slowing down, but you need at least three stats in D before you can even think about going down there. Even then, Riveria wants your stats in B before you go to Floor 11 or 12. The Dungeon is a whole different monster under Floor 9, and you just aren't ready for it yet."
Akihide snarled and ran out of the room. Down the hallways he ran until he ended up in his room, lying down on the bed. He sighed as he looked ahead at his adventurer gear. He was an adventurer, and his Familia was forbidding him from going on adventures. He hadn't been in the Dungeon for close to a month after the Floor 4 incident, and his Excilia gains had only seemed to slow down as a result, leading to him becoming stagnant and plateauing. He was plateauing when all his stats were E Rank. Everyone else in his party had at least one stat in D, even Airmid had a D Rank magic stat, Ryuu had D Rank across the board, even two C stats, and Ardee had D in all but magic, because she had none. Akihide had the lowest level stats out of all of them, without a single D Rank stat to his name.
Akihide decided at that point he had to do something crazy if he wanted to become stronger. Not going into the Dungeon alone crazy, that was a bad idea and a half, and there was no way he was going to die before he reached where he needed to. But what could he do? Training harder seemed to give him no results, no matter how much he pushed himself, and Kaguya had told him that he needed to just keep training and working hard, but it seemed that no matter how much hard work he put in, he got almost nothing out as a result. He needed to have a better training method if he wanted to increase his stats at a faster rate. But he couldn't figure out what to do.
So the boy closed his eyes that night, head cloudy and judgement impaired as he tried desperately to figure out a way to increase his stats at a higher rate.
Akihide had exactly zero ideas on how to increase his stats when he woke up the next morning, and since he had a day off, he decided to spend it as productively as possible, which included waking up at the crack of dawn to absolutely murder his body training to increase his stats as much as possible. He had managed to evolve his training into multiple exercises to train each of his basic status points.
He performed manual labour around the house moving supplies for their the familia's training and food storage. It was quite the heavy task, but it would have to help him improve. Then he improved his dexterity by walking around on his hands for an hour, since it helped him become more graceful, and he was getting better at it every day, despite the splitting headaches he was getting halfway through. Following that was agility, where he would run. That was it. He ran. He ran around the Twilight Manor first, then it escalated to the Stardust Garden, until he ran from the Twilight Manor to Babel, then to the Guild, before reporting back to the Twilight Manor. Finally, he trained his magic by healing up any of the other Familia members who were unfortunately injured during training. His endurance simply increased by doing all that bullshit for a few hours a day.
After that though, he had nothing to do.
So, after making it to the Guild, Akihide decided to spend the rest of his day simply looking around at Orario to see what he could about the city and it's secrets. He'd explore for a bit, find something to eat and then make his way back home to wait until tomorrow when he could go back into the Dungeon with his party and hopefully increase his stats more than the last two weeks. He sighed as he chose which direction he'd go exploring.
"Oh my, if it isn't Loki's child."
Akihide turned to the voice calling him out, coming face to face with a familiar goddess of love and beauty. Freya smiled warmly at the boy, putting him on edge slightly, but also relaxing him as well. Accompanying her was a man Akihide hadn't met before, dressed in pure black, wrapped in a cloak, the tanned man stared down at the boy with his green eyes. Akihide was slightly put off by the unknown man, seemingly being fearful of him. Freya glanced to the side and chuckled. "Hogni, my dear, you're scaring the boy."
The man, identified as Hogni, was seemingly quite upset at the revelation that he managed to scare a small child. He looked back to Akihide to confirm, only to see the poor boy flinch at the sudden movement. Hogni was quick to back up, his social anxiety kicking in and sending him to the floor in tears. "I'm so horrible I scare small children..." he muttered in self loathing. "How bad could I possibly be?"
Freya chuckled at the suffering of the character Hogni, before turning her gaze back to Akihide. "Is something the matter? You seem upset about something." she questioned the boy, placing a hand on his cheek and watching it begin to glow a bright red. She knew it wasn't to do with her charm, as Akihide was somehow immune to it, but he was a boy, no matter how young, and Freya was quite beautiful, even without her charm. "What can I do to help you? There must be something I can give you."
Akihide was surprised that Freya knew that something was bothering him, since they hadn't met since their first encounter at the wine shop. He had been told Ottar had saved him and his party during the Floor 4 incident, and he had sent along his thanks to the more experienced adventurer for saving him and his friends through the Guild, but he hadn't met Freya at all since that one time. But...
Something compelled him to tell her.
And so he did, about how he wasn't growing any stronger despite how he trained constantly, and that Riveria wouldn't allow him to go deeper into the Dungeon to face stronger monsters and get the necessary Excilia to increase his stats. Freya listened to him, allowing the young boy to go on about how he wanted to get stronger. She nodded when he talked, and allowed the boy to vent his frustrations to her. And at the end of it all, she wore a smile that bought comfort to his heart.
"You know, Floor 10 really is a lot different than Floor 9 and above. The rooms are shrouded in a thick fog and the monsters are much larger. A large part of why they might not be allowing you to go is because your weapons aren't suitable for the larger monsters." commented the silver haired beauty. Akihide looked down in sadness, obviously hoping for a different response than what was given to him by the goddess of beauty, which caused her to giggle. "Oh, don't be like that, you're too cute to be all mopey like that. Tell you what? Come with me for a little while, it's not like there's anything better for you to do, right?"
Akihide was convinced. "Okay." he said, as the goddess of beauty took his hand in her own.
"Hogni, we're heading back to Folkvangr." said the goddess, leading the two of them away. "We have some business there."
Akihide's eyes went wide as he looked upon the beauty of Folkvangr. The Freya Familia home was a place where the beauty, wealth, power and honour of the Freya Familia was on full display, with a beautiful entrance with a leading staircase and walkway of pillars with a beautiful fountain in the middle, cutting through a courtyard so massive it could easily hold 300 people. The home itself was beautiful, much more sophisticated and refined than the Twilight Manor, which had a much more chaotic architecture style. The house was seemingly symmetrical, made of a pure marble that shone in the sunlight.
Akihide turned his head to where he saw members of the Freya Familia fighting one another, smashing weapons and hands together as they fought. Freya smiled at the sight. "My children are always working hard to please me. Always striving to become stronger and serve me faithfully. You should endeavour to be like them, strong and confident. Training to the point of breaking and then getting back up for more."
The 'For the sake of me, my Odr.' part went unsaid, and also flew right over Akihide's head, the seven year old taking the words at face-value as a way to motivate him to become stronger. Hogni, on the other hand, understood immediately, feeling irritated that this random kid had managed to snag away her attention. Freya smiled once more as she looked at Akihide, noticing he wasn't looking at her like anyone else would due to her charm, but was much more interested in the members of her familia training.
"Now then, you should follow me." she said as she began leading him away and inside the building, Hogni in tow. "Ever since you made that declaration that you planned on surpassing Ottar, I've had my eye on you. You're such an amazing child that I simply can't take them off you, and I want you to succeed above all else." she said, cupping his cheek with one hand and causing the boy to blush. Not from her charm, but purely by her. That made her extraordinarily happy. "I've known this day will come, so I had Ottar make some preparations for you."
She lead him down the halls as he took in the sights before him, at the beautiful artwork and building itself as they walked down the hall. Eventually, they made their way to a set of doors, which Freya opened up to reveal a room that wasn't fully furnished, only having a bed and small dresser, as well as another door which Akihide could only assume lead to a bathroom. But what caught his attention was what was sitting on the bed.
A pair of weapons from the Far East, one significantly longer than the other, but both were longer than his current weapons by a fairly wide margin. One of them, the shorter of the two, was decorated with a silver embroidery of an eye on the black hilt, whilst the other one was decorated with red flowers through the black hilt. The short one was around 50cm long, making it a wakizashi, whilst the other was closer to a meter but not quite that long, meaning it was a katana.
Freya sat on the bed and held the weapons up. "Come. These are yours now, treat them well." she said, holding them out for the boy to grasp. He did, looking at them in awe. "The wakizashi is Utsukushī-me, and the katana is Megami no Hana. As of this moment, they are yours. This should help you kill the monsters on the lower floors." she said, officially giving him the weapons.
Akihide looked down at the swords in shock. Freya was giving them to him? Why? Why would she give someone not from her Familia a pair of swords?
Freya smiled down at the boy and pulled him into her, sitting him on her lap. "You are special, Akihide, unlike anyone I've ever met since I came down from Heaven. I want to cultivate you and see you grow into someone other won't just respect, but aspire to be. I want you, Akihide, to become a legend of this world comparable to the heroes of ancient times, Argonaut, Galmus, Yuri. I want to watch you not only reach that level, but surpass it, and leave them in the dust." said the goddess of beauty, stroking the young boy's hair. "Prove to me that you're worth of being him, my Odr."
Akihide had no clue why, but he got the sudden urge to please Freya in any such way that she wanted. He nodded his head, seemingly understanding the important parts of the message, become strong enough to stand alongside the ancient heroes and become worthy of standing next to Freya, the goddess of the strongest familia, herself. Become strong, which was all he ever wanted to do.
Freya smiled at the boy. "Good... now then, I suppose it'd be best to try these new weapons out. Hogni, grab Ottar for me and tell him to meet us by the gate, and to bring his gear. He'll be accompanying Akihide to Floor 10." said the goddess to her familia member, who nodded and left. Akihide looked at the goddess in awe at what she was doing for him, but then got worried when he thought about Riveria's punishment and what it was going to be. Freya seemed to take notice of this. "Don't worry, I will sort out anything that Loki or Riveria try to do. Just focus on growing stronger for me."
Akihide nodded, and followed Freya as she led him down to the entrance once more. They walked hand in hand, Freya leading the small boy down their hallways, sending warm smiles to the members of her familia, who seemed to glare at Akihide as he walked alongside her. It freaked him out quite a bit, but Freya was there to give his hand a warm squeeze and comfort him as he walked down the hallway. He turned the corner and left the house, coming face to face with the strongest man in Orario, Ottar. Freya smiled and began chatting with Ottar for a moment, pointing to him once in a while, whilst the giant man simply nodded his head or agreed with what ever Freya was saying. Eventually, the two finished their chat and Freya turned back to him.
"I want you to give it your all when you're down there." she encouraged the boy. "I'll be watching you from here, so be sure to keep yourself alive and me entertained." she said, before cupping one of his cheeks and quickly kissing the other. Akihide burst out into a massive blush, nodding at the goddess before seemingly running away. "Oh my, seems I went a bit overboard too soon." she complained as Ottar simply began to follow the boy.
"Do well, my precious Odr."
Hope you guys enjoyed. Be sure to follow, favourite and review and all the good stuff. Not really much to say, but for now, this is Striker777, over and out.
