Chapter 20: Mystical Mountaineering

A/N :

" " : Dialogue,

' ' : Thought,

[ ] : System, Akasha, Minerva,

"Italicized text" : Telepathy,

{ }: Parallel Wills,

« » : Artificial Intelligence,

: Majutsu/Conjuring usage.(Using MA energy for skills, spells, etc.)

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Location: Renxandt Empire

Shiraori POV

After we finish our meal, we book one of the larger rooms in the inn and tell the owner about our companions that we are expecting. Night fell and everyone has come to the room. Ariel has a troubled look on her face, while Sophia looks downright murderous.

"I've got some bad news." Ariel begins, causing Dante and I to raise a brow. "Is it about the imperial soldiers fighting the ogre or the elves that just so happen to be in town?" I ask her, and she says yes to both questions. "Well, if that's the case, we're in luck. I know the exact reason why both parties are here." Dante says, causing everyone else to look at him with questioning gazes.

"I imagine that you've at least heard of the presence of a unique ogre that has killed some adventurers and soldiers, right?" He asks and Ariel nods. "That ogre is one of the reincarnated people from Earth." He says, causing Ariel and Sophia's eyes to widen in shock.

"As things are, it's very likely that Potimas and his elves found out about most of the reincarnations. As a matter of fact, they've found quite a lot of them, if we're to blame them for the kidnappings of multiple children around the world. As for the imperial soldiers, they're probably here to just kill the ogre." Dante explains. Ariel thinking of the implications of this tightens her hands in into fists.

We had heard of the kidnappings as we went through multiple cities, and Dante and I knew for a fact that the elves were behind it, but we couldn't just say that out to anyone. The evidence that the kidnapping of children not up to 2 years old could have been linked to the elves at this point would have been seen as loose at best and false accusations at worst, but the elves just pushed it up to highly plausible.

"By the way, did there happen to be a very young elf among them?" I ask them and Sophia nods, then wonders why I would ask about an elf that was possibly a baby, the her eyes widen. "Is it possible that elf was Oka-sensei?" She asks shakily and I nod then sigh. "If I was there, I would have killed the other elves then taken her away. *Sigh* Too bad I wasn't." I say with mild exasperation. Despite knowing that I could very well have teleported her into my arms, I chose not to. After all, with Dante's plans, we won't spend as much time as was spent in the other timeline for our preparations for attacking the elves, meaning we'll be able to get her out of Potimas' clutches before it's too late.

It's been two days since we got to the town, and a thought happens to have been hounding me after hearing the details of the elves' attack on Sophia. From what she said, Oka-sensei in the form of an elf child tried touching her as if calling out to her, only for the person holding her to teleport as they separated. So I have been thinking, Potimas is definitely still affected by the effects of Agony-empowered lightning passing through his soul, so his ego and mind have been attacked without him being able to effectively attack the perpetrator, but resorting to kidnapping by teleportation is somewhat off for someone like him. Granted, I can't put such a thing beyond him.

Either way, Ariel's been giving Sophia an explanation of the effects of the Sin and Virtue skills, especially the Jealousy skill that she has, stating how it would turn its user into what is essentially a yandere, but unfortunately Sophia doesn't have the self awareness to understand the dangers it poses, to her and others. Letting out an exasperated sigh, Ariel advises her to make absolutely sure that she doesn't gain any other Sin skills.

She eventually explains the other Sin skills that have the most prominent effects, like Pride, which makes its user grow at an accelerated rate at the cost of their empathy for other beings, making them see all beings as a source of EXP. The Sloth skill that causes those you see as enemies to lose their energy, but also causes you to work far more.

She eventually reaches the skill that I feel had the worst aftereffect, the Wrath skill. It would increase all stats without the use of MP or SP, but would cost you your sanity, as you become a literal mad berserker, killing everything in sight. "Is there any way to get back to normal?" Sophia asks and Ariel simply says, "Nope. At least not within the system." She then tells her the only ways to escape the madness is to somehow turn off the skill or die, then warns her to never activate it even in the case that she happens to gain the skill.

"As for the Greed line of skills, well, you can already see how that would be bad. There's a certain dignity to being poor that some people don't appreciate." Ariel says, with her legs streched out and drinking some pretty expensive alcohol.

Three more days pass with us choosing to take a breather in the inn and we hear that the path out of town had been reopened, with claims that the ogre had been chased away. It seems that while they weren't able to kill him, the army was able to chase him into the Mystic Mountains, which I can easily tell will end horribly for them.

"Well, we can finally get moving, and possibly get the ogre to move away from here with us." Dante says as we leave the room to check out of the inn. We all nod in agreement as we leave the inn. "Come back anytime!" The innkeeper says with a bright smile as she sees us off.

After some minutes of walking, we come across an abandoned village at the foot of the Mystic Mountains without any fanfare. The state of the village however, is desolate and dreary. Based on the information that we gathered before coming here, this place had been attacked by someone and gotten destroyed and no one has tried rebuilding it since then.

But the abandonment is not without reason, as when it was initially built, it was used as a base camp for anyone trying to pass through the Mystic Mountains, but its destruction was taken as proof of the danger of the Mystic Mountains, so no one had tried fixing it up as they would be unnecessarily putting themselves in harm's way.

"I smell blood, both old and fresh." Sophia says after sniffing the air a few times. "So you noticed as well. It's most likely the smell of elf blood." Ariel says after taking a quick sniff. "They were lying in wait for us, but it seems they were attacked by someone else, probably the ogre that was fleeing in this direction." Dante says, looking at the environment.

"Wait, so you're saying that those elves lost to an ogre. How?" Sophia says incredulously. "Yeah. That's what happened." Dante responds, causing Sophia and Merazophis to get on guard, as his response meant that the ogre was a lot stronger than the elves.

"There's no need for you two to be so alarmed, or did you forget who you're traveling with?" I say to them and they calm down while remaining vigilant. "Well, looking at the degree of damage, it's obvious that Potimas didn't send these elves with Glorias, otherwise the damage would have been much greater. Which means that he's most likely trying to keep Oka from knowing about his secrets, for now." Dante says and snaps his fingers, teleporting the APC to us. "Let's get moving, I've got the ogre's, or rather the oni's location down." He says, causing Ariel to stiffen for a bit then sigh as she figured out that the ogre had evolved.

Moving through the mountains at night was easy, even with the unfriendly terrain and the monsters that were attacking us, though those were only incapacitated. The snow on the mountain was somewhat strange, as it fell nonstop. But I guess that could be attributed to the fact that a lot of ice dragons live here and are perpetually creating ice with their magic, because if the snow was natural, it'd have become hail by now, with how low the temperature is.

"Maybe the dragons are trying to keep you away, Miss Ariel?" Sophia says and Ariel's response to her helped me know that we are on the right path to him. "Even the ice dragons must understand that they can't give me a challenge, let alone beat me. Not to mention, we have an unspoken agreement that we won't try to instigate conflict with each other. They didn't try to intercept me the last time I passed through here, so I don't think we're their target. Maybe it's the ogre they're trying to keep away."

As we keep moving, we come across something that causes Dante to hit the brakes. "Well, looks like we're gonna be meeting some old friends." He says as he brings out his red bladed katana which I learned is called Yasetsu, while I look outside and see what exactly he was talking about. It's a literal horde of anogratches hooting at us aggressively.

Following him outside, we tell everyone to stay in, that we want to use this as an opportunity to stretch our limbs. "It's been quite a while since we last saw these monkeys, hasn't it?" He says with a laugh and I nod with a dark smile on my face. "Well, since we're here now, let's make this a reunion to remember." I say, readying my scythe.

Dante POV

'Hey Akasha, wanna suggest a song for the slaughter about to take place.' [How about Faust by Mick Gordon. After all, it is still boss music, just for you instead.] 'I like your taste. I think all of this in the instant that the anogratches start jumping at us.

Wearing a smug grin on my face, I look at Shiro and she looks back at me before sporting a grin of her own, then we flicker away and begin cleaving through scores of monkeys per second, leaving dust behind as we used the Death attribute on our weapons.

We slash, cleave and stab in a deadly dance, testing out new attacks and combos. One of them tries a sneak attack on Shiro and I swiftly stab it in the chest while twisting Yasetsu, blasting a hole in its torso. I notice a few to the side that just happened to line up, then use an iaijutsu technique to slash through all of them in a single blow.

Taking control of the snow around us, I compress it to ice and shape it into multiple knights with swords, axes and lances, then set them onto the remaining monkeys. For the few that were missed by the knights, Shiro took them out with a blast of death energy. Thirty seconds later, there was no hooting or screeching to be heard around us.

Getting back into the Maria, which is the name I've given the APC, we move toward the ogre who is back on the move himself. After some time, we happen to notice someone familiar in our detection ranges, an old man on the verge of death, the so-called humanity's strongest mage, Ronandt. I honestly expected him to either have died or been comatose by now. I guess it just shows how much weaker I was when I basically reduced his entire immune system's potency to a thousandth of the norm.

From what I feel, he's not too far from the imperial soldiers and he's also on his way to the fight that's going on right now. You see, our ogre friend chose to pick a fight with the most powerful ice dragon in the Mystic Mountains and is currently getting his ass handed to him. As for how Ronandt is already moving to him, I guess desperation is pushing him to avenge Buirimus before he died, not that it's my problem.

Anyways. We keep moving in the ogre's, or I guess oni's direction, now that he's evolved, only for him to suddenly change locations as he's punted away by Nia, the ice dragon. 'At least, he's staying in one place for now.' I think to myself as I speed up the Maria. "What happened? Why are we speeding up?" Ariel asks from her seat. " Our oni friend picked a fight with an ice dragon in his rage then got his ass handed to him. He's currently in a crater bleeding out, so we're speeding up to get him before he ends up passing out." I tell her and she nods before she suddenly jolts in realization.

"You just said that he did that in a rage, right?" She asks and I nod, still watching for anymore monsters. She huffs out a tired sigh as I confirmed her fears. "He's gotten the Wrath line skills all the way up to Wrath. This is worse than I expected." She says and Sophia walks up to her and pats her on the back. "Thanks, Sophia. But as things are, it's very likely that we'll have to kill your old classmate." She says while stroking Sophia's head.

"Did you happen to forget that we're here?" Shiro asks her with a raised brow. "We both have power far beyond the system, and we're pretty good at using it. Taking care of an oni throwing a tantrum is gonna be easy." She says dismissively and Ariel just nods in resignation.

A few minutes pass and we come upon a very much awake and ravenous oni eating an anogratch. "So you wanna do it or should I?" I ask Shiro, then she walks out to meet him. Upon seeing a living creature approach him, he immediately lunged at her only to be evaded, then slapped through a few trees.

"Hmm, Wrath has made you far more durable than you have any right to be at that level. Guess I'll start putting some effort into beating sense into you." Shiro says as she flickers behind him before he can fall to the ground and slaps him to the ground causing the ground to crater for a few metres.

Snarling, he gets back up with a bloodied head and attacks her with his magic katans aimed at her neck in a bid to decapitate her, only for her to catch both of them at an intersection with her index and thumb, then slap him upward with her other hand, sending him flying once more. (A/N: Ooooh, that brother floating in the air, how could her hands do this.)

She flickers once more and slaps him to the ground, causing a sonic boom and another crater in the ground, mangling his limbs and rupturing a few organs, if my eyes don't deceive me. "Hmm, looks like I put a bit too much force in that one, huh." Shiro says before casting a sleep spell on him, knocking him out. After double checking that he was asleep, she healed him and carried him over her shoulder like a potato sack.

"Well, we've got Sasajima, so what now?" She says with a raised brow. Looking back into the Maria, I simply say, "We wait. Some company is headed our way, and they're still looking for him. Besides, we'll be seeing the best humanity has to offer, so we can see what our minimum requirements for the army would be." I say with a devious grin as I wait for humanity's strongest.

Chapter End.