Chapter 152 – Surprise from Aunty, The Chase

Zagreus pulls Nuwa into the next chamber and dashes towards the center. He leaves her at the door so he can get to fighting and put his arousal behind him. As much as he professes sexual restraint in the future, the Dao Strings inside him make it hard for him to resist. Goons begin to spawn around him and he smiles as he brandishes his spear to re-enter “the zone” of killing. Only when his mind transitions into the zone can he regain his calm. This is what he has been doing for 10 years almost day and night!

Nuwa senses Zagreus’ mild delight for battle and it reminds her of what she would feel if she were resting in a hot spring. She smiles happily at her brother’s joy and shoots several Casts on one of the enemies in the corner. In the prior chamber to this one, she had been much more reserved with her attacking due to her headache and lower health. Now though, she is mostly healed and feels more confident.

She repeatedly Enslaves enemies spawning in the corners and directs them to help out Zagreus. These shade slaves only do small damage to the shades mobbing Zagreus before dying due to their low health, causing the Dao Strings that had been Enslaving them to automatically return to Nuwa. When a disembodied hand shade spawns nearby, Nuwa is not comfortable with its proximity to her, so she tries to kill it with an extra Cast after it is already Enslaved.

Unfortunately, Nuwa does not realize soon enough that her Cast is not to be treated as a normal attack. When Dao Strings are involved, even the attack itself must follow the flow of the Dao. The arrow veers off-course, disregarding the physics of Nuwa’s perfect aim and short distance to the target.

There is an aspect of Sex that involves Nuwa weakening her mate in order to dominate them, which is why the normal Cast does such high damage in the first place, but killing her mate outright does not follow the flow. And yes, Nuwa’s Dao Strings of Sex treat everyone as potential mates. There is no discrimination from these barely sentient daons.

Nuwa jumps slightly when the arrow misses and the hand shade starts to dive at her breasts. These shades are infused with the tiniest bit of Hades’ Authority, so they may not have a lot of health, but they are stronger than her in raw physical power. She would not be able to pull it off her or shoot an arrow at it at that close of range. Instinctually, she swaps her grip to hold the shaft of her bow with both hands and tries to bat the hand away with it. The limb of the bow makes clean contact with the approaching Enslaved shade, and unexpectedly slices through it cleanly.

Wiping a bit of sweat from her exertion in combat, Nuwa is relieved to find that Zagreus has finished the others off. She soon realizes why the Dao Strings had failed her and is happy to find that Coronacht is more powerful than she had thought. The outer section of the limbs of the bow that face away from her are extremely sharp. There is some mechanism by which Coronacht recognizes its wielders and generates a forcefield to prevent its sharp ends from damaging them when they utilize the bow for melee purposes.

Feeling further enamored than she already is with her weapon, Nuwa runs her hand along its sharp end and feels its forcefield turn it into a rounded surface. She smiles and hugs the bow to her face like a little kid.

Zagreus watches her with amusement and picks up the Darkness reward. The presence of Darkness, Gem, or Key rewards in a chamber excludes any potential Boon rewards. One of the [Mirror of Night] upgrades that Zagreus owns is the ability to sense the type of rewards on the other side of the door. Sometimes there are multiple doors, allowing him to make a choice between a collectible or an unspecified God’s orb. The next upgrade to that ability, which he has yet to purchase, will allow him to see which God’s orb is next, so that he can stack his Boon layout in a methodical manner to improve synergy as much as possible.

Normally, he exclusively goes for collectibles since those are permanent, unlike Boons, which are lost upon death. This run, he has gone exclusively for Boons whenever he has a chance. The previous Aphrodite chamber had only offered them the ability to select between Gems and Darkness. Currently, he is saving up for an especially expensive upgrade to unlock on the [Mirror of Night] called Death’s Defiance, which allows him a 1-time ‘extra life’ per run, bringing him back to half health upon death, so he is focusing on Darkness for now.

Nuwa and Zagreus move on to the next chamber where there are an abundance of traps, but they make it through the fight without too much damage. Now that Nuwa has a handle on how her Casts work, she just has to keep a distance and order her Enslaved shades to help out Zagreus over and over so they don’t bother her. All she has to do is make sure her orders are heard over the various sounds coming from Zagreus’ loud melee.

His Boons activate nonstop from his very first attack and they each make their own sound, so sometimes she has to shout. The worst offenders are the Divine Dash, which makes loud clunking sounds when he passes through enemies, and Support Fire, which sounds like being in a hailstorm given how the weak homing arrows are released in a constant stream from his back due to how often his attacks land on enemies.

When the last of the enemies is defeated, Zagreus looks toward the orb that appears in the center and is surprised to see that it is one he has never seen before. There is a whitish violet divine glow coming from it and the logo is a violet spade. Zagreus warns, “Don’t bring out the Font. I’m not familiar with this one. Let me accept the blessing as a message.”

Nuwa nods, glad that Zagreus is being more cautious. He has very little fear of death due to how often he dies on a regular basis. Pain and battle is commonplace for him, so she is relieved that he still knows how to feel fear.

Zagreus places his hand on the orb and declares, “In the name of Hades! Olympus, I accept this message!”

The orb shatters to reveal a beautiful stern-faced Goddess with a middle-aged appearance. She has deep red hair, dark skin, and purple drooping eyes. The siblings immediately recognize that her appearance and even her robes are similar to their Father, meaning she must be Hera, the Queen of the Olympians, Goddess of Marriage and Family, and the cousin-wife of their Uncle Zeus. She wears a luxurious set of white and red robes, dons gold jewelry with violet gems, and carries a golden arrow.

Hera states in a noble voice, “Little Nephew, I wish to speak to my Niece. That harlot, Aphrodite, mentioned that you can make it so.”

Before Nuwa can get the [Divine Font] out, Coronacht vibrates and flies toward the projection of Hera, dragging Nuwa along until she feels she is getting too close to her Aunt and is forced to let go. When the bow meets the arrow, the projection of Hera establishes two-way communication and gazes towards the two siblings and the bow and arrow in each of her hands.

Nuwa withers under Hera’s resting bitch face. In the beginning, Hera shows mild displeasure at her niece’s scant state of dress, but she eventually softens into a motherly countenance and she smiles. “Little one, I sense that you wield my bow with sincerity to aid your brother, as I once did millennia ago. You are lovers, are you not?”

Sighing with relief, Nuwa blushes and nods.

“Excellent!” Hera excitedly says, “Upon my Authority, I now declare thee, Nuwa, Daughter of Hades, engaged to Zagreus, Son of Hades. Congratulations!” before she bursts into dust.

Nuwa and Zagreus are left flabbergasted!

~ ~ ~

The sonic boom generated by Tsunade’s fist sends a wave of pressurized air that sends Naruto, Kushina, and an awakened Hinata rolling away. Their bodies are naturally strong enough for their eardrums not to burst. Orochimaru, once again showing the extent to which he modified his body to resemble that of a Snake Spirit, coils his legs upon themselves during his ducking motion to spring himself at high speed away from Tsunade. She shouts with rage, “Orochi! What are you doing?!”

Fugaku and Hizashi also enter combat mode and prove their extensive teamwork by simultaneously unsheathing their swords, coating them with glowing chakra, and charging at Orochimaru. Hizashi immediately uses his Sharingan to emulate Inoichi Yamanaka’s (Ino’s dad) prowess with illusions. When he makes eye contact with Orochimaru, he casts a mental jutsu with his eyes that induces a disruptive optical illusion in Orochimaru’s mind showing that both he and Fugaku are going to slash his body, when in reality, Fugaku is aiming for the still-retracting tongue to attempt to dislodge the Ring.

Orochimaru quickly dispels the illusion by recognizing the foreign chakra entering his body and running cleansing chakra through his brain, but not before Fugaku manages to cut through half his tongue. The ring wobbles at the tip of his forked tongue due to some of the nerves being cut, but with a quick session of medical ninjutsu on his own tongue, he recovers his grip and finishes pulling the Ring into his mouth. By this time, Tsunade is fully geared in her shock-absorbing wooden armor that lets her open the higher tier of Gates without severe sequelae and rushes to catch up with them. She orders Fugaku and Hizashi, “Don’t damage the town. We can fight outside.”

The two almost facepalm mid-chase and think to themselves, ‘YOU’RE THE ONLY ONE WRECKING THE TOWN..’ They follow her orders though, and put their throwing weapons, several shuriken and kunai, back into their belts. They whistle loudly to call for backup. Tsunade shouts, “Return the item, Orochi! As a former felon, we cannot trust you to use that for the good of the town!”

Orochimaru scoffs and dives in and out of alleys following a zig-zag route without losing much speed. He might not be as fast as Tsunade, but his snake-like body gives him extreme agility. Realizing that there are no projectiles coming his way, Orochimaru assumes they are unwilling to damage the town to corner him. He falls into thought while on the run, ‘I already have the Ring in my mouth. Leaving the town would only lead to an encirclement and a hunt. I need to figure out how it works as soon as possible. Ideally, I wouldn’t even need to leave town!’

Elite shinobis start to drop onto the roofs of the surrounding alleys. Jiraiya, Danzo, and Minato, Inoichi, Shikaku Nara (Shikamaru’s dad), and Might Duy arrive due to the destruction unleashed by Tsunade. The ANBU and the various elders from clans stand on the rooftops trying to get a grip on what’s going on. Danzo immediately realizes something is fishy and tries to protect Orochimaru, who is from his faction, by proclaiming in a melodramatic tone, “What’s this!? The Hokage is going on an open manhunt of a law-abiding citizen and invaluable shinobi! He needs to be charged with a crime to be taken into detention at the very least!”

Might Duy stands on the roof and argues with Danzo to defend Tsunade’s actions, “Shut your one-eyed mummified trap! Obviously, he did something and now he’s resisting arrest!”

(A/N: I wrote more in the Naruto section than I expected. Left Nuwa on a cliff, oops xD)