Please read the author's notes. (Examples and explanation of moves and appearance+ Monster Sources)
Discord: https://discord.gg/K7f8qGpvuk
pat.treon:/Keanu_Eugene
CHAPTER START---
Comfortably lying atop his bedroll, Yang feels a body press against his side.
Instinctively he rolls over and wraps an arm around Freya, pulling her into a tight hug.
"Uh...dude?"
Yang's eyes shot open only to be staring at a mess of red hair. Silently releasing Welf and letting him roll away in his sleeping bag. He tries to lay on his back, only to feel another sleeping bag pressed tightly against him.
Sitting up he sees Thalie. Groaning as she crawls out of her sleeping bag at the other side of him.
"Uh...sorry, thought you were Freya..." Yang says to Welf, the man now sitting up and getting out of his bag.
"Yeah, I figured..."
"Mmm, why'd you move?" Thalie asks as she also crawls out of her sleeping bag.
"Why were both of you sandwiching me?"
"Because you're warm... I see why Freya never leaves your bed at least, you're useful there," Thalie says as she stands up in the tent. Red Salamander wool walls and roof containing their entire team and their equipment.
"Right, we've been asleep for..." Yang withdraws a small piece of metal from his inventory. Built into it is a watch and compass, "7 hours. Let's get ready to move out."
Each eating two ration bars, compensating for the cold environment. They get dressed and check their equipment, leaving them to finish getting ready Yang steps outside the tent.
A few feet from the entrance to their tent is a solid wall of ice. Walking forward and placing a hand on it, he controls the ice to melt away and part. A foot away is another wall of ice, he does the same thing with this wall and the remaining twelve before coming face to face with the massive dungeon room they made camp in.
Their camp was located twenty feet above the ground behind many layers of ice to avoid any nosey monsters. The walls were made to shatter should anything try to get to them, strong enough to stall it but brittle enough to shatter and make noise, giving them time to react accordingly from inside.
Taking a deep breath, Yang knows the air was approaching if not below the freezing point, but his body couldn't feel it. For him, it was as if he just woke up in Orario.
"Two days to clear one floor," he withdraws the maps from his inventory and opens it to their current area, floor 60. "Floor 60 is way larger than Orario, two days to get here and we aren't even out of it yet. If it gets colder then it's gonna take more energy, add the stronger monsters and diminishing resources and we're in trouble," he takes a deep breath before flipping through all the other maps to look at their mapped route. "Fuck...this isn't just an adventure...it's survival. I figured we'd be at floor 62 by now but the cold is too much. Maybe I can project heat...hmm, that could work..."
"You ok?" Thalie asks as she and Welf approach Yang. Seeing the thoughtful look on his face as he studies their expedition plans.
"I'm changing our tempo in fights," he says.
"Whaddya mean?" Welf asks.
"We've been treating these floors like the others and that's gonna get us killed. Yesterday we got swarmed by hundreds of Ice Golems, they weren't much against us but it sent a pretty clear message. The Dragon Vase was all about agility, this section is all endurance. I think the dungeon is trying to wear us down," Yang explains.
"So having us just power through fights instead of using them as training is better?" Thalie asks, still not seeing all the pieces of this puzzle.
"It's not just the fights. The monsters are the distraction, that's why there were so many Ice Golems. I don't think the dungeon can use more than a certain amount of... magic, or whatever it uses at a time on certain floors. That's why everything around the floor bosses is so weak in comparison, they take all the energy."
"So, it's throwing weak mobs at us instead of a single big threat to test our endurance?" Welf asks.
"No, I just said the monsters are the distraction, the cold is the test. We've been in the cold for two days but this morning we ate two ration bars each. A full day of fighting takes one, you and Welf didn't do anything ridiculous yesterday, hell I barely even used magic..."
"I get it..." Thalie says, raising a gloved hand to her chin as she catches on, "it's giving us multiple targets to keep us in the cold for as long as possible right. You want to just power through and worry about training on the way back?"
"Exactly, when we get to the floor seventy safe-zone then we can assess how much it took to get there and train on the way back to Orario. If we didn't have the cold to worry about we could keep our usual training and exploring routine but it just won't work here."
"I never would have thought of that, the monsters really are just a distraction after all..." Welf admits.
"Same here, but it makes sense with what he said about Balor... it was pushing heat upward so the next boss is pushing cold, shits gonna get a lot colder from here, right?" Thalie asks Yang.
"Definitely, this is a death trap, the only way to win is to figure it out by studying Balor's floors and the Dragon Vase before you even get into it. Before that, the dungeon just threw a variety of monsters at you to test your raw stats. The first ten floors are just brawling, after that monsters get ranged attacks with Hell Hounds. After floor 18 you get flying enemies in the Great Tree Labyrinth, then you get water combat in the Water Palace."
"But the monsters between that and Balor don't have a pattern, " Welf points out.
"Wrong, they do. That's where you learn how to fight larger monsters. Before that even dragons don't get to twenty feet. Only the floor bosses do. But Anjanath alone was thirty feet. The dungeon adds that and all the other issues together while changing the environment almost every floor, then the White Palace tests dueling with the Spartoi and their weapons."
"Then Balor puts it all together with his massive crowds of monsters, rivers of lava and large size enemies," Thalie catches on.
"Exactly... everyone treats the dungeon as a benevolent thing that never changes but it's more like a test. Back home we had games where we could control people and take them into places just like this, it was made to be difficult...but not impossible..."
"Wait," Thalie puts a hand up to stop him, "are you telling us that...the dungeon wants us to win?"
"That doesn't make sense, the dungeon wants to wipe out the surface," Welf reminds him.
"Then why make the tunnels? Why put human-sized pathways at all, we know larger monsters can't get through them... I think it's probably a test, and we're in the endurance section."
Looking away from Yang's cocky grin and toward each other. Welf and Thalie's eyes widen as realization washes over them.
"How the hell hasn't anyone figured that out..." Welf mutters as he now sees how obvious it was.
"I...I don't know..." was all Thalie could say.
"Because you aren't taught to. You've been told 'The dungeon is the dungeon' for over a thousand years. It's part of your tradition and culture so naturally you just accept it."
"But you're from a different world, so you're looking at it with fresh eyes," Welf finally puts it together.
"Exactly, I've been playing this like a video game essentially since I got my memories back, when I was feeling sorry for myself I put the pieces together before Tsubaki gave me a pep talk to get me back on my feet. That's why my plans have been working...well that and my inside knowledge on new monsters," Yang admits.
Hearing his explanation and letting it all sink in for a moment, a new question forms in their minds. A question that Thalie blurts out thoughtlessly, "so what's on the last floor?"
"Honestly, I've been thinking about that since I got my memories back... I wasn't the biggest fan of mythology back home so I only know the basics, but Orario is super horny for heroes right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, the most famous back home is Heracles...at the end of his adventure, he was Deified. Athena made him the immortal guardian of heaven..."
Yang could almost see Thalie and Welf's minds explode at this reveal as their eyes almost fall out of their sockets.
"To...become a god?" Thalie asks in disbelief.
"I doubt a full god but probably something like that... but that's assuming the dungeon has an end," Yang says with a nervous smile.
"You think it can be endless... that's impossible," Welf says.
"I share a bed with a literal goddess and you're gonna be doing the same thing soon enough. We can fly and punch dragons in the face...you really think an endless dungeon is an impossible thing?" Yang asks with a bored look on his face.
"That...shit, you're right," Welf admits.
"He could be in bed with Hephaestus now if they would just do it already," Thalie can't help but take the chance to watch Welf squirm, and of course he blushes and awkwardly looks away.
"Right, that's none of our business anyway...let's get moving, I'll go store away the camping stuff and we can head out..." Yang says as he stores the maps into his inventory before walking over to the packed-up tent and other items in their igloo.
Hours later as they exit the final chamber of floor 60, Yang controls some water to clean the blood off his weapon as they begin descending the steps. With Thalie and Welf staying a bit closer to him as he provides them with heat, pushing the natural heat of his body outward to shield them and hopefully cut down on the rate they're going through resources.
"I think there's fur in the grooves," Yang groans as he releases a concentrated flame onto his weapon to clean it off.
"Yeah well, those Ice Bears were really furry, kinda cute," Thalie says.
"Only you two would be so casual about 12-foot bears..." Welf rolls his eyes at them.
"My Falna supports my otherwise dangerous antics, if the Hell Hound can't hurt you why not try to pet it right," Yang says.
"Ok that's just being crazy," Thalie laughs out loud at the memory of Yang trying to pet monsters, "I said it's cute but that doesn't mean I'll do anything but kill it."
"You're no fun..." Yang whines.
---Hours Later, Floor 61...
With rolling hills of ice and snow surrounding them on all sides. The Trifecta find themselves walking through another baron wasteland. Unable to tell where floor meets wall as the ice and snow blend together seamlessly.
With thousands of meters between them and the other side of this chamber they just focus on crossing this area as quickly as possible.
Walking over a hill, they can see far and wide in every direction, they see a treeline in the distance. Squinting his eyes Yang notices that it isn't a treeline at all. A collection of ice spikes rising almost twenty feet out of the ground at odd angles.
"Hmm, that place is probably good cover," Thalie says as she also notices what the structures are.
"Hmmm, yeah. But this chamber is way too big, and look at that," Yang points out something behind them.
From the hill which they were standing on, at their back he could see a few claw marks of different sizes as well as square and circular footprints.
"Ice Golems?" Thalie says.
"Yeah, and something else too. Ice Golems don't have claws," Welf points out.
"There was definitely a struggle, something killed the Ice Golem, and those things never attack us alone, so this big empty room was probably full of them... we've got a strengthened species on our hands," Yang deduces.
"Think we should be worried?" Thalie asks.
"If it were something like an Elder Dragon or a big monster from something else, we'd definitely notice. Those things cause problems just by existing somewhere. But that size looks like it could be anything with claws and four legs," he says.
"So we're being hunted?" Welf asks.
"Pretty much, I don't really like fighting on someone else's terms. How about you two?" Thalie asks.
"Nope, I'm my own man," Welf says, drawing his sword as Thalie readies her spear, both adventurers look toward their leader.
"Yeah... this is our adventure, we aren't the sheep," Yang says as he lifts his hand toward the sky.
With a snap of his fingers, he uses Wind and Water magic to Shatter the air, a thundering crack echoes across the massive chamber, guaranteed to pull every monster that hears it toward them.
The monsters respond immediately, a cacophony of roars. The unholy offspring of a Wolf's howl and Lion's roar starts before others join in.
The entire chamber is filled with the noise until one much much louder roar silences all others.
"What the hell was that?" Thalie asks.
"The alpha told them to shut up basically, sounds like he accepts the challenge."
"What now?" Welf asks.
"Hmm, well," Yang points toward the far end of the room where the alpha's roar came from before turning around and pointing at the ice structure behind them. "He wants us to get scared and run, at least that's what I think. Wolves and other hunters push prey toward a kill spot like that sometimes."
"It's more defensible than just standing out here, makes sense," Thalie says.
"Yeah, but we sent a challenge, can't be a coward now," Yang says as he raises the snow behind him to form a long solid bench for his team.
Sitting down he withdraws his weapon and rests it in front of him, his teammates follow his lead and do the same. "Udeaus had the right idea. Kings don't go looking for challengers...we can just wait for them right here..."
END CHAPTER---
'The dungeon is the dungeon silly'- Hestia... this is literally all the info the story gives on the dungeon and that's just a waste.