Please read the author's notes. (Examples and explanation of moves and appearance+ Monster Sources)
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pat.treon:/Keanu_Eugene
CHAPTER START---
(Map here and in comments)
Sitting on a bench in the courtyard of Twilight Manor, Yang has an amused look on his face as Tiona tries to use his Switch-Axe. Around them, all the training adventurers as well as Tione and Gareth are carefully observing the scene.
Wearing a formal light blue shirt under his blue coat, with a pair of black pants Yang looks the part of someone heading to a party while still keeping to their adventurer habits, especially considering that on his feet were boots instead of dress shoes.
"You ok?" He asks Tiona, not hiding his light chuckle as she stumbles forward trying to swing the weapon.
"It's too heavy!" she whines, setting it down only for the head of the axe to sink into the stone floor. "Every time I lift it the whole thing pulls me forward."
"Yeah it weighs two hundred and forty pounds, what do you expect?"
"Then how do you use it without falling over?" she says while cradling the weapon close to her chest to prevent falling over while bringing it over to him.
"I anchor myself," Yang gets up and takes the weapon, holding it out with an extended arm by the handle, and not even tilting forward in the slightest. "It's too heavy to use without anchoring yourself or being really really heavy on your own."
"Let me try it then," Gareth says, an excited look on his face as he eyes the weapon.
"Sure," Yang casually tosses it over to him, handle first, which he easily catches.
Gareth doesn't even take a step back as he grips the weapon out of the air, immediately and effortlessly swinging it around without issue. "Guess being a Dwarf has its advantages huh," he gives Yang a victorious smile.
"Hmm, that makes sense. Hard to throw you off balance when you're so close to the ground and heavy," he says with a thoughtful look. "Try to make it transform."
Hearing those words everyone's eyes widen in surprise as they pay much closer attention to the scene.
"I thought your team has weapons that only work for you three?" Gareth asks.
"We do, but this is the exception," Yang says. "All you need is enough magic and it'll transform, anyone can use it."
"I see," Gareth says as he focuses on the weapon. Pouring more and more of his magic into it, nobody can even feel any magic energy in the air as the weapon greedily drinks it all faster than he can produce it. After a few seconds he drops the weapon and takes a step back, wiping a drop of sweat from his forehead and taking a deep breath. "What in the world is that thing?"
"What's wrong?" Yang asks.
"It was taking magic faster than I expected, a few more seconds and I would have been in mind down," Gareth says, much to the shock of everyone.
"Really?"
"You didn't know?" Gareth asks.
"Uh...not really," Yang walks up and picks up the Switch-axe, holding it out he pours magic into the weapon and it instantly shifts before locking back together in the shape of a Greatsword. All the adventurers who weren't involved in the fight against Kulve Taroth are stunned into silence at the sighs, the weapon itself burning with blue fire magic. "Welf said it takes a lot but I never really understood how much, I mean Thalie can use it now, and now so can Welf, and I don't even feel this drain on my magic by itself... guess I never really understood how much it needed," he says in genuine surprise.
"Man I wish I had magic so I could try it," Tiona whines as she and Tione walk toward the men.
"What do you mean, you don't have magic?" Yang asks. "Aren't you level five?"
"Well, yeah, but I just don't have any magic. I prefer just brawling anyway, it's way more fun!" she laughs proudly.
"Uh-huh," Yang gives an unimpressed look. "Try to get some magic before you hit floor sixty at least, you'll probably be dead weight otherwise," he says casually. Everyone in the courtyard is mentally taking notes as he mentioned the deeper floors.
"What do you mean?" Tione asks.
"Well," Yang takes a moment to form his thoughts, storing his weapon away before he speaks. "Ok so the dungeon has a lot of floors right, the first fifty you can beat if you have a big team with a lot of specialists, that's what Loki has, right?"
"Right," Gareth confirms. "Riveria and Lefiya for magic, Finn for strategy and agility, Bete for speed, Tione, Tiona, and Ais for damage, and myself for defense."
"Exactly," Yang says. "And that's exactly why your team is good for the first fifty-nine floors but will definitely start to die off anywhere beyond that."
"W-what?" Gareth chokes on nothing as the shock washes over him. "Die?"
"Yeah," Yang shrugs. "In the ice floors Lefiya, Riveria, and Bete are gonna be dead weight and probably die, in what comes directly after than those three are the most useful and you can't clear it without them while you," he gestures to Gareth, "you were most useful during the ice but will be dead weight in The Bug Jar, and past that is where Tiona, Tione, Ais, and Finn will excel but they won't even get to that, see the issues?"
"But that's why we have a team," Gareth argues. "We cover for each other's weaknesses. nobody can be good at everything, it's better to specialize."
"True," Yang gives a knowing smile, "for the first fifty-nine floors at least. After that you suddenly can't compensate for the kind of things the dungeon will test, either people can deal with it or they shouldn't even be there. The deeper you go the worse it is to be a specialist, it's better to be an expert in some but a master of none, than a master of one and expert in none."
"Huh?" Tiona looks completely lost by his explanation while everyone else in the courtyard listening in on the conversation is deeply reconsidering what type of training they should be doing.
"It's like this," Yang begins to explain. "Welf is a smith, but he's not just the best at Magic Swords, but equipment overall. He can make any equipment better than any other mortal, which lets him make up for all his shortcomings by simply making whatever he needs. Anything he makes, Thalie can use better than literally anyone else in the world, that takes her linear skillset of hitting things really really well, into being a jack of all trades because Welf is on our team. And my magic is the most versatile of all, but that wouldn't be enough on its own if my body wasn't strong enough to handle the threats down there. Make more sense now?"
"I see," Gareth strokes his beard as he realizes Yang's meaning, "we need to be better individually rather than focusing on ourselves as teammates so much?"
"Exactly, that's what Trifecta means for us, we're all the best in the world at something and we just happen to be on the same team," Yang says.
After a few more minutes of interesting conversation, Riveria and Lefiya finally enter the courtyard.
The young girl was carrying a well-made green bag in her arms as her mentor walks a step ahead, as beautiful as ever. Riveria greets Yang with a small wave of her gloved hand, her staff in the other, "good morning Yang."
"Morning princess," Yang looks to the bag Lefiya is holding. "That's everything?"
"Everything I need yes," Riveria confirms. A second later Yang is already storing the bag into his inventory, receiving a thankful nod from Lefiya.
"Alright, then if that's all you need to do let's get going, we should get there before nightfall," Yang says.
"Nightfall?" Riveria quirks a brow," it's a twelve-day trip by horse," she points out.
"Oh princess, I don't ride horses," before anyone can notice Yang scoops Riveria up into his arms, she instinctively clutches her staff close to her with the sudden change.
"What are you doing!?" She asks with a small blush on her cheeks.
"I'll try not to mess up your hair," Yang chuckles as they rocket into the air on a trail of blue flames, leaving everyone in the courtyard, including Lefiya who completely misunderstood Yang. Recalling the last time he decided to 'mess up her hair' was quite, intimate.
Suddenly soaring high above the city Riveria warps both her arms around Yang's neck and hugs him for dear life. With an amused laugh he carefully reaches up and stores her staff in his inventory, just in case she drops it, unlike Liberty and Mosoka, other weapons aren't linked to their users to sense their location.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!" Riveria screams into his ear.
"Ow! You're loud, you can talk normally there isn't any wind," Yang says, a barrier of wind around them to actually prevent Riveria's hair from getting messy.
"Sorry, why are we flying?" Riveria asks, still keeping her eyes closed as they soar above the clouds.
"It's faster, I assumed that was obvious," Yang says.
"You should have asked first..."
"That's no fun," Yang says as Riveria feels them stop moving. "You should take a look at this."
"Just please don't drop me," Rivera says as she slowly opens her eyes, feeling as if Yang was standing on solid ground.
"I'm insulted that you'd even have to say that..."
Sharing a moment of silence Rivera sees the morning sun on the horizon, far out toward the ocean beyond her sight. "This is...wow," Riveria has no words as the golden rays of the sun breach the clouds below them, basking them in its light.
"Ready to keep moving?" Yang asks.
"Just one more minute," Riveria says quietly. "I never imagined I'd have a view like this, to see so much of the world in one eyeful."
"Of all the things my magic lets me do, flying is my favorite, just because of this..."
"Hmm, I can't say I'm not jealous," Riveria says as she closes her eyes and leans her head on his chest, feeling him flying to the North-East once more as she basks in his scent. "You're always so full of surprises..."
Hours later Yang and Riveria pass over the mountains and are met with an ocean of dark green leaves. Leaning down Yang gently nudges her head with his chin, waking her from yet another nap.
"I think this is it, right?" he asks.
Riveria blinks a few times to fully wake up before looking around, seeing the ocean of green and being unable to spot any opening to the forest floor below she nods. "This is it, and I believe it best we land over there," she points to an area further to the West of them.
"Gotcha," Yang changes their course, stealing a glance at the setting sun, "right on time too..."
Descending to the forest below, before Riveria can ask Yang puts out the flames and forms a cloud below them, gently setting her down to stand on her own.
"You could have done this from the beginning?" Riveria asks.
"Yeah."
"Then why carry me like that?"
"Because the cloud is slow, besides..." he gives her a knowing grin, "you seemed like you were enjoying it."
Riveria gives him a playful look instead of the defensive or bashful look his teasing usually gets, "well, the cloud wouldn't be my first choice either."
"Hmm, quite bold of you princess," Yang says as they descend to the top of the trees.
"Follow my lead," Riveria says as she parts some branches and begins descending the tree with Yang one step behind her.
Parting the final few branches they finally step out of the canopy and onto the lower branches.
Each lower branch is wide as a cart and thicker than Yang is tall. Looking over the edge he sees the forest floor two hundred feet below them, as if they were standing atop Orario's outer wall. Looking back toward where the sky was moments ago, not a single ray of light shines through the leaves, instead, the trees have strange blue glowing moss to illuminate the entire forest with what he can only describe as blue glowing orbs floating in place all around, simulating their own version of daylight.
Walking forward Yang mindlessly gazes about, finally noticing how wide the tree trunks are, at least at wide as Babel itself. He stares about with a slack jaw until he bumps into Riveria.
"Sorry," he says, taking a step back to see her completely memorized by the forest.
"It's ok," she says quietly, as if she too couldn't understand what she was experiencing. "I...I didn't realize how much I missed this, being gone for almost forty years... I'm finally back home," she says quietly.
"I can't imagine how you feel," Yang says, a slight bit of jealousy in his voice that goes unnoticed by both adventurers.
Looking at the forest floor below Yang sees a layer of normal moss covering most of the floor but an easily noticeable stone path carved out, even from this far away his eyes can see that the stones have small enchantments on them, likely explaining why they seem flawless even in the deep forest.
"The Rangers will be here any moment to collect us, we should get down," Riveria says.
"Rangers?"
"Orario has Ganesha Familia, our defenders and police are the Forest Rangers, they must have noticed a blue flame descending here, they'll escort us to the palace," Riveria explains.
"Right, let's go," Yang forms another cloud beside the branch for them to both board.
As the cloud descends Riveria's nervousness and anxiety begins to bubble up, she was getting closer by the second to seeing her father, explaining to the most prideful Elf she'd ever met why she brought a human into not only the Royal Forest, but the palace as well, not something she would ever be looking forward to.
Setting down on the stone pathway Yang can now easily see the enchantments, looking around he doesn't see anyone, but he can hear them.
"Don't use any magic," Riveria says. "Elves are naturally predisposed toward magic but Rangers are exceptional, they're selected because they can even sense if someone is using stealth magic beside them."
"Right, good to know," Yang says while wondering how in the world Thalie broke into this forest to steal from it in the past.
Hearing a nearby bush rustle Yang looks toward it, normally he'd use his Earth Element to 'see' who or what was in the bush but here he couldn't do that. As he squints to take a closer look at the bush the sound of an arrow piercing the air reaches him.
Before Riveria can notice what's going on he stops an arrow from hitting him in the leg, catching it out of the air effortlessly.
"Seriously," he says before turning and catching another arrow, this time aimed at his other leg.
"STOP FIRING!" Riveria yells out.
Immediately two dozen men and women appear as if from nowhere, covered from head to toe in different shades of green and brown, some even having actual leaves and branches attached to them, their own ghillie suits. All with Bows drawn or shortswords ready.
'That's awesome,' Yang thinks as Rivera stands in front of him.
"Step away from the human, princess," one of the women says.
"This man is my guest," Riveria says, walking up to the ranger and glaring at her.
"You don't have the authority to allow that Lady Riveria," the ranger argues back. "When he wakes up the king will decide his fate."
'Wake up? Do they plan to knock me out? They literally don't have the ability to do that,' Yang thinks to himself.
"Escort us to my father if you don't trust my friend," Riveria says.
Glaring at the outsider the Ranger glances at Riveria once more, "matters of invasion are only handled by his majesty, his orders are clear. Capture him!" the woman orders.
Not a second later twenty arrows are expertly shot at Yang, none even having a chance of missing to hit their princess who stood almost a dozen feet away.
Feeling all the arrows coming Yang only has one thought, 'this is going to be one annoying trip...'
END CHAPTER---