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---
"Regroup! On me!" Yang's voice booms through their helmets.
He immediately leaps upward, clearing fifty feet with ease and separating himself from the ants below.
Not a metaphor, a literally endless army of ants lay below him, each as big as a car.
Looking above both Welf and Thalie see him, a beacon of blue flames for them to regroup at within this massive chamber.
By the time he lands again, his weapon still in axe form cleaving through a few more ants both Thalie and Welf have made their way over to him.
Their armor was hardly stressed, but their minds were slowing down. Without flames to constantly sanitize them they were both covered in blood and guts from dozens of different species of bugs.
And every second more spilled out of the walls, an endless horde that's been chasing them from floor to floor.
"I need my secondary," Welf's tired voice calls out as he incinerates a column of ants with a single stabbing motion from Mosoka. For the first time while in his grasp the two red edges of the weapon go black.
A safety feature he'd unintentionally built into the blade when forging it, while it naturally connected to him that, connected would be cut if he was at risk of mind down, he could still use it but the weapon itself was warning him.
Hearing his voice Yang summons Welf's nameless greatsword and hands it over to him.
"Thanks," he says while cutting through more ants.
"We need time to make a new plan," Thalie says from the other side of Yang.
"Agreed," Yang says. "We can't take ten more floors of this and my magic is gonna start dropping soon," he says.
"What?!" Both his allies' concerned voices ring in his ears. This was a new revelation, they'd rarely face a situation that outlasted his magic, especially when he hasn't been using any large attacks this past week.
"Just grab onto me," Yang orders as he uses a blast of fire to give them some space, incinerating everything for almost twenty feet around them. In one quick motion he stores his weapon away and scoops up Welf in his arms while Thale grabs onto his back.
Without another word they take to the air, propelled by blue flames.
Withdrawing the last of her Elemental Shuriken, Thalie holds them between her knuckles and looks above, waiting and ready.
"Welf?" Yang asks.
Held in Yang's arms Welf was completely focused on the compartment built into his left gauntlet, the rough map of their route sketched inside it over their days of exploring these previously unmapped floors. They no longer had any help from adventurers of old, this was all new territory.
"Make a left then just go straight," he says.
With a small nod Yang quickens his pace, eyes nervously glancing to the ceiling every few seconds.
As Welf is chugging all the magic potions he can, his helmet raised but held atop his head by the attachment underneath, he hears the buzzing.
Noise bouncing off the walls, loud cacophonous buzzing drowns out the army of ants, beetles, centipedes, and whatever else was chasing them on the floor and walls.
No, what comes next was more...problematic.
"Thalie," Yang calls out.
She looks around warily, gripping the shuriken that much tighter, "I'm ready...behind us!" she calls out.
Glancing back they all see a few dozen giant black and red wasps, the size of a bus with poison dripping from their massive stingers.
"Alright just like we discussed," Yang says as he speeds up, dropping any extra mage armor and focusing everything into his flames.
Thalie looks back and throws three yellow shurikens, after a few meters they shatter and shift into three massive yellow lightning bolts. Scorching the air as they more toward one of the wasps.
A direct hit, half its head is destroyed causing it to drop to the ground a hundred feet below.
In Yang's arms Welf draws Mosoka as he calls out more directions, "take the next right then up the tunnel," he says.
While Yang was focused on moving them he waves Mosoka, with his magic being restored by the potions an arc of fire leaves the tip of the blade and incinerates the spider webs that would have hit them.
Along with the Wasps and other flying insects, the dungeon would release specialized web spitting spiders whenever Yang got too comfortable flying around, hence him avoiding flight this past week.
The last thing they want is to get dive-bombed and glued to the floor while fighting an endless army.
After another hour of this chaos, Yang directs another question to their navigator, "how close?"
"Two more floors," Welf says as he blocks another web.
"Potions," Yang's tired voice says.
With a firm nod Welf passes Mosoka to Thalie, the woman grabs the sword and the two blood-red walls immediately shift to a yellow-orange colour.
With a wave of her hand she releases a massive slash of flame and cuts two of the wasps into pieces. Unlike Welf and Yang, her fighting style was less magic intensive. Welf self-admittedly needed Mosoka just to stay relevant, and Yang, while boasting a previously considered endlessly refilling supply of magic, he works at his best when mixing magic and physical attack.
Her on the other hand, she rarely ever used magic before meeting them. And unlike them her magic was suited for Endurance fights, previously it would take so much that she could only use it once or twice a day, but now. With the new War God's Blessing spell all she needs is to activate the armor and it's on for a long time as long as she doesn't need to amplify her hits to extreme levels. And the best part, during that time which she can use to allow her magic to refill itself while she fights with increased physical abilities, it was perfect for these kinds of situations.
While Welf is feeding Yang a few potions as they fly through the air, Thalie enjoys having ranged attacks for a change. With every swing of Mosoka bright orange flames destroy more and more bugs.
"I need one of these," she says to them through her helmet. "I hate having to run down flying monsters."
While holding a glass vial up to Yang's lips Welf responds, "when I figure out how I made that one I'll get right on it."
"Can you make one that can teleport me with it, like what Yang has in that book?"
"Don't be ridiculous, that's a fantasy," Welf shakes his head at the thought.
As Yang finishes chugging the potion Welf simply drops the bottle to the swarm below them, "go left up here then it's just one more floor to go," he says.
"I'm gonna speed up," Yang warns them as he pushed more magic into his flames, with the magic from the potions he focuses on getting them back to the safe zone as quickly as possible.
Almost an hour of constant dogfighting later they round the final turn to get out of these floors.
With Mosoka still in her hand, Thalie turns around to release another pillar of flames, and sees nothing to hit.
"What the hell..." she mutters in confusion.
Both men look back to see all the bugs retreating back into the dungeon as they enter the final stretch to the safe zone.
Putting their thoughts aside Yang flies into the safe zone and makes a sharp turn, getting to the plateau he made with their insignia carved into it, something of a team tradition to mark their progress through the dungeon.
As he lands on the stone floor Yang collapses onto his hands and knees, pulling off his helmet he closes his eyes and takes steady deep breaths.
"My head feels like someone is stomping on it, from the inside," he says in a low tired voice.
Standing beside him Thalie hands Mosoka back to Welf and looks to the entrance to the lower floors, "the bugs don't leave their nest apparently so we can get some rest. You can sleep it off."
"Yeah," Welf says as he puts Mosoka on the floor and takes a seat beside Yang, "can we save the talking till after we get some sleep?"
Seeing both her allies exhausted, whilst Yang has an insane Endurance, against an endless army he had to constantly use magic, even if it was in small doses the mental strain would slowly build up. Most mages wouldn't last an hour or two, but they'd been fighting for...for...
"How long were we down there?" she asks.
"Call Hephaestus and ask, after we rest..." Yang says as he forces himself to stand. Struggling to keep his eyes open and ignore the headache they begin getting cleaned up to get some rest.
The following day the Trifecta was resting in a hot tub Yang made, all relaxing their sore bodies and trying to get the fatigue out.
"Welf," Yang says. Keeping his eyes closed he hears Welf respond.
"Yeah?"
"Call her, tell her we're fine just need to rest. And find out how long it's been since our last call in," Yang says.
"Uh, sure," Welf raises a brow at this. Normally Yang would handle all updates as team leader, but it wasn't any real problem. Raising his right hand to his face he activates his message ring, "Hephaestus?"
"Welf?!" her worried voice calls out not a second later.
"Yeah I'm fine, we're all fine. We were just a bit too busy with some monsters to call in."
"That's good that you're ok," she immediately sounded more relieved. "Why haven't you called in?"
"Like I said we've been busy, how long since our last call?"
"Eight days," she says harshly.
"Oh..." Sharing an uneasy glance with his friends Welf isn't really sure what to do.
Raising his metal hand Yang comes to his rescue as he joins the call, "the new floors spawn monsters by the army so we were busy, we'll try to call in more often so you don't have to be worried like that again," he casually says.
"Hmm, alright," Hephaestus says. "But if you think I'm worried just wait till you talk to that wife of yours, she's almost ready to start pulling her hair out since she hasn't been able to connect to your ring for over a week."
"Not my wife, but uh..." Yang frowns at the thought, "shit."
"Mhm, well I'm glad you're all ok, try not to have me waiting this long for another check-in please, and be careful."
"No promises," Yang says as he cuts the connection to the message item built into his metal hand.
Shaking his head Welf responds to Hephaestus, "we'll be careful Hephaestus."
"I'll keep these idiots in one piece!" Thalie says, loud enough for her voice to reach Welf's ring.
As Hephaestus ends the call Welf looks over to Yang, "what was that about?"
"Figured she'd like to hear your voice, that's all."
"Great the self-torturing lovers are all caught up," Thalie says, "can we please talk about the lower floors now?"
"Self-torturing?" Welf asks.
"You both want each other and are letting whatever goals you set for yourself stop you, either self-torture or you're just morons," she says dryly.
"Yeah that's true," Yang agreed. Completely ignore whatever Welf is about to say to refute the point he continues, "so about the lower floors, what do we know, breakdown, Thalie..."
"They let us get a floor and a half deep to surround us so it was an intentionally kill box," she says. "Strength of numbers, those things couldn't have been above level five at best, and not even strong level fives. I even saw Welf punching out a lot of them, no offense Welf."
Welf shrugs, "none taken, physical power is what I have you two for."
"No real elemental enemies," Yang points out. "They're all melee aside from spiders but those only come out if we start flying. We spent eight days in there and barely got to floor seventy-five, then had to fight back here, which was even harder because we were getting worn out."
"And we can't hide to rest," Welf reminds them. "We tried the invisibility badges but they could still smell us...or sense us. We had to take turns drinking potions and refilling throwables from Yang's inventory, and we couldn't even hide in the ground like the ice floors."
"Yeah," Thalie says. "Those things crawl out of every surface so they'd just burrow into the tent, and even if they didn't we can't exactly use Earth magic to mold a spot since whatever that floor is, isn't dirt. As much as it looks like it."
"It's wood," Yang says. Brining a closed hand to rest over his mouth he slowly puts the pieces together.
"Wood that looks like dirt?" Thalie asks.
"Yeah, like a termite mound, they use wood, shit, and mud to make their mounds. Mixed with the chewed wood it's hard and looks like dirt. This mound didn't have any dirt," he says.
"Didn't have any termites either," Welf says.
"Mhm, good point. I mean it's less of a mound and more like, a bug jar...The Bug Jar?"
"It fits," Thalie says. "But what's the plan for getting through it, took us a week to map and fight through the route to get five floors deep."
"Yeah but it stays within the style of the dungeon so far, this is an Endurance test, we expected one but this is a bit much. But it obviously is. I mean I doubt those weak monsters are gonna get Thalie any Strength points, and I probably won't even get one or two. But at least Welf can get a bit," Yang says.
"True," Welf says, "you two can tear through those things like paper so without armies, they can't even stall us. But do we just keep fighting room to room and mapping it? At this rate it'll take us what, a month?"
"Longer," Yang says. "Going by how the dungeon operates, I'm thinking more like, maybe four months assume the monsters go up one level by floor eighty, then we'll have five entire floors of level six enemies, that can stall us much better," he says.
"Right," Thalie thinks it over, "so that puts your estimate at fifteen floors between us and the next safe-zone somewhere around floor eighty-five. And non-stop bugs in our way. Is playing by the rules of the dungeon really the best bet. What if we just rush down to the next safe zone like we raced up here?"
"Bad idea," Yang says. "The monsters likely only spawn from within one or two floors of where you are. Notice how it never felt like the amount of them changed during the fighting. If we rush past all the floors it's like opening every encounter and fighting them all at once at the next safe zone, if there is a boss down there we can't afford that, best to play by the rules this time. But if we could somehow figure out the proper route we wouldn't have to set off so many areas to start spawning monsters..."
"Maybe I can think of something for that when we get back to Babel, can't imagine what right now though, but what do you mean 'if' there is a boss?" Welf asks.
"If, as in there may not be. The dungeon has more power to make monsters the lower we go but so far it hasn't been unreasonable at each stage. You don't reward an Endurance test like this with a big fight unless you can put a timer on it, and the dungeon doesn't have timed fights it's all to the death. Probably won't have a boss," he says.
"Damn," Thalie shakes her head slowly, "you really got this all figured out huh. Not that I doubted you before but, damn."
"Eh, it's not that hard with some of the experience from back home, I'm the only person in the world that could figure it out, if I told anyone else the dungeon has a pattern they'd never see it because of your culture. You were raised to believe it's random, I was raised to analyze it and figure out how to get to the bottom, by figuring out the pattern. It's all one big game, and we aren't the players," Yang says.
Both Thalie and Welf share a worried glance at his last few words. "Then who are the players?" Welf asks.
"Eh, I don't think I'm supposed to say," Yang says with a shrug.
After an awkward moment, Welf chuckles as realization finally hits him," you're such an ass, I finally realized what you did before we left," he says.
"What?" Yang asks.
"You mentioned the dungeon having a patter for Finn to hear, you gave him a problem he couldn't solve."
"Oh that, yeah, figured it'd be funny," Yang casually admits.
"Super-genius strategist Braver can't figure out the pattern," Thalie laughs, "I'd pay to see that breakdown..."
---Later That Night...
Sitting outside the tent at the edge of their plateau Yang has his feet over the cliffside. Withdrawing the Ring of Odr from his inventory he slips it onto his right hand and raises it to his mouth.
"Freya?" his nervous voice calls out, not expecting this to be a pleasant greeting.
"Are you ok?!" her worried voice almost screams out.
A small smile appears on his face, "I'm fine, we're all fine. We just got back to the safe zone and got settled in."
"Oh, that's good. I'm glad you're ok," she breathes a sigh of relief before her tone shifts to a harsher one. "Why haven't you called me, why haven't I been able to make contact with your ring?"
"Because we've been fighting a literally endless army of monsters without a second to breathe and my ring was in my inventory since it'd probably get destroyed by my magic, better now?"
"I'm not happy about it but I understand," she says. Yang can easily imagine her pouting on the other side.
"Just making sure, how have things been up top?"
"Boring, I'm sitting across the table from Ganesh and Loki right now discussing some nonsense about Ares amassing weapons and people."
"Oh, sorry, I'll let---" as he was about to excuse himself from interrupting their meeting Freya's voice reached him, in a more hushed tone as if she didn't want him to hear.
"Shut up before I tear your trunk off," her voice sounded like a whisper. What Yang assumed was a threat to the god Ganesha whose symbol in Orario was an Elephant. "Right dear, where were we. Oh yes, life in Orario is boring, how long until you're done with this expedition?"
"Atleast another month, but I'll call whenever we're at the safe zone. We'll be chilling at floor seventy for maybe another day or two to rest up before we head back down, floor seventy-five was our limit last time but now we'll know what to expect," Yang says.
"You sound exhausted..."
"I am, very, barely awake even," Yang admits.
"Alright love, go get some rest, and call me before you resume the fighting please," Freya says.
"Will do, have fun at your meeting," Yang says as he cuts the call.
Getting up he begins to walk back to the tent, only to see Welf sitting on a stone bench at a picnic table not far away, staring down at his sketchbook. Knowing Thalie was already asleep, Yang walks over to Welf.
"You ok?"
Welf is startled slightly as he looks up from his book, for a moment Yang can barely see a sketch of Hephaestus sitting on a hill under a tree before Welf closes it.
"Uh, yeah I'm fine," he says.
"Mhm, nice drawing," he says, genuinely impressed, the arts really aren't in his skillset after all, he's always fascinated by how people can be so talented.
"Oh, it's from our first date at the vineyard, thanks for that idea by the way. She asked me to draw her to understand how I see her," Welf says.
Taking a seat opposite Welf, Yang gives him a concerned look, "and you're out here staring at it because?"
"Because I want more of, that."
"The relationship stuff?" Yang asks.
"Yeah, all of it. But because of well, mostly me according to what everyone seems to believe, we've gotta wait."
"Yeah, pretty sure if you asked she'd show you exactly how divine she can be, you considering just finally making your relationship official rather than just really close friends pining for each other?"
"Yeah, but if I get the prize what's gonna keep me in the game?" He asks, his voice filled with concern and worry.
"That's easy, a bigger prize." Welf looks up at Yang, not sure what he means. "If you got the girlfriend what's the next step huh? Just move to goal post every time you win, then the game never ends and you never stop improving," Yang says with a shrug as he gets up and leaves Welf with his thoughts.
Opening up the book once more Welf looks at the drawing, "one step further than a girlfriend huh," he takes off his message ring and stares at it for a moment before his eyes go back to the drawing, "yeah, probably never would have thought of that, I'll need to study making jewelry for later..."
---Elsewhere...
At noon, in a high-end restaurant on floor fifty-eight of Babel, six individuals were sitting around a table.
Freya, Loki, and Ganesha with their respective captains.
This was a meeting to discuss a potential upcoming war, whilst Ganesha's familia wouldn't be leaving the city, their job was maintaining order in times of chaos. That's why it was integral for him to be here.
Moving her Ring of Freya away from her mouth as the call with her lover ends, Freya has a wide smile on her normally stoic face. The sight is unsettling to all but Ottar, in these past months he's seen this so often that it's expected whenever she spends time with Yang Shen.
"Alright I'm off, have a good day everyone," Freya says to the completely silent table as she rises from her chair. Ottar follows her lead and wordlessly gets up.
"Hey!" Loki slams her hands on the table and gets up challengingly. "The meeting just started where are you going?"
"Oh," Freya looks back with a confused look on her face, "Was it not obvious? I'm leaving."
"You can't leave, this is important, right Ganesha," Loki calls on the man to support her but he's frozen stiff in his seat staring down at the table. Scared and silent, interrupting her call with Yang got her angry enough to threaten him, he wasn't taking any more chances. Honestly speaking aside from Ouranos only Loki and Hephaestus could get away with being mouthy to their sister.
"Right," Freya looks between both the gods in attendance, "so I'll be leaving now, have a good day."
"This is for the safe of Orario!" Loki yells out.
"Please, it's Rakia, either one of our familias can crush them, so what if they called in debts and amassed more forces? What's the worse they can do?"
"That's beside the point Freya, stop being such a brat and just stay for the meeting, people could die if we aren't ready," Loki growls.
"Mmmm, I don't care, and I'm not going to let this nonsense ruin my good mood," Freya says as she turns on her heel and leaves the room.
As Loki takes her seat with a frustrated huff, Finn speaks, "exactly how Yang left the meeting to discuss Kulve Taroth... guess they're made for each other."
"They're made to be a pain in my ass..." Loki groans.
END CHAPTER---
This expedition isn't the usual chain of set-piece fights, the dungeon threw something different at them.