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---
---Dungeon Floor 79...
Deep below the surface in a massive chamber, three adventurers combat an endless army of insects.
Welf does one horizontal slash, the Flame Construct on Mosoka becomes the absurdly large Buster Sword he tends to favor before extending outward, releasing an arc of thin flame and clearing a football-field-sized swath through the horde.
Limbs, exo-skeletons, and guts fly everywhere for a moment, with the heatwave which follows his swing, all the monsters are immediately incinerated leaving nothing but ash, and a foul stench in the air.
"Above us," Thalie says as she spins her spear around her, bashing in the heads of a few giant ants.
With perfectly precise movements she dances through the swarm, each strike being a killing blow as she deals with monsters a level below her.
Dashing forward she easily pierces the natural armor of the bugs and shatters the crystal, understanding herself and the enemy she keeps moving forward with no intention of stopping. As the crystal shatters the monsters become dust and scatter, allowing her to easily move through the previously occupied space.
A lethal and captivating dance ensues as she barrels through the army easily killing anything in her way by simply adjusting the angle of Liberty.
Hearing her words through his helmet Yang flares up his mage armor, previously he'd been only using his great-axe in order to preserve his magic, but now with his mage armor active he pushes more magic into the skill, blue flames roar as they wash across the battlefield like a raging tide.
In the large clearing he made, Yang looks around to see Welf and Thalie standing with no monsters around them as they look at what was dropping from the ceiling.
"That's just nasty," Yang mutters as a few dozen giant grey slugs, two stories tall and as long as two buses drop from above.
Mucus splashes out as the force of the fall causes their squishy bodies to flatten before returning to their original squishy shape. The thick grey liquid begins flowing off of them like creeping lava as they very slowly inch toward the adventurers in the middle of the room.
While they arrive at the clearing the other monsters never stopped spawning, no, but the growing ocean of mucus seems to give them all pause. The other monsters rushed forward at first only to get stuck in the viscous liquid, struggling to break free to the point that they tore their own legs off.
"Ok, so Glue-Slugs?" Yang asks.
"What?" Thalie looks at him, "these aren't one of your monsters?"
"Hell no, these things are gross, but I think we should keep our distance and let me deal with this," he says.
"Easier said than done," Welf says as he regroups with them and points to the nearest slugs.
As they look at the monster and enjoy the slight breather from the endless days of fighting they see the slug seemingly rise up and look over to them. Atop its head, two stalks stretch out with holes at the ends before shooting the mucus out like a fire hose, one quick burst from each stalk.
With ease the adventurers leap to the side, staying together and avoiding the mucus.
"Ok so they have range," Yang says. "We've got a few seconds so chug a potion or whatever you need before the others crawl into range, they're giving us a break so let's use it."
Taking his words to heart the adventurers each drink an Elixir, two in Welf's case.
As they finish their very short break a swarm of Giant Slugs finally crawl within firing range and Yang steps in front of his friends.
"Get ready for all hell to break loose again as soon as these things are dealt with," he says, giving his team a nod which they return.
Walking forward he holds his axe over his right shoulder and raises his left hand, with practiced ease an ocean of blue flames washes over the area. Blinding blue light cascading over everything, drowning the slugs and incinerating all the monsters behind them in that particular segment of the room.
As Yang keeps the flames going suddenly something surprising happens, a large glob of grey mucus pushes through the flames and encases his hand. Hiding in the flames until it arrived at the source, his fire is immediately snuffed out as he jumps back.
"What the fuck?!" he cries out, pushing more magic into his flames only to get nothing in return. "It's fireproof or something!" he says. Immediately cycling through all his elements to find a solution.
As he's working on that problem more streams of the glue-like substance is fired at the team.
The three adventurers find themselves dancing between the streams before they eventually begin running out of space.
"Yang, what's the play here?" Thalie asks as she avoids a few more blasts.
"Uh, fire doesn't work," he says. "Water spreads it, just freeze it or shock them, that works," he says as he breaks the frozen mucus off his arm and begins spreading a cold chill around them.
"I'm useless here so make it quick," Thalie says with a scoff. Once more feeling the drawback of only having physical prowess to contribute.
As he begins freezing the chamber the slugs noticeably slow down even more. The mucus on the ground freezes and becomes brittle as the layer coating the monsters does the exact same.
With the atmosphere slightly more relaxed they don't notice one of the monsters taking a very lucky shot at Welf.
Hearing the liquid moving through the air he instinctively raises Mosoka, knowing that Fire Magic doesn't work on this substance Yang is about to reach out and freeze it in the air, only for Welf to incinerate it.
A small stream of black flame fires out and incinerates the Fire Immune substance.
Unlike any other flame, this black fire carried no heat, if one didn't look at it you wouldn't even notice its presence.
As the remaining slugs freeze over, both his allies look at the black flames with curiosity.
"What the hell is that?" Yang asks rather bluntly.
"Honestly, no idea," Welf admits with a shrug. "I still don't really know as much as I'd like about Mosoka but these black flames are...different."
"Yeah no shit," Thalie says. "How come you didn't mention them earlier?"
"Every time I use them Mosoka cries," Welf says.
"Uh," Yang isn't quite sure what he means. "Is this a blacksmith thing?"
"No, it's, weird. But I think it's because I'm connected to Mosoka that I can feel when it's straining, the black flames are too much. It could be dangerous," Welf explains.
"Right..." Thalie shakes her head a bit," let's focus on first things first then, we've got monsters to kill."
Turning their attention back to the now frozen slugs, they see the swarm of giant bugs rushing over the frozen corpses to charge at the adventurers.
"Of course, back to work..." Yang mutters.
---4 Days Later...
"Why are you even doing that?" Thalie asks. Sitting around a large table with Welf and Yang the Trifecta were back in the floor seventy safe-zone.
On the table Yang had his equipment and a small container of soap with a cloth. Carefully scrubbing his already clean equipment. He had already used fire to cleanse his gear but for some reason, he insists on doing this.
"Because, I need to smell something other than bug guts on the way back up," he says. "My question is how can you two wear your gear with it smelling like that."
"It just makes more sense to clean it back at Babel," Thalie shrugs.
Welf nods in agreement and speaks, "isn't it already clean with your fire?"
"Yeah but, I need to have it smell like soap at least to put my mind at ease...I'm not very good with, you know..."
"Mud, guts, gore, skinning animals, having dirt on your hands for longer than needed," Thalie gives him a mocking smile. "Did I miss anything else that mister worlds strongest can't handle in all his squeamish glory?"
"Horses," Welf says with a low cackle.
"Right, horses, the most dangerous things in the world to the man that punches dragons and plays with sharks," Thalie says.
"I like being clean, nothing wrong with that, and horses are assholes," Yang points out before looking to Welf. "You called your girlfriend?"
"We aren't official, yet," Welf says. "But yeah Hephaestus is expecting us in a day or two. She's surprised we're turning back without someone dying seeing as we usually go till we can't anymore... we'd like to know why you called off the expedition too," he gestures to himself and Thalie.
"Because," Yang starts, "we won't make it past floor eighty-two at this rate." he stores away his boots and move to clean his helmet, "we put a serious dent in our rations, down to about two months now since we're all eating roughly three bars or more a day from fighting in the Bug Jar. The monsters aren't strong enough to max out either Thalie or my stats and we're already out of regular Magic Swords, best move is to retreat, recuperate, then try again."
"So the plan is what?" Thalie asks. "We get geared up again then just rush back down here. What's gonna change?"
"That's not the plan, Welf is the plan," Yang says.
"Me?" Welf asks.
"Yeah, you. You said you had an idea of how to fix this navigation issue right?"
"Well...yeah, I've been thinking of ways to copy the map magic you told me about."
"You mean google maps?"
"Yeah, that spell, a map of everything. I won't be able to do something like that but I might be able to figure something out, I just need my stuff from Babel and a few days at the enchantment table," Welf says.
"Perfect, the problem is we don't have a map," Yang says. "We won't have any issue if we knew the route but these floors are way larger than Orario and have dozens of routes and even more chambers. Using the trial and error approach is exhausting us and taking all our time especially with all the damn bugs."
"And the lower floors only get bigger," Thalie points out.
"Exactly, the dungeon is a pyramid and Orario is at the top, I'm guessing floor 100 is roughly ten times the size of Orario at least," he says.
"That's like a hundred miles," Welf points out. "With just trial and error, it'll take weeks if not months to map the way to the next floor...damn. Yeah, I'll have to figure out a better map," he says.
"Yeah, but until then I think we should just head back to Orario and prepare. I don't want us fighting in The Bug Jar much so if the map works we'll skip it entirely," Yang says.
---The Following Day, Somewhere Deep In The Dungeon...
A man with the skull of a Formoire, a goat monster, stands clad in all white with pale white hair flowing down below his hood.
"Revis," he calls out to the woman sitting on the stone floor a few feet away. With short red hair and a revealing outfit of the same colour, she holds a few magic crystals in her hands. Not the regular purple crystals, but the strange greenish-yellow crystals like Yang found on the beach. "They're leaving the dungeon again, this is another opportunity, we must go," the man says.
"Olivias, the crystals aren't going anywhere," she says to the man while biting on the monster crystal in her hand. Chewing it up and swallowing the shards. "They barely ever touch any monster crystals, much less on the way out," she reminds him.
"The other monsters may get the crystals first, it's easier to amass strength when these...things, slaughter everything in the dungeon and leave the crystals behind for us. We should go," he insists.
With a wave of his hand a plant monster moves behind him, a Venus Flytrap like monster with a human mouth within its own plant mouth, red and yellow flower petals at the base of its head, and a long green stalk going into the floor.
Leaping onto the monster he gently pets it before turning to move away, only to be stopped by her words.
"They'll kill you if you get too close, just wait a day to make sure they're gone," Revis says as she eats another crystal. "If we ever get close enough to observe those freaks they'll kill us, stay put."
"Mmm," he looks back at her from his spot standing on the monster, "maybe we should get closer, to observe them. If we better understand their power we can know how to stop them, before they reach her Sanctum," he suggests.
"We could," she muses. "But that's still far away from them, and I don't think we can get stronger than them in time, it's suicide, just sit down and be patient before I kill you. If they see you then they'll start searching for us, and I'll die, I won't let that happen," she says with a deadly glare.
"Fine," he relents and hops off the monster, "to think mere humans could push us into hiding...but I suppose it makes no difference, even if they arrived at her Sanctum, they'd never get in, Mother won't allow it. And if they get close we'll just kill them," he says with a small chuckle.
"I'm not dying to protect his plans," Revis says coldly, those people are freaks if the Spirits were reacting like that to their power, it's beyond us. Let's just quietly take the crystals as we've been doing for months and stay out of their way..."
END CHAPTER---
If you read Sword Oratoria(Danmachi sister series) then... :)