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CHAPTER START---
"Did he level up?" Loki asked, staring at the Divine Mirror like everyone else, Welf and Ottar hadn't moved in the past few seconds, each waiting for the other to strike first. Often the first to strike dies among adventurers at this level.
"No," Hephaestus says. "Still level-6."
"Ah," Loki nods, "so he's just crazy..."
"This has to be a trick," Freya says. She leans forward to get a look at Yang, he appeared almost bored at the sight, not worried in the slightest. "What game are you playing?" she asks him.
"I don't even know what they're planning," Yang admits with a shrug, much to the surprise of everyone in the world. "I told you I don't deal with human conflicts, remember? I'm a monster hunter, nothing else."
Hearing this Finn immediately perks up, a sour taste in his mouth and pit in his stomach, understanding exactly what Yang meant. But as much as he disagreed with what was about to happen, he kept his mouth shut, deciding it was the smart move to have the monsters ignore him instead.
"Huh?" Loki questions, only to be interrupted by Hermes.
"They're moving!" he announces loudly, all eyes turn to the Divine Mirrors.
True to his words Welf raises Mosoka, buster sword Flame-Construct and all, and made a small slash through the air.
A massive arc of fire spread out, a thin crescent-moon-shaped horizontal attack at Ottar's waist level.
Not even batting an eye the man waves his hand and dissipates the attack, his black metal armor not even glowing a bit from the intense blood-red flame.
"Ok," Welf says nervously, speaking plainly instead of through his helmet so Ottar and the viewers could hear him. "Let's try this instead!" He creates a massive pillar of flame two meters wide before dropping it down onto Ottar.
"Hngh!" Ottar does a single two-handed slash and cleaves the flame pillar in two, still completely unmoving, ignoring the flames around him.
Seeing Ottar standing still as all the rock and dirt melt around him Welf audibly groans, "why can't you level-8s be normal," he places both hands on Mosoka and gets into a low stance, ready to bolt forward. "You fight just like Yang," Welf announces as he rushes forward.
BOOM!
The sound barrier shatters as a crater forms where he was standing.
Ottar reacts instantly, shifting from his confident rest position to mirroring Welf's stance and charging forward.
All the audience saw were two craters, then two silhouettes.
One with a gargantuan 6ft long greatsword held above his head in a wide diagonal arc. And another with an almost identical sword made entirely out of fire mirroring his attack.
Seeing the flame sword coming down Ottar knows exactly what he has to do next, 'knock away his attack. Throw him across the field. Parry Thalie's backstab. Knock her away. Get to the flag,' he chants.
A seasoned tactical mind, understanding that he was level-8 while there were level-6 and 7 respectively. Not expecting Thalie to even honor the sanctity of a duel if Welf was in true danger, or if they could lose the War Game, and even making a plan that wouldn't hurt them too much.
CRACK!
His boot sinks an inch into the rocky field as he puts his back into the swing, the full strength of a level-8 crashing down on Welf like an endless tsunami.
Both blades collide and Welf feels his arms go numb, bones fractured even with his armor on to absorb some of the shock.
"Agh!" he yells out before Ottar uses his superior speed to move his plan forward. With Welf's arms knocked aside Ottar quickly adjusts his blade and bats Welf away with the flat of it, a foot wide slab of metal slams into the smith. The sound of armor against sword rings out across the battlefield as Welf is lifted off the ground by the force.
As the smith is ragdolled for hundreds of feet, carving a clear trench in the dirt he grips onto Mosoka for dear life, even with fractured arms and a few broken ribs he dears not to let go, he wouldn't give up on this fight, give up on Yang's adventure.
"Welf!" Hephaestus cries out in horror, never before actually seeing him in a fight, and certainly never seeing him hurt. Watching his crumpled body trying to stand up, willing feeling to return into his limbs he barely raises his head before Thalie descends.
As if hearing the cry of her goddess the woman lunges directly toward Ottar's back, not caring about such silly things as honor, this was a war after all. There is no honor, no winners, no losers. Only who remains.
Expecting this Ottar turns around and meets her spear with his sword. The woman is in mid-air thrusting down, a thick coat of green wind surrounds her glowing weapon and armor.
Thalie feels Ottar's strength almost pushing her back, her muscles pushed to their absolute limit but the man refuses to move.
"RRRRAAAAGHHH!!!" She releases a bone-chilling cry and her magic glows even brighter.
For barely a moment Ottar feels her overwhelm his strength, he feels his defense broken for the second time in over a decade, both times by members of this team.
Not wanting her spear to run him through he shifts his stance and transfers his block into a parry, allowing her blade to grind against his before he sidesteps her, allowing her to rush past him.
With her back facing him he immediately swings out at her.
'Hmm,' his eyes widen in surprise as her body reacts. As if possessed or somehow being able to predict all his moves she instinctively avoids his strike without looking.
Lifting her blade and blindly swinging it back, perfectly parrying his strike.
Ottar swings three more times in the blink of an eye, each attack parried and forcing him to parry an even faster counterstrike.
He can see Welf already walking back over to join the fight, and he couldn't let anyone from his familia get close to these two or it could get very complicated.
Deciding to accept the pain Ottar strikes out again in another flurry of blows.
The clashing of metal echoes across the field as the ground beneath them breaks under the pressure, cracks spreading out across the dry rocky field as if an earthquake was occurring.
Seeing his chance he leaves a small opening, one that Thalie may have seen through if she had the time to think.
SLICE!
Thalie's spear pierces between two plates of his armor, tearing into the meat between his left pectoral and his shoulder, barely missing a lung.
Thalie is somewhat surprised by how easy it went, but as she goes to remove the weapon Ottar drops his sword and grabs it.
"Wha---" before her confused words can even finish he spins his entire body, knowing her grip would never loosen, she gets dragged until he is between her and the flag, a completely 180 from their previous positions.
Lifting one of his massive feet he plants the bottom of his boot into her helmet.
BAM!
Releasing his grip on the blade at once she's sent tumbling across the field.
Ottar hears Welf's flames ignite just out of vision, ignoring it he turns and rushes to the flag, his wound already quickly healing as he focuses everything onto the flag.
As he's only a few meters away, not even a tenth of a second for people at their level, he feels a sudden warmth in his chest.
His entire world goes silent as Thalie's spear protrudes out of the front of his chest, completely destroying his heart while the blades jutting out at the sides shred his lungs.
"Hngh!" he groans, and stumbles, but quickly regains his focus and continues running. He could heal later, Yang punched a hole through his chest and heart before and he was fine, this is fine.
Only a foot away from the flag he feels a tugging at his back, four pairs of hands trying to pry him away from his target. But with all their might, he was simply too strong.
Like an unstoppable force, he reaches out, that simple wooden shaft with Hephaestus's banner hanging on it. Just inches away, and to the dismay of the minority who thought he would lose.
The former King of War once more claims victory for his goddess, reaching out and tearing the flag from the ground, and with it, all of Yang's hope of even leaving his goddess.
Thalie and Welf are stunned silent, simply staring at the man, both dropping their weapons and stumbling back in disbelief.
"We...lost?" Welf mutters to himself.
Thalie dropped to her knees, all her confidence completely shatters, sobbing behind her helmet where nobody could see or hear.
A wide grin stretches across Freya's face as she gets up and walks over to Yang, putting a much more exaggerated sway in her hips.
As he stares at the Divine Mirrors in horror, surrounded by the eerily silent audience, she leans down and cups his chin, looking directly into his brown eyes with her own silver.
"You, are never going home," she whispers out to him, but the words rock his mind worse than the loudest explosions. "I am your home, and you will stay with me, forever."
As he leans back and away from her she grabs his face and forces him into an aggressive kiss, not passionate like before, this was a statement, he no longer had control of his own destiny.
He was all Freya's...
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Or at least that's what everyone expected.
Truthfully, most people never live up to their reputations, but most people aren't The Trifecta...
The moment Ottar and Welf were about the clash for the very first time, in the minds of most it was decided.
"Suicide!" they would say. A level-6, even as talented as he was, against a level-8? Nonsense.
But those people didn't know, only three people in the world knew.
And only those three weren't completely surprised as the buster sword Flame-Construct suddenly received another burst of magic mid-swing.
Inches away from Ottar's much more powerful attack it transformed from blood-red flames to a void-black nightmare.
"Wh---" Ottar never gets to finish his final word as the flame cleaves through his new blade, before he can react the construct flames up like a wild bonfire as Welf completes his swing.
Where the sound of crackling and roaring fire would be heard, there was nothing.
A small arc of these flames slash out and dissipate into the air behind Ottar, and the entire world falls silent.
Welf sighs and shakes his head, deactivating his sword and placing it on his back. "You really do fight just like Yang," he looks down at Ottar, what was left of him, everything above his knees simply ceased to exist. "But Yang could have taken that hit with his magic..." he looks up at Thalie and waves, signaling for her to start moving.
Thalie stands on her spear and slowly begins moving through the air, giving her enemies time to consider what they just saw.
Back at Babel and all around the world everyone was waiting for Yang to explain.
"What the hell was that?" Hephaestus asked, surprising everyone. They all knew The Trifecta don't report their expeditions to the guild, but they expected at least their goddess to know.
"Void Flames," Yang shrugs as if it were nothing important. "Ignores defense and levels, just erases matter and energy from existence."
Freya doesn't react at all, not caring about anything they could be saying, she had already accepted her loss, Ottar was the key to everything, and unless Allen pulls off a miracle she had no hope. She had no hope.
In all of their obsessing over this anomaly that is Yang Shen, most of the world forgot, they're all monsters...
BOOM!
Thalie lands in the main square of Freya's fort. Not even bothering to move or pretend to defend herself, looking around she sees all the adventurers staring at her, weapons drawn but not moving.
And all of this while the flag is only a few feet ahead of her. Looking above the main gate she sees the only potential threats here.
Hedin, the light-elf magic swordsman. Hogni, the dark-elf magic swordsman with an invisible blade, Allen, the only other level-7 in Orario, and finally, Heith, standing beside Hedin. The most annoying of all, the miracle healer, second only to Airmid. She can't cure curses and hexes but in exchange, she can bestow much more vitality, a fair trade-off.
"What?" Thalie challenges, slowly walking toward the flag with her weapon held out. "Nobody gonna stop me? Are you all so cowardly?"
With her magic armor and weapon active they'd have to be foolish to challenge her, especially considering what they just saw the assumed 'weakling' of her team do to Ottar.
With every step they could feel their stomachs turn.
Every inch she moved they could feel the anger, no, worse, the disappointment of their goddess burning into them.
Perhaps if they knew losing would mean being banished from their familia, they would have gladly thrown themselves at Thalie, all preferring death to life without Freya.
But none of them reacted, they simply believed they would go home to their goddess, and both Ottar and Yang would be gone, bother her favorites.
"So much for a familia of warriors," Thalie mocks as she stands beside the flag, reaching out enough to wrap her fingers around it, but freezing. Instead taking the moment to look around, daring someone to act before she wins.
"What's she doing?" Loki asks, not at all understanding why she doesn't take the free victory.
"Winning," Yang says.
"But she has the flag!"
"The flag isn't winning. It is for me, but for Thalie, winning means---"
"Being the only survivor," Finn finishes for him, earning a small nod from Yang. He only sighs, his thoughts confirmed. "Thalie leads your team on human conflict...and conflict can't exist if you're the only survivor," he is the first outside to put the pieces together, this was never about those silly flags for Thalie...
SPLAT!
The sound of breaking bones and blood hitting stone reaches Hedin's ears, an instant later blood splashes across the left side of his face.
He'd been staring at where Thalie was, everyone was. Then in a flicker of golden light, she disappeared.
Being second only to Finn his mind easily figures out what's going on, and he doesn't even both to lift his weapon in protest. Still looking ahead at the untouched flag for a moment, "the healer first huh," he says.
Finally turning his head, ignoring the blood and gore on his person to see Thalie standing in the middle of it all. As if a person exploded and she emerged from inside them.
Only a foot beside him, exactly where Heith was, their prized healer, and Thalie's entire armor dripping with the woman's blood.
The result of simply ramming into her at an absurd speed.
Everyone freezes, not quite sure how to react.
"Healers are the most annoying," Thalie says coldly.
Hedin does his best not to break, "and after healers?"
"You mages..."
END CHAPTER---
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