Bab 96: CHAPTER 96(Trifecta Privileges)
Please read the author's notes. (Examples and explanation of moves and appearance+ Monster Sources)
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CHAPTER START---
Standing at the edge of their campsite, Yang has both hands on Udeaus's sword as he superheats it, causing the weapon to compress and shrink in on itself as it glows red hot.
The massive 30ft sword cracks and warps into a deformed black rod of sorts. No longer recognizable as the king's weapon.
"Damn, it shrunk so much, we might get fifty ingots if we're lucky..." Welf says while approaching Yang.
"I avoided breaking it in the fight to collect as much as possible, but this is a lot less than I expected," Yang frowns at the item between them.
"It makes sense that there wouldn't be much when it got compressed honestly, this material makes Superior grade weapons after all. It's what gives our weapons such high defense properties on top of Durandal properties."
"You wanna make ingots now or..."
"Yeah, let's get it over with," Welf begins preparing his tools.
"If I knew it would be this small after we made ingots I could've grabbed more crates for Finn."
"Uh-huh, then he definitely would've sent the princesses with us, and you'd probably be fighting Ais the minute we got to this safe zone," Welf jokes while hammering away at the material.
"Ugh, don't remind me. Have to admit though I'm curious about how well I stack up against them, but I much rather have Tiona around, she talks a lot but at least she fits in with us well," he shrugs.
"And I get to work on Urga tomorrow so there's that, new weapons are always welcomed," Welf chuckles as he forms another ingot.
"Jeez, you blacksmiths are too easy, I'm gonna help the girls get cleaned up, this gonna take long?"
"Nah, I'll be done by the time they're done then we can relax..." Welf says as he shifts all his focus onto his work, the crystals in the ceiling already beginning to dim.
Walking over to Thalie's tent which she'll be sharing with Tiona for a while, Yang sees both women wrapped in towels holding their soaps and other products.
"Ready?" He asks casually, Thalie nods in response while Tiona looks a bit confused, deciding to just follow along.
Walking down the large steps to the forest below, they come upon a small stream, a shallow pool at the bottom of a small waterfall perfect for them to wash up.
"Just shout when you're done..." Yang says while withdrawing a book and walking upstream, jumping to the top of the little waterfall and moving further away before dipping his feet into the water as he reads his book.
"Oh, he's standing guard, that's nice," Tiona smiles as they both begin to strip.
"Nah, he really doesn't care about that, he's here because I asked him. Water in the dungeon tends to be cold... I don't like that," Thalie casually walks into the water.
Just a step behind her Tiona enters the water as well, "Yeah but that's just how it is, n---" her words come to an abrupt stop as she looks down at the water around her legs.
"Yang acts as a nice water heater, perks of having miracle boy in your party..." Thalie shrugs while dropping into the water.
Above their bathing spot, Yang lays on his back with his feet in the water, the stream bubbling around his legs as it takes the heated water down to Thalie and Tiona, his book raised above him as he reads about the history of this world.
After everyone gets cleaned up, the four find themselves in the middle of their plateau campsite, all wrapped in towels still.
With no warning Yang slams his foot on the ground, a wave of earth magic rocks the pillar as a square pool forms before them, placing his hand above it a torrent of water fills it up immediately.
Stepping inside, the water immediately begins to release wisps of steam.
"Wow, HOT SPRING?!" Tiona cheers as she drops her towel and jumps into the water, splashing everyone in the process.
"The tower was so you didn't have to be naked Tiona..." Thalie mutters as Yang passes her a bottle of wine.
"Meh, nothing wrong with letting it all air out," the amazon stands up and puffs out her chest, proudly displaying her body.
Both men give her a good look up and down, Welf's face forms a light blush as he quickly looks down at the thankful steamy water.
Yang doesn't seem to care, however, much to her disappointment as she planned on teasing him.
"Sit down already, you're ruining the view," he casually remarks, he was facing the forest while she had the side with her back to the safe zone.
"Don't you know you're supposed to fall for my womanly charms, it's rude not to," she tries her best to get a response out of him.
"Dunno, he tends to prefer more subtle women..." Thalie joins in the teasing.
"Or people that aren't built like 10-year-old boys," Yang shrugs as he takes a box of cookies out of his storage.
"HEY!" The girl whines.
"He's doing you a favor anyway, if he fell for your 'Womanly charm' then his girlfriend might lose her shit and kill you," Welf jokes.
"Girlfriend?" This catches Tiona's attention.
"No. Not girlfriend..." Yang bites back, giving Welf an annoyed look.
"Whatever you say, miracle boy, good look dealing with that mess," Thalie chuckles as she lifts the bottle to her lips.
Yang wordlessly passes a bottle of sake across the surface of the water to Welf before his gaze turns to Tiona, as if waiting for her to speak.
"What?"
"Want a drink? Snack? I've got a lot of stuff stored away so don't be shy."
"Oh, um, chocolate?" She asks, a bit of hesitation.
"Raising his hand, Yang withdraws a large chocolate bar and tosses it over to her."
"Best magic ever," she gives him a dazzling smile while opening the candy bar.
After a few minutes of peaceful silence, mostly due to Tiona being busy chewing. Yang breaks the silence.
"So, Udeaus?" he asks, two simple words but his team knew what he meant.
"You decided to brute force it, I assume testing your limits but was it the new skill?" Thalie asks, always quick with deductions.
"Both, fighting feels good, it's a lot easier to control when the enemy is enough to give me a good sweat, fighting weaker monsters and having it trigger doesn't work as well..."
"And you were intentionally avoiding breaking the sword, so your control is pretty good, didn't think you were that scary though," Welf comments while giving Yang a look as if he were trying to see just how powerful his friend was.
"The moment I started actually trying he fell apart, disappointing, I think we're done with these floors, from now on we'll only be operating deeper than this safe zone..." Yang decides, knowing they trust his judgment on these matters.
"Udeaus..." Tiona says, giving them all wary looks as they all turn to her," I was ready to jump in and pull you away when he came out, but your friends didn't even have their weapons out, I thought they didn't care but you actually won, and so easily too. It usually takes 30 of our members in a big fight to bring him down safely, but you did it alone. If you join us we can definitely reach the Frontier floors of the dungeon!" she pleads her case.
They all give her bored looks as if she just said the dumbest thing ever, they knew she was right of course, she knew she was right, but they just didn't care.
"Never gonna happen, our little system only works with at BEST five people. Sorry but we can't do big parties, plus it'd suck to have to change the name and all that, Trifecta kinda grew on us," Yang says with a playful tone.
"You know Finn won't hesitate to accept you if you wanted to, right?"
"Of course, but at the current rate we're going, your team is gonna be trying to catch up to us," he gives her a cocky smile.
"Can you please not taunt the competition..." Thalie groans as she takes another sip of her wine.
"More like don't taunt my future customers..." Welf adds in.
"Meh, whatever. How was the trip down for you guys, new toys working like intended?" Yang asks as Tiona just quietly grumbles to herself.
"Yeah, my sword took these floors from challenging to almost boring, they were made for us to punch up to higher levels but I think I overdid it..." Welf confesses.
"Yeah, I haven't even been pushed yet, these floors only have one real challenge and you handled it to get the sword," Thalie shrugs.
"Glad we're all in agreement, for the sake of not becoming stagnant, we're gonna get down to floor 50, then we'll backtrack floor 49 and see what we're really made of."
"Floor 49? Yang, you can't be serious..." Thalie is the first to realize what he's thinking.
"Yup, we'll handle Balor then move past these boring floors. The deep levels should be a nice training field for us, if we stay here too long with our new weapons then our growth will be hampered."
"Wait, what? Whaddya mean?" Tiona questions, not quite being able to read within the lines, simply because she doesn't know what they know.
"Don't sweat it, what can you tell us about Balor, I want this done and us back at floor 50 before the main forces arrive," Yang asks, as if it were the most casual thing in the world.
"I've never fought him, Finn says that it's impossible to fight him without some of our stronger members being hurt or losing a supporter or two---"
"And since Balor sits at the far end of floor 49 away from the main route through the floor, he's completely optional, so you can just rush past him then backtrack when stronger..." Welf concludes as he realizes what they planned.
"Yeah, he never moves and his room acts as a safe zone if the guild info is still reliable, that boss room doesn't spawn anything when he's not in it and scares away other monsters, if we launch an offensive we don't have to worry about watching our backs, and if worst comes to worst we can just leave since he never leaves that arena," Thalie informs them.
"Hmm, that's good. But let's see how we do on the way to floor 50 before we challenge a level 7 raid boss, we haven't had any real injuries and only one of Thalie's shuriken was used, mostly for the sake of testing how it works. I think we'll be good since I've still got a few tricks I can use if we need more power, Welf?" Yang hands the conversation over to their smith.
"I can have all our repairs done within a day, Urga will take at least 3 days so if we want Tiona at full power to back us up for Balor, assuming we make good time that gives us a few days to get it done before everyone else gets down here and crowds us." He informs them.
"Hmm, how many Ice shuriken do you have?" He asks Thalie.
"At least two dozen, why?"
"Balor is a being of strength, fire, and lightning. Most of our stuff won't work for him so in terms of magic it'll be ice and water plus Welf's flame control, but even that's limited against enemies that outmatch you right?"
"Yeah, can't control flames from someone like you just put up my heat shield and hope for the best," Welf admits.
"Hmm, I think we can pull it off, Tiona won't be engaging no matter what however, I'll stash the materials at floor 50 so you won't have any reason to. This is our adventure, remember that please," he tells the amazon, his voice firm but still kind.
"Mhm," she nods, reluctant but understanding what he means.
"Alright, anything else?" He asks the group.
"I briefed Tsubaki on our trip down here, they left a few hours ago, not long after we arrived here. We should have roughly a week before they get to floor 50," Thalie adds.
"Alright, having back up in a week is good, we've got work to do before they get here still so make sure to get good rest while we're here," Yang says as he withdraws a bottle of orange juice and takes a sip.
Later that night when everyone returned to their tents, Yang and Welf were fast asleep, the stairs to their camping spot were removed and walls erected around the edge, strong enough to keep monsters out and high enough to cause noise if they're broken. Not that it would be easy to sneak up on three level 5s either way.
"Camping with you guys is really fun..." Tiona quietly says, laying in her sleeping bag beside Thalie in their tent.
"Hm, what?"
"It a lot less, I dunno, stuffy. It's freer if that makes sense. Nobody barking orders at me and we move a lot faster, not having to carry stuff is fun too, and warm water to bathe in," Tiona elaborates, a large smile on her face as she pulls the covers over her head.
"Yeah, honestly I've been kinda spoiled. I hate to admit it but having Yang around got me used to being comfortable when we're working," Thalie softly admits.
"Mhm, I really wish you guys would join us, but I understand you have your own reasons."
"Thanks for not pushing it."
"No problem, ya know, you aren't as scary as I expected..." Tiona mutters as she pulls her covers down to give Thalie a side eye.
"What?"
After a tense moment, Tiona explains.
"Riveria told me you're an assassin, something like that at least."
"I am, I kill a lot of people and steal a lot of things, but that's just a job... you can kill people and still be nice, YOU should know that. You are from Kali familia after all..." Thalie says with a small smile.
"Mmm, guess I shouldn't be surprised you'd know that, somehow."
"It's my job, Yang's a different breed when it comes to adventuring, my role in the team is to provide a guiding hand and look out for him when we're dealing with people, he's still crass when people are involved. I just make sure everyone who raises swords to us dies, no swords at our back..."
"Riveria was right, you are scary..."
END CHAPTER---
40 follows on this story from 5K, feel free to request a monster, encounter or event and I'll write a bonus chapter for whatever gets the most votes. Discord for any full discussions.
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
keanu_eugene
keanu_eugene Have some idea about my story? Comment it and let me know.
---Camping with Trifecta is was more relaxing than Loki familia.
---Teasing Yang, bad idea.
---Target; Balor. Definitely gonna be fun.
Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone