CHAPTER 142(Heart Of The Storm 2)

Please read the author's notes. (Examples and explanation of moves and appearance+ Monster Sources)

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CHAPTER START---

"I hope this works," Yang mutters to himself. Eyes closed and hands clasped together in front of his chest and wind blows around him. 'Standing' with up to his knees embedded in the frozen ceiling of the boss room completely upside down he focuses on his magic now more than ever.

Not only was he using his worst element, Earth. He already had his Elemental Wheel at his back in the form of broken rocks floating in a perfect ring, channeling more magic than ever into a single attack in the hopes that it'll work.

While he prepares his magic, for the past few minutes his allies have been in a stalemate with the titanic-sized Xixecal.

The gargantuan monster was too slow to grab onto them, but between Thalie not having a weapon or magic that matched up well against the monster, and only being able to slash at its feet as well as Welf's attacks being constantly healed, they were getting nowhere.

Working with Thalie they took advantage of his flames being able to not only exist in the cold where Yang's can't. But cut into the adamantite hard ice of the monster, even if it's only a little bit.

Thalie was struggling to consistently pierce the ice, her spear not made for large slashes that could work on such a massive target.

They were climbing at its leg chipping away below the knee in the hopes of throwing it off balance. Ever so often Welf would fly up to its shoulder height to keep it focused on them.

Every stomp from the monster caused quakes in the chamber, rattling them deep in their bones, their teeth clattering together from the cold and shaking.

Feeling the cold on her skin Thalie could see the frost on her armor slowly freezing her. Not wanting to drag this out she leaps forward. Her limbs enhanced long ago with magic, placing her spear onto the powerful magnetic plate on her back she decides to use her fists.

Piercing wasn't getting them anywhere, the best way through the ice was to smash it after all.

"Gods what I wouldn't do for a hammer right now," she grumbles to herself as the fight drags on.

With both adventurers giving everything they have trying to break one of this colossal titan's legs, they hear words that inspire a myriad of emotions call out from their message rings.

"METEOR SWARM!" Yang's voice cries out. A mix of shock, hope, dread, and amazement fills their minds.

Stealing a glance toward the ceiling, Welf and Thalie see large black stones descending from the sky. Glowing a dark yellow and the size of small houses, angular faces cut into them as if they'd been recently worked by a jeweler.

A thundering cacophony of stone smashing ice and explosions as the magic propelling them downward gives them enough force for the reinforced meteors to break the adamantite hard monster before the stones shatter.

Both Welf and Thalie are forced to retreat, avoiding the pieces of stone descending from the heavens above. Forced to watch a dozen meteors crash into a Xixecal, taking a chunk out of its left shoulder and cracking it all the way down to the tip of its arm.

"He did it," Welf says as he sees a crack spread across the chest of the monster, shallow, but it was a start.

"Go catch him!" Thalie points into the air, directing Welf's attention to Yang as he falls headfirst through the air. No magic to support his body. Reserves completely spent.

As the monster stumbles backward dazed and confused by what just happened Welf rockets through the air and grabs Yang. Catching him and slowly bringing them both down to land by Thalie.

"Mmm, head...hurts," Yang mutters out as he drops to one knee clutching his head.

"Guessing you don't have another one of those in you then..." Welf says.

"I pulled a meteor swarm out of my ass, what more do you want man," Yang groans as he begins chugging elixirs. His team follows his lead and takes the chance to heal up.

"It's hurt, and it's not healing quickly. What's the plan now?" Thalie asks, noticing the monster was slowly moving toward them. It clearly had much less energy to fight, likely focused on healing the massive chunk of its shoulder that was missing.

"If healing slows it down," Yang takes a deep breath and rises to his feet before he continues. "Then let's finish breaking off that arm then," he points to the very weak shoulder, the arm itself was barely intact but slowly healing.

"I um...I don't think I can fight up there," Thalie begrudgingly admits. Her fear of heights wouldn't let her fight on the shoulder of a 200ft tall monster.

"And I don't have enough magic for anything useful after that move," Yang says before turning to Welf. "I'll help soften it up and you come in to finish it. Thalie hits it from the other side and sweeps a leg so when I hit it goes down, then you cut the arm off and we take the core," he points to the blue glowing center of the monster.

"Gotcha, just say when," Thalie says as she rushes off the get into position behind the monster.

Many elixirs and potions later, the monster was lumbering toward Yang and Welf. Focused entirely on the two major threats to itself. One man had flames that could exist in the Absolute Zero area around it, where no open flames should have the audacity to exist. The other bombarded it with meteors from above.

"Call it," Yang says to Welf as he crouches down into a runner starting stance. Both hands on the ground as he focuses on his own heartbeat.

Feeling and hearing the steady thumps in his chest speeding up more and more as he takes shallow ragged breaths, pushing his body into a state of adrenaline.

Red marking spread across his body, marking his skin on his neck and face, visible through the new holes and cuts in his clothes. Gritting his teeth and focusing on the monsters' injury his muscles begin winding up.

His chaos mark was now in full bloom.

As the monster takes on more large step toward them, only 200m away. With its foot at the height of the step, Welf gives the signal. "NOW!" he yells into his message ring.

In an instant, a flash of gold goes off behind the monster as Thalie slams into the raised leg with her entire body, her armor cracking against the body of the monster. Strong as reinforced adamantite and cold enough that even with the layer of protection under her armor her body immediately went into stage two frostbite, feeling the energy being drained from her at physical contact.

As her attack knocks the raised foot forward, Yang takes off and slams into the monster's injured shoulder. His powerful leap cratering the ground, kicking up ice and snow all around him and knocking Welf off his feet. A crater the width of Babel forms where he was just a moment ago.

Unlike Thalie who only forms sparse cracks in the monster with small bits of ice flaking off. Yang's hit creates a spider web of cracks moving from the now extremely weak shoulder all the way across the torso of the monster. Not deep enough for real damage, but it's a start.

As Yang's hands and feet are stuck in the monster, the force of his impact pushes the upper body backward just enough to tip it over.

Causing a massive earthquake that rattles not only the chamber but the nearby dungeon floors as well the Xixecal falls onto its back.

A moment later Welf is atop the monster swinging Mosoka downward. Cleaving the severely weakened shoulder clean off with a 30ft line of flame extending from his weapon.

The monster trembles in pain, not having a mouth to articulate itself all it could do was shake, causing more tremors as it focused all its energy on repairing the now missing limb.

Not wasting any time Yang pries himself out of the ice and leaps high up. The chamber shakes as he soars through the air.

Rocketing toward the ceiling with only his physical might, enhanced by the Chaos Mark.

Before Welf can even realize what Yang was doing, the flat of his boots touches the ceiling of the chamber and he pushes off with everything he has.

A massive booming explosion is heard as the ceiling cracks and chunks of it begin to fall to the floor below. The entire chamber shakes once as he launches off the ceiling, then again as he descends hundreds of meters in the blink of an eye to slam down onto the monster's chest, directly above the glowing blue core.

Without hesitation, Yang begins hammering down with a barrage of punches.

"RAAAGHHH!" he screams out in a mix of excitement and fury. His adrenaline pumping and a massive smile on his face as he's enjoying himself.

Landing beside him after being knocked off the monster by the shockwave Yang's impact caused, Welf stabs Mosoka into the monster and channels all his magic into the sword.

The metal becomes red hot, as if it were fresh from the forge.

With every punch Yang throws, hundreds a minute at the rate he was going, Welf's fire snakes it way through the cracks toward the core. Weakening the ice more and more as he pushes himself to the limit.

Until his hands are burnt onto the handle of his weapon and Yang's gauntlets, for the very first time...break. Pieces of black metal falling off as he continues for hundreds of punches. With every hit, his absurd strength shakes the chamber. Countless quakes shaking Welf so much that he lost feeling in his legs, desperately holding onto his blade to stay focused, using the pain to keep himself in line.

As they finally make visible progress, the ice around them cracking and breaking taking them closer and closer to the core. The remaining hand of the Xixecal is raised, preparing to crush them as it weakly dropping all its weight onto them.

The sharp and cold claws of the monster descend onto them, as large as a bus. Thick solid magically reinforced ice bringing absurd weight with it. With Yang completely tunnel-visioned on punching down to the core and himself unable to stop because that could mean losing all the progress they've made, Welf is elated when Thalie arrives to help them.

Just before the claw could crash down onto them she stabs it with her spear. Limbs bright gold as she defends her teammates.

Unfortunately, she's already expended much of her strength in the moves she's done. Between the burst to kill a dragon then to throw a colossal enemy off balance, she didn't have that much to give.

Her spear holds, but her hands buckle and wane under the weight. After only a few moments she barely diverts the claw as it crashes down onto her, narrowly avoiding her allies as they continue their work.

"AHHH!" she screams in agony. Bits and pieces of her armor scattering about as it shatters under the weight and cold effect of the claw.

Her body lays bloodied and broken under a massive claw, dark blue ice with streaks of black as the cold spreads out from it. Welf can see her body becoming paler by the moment.

Redoubling his efforts he throws all caution out and pours all his magic into his weapon.

With one final push, as he sees Thalie's skin becomes black his flames seep through the cracks Yang's fists made. Softening the ice so his hits can form more cracks and constantly feeding off each other in a desperate loop.

And so the core shatters.

With the sound of glass breaking, Welf finds himself falling 50ft through the air as the monster becomes blue dust below them. He barely manages to slam into the snow flat on his back and see Yang struggle to his feet as the Chaos Mark fades away. Taking one last glance at Thalie he sees severe frostbite all across her body and face, her armor barely even there anymore.

Those are the last things he sees before his vision goes black and he succumbs to Mind Down. His hands still burnt onto the handle of his weapon as he goes to sleep.

As Yang fully returns to his senses. All laid out within a massive snow angel in the shape of the Xixecal. He tries and fails to shake away a headache caused by his lack of magic and his fatigue.

Without his Heat Barrier up he can't even feel the cold of this room anymore, without the Xixecal he was completely back to normal in this weather. He immediately takes out an elixir. Feeling searing pain in his hands as he tries to remove the cap from the vial he looks down to see blood dripping from his cracked gauntlets. Pieces of metal missing all over the Elementalist Gauntlets. Removing the cap with his mouth he holds the vial head between his lips and chugs it so that he wouldn't pass out from exhaustion.

Looking toward his friends he sees their burnt and frozen states. Gives them a worried look before shuffling over to them, immediately withdrawing a case of frostbite medicine and a dozen elixirs to begin the first round of treatment...

END CHAPTER---

"I think I bit off more than I can chew with writing this fight...but hey you live and learn right."

Xixecal Info etc in Author's thoughts below :)