CHAPTER 186(The Faceless Series)

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

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CHAPTER START---

---Floor 69, Boss Room...

"You guys ok?" Yang asks. Sitting atop the corpse of a Kushala Daora, the metallic Elder Dragon being his main contribution to this fight.

Off in the distance, he sees massive arcs of crimson flames slashing at the Xixecal, the two-hundred-foot ice titan sporting large cuts and currently missing an entire arm.

With the monster weakened the blizzard became lighter allowing him to see a speck of gold light piercing through the leg of the monster like an arrow.

"Give us a minute then you can finish this, I think we're just about done testing the new gear," Welf's voice calls out from within Yang's helmet.

"Gotcha," Yang says.

Atop the silver metallic dragon his armor shifts as he hops forward. With a sleek all-black design, dozens of interlocking plates with hard angles, and a thick protective layer of enchanted cloth below his unique armor was rather intimidating.

Unlike most people he had no need for external pockets or pouches for items and equipment. This allowed Welf to focus completely on the defensive properties of his gear, mostly to ensure he wouldn't melt it from the inside.

Taking inspiration from Yang's 'Book of wonders' the smith completely abandoned the traditional armor designs. Ignoring the natural inclination to soft smooth edges that accentuate muscles and moving toward inhuman and unnaturally hard angles.

What Yang refers to as more 'Modern' design concepts, abandoning form for function, not caring what the world thinks, only bothering with results.

This all culminated into the Oculus Helmets, the coup de grâce of his entire design.

Yang's helmet was all black, rounded at the top with hard angles at where the mouth and eye holes would be. Instead, it was one solid piece of metal, the Occulus enchantment reverse-engineered from Fel's item allowing it to work as a one-way mirror. All the world could see is a black slab of metal, but from the inside, it was almost as if there was no obstruction at all.

The most difficult part of Yang's armor was admittedly making sure his Mage Armor and other abilities wouldn't destroy it, but he managed to figure that out with enough trial and error.

"I'm prepping my attack," Yang says as he walks a few steps away from the Elder Dragon. "Get to me when you're ready."

With those words his Elemental Wheel appears, half-filled with green magic, the Air element, the other half filled with blue water magic.

Every groove and crevice of his armor glows with both colours. Like a river with two colours of water that never mixed, only sharing the same space as they flow in unison.

All the flowing magic moves to his right hand and he balls his fingers into a fist, the very air around his hand seems to shake and tremble as the power builds.

As he's watching the fight, standing in the snow he hears Thalie's voice in his helmet almost a minute later, " get ready, we're wrapping up now," she says.

A moment later a gold and red blur shatters one of the titans' legs. It rockets toward Yang only to stop a few dozen feet away separate into Thalie and Welf, harshly rolling to the ground.

As the monster is falling Thalie and Welf pick themselves up from in the snow and rush over to his side, ignoring them for the moment Yang punches forward toward the monster and releases his attack.

An eerie sound echoes throughout the entire boss room. Like glass slowly cracking as more and more weight is applied.

The Wind and Water magic rockets forward and stops just an inch away from his fist, the air trembles and shakes. It bends and twists, then it cracks.

A large crack appears as if floating in space, as if a rock tried to break a piece of glass. Green and blue lines hovering in the air containing so much magic.

Everyone is silent as they watch this magic unfold.

Then the air cracks once more.

And finally, Shatter.

A quake rocks the air and everything in front of his fist breaks apart. The force of so much Air and Water magic being condensed like the epicenter of an earthquake, a skyquake.

The glacier shatters and the snow is pushed away, ripples of air echo out toward the monster. The ground rumbles as if scared of the magic itself, all the ground here was ice, exactly what this attack was meant to target.

As the quake reaches the titan it trembles and begins wailing, arms and leg flailing as the ice cracks and falls apart.

And before long, it shatters too.

As the rumbling finally stops both Welf and Thalie steady themselves behind Yang, looking out at the destroyed glacier ahead of them, this attack had not only sent a quake through the air to shatter the monster and the entire room, but it shattered the monster crystal as well.

As they observe the destruction in awe, a single punch destroying essentially a small mountain of ice, Thalie speaks in disbelief, "Shatter? That's what you wanted to try on me? Seriously?"

"Uh," Yang turns around to look at her. Seeing her in the new full plate armor, much sleeker than her last set and now based on the designs her new magic materializes on her body. What he calls the 'roman design,' not that he's sure about the accuracy of that. With smoother gold plates than him, her armor allowed more defense with just as much agility. Not having to account for her being a walking forge allows Welf to focus more on the actual armor than trying to keep it from melting after all. Just like Yang, her helmet had no face, but there was a red crest at the top, also copied from her magic.

"I figured you could take it," Yang says.

"Well at least I see why you don't want to use that against people, what is it, an earthquake? You'd break all their bones and destroy their organs," Thalie says as she places Liberty onto her back.

"How does 'Shatter' even work?" Welf asks as he puts Mosoka onto his back. His armor was his signature red and black. Much like his last set was modeled after smithing attire, this set was no different. With Fire-resistant material draped under it, all enchanted just like his allies gear so they wouldn't freeze or overheat. There was red material on the heaviest armor portions of the torso to draw the attention of any attacks as well as larger bracers to hold tools and items, along with some pouches here and there built-in.

"It's like, well, basically an earthquake yeah," Yang admits. "I just condense the magic for whatever I want to shake, the smaller version is what I do when I snap my fingers and make a lot of noise. I condense enough Air and Water and I can shake the air and people without shaking the ground."

"And rupture all our organs if we get hit with it, likely killing us," Thalie points out.

"Yeah well, it's only for the Xixecal so I won't be using it much, if ever. The thing is made entirely out of ice, just didn't feel like taking extra time to kill it whenever we pass by here," he says.

"The cracks in the air were cool looking at least," Welf says.

"Yeah, I harden a layer to build up more force before releasing it, but it takes a fuck ton of magic and time to prepare."

"How much magic?" Thalie asks.

"Uh, like a minute of build-up and maybe a quarter, Water isn't my most proficient element and this is pretty advanced. Plus the Elemental Wheel drains my magic by the second," Yang says with a shrug of his shoulders.

"Wow," Welf says as they begin walking toward the Xixecal loot, leaving Thalie to deal with the Elder Dragon corpse. "You keep track of all that plus everything in your inventory, that's insane. I only have to worry about Mosoka and my one spell that's pretty useless against the monsters down here."

"Well, not really. It's all instinct by this point unless things get really difficult. The inventory stuff is like I can imagine everything in there at once with perfect recall, the magic takes care of it," Yang admits.

"Yeah that makes more sense," Welf says with a shake of his head, "should have known you weren't that good, I've seen you try to do math."

"Wow," Yang says in disbelief, "that's a low blow, no need to be a dick about it," he says with a light chuckle.

Hours later the Trifecta is standing in the floor seventy safe-zone. Staring down the tunnel leading to the deeper floors, a brand new frontier.

"Final check, everyone ready?" Yang asks. Giving himself a once over he ensures his gear is properly secure and withdraws his weapon, the massive Switch-Axe immediately materializes and is held on his shoulder with one hand.

Giving her compartments a once over Thalie ensures her Elemental Shuriken are secure, not that they'd be of much use against monsters this far down but everything would help. Checking the combat knife at her back she gives Yang a nod, "ready."

Looking to his left Yang see's Welf opening numerous pouches and double-checking all his tools and items, "ready," Welf says.

"Alright, let's go."

As they enter the tunnel nothing seems out of the ordinary, the same grey stone as always. Atleast that is what they thought at the beginning.

With Yang in the front, Welf in the middle, and Thalie in the back, they march onward. The dungeon changed from the stone tunnel to massive caverns of strange brown rock. Appearing like dirt but much much harder.

Crouching down Yang punches the ground, only with enough force to break regular stone, nothing happens, "it's hard...feels weird," he says. Putting his hand on the ground some brownish-yellow magic flows from him into the floor and dissipates, "That's why it felt strange," he says.

"What's wrong?" Welf asks, looking up from the map he was currently drawing of these uncharted floors. In his left bracer was a very durable pouch for their navigation tools.

"This isn't Earth, my magic isn't working on it," he says.

"Looks like dirt to me," Thalie says. "Floors twenty-one to twenty-four have outer walls made of wood, think this is something like that?"

"No," Yang says. "This is weird, we've been walking for almost an hour but haven't encountered any monsters too, and it's way too quiet, just be ready for anything."

As they continue walking he notices the already large caverns becoming more and more massive. With every passing hour they proceed further and further. For hours this uneventful exploration continues, they take pathways at random for the entire day until eventually finding the tunnel to floor seventy-two.

"Ok, this isn't making any sense. This is supposed to have a theme like the others," Yang says, staring down into the tunnel.

"Yeah, you've always been right so far," Welf says. "I don't think you're wrong but maybe the dungeon is thinking more outside the box than you. Is that possible?"

"Maybe the dungeon changed the rules?" Thalie asks. "If you want to win a game and are losing why not change the rules, right?"

"True," Yang says. "But that's what children do, this is the dungeon. Changing the rules partway into the game makes the game before it meaningless, she wouldn't do that, this has to be some kind of trick."

"She?" Welf asks.

"Yeah, uh, let's just keep going," Yang says.

Taking the hint that he doesn't want to discuss it they all proceed forward.

After another four hours of uneventful walking later they've officially made it through almost three dozen miles of dungeon floors since leaving the safe zone.

Standing in the middle of a massive chamber a tremor suddenly shakes the entire room.

"Yang?" Welf asks as he secures the map.

"Not me, this isn't Earth around us remember, I can't even sense where it's coming from," Yang says.

"This way," Thalie calls out as she points to their left.

Turning to follow her spear they all see the ground slowly crack and break apart. As if crawling out of nightmares a giant centipede monster, all back with glowing orange legs and stingers erupts from the ground.

"Oh shit," Yang says as he instinctively takes a step back, not a fan of bugs in any way. Studying them was one thing, but touching them was an entirely different story.

As the hundred-legged horror crawls toward them Yang freezes, hand locking up as his mind blanks. Atleast until a burning sensation rises in his chest, spurring him on, reminding him of everything he's fighting for, reminding him to keep moving forward.

Buring his fears he raises his hand to release a jet of blue flames, instantly incinerating the monster.

"Hmm, that was actually weak," he says. That attack was barely at level five, far from his strongest magic.

"We aren't done, look," Thalie says while pointing up and around them.

Looking up he realizes the shaking never stopped, things the slither and crawl were emerging from the floor, from every wall, and even the ceiling.

Centipedes, spiders, flies, and all manner of beetles and wasps.

All rushing toward these three adventurers with open mouths.

The clicking and clacking of their Exo-skeletons and mandibles drowned out the adventurer's own thoughts, and like an endless pit of creation, the dungeon never stops. The cracks in the wall remain open for an abundance of monsters to crawl out and feast.

Looking around Yang groans and finally puts it all together, 'it let us get an entire floor and a half deep so it could surround us, we'll have to fight for every step in either direction...it's an Endurance test, that's the theme.'

As he readies his weapons and prepares for an endless wave of bugs, only one thought comes to mind, "I fucking hate it here..."

END CHAPTER---

The series of armor is called the Faceless Series hence the title, hope it lived up to the expectations.

Like 150 chapters ago someone asked if Yang would ever cause quakes like Whitebeard(One piece) and I confirmed it because this chapter was already planned, hope the wait was worth it :)