CHAPTER 98(King Of Formoire; Balor)

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

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CHAPTER START---

The walk through the 49th floor was uneventful.

The moment Yang's party began following the route toward Balor's room, the monsters became more and more scarce.

The monsters were all walking away from the boss room as if they were unworthy to stand in the king's presence.

They'd spent the last day resting and sharpening their weapons.

They planned as best they could from the documents the guild had. Balor hadn't been slain since Zeus and Hera familias were destroyed. The risk was simply too high, Loki and Freya familias could do it if they wanted, hell, Ottar managed to half kill it all by himself before having to retreat. But the risk was too high even then, and considering how these floors have been affected by the dungeon changing, everyone was willing to bet that Balor's room was different too.

3 days of planning and preparing, all of Thalie's magic throwables were light blue, all ice. She had a white longsword on her back, just as Welf had one on his, ice element, all Welf could make during the time they had.

Welf himself would be playing defense to compliment Thalie's utility during this fight. His sword would be just as useless as Yang's flames, Balor was outright immune to fire and lightning, and resistant to all magic, Welf was shit out of luck.

He was currently wielding the greatsword he made for Yang to practice, a first-class weapon in itself, but even then it pales compared to all their main weapons. His own unbreakable magic sword was still across his back with the magic ice sword slanted across it. It had its part to play.

Walking further and further toward the room, Tiona cuts down everything in their way with her repaired Urga, free of charge and faster than she would have gotten it on the surface, courtesy of having no lines to wait in.

Yang had his coat back on, utilizing his equipment to the fullest, they couldn't take any chances in this battle. Tiona was sweating from the heat of the area as they round the corner to the boss room.

With grim faces and focused minds, this was the most serious they had looked since entering the dungeon, everything until this hadn't been any real challenge, this was their final step to rush past the other expedition teams.

"One more time, the plan..." Yang's voice was commanding, a stark contrast to the normally carefree energy he had.

"I'm on defense, use my sword to dissipate the heat and deal with smaller monsters," Welf confirms with a nod.

"I'm to slow him down and immobilize or disarm him," Thalie follows up.

"I'm supposed to stay up here and don't engage no matter what, which I think is stupid..." Tiona grumbles.

"We all have our part to play, remember we disarm the lightning first then that gives us more freedom afterward since we're better against fire, let me take the vanguard position, I can handle the big hits better, Thalie---"

"Pierce the crystal as fast as I can, I remember," she gives him a confident smile.

"Good, we can't afford to drag this fight out, he's two levels above us at least, this is kinda cocky jumping ahead like this, but I think we can pull it off," Yang reassures them.

"Well you are the miracle boy, lets pull off a miracle," Welf jokes.

Yang walks over to a secure wall, away from the ledge that enters the boss room. Reaching down he withdraws a dozen elixirs from his storage as well as some regular potions.

"Just in case, stay up here, got it Tiona?"

"Yeah I got it, go kick Balor's ass!" they've got their own cheerleader.

Giving her a small smile, Yang walks up to his team at the ledge.

Standing between Welf and Thalie, they all look down into the massive boss room.

Almost 100ft below them in a massive cylindrical cavern, Balor sits on an actual stone throne. That wasn't in the guild info. The very walls of the room radiated heat, unlike anything they'd felt from the dungeon before.

It was clear that this was the heat that permeated out all the way to the previous floors.

As if the doorway had an invisible barrier, the moment Yang reaches his hand out and felt inside the room, he knew the heat in there was different, magical. It wouldn't hamper Welf much, but Thalie can't fight in here as long as they could, and Tiona likely couldn't enter for even half that time.

"We're on a timer here, the moment we touchdown I'm kicking it off," he takes a deep breath, his elemental wheel triggers immediately, a cold white mist forms the circle at his back. "Let's go," he takes Thalie's hand.

As she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, he jumps into the room, guiding her down the 100ft drop so she doesn't have to really experience it.

Hearing the sound of feet smashing stone, Welf lands beside him.

Opening her eyes, Thalie takes a second to look around.

The stone walls were lightly glowing red from the heat they release, definitely not normal.

As if her blood was beginning to simmer an extreme blush spreads across her entire body, Welf had a light blush, courtesy of his fire affinity.

Activating his mage armor, gauntlets glowing with the pale white of his magic, a cold mist is caked to Yang's body.

Thalie brandishes her spear, ready for combat, Welf holds his greatsword as he prepares to counter Balor.

As they all rush forward, the king rises. The flames on it subside to reveal what can only be a demon-given form.

Standing 30ft(10m) tall, an imposing figure of red skin, humanoid body with two bat wings of dark black, leathery as they come. The head of a goat with one eye at the middle is the main draw, until it summons its weapons. Rising out of the ground comes two longswords, in the right hand, the sword becomes the incarnation of fire, orange flames raging and raising the heat in the room. In the left, pure white lightning overwhelms the blade, arcing ever so often toward the ground.

"GRRR!" The monster grumbles as they sprint across the football fields of the distance between them, from the middle of the room they rush the boss.

Seeing the intruders charging, Balor lifts his flaming longsword high, before violently swiping down. The ground shakes as a pillar of flame rushes directly toward them, more massive than anything they'd ever faced before.

"SPLIT!" Yang shouts, Welf immediately dashes left, the side of the flame sword. Thalie and Yang rush right, focusing on the lightning sword.

Feeling the heat of the flames, Yang stays between the flames and Thalie, using his ice magic to block the best he can with just his cold presence.

Building magic into his hands, they arrive at the monster.

Running around him as if they were ants, Balor was faster than them, keeping his focus divided was their goal, because their lives depended on it.

Welf focused on the monster party, at least 50 Formoire had crawled out of the floor the moment Balor rose from his throne, he was the king of those goat monsters after all, but they were barely any issue as torrents of flames or simple slashes would easily dispatch them.

Every hit they land on Balor would be paid back with interest.

The monster rampaged on the battlefield, every swipe of the lightning sword was narrowly avoided as they focused more on this weapon, every flame attack was either avoided or divided by a slash from Welf. They were forced to grit their teeth as their bodies were burned.

Yang kept kicking at Balor, trying to use his cold to damage the monster, they saw the progress.

Thalie was hitting all the weak spots, joints, tendons, but she couldn't reach the eye. And nothing was even slowing him down.

"YOU READY?!" Welf shouts as he dashes in front of Yang, dividing a column of flame that the man couldn't dodge as he was in mid-air from a jump. The smith's clothes were already burning away, his hands red and raw, burnt by the sheer heat of having to deal with so many of these attacks, his neck and lower jaw sporting serious burns, they hadn't even a moment to take potions, this was a real boss fight.

"YEAH, THALIE!"

"GO!" She replies back, her face burnt on the right side, almost unrecognizable, the eye swollen and burnt shut.

With one intense surge of strength, Yang rushes Balor's left hand, the lightning sword swings down toward him as Thalie sprints the other way, rushing to the other side of the battlefield.

With swift motions he narrowly avoids the blade, the lightning arcing onto him, he grits his teeth and bears the pain without a sound as his target just got that much closer.

Balor raises the flaming sword to strike at him, only for a massive wave of red flames to wash over the monster, Welf's flames were just as useless as Yang's, but they still blocked vision.

The instant the monster's vision was obstructed by the red flames Yang ran past the sword, slamming both his palms into the monster's wrist.

The moment the fight began, this was their plan. Yang hadn't been able to throw a single punch in the past 10 minutes, all they did was evade and try to hit Balors weak points, they could deal with his flames, as painful as it would be. But the lightning sword was just too much.

His hands had been gathering up Cold magic energy since he activated his elemental wheel. Unable to use other elements, the heat of the boss room helped him build more magic because it countered the frostbite his hands would be feeling, not that he'd be able to even use the dead nerves that he surely would have had at this point.

Opening his hands he slams them into the monster's massive wrist, reaching up as he leaps into the air.

"RRRAAAARGGHH!!" Balor cries out, reeling back in pain as the cold magic overcomes his natural heat. More than half of Yang's magic was put into that attack, and it showed. The wrist cooled before freezing, becoming black and brittle. The discoloration spread up all the way to the bicep before the monster's body fought back.

Leaping away, Yang could only smile as he felt fatigued, he needed to catch his breath, that was more magic in one attack than he'd ever done before, he was only level five after all.

As he and Welf leaped backward as far as they could, a golden streak flew past them.

The sound of ice shattering could be heard before a loud collision.

"RRRAAAAARRRRRRRR!" Balor cried out, immense pain wrecked the body of the monster.

Frozen chunks of the monster's limb fall to the floor in loud crashes as he stumbles back, staring at the missing appendage in shock.

Thalie had run to the empty half the battlefield earlier to charge her magic, putting her strength and magic into her rush and her spear, the moment the arm froze she dashed across the battlefield and shattered the arm, landing herself in a crater behind the monster.

"Argh..." she groans, her body aching from using that much force. Thankfully her level up and new equipment greatly cushioned the blow.

She barely manages to pry herself out of the wall as Balor swings the flaming sword wildly at her crater.

Sprinting with all her might, she rushes back to her team, looking over her shoulder to the rising heat behind her, she throws 3 magic shuriken, torrents of ice impact Balor, barely surprising him enough for her to escape his swipe and arrive at her team.

"You good?" she asks Yang, seeing him panting heavily before he downs a mana potion.

"Need a minute..." he weakly answers between gulps.

"He doesn't plan on giving us one..." Welf says while stepping forward, stabbing his unbreakable sword into the floor while drawing the ice sword from his back, holding it with both hands.

"Shit," Thalie says as she joins him with her own ice sword.

Balor had deemed them a worth threat as it seemed, igniting his entire body in orange flames, the stone at his feet melting with every step to create small pools of liquid rock.

While they were regrouping and using potions, he raised his sword high, building more and more magic into his flaming longsword as he points it toward the sky.

Seeing what's about to happen, Yang activates his elemental wheel once more, white cold mist at his back as he takes his spot between Welf and Thalie.

As Balor drops his sword, the blade hits the ground and a tidal wave of flames almost topple each other in the race to the Trifecta. Immense heat melts the floor as the attack moves across the battlefield.

Placing both his palms forward, Yang pours everything he can into releasing waves of freezing magic against the level 7 boss's attack.

Welf swings the magic longsword, releasing a continuous stream of ice, comparable to Riveria's strongest ice on its own, as his ice barrage begins, he eyes his unbreakable sword in the floor, ready for a quick switch.

Thalie swings her ice sword in tandem with Welf, her one-handed swing allowing her to continuously throw shuriken after shuriken into their defense.

The waves of fire crash against the ice, stuck in a draw for barely a split second, a mere 20ft from their faces the attacks clash against each other, the boss not letting up as their backs are against the wall.

They prepared for this, Yang assumed that whichever weapon they take out would trigger a massive retaliation attack from the other. They would certainly die if this had been lightning instead of fire, this was the best-case scenario.

As the ice became dimmer and dimmer, so did the flames. But it was clear who the winner was.

The flames swallowed the ice with one last push, the torrent rushed over the Trifecta and up the wall behind them, reaching all the way to the high ceiling of the room...

END CHAPTER---