CHAPTER 132(A Frozen Wasteland)

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

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pat.treon:/Keanu_Eugene

CHAPTER START---

---Dungeon Floor 59...

Walking away from a small patch of seemingly dead trees. Large and frozen solid but still somehow growing fruit sparsely across their branches, the Trifecta make their way further through this floor.

Wrapped tightly in their extra layer of protection they can't even feel the cold air on their covered skin.

Welf's face is rose-tinted as his body compensates for the cold air on his face.

Walking at the front of their group, Yang plays with a small white ball, easily mistakable for a baseball but actually one of the fruits taken from the patch of trees.

"How much do you guys think this is worth?" he asks his team.

"This far down..." Welf considers the question for a moment, "if it's edible it could be anywhere from 10 to 100 thousand Valis depending on the taste, if they find another use for it then maybe even more. Grabbing a bag of them was pretty smart."

"Just don't bite into it," Thalie reminds him, "we need to have Airmid test it before we do anything stupid."

"Right," he stores the fruit into his inventory as they walk forward.

Marching further into the frozen wasteland, they don't meet any more trees. In fact, any signs of life other than monsters are completely non-existent. Using Water-Walking Yang keeps them on the surface of the thick snow and ice. The only thing around them is mounds of snow and ice after all, even the dungeon walls are coated with feet of white ice.

Many hours later, the Trifecta are standing at the final stretch before the tunnel to the next floor.

Reaching down, Yang puts his hand into the corpse of a fresh Ice Snake and removes the crystal. The 5ft long serpent immediately becomes ash leaving one fang behind which he also takes.

Rising to his full height and holding his Switch-Axe across his shoulder he walks over to his allies and collects their bags of crystals and other drop items from this hoard of monsters.

"Ok let's get the hell outa here..." Yang says, looking back to make sure all the snakes were dead.

"What, don't like snakes?" Welf asks.

"Nobody likes snakes."

"The floor boss of this region is a snake, you gonna be ok?" Thalie asks.

"Yeah... honestly the bigger they are the less scary... does that make sense?"

"No...but most things about you don't," she says as they begin walking toward the end of this floor.

---Floor 60...

Stepping out of the tunnel of slippery ice, their equipment made or modified for the artic terrain allowing them to walk without issue thankfully. The Trifecta sees a massive glacier in front of them.

Jagged piles of ice piercing out of the ground, no snow on the floor only hard and foggy ice, and no signs of life anywhere.

"You know...I was sick of those stupid caves at the start of the dungeon because they had no scenery, but this shit is just as boring," Yang groans as he leads the way through the floors.

"Same here," Welf agrees," the Water Palance is still my favorite."

"I prefer the Great Tree Labyrinth myself," Thalie adds.

"Nah I'm with Welf here, Water Palance gives the most flight space...but I guess that's why you don't really like it huh."

"Exactly..."

As they continue walking across the massive room, at least the size of ten football fields, Yang suddenly raises a hand to stop them.

"What's wrong?" Thalie asks as she readies her spear, Welf immediately draws Mosoka.

"That piece of ice," Yang points to a grey-blue ice boulder almost a hundred feet away.

"Uh-huh?"

"It doesn't match the floor around it. The floor is grey-white ice but it's grey-blue, throw something at it."

"Gotcha," Thalie immediately draws an adamantite dagger and throws it as hard as she can.

The dagger hits the ice and chips a piece of it, not even a moment later the ice under their feet begins to shake.

Looking around they see all the seemingly lifeless boulders around them rising from the ground.

A full legion of 10ft tall Ice Golems stands tall around them, each having a single blue glowing eye in the middle of its chest. Humanoid in shape and made of connected blocks of ice, headless shoulders at the top and already lumbering toward the adventurers from all sides.

Hundreds of Ice Golems come bearing down on the Trifecta.

"A monster party, these things explode when you kill them so be careful," Yang says.

"That's good," Thalie says as she prepares to lunge forward with her spear," Welf can blast them but you don't get to use magic. You're still too slow with your weapon, this is good practice, do what I do," she says before leaping toward the monsters. Dancing across their heads as she pierces and slashes them with her spear, always one step ahead of their exploding bodies and striking at the next monster to avoid damage.

"You good here?" Yang asks Welf.

"Yeah," the smith ignites his weapon, "I'm good," he points his sword forward and releases a pillar of flame, carving out a hundred meters of ice from the floor and destroying all the golems in the line.

"Nice," Yang gives Welf a proud smile as he withdraws his weapon from storage. Keeping in line with Thalie's training, axe mode to crack armor, sword mode for slashing, and use magic with it if he really needs something dead.

Smashing the first golem right in the glowing eye, he immediately finds himself flat on his back as the explosion of ice knocks him back a few feet. Not powerfully enough to harm him but enough to knock his weight out of the air as the monster explodes.

"React faster! The moment you kill it change positions, don't follow through with the full swing!" he hears Thalie shout from somewhere else on the battlefield.

"Ugh...thanks for the tip," he mutters while rolling over to dodge a stomp aimed at his head.

Before getting up he swipes out with his weapon and cleaves the leg clean off...causing the monster to topple over directly down onto him.

Reacting instinctively he kicks out and shatters the monster's body.

And he pays the price for that when shards of ice rain down onto him from its exploding corpse.

"I fucking hate these things!" He cries out, springing back onto his feet and lashing out at the hoard of Ice Golems.

As he shatters the monsters he tanks more and more ice while focusing his body. Stopping the 240-pound weapon mid-swing to adjust and reposition to avoid the explosion was easy for someone with his physical stats. But he simply lacked proper training. That kind of control isn't something he had. Until now he's been a true brawler. All he's had to do is hit things before they hit him, and hit them hard enough to keep them down.

Now that he can do that consistently, Thalie is upping his training to proper control of his momentum during combat. Not the easiest thing considering he has skills that literally help him use momentum to increase damage.

By the time he's on the 12th golem, he's pissed. The explosions don't hurt him alone, but they add up. Chipping away at him bit by bit, annoying him that much more each and every time. But the damage chipping away at him wasn't what he was really angry at, it was how slowly he was improving. He's so used to his accelerated growth that when dealing with something like this, learning faster than most people would but not quite at the pace he's used to...this was annoying for him. He's so used to doing better that he's angry at himself.

As the shards of ice that coat his clothes melt away, his anger becomes heat on his body as he furrows his brows and grits his teeth. Cutting down dozens of golems before he sees more progress.

Slowing his swing before he makes contact he can just barely begin retracting the weapon before the golem shatters. With the crystal so close to the surface and the monster's full-body being a few feet thick, slashing right through would certainly get him caught in every explosion.

Being able to properly execute this technique was optimal here, and in the future should he end up swinging at something he doesn't want to fully destroy, this would be the only way to stop himself...with proper control.

After the first 50 monsters, he finally gets it.

Slashing horizontally he begins stoping his swing before his weapon even hits. The blade of the axe easily cleaves through the hardened ice of the monster and cracks the crystal within.

As the light on the creature fades away, signaling it's about to explode Yang has already leaped backward, accidentally slamming into another creature and knocking it over, but he completely avoided the explosion.

"YES!" he cheers while stomping down on the creature under him, shattering the crystal while launching himself above the battlefield.

"GET YOUR ASS BACK ON THE GROUND!" Thalie shouts out as she pierces the crystal of a golem while running past it.

Hovering in the air with his flames for a moment Yang follows her voice to see the woman with a serious expression on her face as she gets swarmed by seemingly endless golems.

On the other end of the battlefield, he sees waves of flames cutting a swath through the monsters as familiar explosions of ice shards occasionally erupt at the source of the flames.

"Guess everyone's doing fine," he says before dropping back down into the fray.

Hundreds of golems and almost two hours later, Yang sees his team in the middle of the battlefield. Thalie has her arms folded with Liberty on her back as Welf leans on her shoulder for support.

"You ok man?" Yang asks as he approaches, cleaning the ice and frost off his weapon by heating it up.

"Yeah, had to use a potion thought. Some of those shards hit me in the face. Those things felt like high level four...maybe low level five," the smith says.

"Definitely fives," Thalie agrees, "these floors are way different. The upper floors would never throw hundreds of enemies like that at us. You sure you're ok?" she asks Welf, giving him a more critical look.

"Yeah yeah, I made Mosoka so I could keep up with miracle boy, doing damage to things above my paygrade isn't a problem, but..." he takes a deep breath, "I've only got level four stats... my body can only fight that much..."

"We've been fighting for two days now since leaving camp at floor 50..." Yang says as he gives Welf a careful look, seeing the exhaustion beginning to creep in. "Let's find a spot for me to hide us away and make camp. These floors are way more dangerous so best to stay in top form as much as we can anyway."

"Yeah, and I'm getting hungry," Thalie adds.

"Same here, kinda weird since we already ate ration bars this morning..." Welf says.

"It's probably just because you're fighting in the cold, let's make camp and tomorrow we'll head down to floor 61..."

END CHAPTER---

I'm giving glimpses at some of the fights because I don't want this arc to be 90% fight scenes...that's what they're experiencing but that gets boring to read...and write. So if it isn't for the plot I'll gloss over it and just mention it somewhere.