CHAPTER 197(Chromatic Dragon Queen -I-)

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

Discord: https://discord.gg/K7f8qGpvuk

pat.treon:/Keanu_Eugene

CHAPTER START---

"SCATTER!" Yang yells out.

Staring up at the monolithic monster, five heads of different colours attached to one body by their long thick necks.

A monster large enough to be visible on a region map, just as easily as it would completely rearrange any map it was on. Teeth larger than even Ottar at an absurd seven feet long, and in most of the heads was their respective breath attack.

As the Trifecta split up, Yang stood his ground. Switch-Axe raised and already brimming with Cold and Water magic as he stares down the Red Dragon Head, the most powerful, the leader.

A cacophony of roars echoes out as he sees Thalie break off to the right, three magic swords on her back and Liberty in her hand.

He sees Welf mirror her to the left, Mosoka in his hand and three magic swords on his back.

All these magic swords were eerily similar, made specifically to deal with this encounter after Yang properly deduced who the boss was. With his almost true mastery of magic swords, creating Crozzo swords in a simple pattern was easy for Welf. They wouldn't be as powerful as their own personal weapons, but they'd get the job done. After all, for him they were a hasty job, but they were still atleast two decades ahead of anything even Tsubaki could make with her lifetime of training.

All the heads release their attacks at once, the two to his left, Blue and Green. Releasing lightning and poison mist respectively. With no hesitation Welf aims Mosoka at the floor behind him and rockets to their eye level, putting more distance between himself and the monster.

The pungent stench of the poison mist permeates the arena, mixed with the scent of Ozone from the lightning attack.

The lightning carves a trench a dozen meters deep and just as wide into the stone floor as it tries to track Welf through the air, forcing him to constantly expend magic and fly about, playing along nicely with the monster and Yang's plan.

'This is so above my paygrade' Welf thinks to himself as he takes another glance at the Lightning Dragon Head. Seeing the blue energy flowing from the core through its veins and nerves all the way to the head where he presumes it's converted into lightning. Same for the Poison Dragon Head beside it, blue energy into green poison mist.

'C'mon Yang hurry up,' he mentally chided. Not at all comfortable with the amount of ambient power he could feel radiating off this Monster-Rex.

On the other side, Thalie was having her own battle. Much less fearful than Welf, but rather annoyed to say the very least.

'I fucking hate these things,' Thalie furrows her brows as she glances at the Black Dragon Head, powerful bubbling Acid pouring out of its mouth like a geyser. The thick and heavy beam of acid was so slow that it had no chance of hitting her, but what made it annoying was the fact that unlike her teammates -who she suspected always seemed to forget this- SHE CAN'T FLY!

The pools of acid were constantly growing and dissolving the floor which gave the feeling of a noose being tightened around her neck as she literally played 'The Floor is Lava' while constantly having less floor.

Keeping her distance was the key to this plan, however, while the Acid was easy to avoid but a nuisance when it settles into place. The White Dragon Head was a different story.

A beam attack with the power and effect of a blizzard, no, worse, a magical snow maelstrom. What's the difference? Well, a blizzard wouldn't have much effect through their armor and magic resistance, but this dragon seems to have all the things to annoy her.

Everywhere this Ice Beam hits, a massive fog hangs low the to floor and lingers, hiding the pools of acid, creating ice to slip on. And worse of all, freezing the air to a point that even with her level-six lungs, it's hard to breathe.

Between the fumes from the acid and the frigid air, Thalie found herself holding her breath more and more as this drags on, all while constantly moving, not fun.

"Yang! What's the problem? We need to go on offense quick!" Thalie yells into her helmet's communication device while skidding to a halt and jumping backward.

Pushing off with enough force to shatter the stone floor she soars and twists to arc over the beam of ice that was about to hit her. The beam itself was just as big as the lightning stream Welf was constantly racing against, a twelve-meter-wide column of pure power.

"Just a little longer," Yang calmly replies. Hidden behind his helmet his eyes locked onto the Red Dragon Head, Tiamat's main head.

Looking to his left and right he sees the other four heads paired off to attack his teammates, the Fire Dragon Head simply stares at him, waiting for either of them to make a move.

This wasn't a matter of two opponents respecting each other and having a staredown. No, this monster knew for a fact it was stronger. Everyone in the room knows that.

The problem was a physical one.

He sent Welf to his left, Tiamat's right. To deal with Lightning and Poison.

He sent Thalie to his right, Tiamat's left. To deal with Acid and Ice.

But Fire was in the middle, it guides all the other heads, it's the leader of this shared mind.

The left side of Tiamat wants to chase Thalie, the right side wants to chase Welf. And the middle is having a staredown with Yang, because it expects him to pick a side so it can commit and cast a vote for whichever side has two enemies.

A simple pack tactic that he's studied before. Wolves, Lions, Hyenas. They all do this, majority rules after all.

Observing the heads in combat Yang sees the veins of power pulsing and bulging beneath the skin of the monster. Most pronounced in the body where the heart would be, then the veins leading up to the heads, and finally the mouth. But the main head seems different, as if the glowing blue was constantly flickering on and off, never fully there.

"Just a few more seconds," Yang says to his team as he sees the heads getting more stressed.

Red finally starts building up a breath attack and Yang readies himself, almost a minute since the battle started and he's about to get his chance to move.

As Red opens its mouth to release a massive pillar of fire...nothing happens.

Its mouth appears like a forge that's gone cold rather than a raging inferno. Nothing that would separate it from a regular lizard.

"Huh?" Yang shakes his head in confusion. Quirking a brow as he sees the dragon shake its head angrily as if it just had a splitting headache.

It releases a few dry coughs and an absolutely livid screech, as if it were a kid that had his favourite toy taken away, exactly what Yang suspected had happened.

With a massive grin on his face he sprints forward. Only Cold and Water Magic flowed through him to make Ice and put some hurt onto the main head.

"I think Red can't use fire while the others are using theirs," he immediately assesses as he sees the other dragons still firing away.

With an absurd leap, one that most first-class adventurers wouldn't even believe, he clears the length of a skyscraper directly for the middle of the Red Dragon Head's neck.

As it's still dazed and confused, reeling from presumably the worst headache the world has ever had, Yang takes this unplanned, and very lucky, opening.

"Rahhhh!" he cries out as he swings the Switch-Axe horizontally, already in Greatsword mode with cold blue mist wafting off it.

The edge of his blade makes contact with the red scales. Thicker than a person, each and every one of them. The sheer girth of the neck itself was half as wide as Babel Tower.

His blade sinks in, a massive slash arcing out as usual with magic extending and propelling the cutting edge to bisect even the most gargantuan of creatures.

But the moment he cuts any deeper than the scales, the blue veins of power become supercharged. Yang was fast enough for him to notice, but he had no chance of reacting to that.

With a pulse of the blue energy the scale he was currently almost a foot deep into, healed. Pushing out the foreign invader to its body and knocking him hundreds of meters away across the stone floor with a pulse of energy.

Digging himself out of the trench he carve out, Yang looks down at his hands, still firmly holding his weapon.

Dropping his Ice element he activates his standard blue flame Mage Armor and begins healing himself. The impact wasn't enough to warrant this, but his power clashed with the bosses and he lost, badly.

"Fuck... new plan," he says while standing up to look at the battle. The long-ranged attacks were still chasing his teammates and it was only a matter of time before someone slipped up. He feels the torn muscles and cracked bones from the power clash healing under his armor, feeling the thick, slick blood coating his arms, out of sight and out of mind.

"Thank the gods," Thalie responds first followed by a grunt from Welf. "What is it?"

"The main head heals and I can't touch it because of the energy, I think we need to work from the outside in, if the others heal then we need to back up and reassess the situation, if not. We'll start with Acid, then go to lightning, then Ice, then Poison. We need to keep the number of heads even on both sides so the main head always has to focus on mediating between them," he explains.

"That means I'm up first!" Thalie cheers. "Get over here so we can kill this damn acid fountain!"

"Gotcha, hang on Welf I'll be there soon!" he says as he rockets off like a blue meteorite.

While Yang soars toward the battlefield he sees the blue energy still pulsing in the main head, it was constantly shaking its head as if trying to rattle the headache away. Moving much more sluggish than it was at the beginning of his battle.

'We'll need to cut it down quick after the other heads are done,' he decides as he arrives at Thalie's battlefield.

"How do you wanna do this?" he asks from his spot hovering above the fight. Before she can respond a massive stream of purple lightning is suddenly scorching both the heads on that side of the dragons. The energy arced down their necks but dissipating before reaching the main body.

Yang frowns as he sees them being hurt but somewhat ignoring his attack. Enough power to destroy a city block in seconds seemingly wasn't enough to properly penetrate their scales even with their vulnerability to lightning.

Instead, the Ice Head just turned and begins tracking him with a powerful beam of ice, forcing him to fly around on the defensive and stop his attack.

"Can you hold down Ice while I kill Acid?" Thalie asks.

"You can kill it solo?"

"One way to find out, right, but we need to chip away at them first."

"Got it, let's go in melee..." Yang says.

With those simple words both their fighting styles shifted greatly, Yang noticed that his ranged attacks simply weren't cutting it against this monster and withdrew his weapon once more. This time channeling Lightning Magic into it to form a massive purple greatsword with small bolts constantly arcing off him.

Thalie turned on her heel and ran toward Acid. Liberty glowing a brilliant gold as her magic lit up in the same colour. War God's Blessing perfectly matching her weapon as she charged forward.

Both Ice and Acid stopped their onslaught of ranged attacks immediately seeing the issue. Using their attacks so close to the main body could be dangerous, they were some of the only things in this world that could actually hurt the main body after all.

On the other side Lightning and Poison also stopped their attacks, already using far too much energy over the past two minutes and needing to recharge.

Welf poked and prodded both the massive monster heads with arcs of fire, keeping his distance while also trying to conserve his magic, buying time until his allies were done with their part.

As he rockets into the air once more to dodge a particularly vicious bite from Lightning, he slashes down, destroying the left eye of that particular head.

The entire body shakes and trembles as it screeches and lashes out, spewing random bolts everywhere.

One of these bolts hits Welf, numbing his body for a moment before he recovers just in time to stop himself from falling to the floor from almost a hundred feet up.

As he tries to catch his breath he looks at Poison and Lightning, both of which were recovering their ranged attacks and are now safely out of range. And his eyes fall onto Tiamat's back.

"Uh Yang...can this thing fly?" he asks nervously as he sees the two closed-up wings on its back. Looking a bit further he sees Yang and Thalie in combat with their side of the monster.

"Tiamat is too heavy to fly, she operates more like a Hydra, minus the regrowing heads...I hope," Yang blurts out between heavy grunts as he swings his weapon, constantly dodges thrashes and bites.

Ice was bleeding, not profusely but enough to stain the perfectly clean white scales of its neck. Yang kept up his assault relentlessly to weaken the head but Welf could see him constantly speeding up.

'He's getting excited, we've only got maybe a half-hour before he goes full battle junkie on us,' the smith mentally notes as his eyes move to Thalie.

The woman in question was carving up Acid as if it was her divine purpose, well, maybe it was. Champion of War after all. Welf looked down at Lightning and Poison who were sneering, snapping and growling at him, then to Fire who was still dazed and confused. Becoming more and more lethargic as the battle drags on.

Arcing away from the battlefield, just out of their range, enough to keep them interested and appear as if he were taunting them. He rolls his shoulders and removes his helmet before chugging an Elixir.

Maintaining eye contact as he drank half a million Valis worth of healing medicine certainly enraged both Poison and Lightning, but damn did he feel great. What felt almost as good was his muscles no longer screaming and his magic quickly refilling.

He was still level five after all, something he was sure both his teammates forgot when they assigned him to stall TWO of Tiamat's heads. He didn't have the stats to keep up with them in most things. The only things carrying him this deep into the adventure were his creations, most notably Mosoka, its unmatched potential attack potency and flame control, putting him ahead of Yang in certain cases.

As Welf quickly got back into the air, raining down sharp arcs of blood-red flames onto Lightning and Poison. Yang and Thalie eventually weakened Ice and Acid enough to intact her plan.

"NOW!" Yang calls out as he slashes at Ice's jugular, or where he assumes it would be for a magic-monster-hydra-dragon creature.

Feeling his muscles stiffen and joints buckle as his weapon carves through the absurdly durable scales he's soon sprayed in a shower of nearly freezing cold blood. Thick and viscous as one would expect from such a monster.

With blood covering his helmet he blindly stabs forward, piercing the scales once more and turning his weapons, locking it into the neck bone of the monster before lunging forward.

Elbow deep into the beast he holds onto the hard bone and releases enough magic to fry nearly half of Orario in a massive Lightning Discharge, directly to the monster's head.

The head immediately begins seizing and thrashing but he channels his magic into his feet to anchor him.

Over two thousand tons of force pulls against his grip as the dragon's muscles contract and try to pull away from him. The weight of more than a dozen fully grown Blue Whales or roughly two cargo ships pulls against his hand and shoulder, as well as his feet magically anchored to the ground. And he doesn't budge. The weakened dragon quickly exerts itself as the wound begins to freeze shut due to the Ice Element.

"Arghhh!" Yang groans as it feels like the muscles in his arm are filled with lava tearing them apart. He rarely if ever gets to test anything but striking strength on these expeditions. Truth be told even he doesn't know the answer to the simple question 'how much do you lift?', and he was certain unless he took extreme measures he couldn't find an upper limit, and this was all before Chaos Mark got involved.

Pinning down Ice while already weakened after exerting over half his magic, he was somewhat curious what he could do if he were fresh.

While Yang was flexing his muscles, Thalie was blowing off some steam.

The moment Yang had signaled that he pinned down Ice, the woman executed a volley of piercing stabs to the side of Acid's neck.

Holes as if he were shot by a greatly enhanced Balista volley appear wherever her glowing spear lands.

Bubbling blood leaks out as it thrashes and struggles, knocking her aside with a lucky swing of its head.

Tumbling across the hard stone floor Thalie balances herself and skids to a halt on her feet. Already coming to an understanding that what she and Acid had was very personal.

The Black Dragon Head narrowed its eyes and glared at the woman. Green liquid dripping from its maw as it takes deep labored breaths.

Accepting this challenge Thalie rises to her feet and taps the ground once with her spear, a quick glance to the side she sees Yang still holding down Ice, his helmet still covered in too much blood to see her.

"C'mon!" she yells out in challenge to Acid.

The dragon roars back at her as she rushes forward. Armor and spear glowing golden as she makes a beeline for him.

With a deep breath, the Black Dragon Head releases a massive spray of thick, green, and bubbling, sticky acid. Unlike the previously concentrated beams, this was a scattered geyser, sure to get her at some point and glue her to the ground.

Thalie somewhat expected this, its was combat basics after all. If precision doesn't work, try volume, you'll hit eventually.

Rushing headlong into the spray of death she uses her insane physical strength and simply jumps straight upward. At level-six, with her Strength always maxed out, Magic and Skills helping her as well, jumping above the attack was not hard for her.

The attack was a shower that was clearly meant to be a last-ditch effort, forcing her to leap almost three hundred feet upward to evade.

This maneuver was rather obvious however, something everyone in the room knew. Acid simply tracked her as she reached the peak of her aerial arc and shot a thick geyser at her.

Once again, if Thalie could fly this would be no issue. But she didn't have a way to beat gravity, so, she improvised.

Diving headfirst toward the attack she withdrew one of the Magic Swords from her back. Of the three longswords, she pulled the one that had a bright green, glowing blade. A faint draft always wafting off the blade.

Stabbing to her side she releases a massive gust of wind, shifting her course a dozen meters to the left and away from the acid.

The dragon however followed her, constantly tracking her through the air and forcing her to use more and more of the magic to evade.

"C'mon, c'mon, just a little more..." she mutters to herself as she's only a hundred feet away. As she reaches fifty feet above the monster she adjusts herself once more, moving to be directly above the monster's head before turning around and putting her back to the ground.

With one massive swing she releases all the remaining Wind Magic in the sword, not that she'd used much to shift only her weight in the air, and rockets downward.

The sword instantly shatters as the sudden shift in air pressure at her position causes a deafening boom, along with her breaking the sound barrier.

The instant the sword shatters in her hand she's already turned around with Liberty facing straight down.

"DIE!" she screams out, annoyed and angry at having to deal with Acid and all the other Black Dragons that made her have to be extra careful of where she steps.

Slamming down onto the dragon's head she caves in a small part of its skull. She feels the bones in her limbs strain, crack, and in more than a few cases snap with the amount of force she came down with.

Ignoring the pain she looks down to see Liberty buried almost five feet deep into the skull of the monster and piercing the brain, only a foot of the spear still visible.

Noticing Acid wasn't moving she took out another Magic Sword from her back, this time a longsword of a bright red colour which constantly releases embers as it moves through the air.

Placing it at the hole Liberty made she quickly withdrew her spear and poured an entire Welf Crozzo Magic Sword's worth of fire into the monster's skull. The brain cavity was incinerated from the inside out before the eyes popped and the entire head looked like a fireplace.

As the flames consumed the skull Thalie suddenly found herself falling to the floor as it disappeared from below her. As the second Magic Sword shatters the head and entire neck dissipate into blue particles of what seems like dust and hangs in the air for a moment. A few seconds later they quickly drift to where the neck had been attached to the main body and are absorbed, sealing up the body as if it were never even there.

"That's new," Yang says, hovering in the air not far away from her chugging his fourth Elixir to recover from his stunt with Ice. "Saw you falling with style, we'll talk after we deal with that," he gestures to the fight going currently making a lot of noise on the other side of the gargantuan monster.

"What about Ice?" Thalie asks as she takes out an Elixir and begins drinking it.

"Extremely weak but we need it alive to disrupt the red one on this side," he looks over to the main head to see it shifting slightly more than before, as if it were now beginning to wake up. "C'mon," he rockets up and over the monster to join Welf on the other side.

Seeing him leave Thalie drops her empty vial to the floor and takes a look at the barely awake White Dragon Head that Yang left on death's door. Turning around she looks up at the massive monster once more, it's underbelly was a few stories about her and the fight was on the other side, she decided to simply walk under it, not that she had much of a choice.

While Thalie and Yang were dealing with their opponents, Welf was, admittedly, struggling.

Any damage he did was not enough to stop Lightning or Poison. Lightning was currently missing an eye and riddled with scars and burns but the dragon was unrelenting.

Atleast until Yang and Thalie showed up.

With simple instructions they team up on Lightning, the Blue Dragon Head didn't even know what hit it.

From above Yang rocketed down, slamming into the head of the monster to drive it all the way into the floor.

From below Thalie leapt upward with Liberty, skewering the monster by making a person-sized hole in its skull.

As they were doing this, Welf flew forward to Poison. Seeing the situation for what it was the Green Dragon Head belched out a massive cloud of green gas.

In response, Welf tumbled in mid-air and thrust Mosoka forward with one of the Magic Swords on his back. Another wind element blade, it clashes with Mosoka as he used them as if they were one.

A massive horizontal twister merges with the blood-red flames of Mosoka and overwhelms the green cloud. Yang and Thalie look on in surprise by the intensity of his attack.

As Lightning dissipates in motes of blue light and is absorbed back into the main body, Poison falls lifelessly to the ground, breaking apart slightly before doing the exact same.

Welf's Wind Sword shatters and falls to the stone floor as he chugs another Elixir. His eight since this encounter began not fifteen minutes ago.

"Well, that wasn't so bad..." Welf said. Standing not too far away both Yang and Thalie give him an annoyed look, not a moment later the main head releases an ear-splitting roar.

"You had to jinx it," Yang grumbles as they all turn to the now fully aware Red Dragon Head.

"Well, that did feel too easy," Thalie admits.

As the roar finishes the blue luminous veins on the monster glow blindingly bright. Power like they've never felt before begins radiating off its body forcing them back, the ground is torn apart as scales crack and shift, constantly merging and breaking as they're saturated with this blue energy.

"What the hell is this?!" Welf asks.

"Best guess," Yang says as he takes to the sky. "They were all sharing one power source, but it wasn't enough for Red which is why it couldn't function, don't let it power up!"

As he rockets toward the Red Dragon Head he slashes out with his Switch-Axe. The moment he makes contact a pule of the overwhelming blue energy knocks everyone back, as if a bomb went off.

Taken by surprise Yang is knocked to the floor, his allies a few dozen meters further away still struggling to focus their blurry vision by the time he rises to his feet.

"Oh, that's why you seemed familiar..." Yang mutters in a low voice. Dread and realization fill the ears of his allies as they hear him speak with real fear in his words. In most cases, he's usually just excited to see the monsters he's studied, but this one made him hesitant.

Before his eyes was an adult red dragon. Well, not 'A' red dragon. 'The' red dragon. Shifting and morphing from the body of a gargantuan hydra. He barely managed to get up in time to see the monster reach out and tear the White Dragon Head off, watching it become the same every and get absorbed once again.

Next, the entire main body continuously shifted and shrunk...no, it condensed and morphed. The stone beneath its feet sunk in with every step, the full mass of Tiamat was no in the form of a red dragon only fifty meters long from nose to tail.

The red dragon head was much the same with a slightly lighter shade on the underside and being much smaller to match the new body, but what Yang recognized now, was the energy.

This was pure Dragon Energy flowing through its veins from what would be a reactor where the heart should be. The pieces finally fell into place as he looked on in realization and helplessness, knowing interfering with the metamorphosis would only result in more backlash.

Before his eyes, Tiamat, became Safi'Jiva, the Eternal Emperor of Elder Dragons...

"What the hell is that?" Yang hears Thalie ask through his helmet.

"A problem, how drained are you two?!" Yang asks, speaking panicked and fidgeting around as if he were looking for some kind of secret clue all while quickly backing away from the monster.

"I think we---"

Whatever Thalie responded with, he couldn't hear. Turning back to the monster he was greeted by a wave of pure Dragon Energy flooding the room. Like a blue mist moving at hurricane speeds it muffled and drowned out all sounds, made it difficult to breathe, caused the hairs at the back of his neck to stand on end, and most importantly, warned him of what he knew came next.

Before the monster was even fully formed, still protected by the impenetrable layer of energy, it was already making his nightmares a reality. As if screaming at the ground is was releasing this much energy for seemingly no reason.

Before Welf could find his bearings and Thalie could ask what was happening, Yang had already turned around and grabbed them both.

Moving faster than he ever has before the adventurer immediately began running toward the exit to the upper floors.

With Welf bent over his left shoulder and Thalie on his right he took to the air and began flying away, but it was too late.

While his back was turned to the monster, both his allies got a perfect view of what death itself probably looked like.

The dragon beat its wings twice and hovered two stories above the ground, still releasing absurd amounts of Dragon Energy as if it were nothing, before everything went silent. They spoke aloud in their helmets but couldn't even hear their own voices as it released what appeared to be a blue star.

Like a shining sapphire descending silently from its mouth to the ground, and when it made contact, they saw death.

Arguably the most powerful attack of any Elder Dragon, The Sapphire Star of the Emperor. A flash of blue, the sound of what could be mistaken for a world shattering, an ungodly amount of pain, and a peaceful sleep was all they experienced...

END CHAPTER---

Some people wanted Fatalis as the boss but since chapter 1 this was the plan for floor 100 and for the most part my dungeon plan has never changed. Hope the chapter was worth it.