CHAPTER 220(Superpowers)

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

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CHAPTER START---

"C'mon, just focus," Yang says as he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

Standing in front of his bathroom mirror he's wearing green shorts and no shirt. With his thick, raven-black hair unkempt and loose he gives himself an unimpressed look. Slight dark bags under his eyes.

The same dream had been haunting him for months now, but lately, it's gotten so much worse.

He always woke up sitting at the edge of his bed back in his home. His mother always calls him to the kitchen for breakfast before he goes to class. Then everything goes to hell when those things appear.

And the next thing he knows he's falling through the clouds with The Angel, some kind of glowing white being as if she were made of light, with a single shard roughly two inches long missing from her chest, in the middle above her heart, as if she were a chipped porcelain doll. She gives him a note and pushes him miles outside of Orario.

"And now we're here..." he mutters sadly. Looking in the mirror he sees his muscular body, not dissimilar to what he'd expect of a superhero from the stories back home. And all for strangely little work, unlike everyone else.

Raising his metal hand to his chest he gives it a closer look, seeing all the grooves on the black prosthetic. All the enchantments that are etched into it, turning it slowly he sees Hephaestus's sigil at the top of the wrist with The Trifecta sigil just below it.

Glancing from his arm back to the mirror he sees the only scar on his body, the one small white scar on the left side of his otherwise caramel chest. He's had it for as long as he remembered.

"I guess magic can't fix everything," he says as he activates his Elemental Wheel.

Turning slightly for his back to face the mirror, he sees all six elementals active at once. The wheel is divided between Water, Earth, Fire, Air, Lightning, and Cold. All the elements constantly shifting and fighting each other for dominance.

"Worked my ass off just to use all of them in tandem, but I guess the balance isn't perfect, yet," he says with a small smile. Magic still hasn't gotten old, even after almost two years in this world. Eighteen months to be exact.

Raising his right hand -the flesh and blood hand- he forms a small twister of green wind in his palm. With a thought, he adds blue fire to it and creates a full blue flame tornado in the palm of his hand.

"Never gets old..." he smirks while crushing the magic in his hand.

"Yang?" Freya's voice calls out from the other side of the door.

"Yeah?"

"Can I come in?"

"Sure," he says while looking toward the door.

Freya opens the door and pauses, a towel wrapped around her waist leaving her chest exposed. Her silver hair flowed freely and unkempt, almost reaching her knees.

"Wow..." was all she could say at the sight. Never having before seen his Elemental Wheel up close like this. It made her face contort into an obsessive smile as she walked forward to take a closer look.

"What?"

"Should I be worried about you burning my things with that?" she gestures to the Elemental Wheel at his back. Yang was still facing the mirror.

"It's not real elements," he says casually as he begins brushing his teeth.

"What do you mean 'not real elements'?"

He pauses his brushing for a moment, "touch it," he says before resuming.

Giving him a strange look but still completely trusting him, Freya casually walks up and waves a hand through the Elemental Wheel. To her surprise, her hand passes through the magic without even feeling the temperature change or any obstructions even from what would appear to be solid elements like Earth.

Ignoring the goddess constantly passing her hand through the magic as if she'd found a new toy Yang finishes brushing his teeth before he turns around to face her. "It's not really at my back. It's a representation of what element I'm currently enhancing. Every second I have it up takes more magic than the previous second, more elements more magic, simple. Still need to work on balancing them when all are active," he says.

"You have enough magic to sustain something like that?" Freya asks, foregoing their unspoken rule of not discussing adventuring business for a moment, her curiosity toward him was always rather insatiable.

"When I'm really into a fight I generate magic faster than all but my big attacks can drain it, so I'm good for a while even with this much strain on it," he explains.

"It's a good look," Freya says with a mischievous smile. Reaching forward and passing her fingers over his abs and up to his chest.

Smiling down at her Yang looks directly into her eyes and gently rests his hands on her hips.

Suddenly the blood-red Chaos Mark blooms all across his body. Tattoo-like markings start in the middle of his back and swirl across his limbs, torso, and up the back of his neck to run down his face.

A little trick that would terrify most people, at least the people who don't live on this floor of Babel. But the goddess doesn't even flinch.

"You know you're no fun," Yang says. "You could at alteast pretend to be scared."

"Please, you're harmless," Freya rolls her eyes and gives him a gentle kiss. "I'll be staying at Folkvangr tonight, I need to update my familia and prepare for the Denatus tomorrow. Apparently, some idiots have the entire world up in arms about them miraculously ending a war in a few hours."

"Sounds like fake news," Yang says jokingly as Freya hangs up the towel and steps into the shower. Taking a look at her otherwise flawless skin he sees a singular bitemark on her butt as she enters the shower. "Who took a bite out of you?"

"Riveria," Freya giggles. "She's incredibly petty. That first night we all spent together I did this to her, she got me back yesterday..."

Yang sighs in disbelief. "Never would have expected my mornings to be like this, not in a million years," he says as he sees the goddess of beauty step under the water.

"You're living the dream of any sane man, too bad you're not sane," Freya says sadly. "The eyes are a nice touch by the way."

Yang gives her a confused look, "eyes?"

"Mirror."

Turning back to the mirror Yang looks at his own eyes. Glowing the same blood red as the Chaos Mark. "Hmm, that's weird. Maybe it's stronger now or something."

"How much magic does that take?" Freya asks as she allows the warm water to wash over her.

"None, it drains my ability to reason and control myself the more I fight and longer I use it," he says.

"And you're using it in our home?! Turn it off!" Freya shrieks.

The Chaos Mark immediately disappears, along with his Elemental Wheel. "Yeah yeah, not like I'm in a fight right now anyway. I need to get to my meeting," he says as he begins leaving the room.

"Have fun," Freya giggles.

Yang grumbles under his breath, "yeah...like that's possible." His dislike of boring paperwork was already very well noted, and they both knew that's exactly what this meeting was about.

Standing in the shower Freya completely ignores the water beating down on her. Locked onto Yang's soul through the walls she sees a slight change in them. A unique shattered soul like his, she expected him to change somehow as he continued forward.

But now the shattered planet-like structure in his soul was flowing with what appeared to be his elements. Not uncommon since Magic is a manifestation of the souls' desire, and his was the desire to overcome any situation with versatility, atleast according to his own words.

Elementalist was perfect for just that, magic that allowed him a list of attacks as far as his imagination stretches.

But the concerning issue was the fact that, contrary to her expectations, the shards of his soul are now slightly further apart than when she first laid eyes on him. And his desires are being reinforced.

"What in the world are you... Yang Shen, my Odr," she mutters quietly before resuming her shower.

Leaving his apartment and entering their Expedition Planning Room, Yang sees all the executives of his familia sitting at the large conference table with the seat at the head of the table empty.

Hephaestus gestures for him to take the seat, which he does, as she deflates slightly and sinks into her chair beside him.

"Alright, let's start," Yang says before looking to Hephaestus. "So what's up?"

"Congratulations," Hephaestus says. She looks around the table at Welf and Thalie before giving Tsubaki a nod. "Your plan worked, way too damn good..."

Tsubaki takes three stacks of paper from her lap and slides one to each member of The Trifecta. Atleast four hundred pages in each stack, and each with walls of text.

"What the fuck is this ?" Yang asks, giving the paperwork a disgusting look.

"Your reward," Hephaestus says cheekily. "You wanted Welf and Thalie to be feared enough that Rakia wouldn't try this crap again after you leave, congratulations. After this-" she holds out a sheet of paper and slides it to Yang, "got passed around quietly to all the continents the world leaders had a group panic attack."

"What is it?" Welf asks.

"The Rakian War Log," Yang says as he slides it to the man. "Basically accounts of everything that happened. They passed this to other countries within a few weeks?"

"You'd be surprised how fast fear can get paperwork to move," Tsubaki says. "They, and by they I mean literally every country aside from Orario, have declared you three as, 'independent national superpowers.' "

"Jesus Christ," Yang leans back in disbelief. "I wanted them to get some recognition but, seriously?"

"The war log confirms everything you three told me," Hephaestus says. "And it was officially released to the public via the guild this morning when these stacks of embargos arrived, that means every familia in Orario is having a meeting just like us and discussing what the hell I feed you three to get these results."

"Embargo?" Yang gives an amused chuckle. "What they don't want us entering their territories?"

"..." Hephaestus and Tsubaki give him unamused looks.

"Oh..."

"It's worse than that," Tsubaki explains while Welf and Thalie are reading the war log. "You've got hundreds of Embargos from countries, islands. Five of the thirteen continents in the world completely united to simply form a Continental Embargo...those didn't exist before you three. That means anywhere that isn't Orario, you need explicit permission from the national leader to enter."

"Aside from The Far East I assume," Thalie says.

"Yeah, that place is still lawless garbage," Hephaestus says.

"Can we still do business with them?" Welf asks. "I can't get all the materials I need from the dungeon after all."

"Trade is fine," Tsubaki says. "They just don't want you three or your weapons in their borders, or oceans in certain cases."

"So all of this is just what, the specifics of each Embargo?" Yang gestures to the stacks of paper.

"Basically yeah," Hephaestus confirms. "The guild made a new position and gave it to Varissa since she's the only person in the guild you've spoken to and not terrified. Her new job is mainly mediating between you three and the guild because of all these national issues. She sorted out all of this so each of you just has to sign the bottom of each page in your stack."

"Seriously?" Welf asks. "Can't we just...not go to the country, wouldn't that be enough?"

"Doesn't work like that," Thalie says as she's already signing documents. "They need to know that we know we can't enter their lands. Honestly, the entire world is waiting for Orario to mess up so they can all try to take over the dungeon, us building more and more power makes Orario looks like it's better at monopolizing the dungeon. That makes other countries jealous and that causes problems for the citizens."

"Wait a minute," Yang says. "So if I level up a few more times then what, they try to bleed us of resources by stopping supply routes. What do they expect me to do? Remove some levels because of that?"

"No they expect you to move," Tsubaki says. "Start your own kingdom, how do you think The Empire formed. You should have already been doing that honestly but because you're actually active exploring the dungeon everyone is staying quiet."

"That's stupid, ruling is too much responsibility for no reward, it's for suckers."

"True," Welf says.

"Look, none of that matters," Hephaestus gets up to leave. "I need to do some final updates before the Denatus starts tomorrow. I want all these Embargos signed and delivered to the guild before you three leave for your expedition tomorrow. Tsubaki will be staying to help out however she can."

"What!" Tsubaki cries out. "That's why you called me here? But I was working on a cool new Warhammer!" She whines.

"Stay with them and help out however you can, especially since none of them speak Dwarf or Gnome and you speak both," Hephaestus says in a flat tone before quickly leaving the room.

Staring down at the massive stack of papers both Welf and Yang release sad sighs. Thalie is already reading her third page at this point.

She pauses for a moment and looks up at everyone, "you know...Mikoto is making Pork Buns, we could go to my apartment and do this stuff..."

All the executives share a look and nod.

"Have I ever told you how happy I am you adopted that kid?" Yang asks jokingly as they all get up.

"Honestly her living with us has been amazing," Tsubaki says with a satisfied smile on her face as they leave the room.

Yang signs and rolls his eyes at the dramatic cyclops. "One day I'll find a normal woman in this world...one day..."

END CHAPTER---

Journey to the final Monster-Rex starts next chapter, if you've got any last-minute monster requests now is the time :)