Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power - Chapter 1005
This Demon’s system text is chaotic, blue and orange, just like the waves of aura that pour out of his soul.
The Demon’s eyes, teeth, horns, daggers, and claws all glow with this same chaotic light; but his skin and muscles are very different.
It is like I’m staring into pure consolidated crystals of demonic essence. It is a deep dark purple, and the light of the aura bursting off of him shines through his body.
My subconscious replays all of the times I watched his skin and flesh be burned away by Ember’s flames, and now I fill in what was really taking place. This crystalline-like flesh was only melted through, energy pumps into it from his Royal Demon’s core, and it grows back as a perfect replica.
Waves of chaotic aura flow through it, enhancing its strength; but they are certainly made of two different energies.
Glowing deep inside this Demonic Form, there are dense purple glyphs strengthening his physical body. Even deeper than that, beside his Royal Demon’s core and purple divine true core in his chest, I see one more orb.
For a moment I contemplate if he is the same as me… with three cores, also capable of wielding mana. However, once I see that it only holds pure high-quality ether, I realize it’s something different.
The core pulses with familiar glyphs, and my subconscious pattern recognition instantly links it to other blinking white lights holding the same exact glyphs all throughout the Upper and Lower Realm.
Whatever that third core is, it has something to do with the seal.
Quickly, my in-depth studying of this demon zooms out to the surface, and I focus on his daggers and larger general movements. These are the only things that are actively aiming for me.
Marcellus gets fed up with Maria’s targeted ice blades after just two shots, and turns away from chasing Ember.
He dives down at us, and his chaos grows even more desperate and volatile.
“I have waited too many eras for my paradise to come to fruition! I created the perfect family clan of demons to siphon all of the resources this system gathered from the outside, into my domain. This perfect victory will not be ruined by two lesser races… two humans. Insects from the newest era of the source’s creation. This joke is no longer funny!”
His form slips through the atmosphere almost faster than I can see; I’m only able to track his moments when I push all other thoughts away from my mind.
My constant viewing of the zones below instantly ceases, and I activate my [Primordial Resonance] buff to focus every fiber of my being on the demon in the sky.
I feel Maria’s focus tighten too, as she swings her blade back and forth, letting out crescents of icy source resin into the air.
Marcellus spins and kicks off the air to dodge by instinct. The ice blades may be near-invisible and slice through the Primordial Aura in the air, but it is his Primordial Aura they’re slicing through. Every time he escapes these blades, his anger grows more, and it looks like he’s getting stronger and faster; dodging the new ice blades with more ease.
Mere moments later, there is an echoing crash that sends chaos and fire spewing out into the central Domain.
Marcellus collides with the full-powered metallic red and black crystal defensive array I summoned, and both his chaos-filled blades pierce through it.
Not all the way, but enough to send cracks through the disk in the sky hovering above us, and enough to begin pouring chaotic Advanced Primordial Aura through the defenses, down into our personal atmosphere that was free of danger moments earlier.
All of the newly awakened glyphs in our souls vibrate even more, floating to the outsides of our bodies, and tethering with our Advanced Primordial Aura to make more defensive arrays hug tight around our energy forms.
Maria swings upward again, and the Demon pulls out his blades to roll aside.
He tries attacking from another angle, but as I shift my stance, the enormous floating array follows where my raised palms aim.
Both daggers are lodged into the creation again, and more cracks break through it, damaging some glyphs beyond repair and fracturing others so they begin leaking the ether and aura I’ve infused into them.
Maria sends attacks flying upward at him, but the Demon dodges again and again.
Over ten collisions pass, and the defensive array is covered in dagger holes and wide cracks that leak chaotic aura through.
On the outside of my soul, I’m beginning to weave a replacement barrier, but this is only a short-term fix.
I have all of my skills at my disposal, and I could concentrate on channeling my corruption into a pseudo soul weapon like I did while fighting demons outside this central domain. However, I can sense that none of them will have the same deadly striking force as Maria’s blade does right now.
By cutting through the demon’s horn, it has already proven to be strong enough to land damage.
When I try to reach into my soul, and pull at my own blade, it still lays dormant, behind a dark veil.
At least now, I can tell that it is some kind of Advanced Primordial Aura pushing my consciousness away. My own dark aura floods in to try and surround it, and it flows far deeper and closer to the blade than I could before… but my aura is still nowhere near mature enough.
The sword won’t give in; it will not allow aura this weak and unsettled to touch it.
So, instead I focus on what I can do in this moment.
My barrier crumbles more and more, but the new one I’m forming has two distinct layers to it.
“Just a little longer…” I send to Maria through our link, then visualize flows of Primordial Aura, sending deep scans of our surroundings and future foresight paths now that it has upgraded to Primordial Grade.
She mentally nods back through our soul tie, and the enormous red and black array above us shatters into nothing but ether dust and free-flowing raw primordial aura.
The Demon laughs hysterically, as Maria does not send another ice blade its way like she normally would.
He does not have to dodge and can close the distance between us even more.
“I had you two in my grasp once, and did not take the opportunity to set my destiny in stone. This must be fate’s gift to me. In the end, this galaxy has been molded to the Demon’s liking. It is only right I crush the outdated creator’s legacy in its activated form. I must see with my own eyes what will be transcended! Yes! This is how the day of the sealing was always meant to be!”
Maria’s wings flap with enough force to shake the tree stump below us.
She activates a borrowed body double skill, and bursts out in 10 different directions.
At the same time, I release the new barrier into the air alone, watching the Demon come down at me in the center of the tree.
This one has a base below it that looks just like the one he shattered, only it glows brighter and thicker with far more glyphs. In the time it took to break it, my Advanced Primordial Aura has matured even further.
The simple array fused to its front is what makes it so unique.
It appears to be nothing but a thin film of metallic light. There is only one reinforced glyph in its center.
To the unknowing eye, it even looks like an unfinished formation.
However, it is hexagonal, and to its core holds the same essence as a True Core ability I grasped on the human world in the Lower Realm from a dragon that could reflect back every attack I threw at it.
When Marcellus collides with this array, his blades sink into the film of Advanced Primordial Aura, but they do not break it.
The blades slow down the deeper into it he pushes, and as the array bends, the very chaotic glyphs he is trying to channel start to appear, mirrored into this reflective metallic film.
