Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power - Chapter 1017
When the memories glitch away, and I see Marcellus in full view again, the first thing I look at is the strong soul bond he still holds onto. It tethers to the space above this zone, where the memories I just witnessed showed.
“You still fight me like Lower Races were not all doomed the moment the Demons Took Control of the Upper Realm. You all even use the name we’ve changed it to in order to suppress the imagination of the new eras. Many would dig too deep if they knew it as its true name, the Originators Domain!” Marcellus yells, launching at me as almost my entire Origin body is consumed in his Demonic Essence.
It makes my limbs all filled with static and evaporates large amounts of my Advanced Primordial Aura.
It is an infinitely renewable energy source. As long as I’m conscious and my will is unbroken, it will only be summoned back stronger.
The glyphs it starts to seep into, on the other hand, these vibrate, and sharp pain surges through my soul as his glitching demonic essence tries to devour them too.
I let out a yell while flying backward as fast as I can.
The further away I get, the weaker his essence becomes, but it also leaves less room for a quick counter.
A new wave of Advanced Primordial Aura floods out from my soul, paired with spinning red, white, and black glyphs that move all over the outside of my body. Millions of crimson explosions occur all over me, as copies of my soul sword are constantly summoned and sacrificed to disperse the energy.
The true blade itself, on the other hand, is completely unharmed…
It has a sharp blood-red pressure that comes out of its core and concentrates around the crimson eye at the base of the sword.
The same amount of demonic essence attacked my Origin body as it did my sword, but it slid off the blade like a wet balloon. Any dark demonic essence that tried to attack it directly melted on impact. The glitching substance just went haywire and destroyed itself while being repelled.
It pulls on my soul and uses my high-quality ether stores, as well as the pressure from my Advanced Primordial Aura.
So, as my energy dims, it does too. Yet, there is a small amount of lag. It’s like it’s reacting—not so much a perfect link.
I can feel there is a separate living entity in my hands, and it gives off the aura of the sword I’ve fought many battles with before, but there is something very different about it right now… and I do not have enough mental space to figure out what or why…
Another long-range wave of demonic essence comes my way, but it’s far weaker than the last few.
At this distance, I’m able to summon enough defensive arrays to block and absorb it entirely before it even hits my body. An explosion of rainbow ice on the other side of the domain hits my senses next, as Maria easily blocks the next strike too.
In the center of my vision, however, the orange-blooming Advanced Primordial Aura grows far stronger than the bubble we just obliterated, and the pulsing white light in his chest blinks so fast it feels like it will become nothing but pure white heat at any moment.
Hundreds of black and purple slashes of energy come bursting out from the Demon’s blades to keep us back.
They get faster, but also weaker…
Even the Demonic Essence that holds his physical body together looks as though it’s getting thinner. Dense strands of purple divine threads start to show themselves holding up the frame, as the physical liquid is sent at us with no more regard for the artifact’s safety afterward.
“This is it! He’s using everything he has to hold us back!” I hear from Maria, pinging into my mind, coming to the same conclusion as me.
“Yes. No matter what, we need to finish him now.”
Both of us dart back into the chaos.
This time, not even clearing a path, but plunging into the chaotic aura and letting our own natural auras flow out of our Origin bodies as the buffers.
They fight for dominance and devour each other. My Advanced Primordial Aura pushes out at the same rate as it’s destroyed, but this is not my main concern.
It is the over one hundred demonic crescents of essence coming at me from all sides.
Marcellus’ yell echoes with them, “The seal is finally going to be complete. All remaining life within the system will never have a chance to escape!”
Massive arrays form all over me from every angle. They shine with a red metallic glow, and every time they’re struck by another crescent, black glyphs on their insides are deployed to devour the rest of the weakened Essence destroyed in the blast.
Yet, the closer I get, the more of these arrays I have to summon. My shadow of crimson mist shrinks and shrinks until the point where I have to start manually summoning glyphs and not rely on the automatic summons of my copied soul swords.
They attack from all angles and get stronger the closer to the Demon’s real body I get.
It is pulling away from the amount of energy I can build up in a single attack in my sword.
The waves of white heat are starting to look like a flicker. I can hardly tell when the artifact is not pulsing.
I know I will not have another chance at attacking it.
So, the defensive arrays around many of my less important body parts become weaker than the rest.
The outer portions of my Origin body begin to be struck by waves of demonic essence.
The first dozen only feel like the strange static I’ve gotten used to, but the next hundred start to feel like poisonous, acidic hail tearing holes in my body and melting down into my soul.
Every single one of them glitches with different rhythms, and bursts of strong memories force their way into my consciousness.
Massive abstract visuals pour into my mind.
I can see a fully zoomed-out version of the entire galaxy. It overlays perfectly with the visual of the current-day galaxy that I can feel through my Rising Emperors Domain.
The difference is, the old galaxy from billions of years ago still has the many highways of dense high quality ether streaming out from the source and throughout the many thriving civilizations.
It also tears a hole upward through space.
This was impossible to see in the memory where Marcellus was still a younger Demon, but now it all looks so clear.
It is like an invisible funnel that attaches the Lower Realm up to a different plane of existence. It only appears to be a black void, like a stretched layer of strange energy over the top of the galaxy. I cannot see what is inside it.
Millions of glitching memories patch themselves together to create a timelapse of a small portion of this structure coming to see light.
As more and more of the highways in the Lower Realm are drained, and the pockets of energy are siphoned out, up into this funnel, and through other smaller tears into space, a layered construct is created.
I watch each zone of the Upper Realm being created within the bottom layer of this enormous black galaxy-sized construct.
Silver Anchors are placed in each zone, and family heads are placed to each of them as the eras go on, and life in the Origin Plane becomes weaker and weaker.
I’m hit with another wave of stronger demonic crescents, and these memories are jolted away.
I see the outside layers of Maria’s bright crystalline Origin body being broken apart with the same intensity of attacks that I am.
We both swing our red and blue blades one more time. A half demon, and glimmering angel come bursting forward through the bubble of chaos and through the barrage of Demonic Essence slashes, simultaneously aiming to strike the bright white orb in the center of what’s left of Marcellus’ body.
