Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power - Chapter 1033
These glimpses into the moments of the past are all from the point of view of this blade, so I can’t see any levels, races of the wielder, or even the integration with the systems they’re linked to. There is only a faint crimson glow of consciousness I can latch onto, and the reality it perceives becomes clearer later in all of its lives once it becomes stronger.
What I can feel is a baseline of ether in every single memory, and in many where the wielders grow strong enough, vibrations, divine threads, and primordial aura. However, it’s hard to sense any mana or demonic energy for sure, I can only assume this is the energy being used in many of the memories flashing by.
Even the many worlds I witness look strange and foreign. There are many that have massive energy constructs similar to dungeon-like pocket realms to help natives grow stronger, and others in the shape of enormous towers or deep caverns that create trials on floors that get harder the deeper one travels down. Far more methods that I can track of connecting awakened lifeforms and strategies to grow stronger. Some are used by monstrous and unintelligent races, using relics of ancient pasts and others are civilized races, and I get to witness the creation of these systems. So much more information flashes by than I ever believed existed.
Some of these Realms are constructs connected to individual worlds, others are stronger ones connecting collections of worlds, or entire galaxies like the Upper Realm I’ve seen with my own eyes.
Yet, every one is vast and unique, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.
Even though the memories aren’t very full of depth, they are mostly just images or moments in time captured by the soul weapon’s consciousness, it still opens my mind up to an entirely new way of looking at reality.
It makes the rigid leveling system I’ve grown accustomed to far less special, and even my ability to grow and adapt so quickly… I soon feel that my path from the small human world upward through the Upper Realm has been done many times before…
Not only am I seeing it happen through these memories, but the Crimson Aura that is tethered to the outside of my Origin Body is resonating with my own Primordial Aura so much, that its instincts feel like they are my own.
There is a clear separation, that we are different entities, but at the same time I get an almost lost nostalgic feeling when holding on to the instincts of the blade that is slicing through the Realm Wave in front of me.
It grows even stronger when I feel that every single wielder of this soul weapon drains the life out of their enemies. Whether it’s through a system that extracts their enemies’ skills and talents. Or through strange rituals using their slain enemies’ blood to form complex arrays and cultivate in the center of them. Or even eating the flesh of the enemies they kill.
There are images of a shadowy wielder pulling out enemies’ souls and refining them into their own, and some where this wielder only appears in their dreams and devours their mind from the inside before draining all of their energy to make it their own.
This only scratches the surface.
There are countless techniques that I cannot even begin to learn all of with the strength of my current mind, but they all have one thing in common. They all end up the strongest, and only from absorbing the power of those they kill.
The soul weapon in their grasp grows stronger in the same exact way, devouring excess energy and soul weapons of their enemies.
I can never actually see what the wielder of this weapon looks like, but the more memories that pass, the more my subconscious fills in the dark figure with a mental manifestation of myself… Every time I focus, the shifting shadowy figure of many shapes returns, but when I divert my attention to other areas of the memories, my own humanoid image fills in the gaps.
More waves of golden aura and purple-silver aura flood in from above us as Ember and Noctus continue to yell back and forth, but it becomes one of the last things on my mind.
My focus shifts to the change in the atmosphere around me.
The path my blade has carved out is now closing up behind me. The folded layers of silver threads and demonic aura flood back in, and even start to pull on my back.
I can feel the tug of extremely strong gravity and subconscious attraction. It almost feels sweet and inviting, just like the time I couldn’t resist Marcellus’ daggers. The will holding this Realm Wave together is so strong that my own cannot compare.
Strands of red and black metallic aura seep out of the Crimson layer that tethers to my Origin Body.
The same thing happens to Maria. Crystalline streams of blue and white energy start flowing off of her and become entangled with the Realm Wave that grows back toward us.
The same sensation of our auras being pulled in too many directions, and contradictory flows of time comes over us. We have to continuously start severing these portions of our soul and allowing them to be either frozen in time, or killed off by thousands of years of relentless pressure in an instant by the wave.
All of the aura spawns back into our souls like it never left, due to the strange properties of the void. However, if our entire bodies and mind were to fall into this wave, it doesn’t feel like it would simply spit us out on the other side.
I still feel all of the effects of the wave, even if they happen on fragments of my soul that are disconnected.
Though, as more of these memories from my blade are imprinted on my consciousness, and I share them with Maria, our Primordial Auras grow stronger too. The broader perspective compounds on everything we already know.
There are civilizations that use glyph-like patterns, and wisps of consciousness with understandings of complex systems I’ve never thought about before. Although they are not incredibly deep, they make our vibrations tougher, and even the Creator’s Legacy Glyphs glowing in the depths of our souls shine brighter with more force.
It opens up new pathways with less resistance in these new memories, allowing me to sink even deeper to perceive small glimpses of what would have been seared away out of my mind by golden threads just moments ago.
