Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power - Chapter 944

I stare up at the domain barrier.

Moments earlier, when we entered this place, I couldn’t even sense that it was here.

Now, I can perceive billions of shifting arrays and groupings of glyphs moving together to create countless pathways. Not all of the symbols directly translate to actual words in my mind, but when I look at them all together, I can feel what each one does.

With Maria’s mind connected to mine, deciphering everything at the same exact time, we bounce theories and ideas off each other at an extremely fast rate, and everything continues to become more and more clear.

Ulgar steps far back, watching us with curiosity and skepticism, as there are no glyphs activating on our bodies at all.

It is not an illusion or perceptive trick, we really aren’t summoning any high-quality ether commands. The thing is, we really don’t have to.

Everything needed to open up this barrier is already laid out in front of us.

I raise my hands and place them against the invisible wall. Maria does the same, and we flood it with our Primordial Aura wrapped with layers of royal intent. At first, nothing at all visibly changes. All of the spinning and active commands go on as if they don’t even notice our presence.

However, once a large enough portion of the barrier is saturated with our aura, about 100 thousand kilometers high, we begin allowing Celestial Energy to leak out of our palms.

It is not random. In fact, there are very specific glyphs we send them toward, to pass through a series of arrays and compact them tighter and tighter together. The bright blue and red celestial energy that pours out of us in dense streams gets crushed and compacted down into hair-thin lines of higher potency ether.

Even the excess high ratios of mana get filtered out.

It is like we’re putting up a temporary offering, risking a portion of our souls. Without the mental connections I made after feeling my glyph imprints be stimulated by that elven village’s artifact, I wouldn’t have been able to understand this. Right now, we’re allowing this domain to use our energy, like we’re creating a miniature legacy. The one accepting it just happens to be an unconscious grouping of preset ether commands.

It takes almost a full 10% of our Soul Energy cores to pour outward before I can tell it’s enough. Both Maria and I cut off the outward flow, but stay in total concentration while manipulating our Primordial Aura to mentally communicate with the complex glyphs.

It is impossible to directly shift or activate them like I witnessed Ulgar do by force when we entered this domain, but I have the perception and intuition to understand that we can see far deeper into these Glyphs than the ancient Black Ogre. In addition to this, I can feel the same aura of admiration and respect pouring out of some of these glyphs, just like the elven artifacts from before.

They all start to spin and activate on their own, creating the outline of a small white archway in front of us.

I can’t sense the energy readings themselves, but I can perceive everything they’re doing with immense detail. My depth of knowledge and understanding of every array’s intricate need grows with every passing second.

Layers of the domain barrier fold into each other, deactivating soul suppression arrays, visual blocking sensors, even strange space-warping glyphs deactivate thousands at a time.

A perfect hole in the domain opens up and reveals the outside Primordial Garden in all its glory.

Wide smiles are on our faces, but Ulgar’s skepticism has only grown stronger.

“H-How… how is that possible? You didn’t summon a single glyph. You—”

He murmurs to himself, trying to figure out what just happened, but Maria and I have already started walking through.

“You didn’t even have to activate your greater forms. Far more energy is necessary to brute-force open a domain. This one is hardwired to only accept Black Ogre’s commands…”

He follows behind us, leaving the elven village and the rest of his territory with a puzzled look and an inconsistent stride.

When we turn back around, the doorway we’ve created starts sinking back down and the barrier reforms in its place. In a matter of seconds, all evidence of the Black Ogre’s domain disappears. It’s like there is perfect imagery of an untouched forest where I’m positive there were structures and craters in the ground moments ago.

All of the glyphs and arrays finish spinning, and the Celestial energy we poured into the barrier floods back through the same high-quality ether commands that were used to trigger this action. They’re stretched out and decompressed, turned back into medium-quality ether before our eyes.

The energy is pure white, though. Our own natural auras have been separated out. The red and blue particles float in the air within our Primordial Aura and Royal Vibrations. The barrier’s commands start to push out our consciousness, and we pull all of this energy back into our souls.

It’s like they’re giving us our pseudo-legacy right back; in fact, I can feel something extra flowing through it.

This mass of ether commands very easily could have taken and assimilated this energy for itself, but it acknowledged our wills and gave the energy right back.

My body and depths of my soul hum with a satisfied feeling.

A rush of euphoria follows, then my fingers and toes start tingling with a sensation I haven’t felt in a while… This is energy exhaustion. A light ringing sounds in my inner ear, but I clasp Maria’s hand next to mine to cycle our celestial energy through each other, and the feeling fades. We’re far stronger, and our eyes have opened to more of High Quality ether’s secrets.

I recall seeing Ulgar open the domain and don’t remember him receiving any energy back when it closed…

If this is the case, and he has not created a relationship with these glyphs like we just did, I can assume that is what fighting an enemy with High-Quality ether commands would be like… One would have to use up large portions of soul bonds in order to activate glyphs, with no guarantee they ever return.

My head turns to the side and out of my thoughts when I hear a buzzing and clicking sound start to become louder than the soft hum in my mind.

It’s a stray swarm of insects.

Inside the domain, I didn’t see a single one. The forest was calm, yet now they move down through tree branches toward us like we’re fresh meat.

My vision becomes overwhelmed by the vast amount of commands pouring into my consciousness. Even without any of my greater forms activated, I can’t block out the fact that I can now perceive everything around me in greater clarity.

Maria is frozen with wide eyes too.

Ulgar is the only one able to move, knowing what to do in this situation.

A burst of black aura erupts out of him as his base greater form explodes outward. Then, the air’s density of Divine threads all pull in toward his core as his astral form takes control of the atmosphere. Primordial Aura and his Royal Vibrations revert back to the strength we felt when first encountering him in this forest, but one thing is very different.

Covering every bit of his massive energy form, I see white High Quality ether Commands spinning and draining pure ether from his Soul Energy Core. I couldn’t perceive where the energy was coming from or how it was activating before, but now it’s all becoming clear and logical.

He pulls a machete from his back, and it too pulls pure white high-quality ether from his core. When he swings his blade, letting out a crescent of energy at the attackers, a portion of his soul is lost forever.

Yet, in exchange, dozens of insects are shattered to dust. Far away, high up on a tree’s branch, the crescent slices a lizard in two as it was eyeing us from afar. Its two halves fall from a great height down nearby.

Ulgar puts his weapon back in its sheath, and he walks through the shattered mist of monsters he’s killed. Many automated glyphs light up all over his energy form, and I see what he called Glyph Imprints finally working in front of my eyes.

They drain the excess High Quality Ether and even fractured ether commands back into the Black Ogre’s Soul. The amount of energy he sacrificed in order to kill his enemies was less than what he gained.

In a matter of seconds, my theory came true.

I look away from the Ogre and can’t help but take in the complex patterns pulsing out of the tree’s bark again.

I can see their original dark brown color now without the blinding white light shielding my vision, yet there are still an absurd amount of ether commands infused in the tree. It is a thick layering, and they range from projecting shielding commands to natural atmosphere energy absorbing glyphs, to countless that are infused deeper into the tree’s core I still can’t comprehend.

The deeper I look inside, the more my soul starts to heat up and my mind grows fuzzy. I’m forced to release my Primordial Aura outward again to create a bubble of protection. For some reason, the deeper inward I look, the more these commands are bonded with ancient Primordial Aura of their own.

My eyes shift all over the forest as the sensation of being watched from every side by these strange trees returns.

Ulgar looks back at us, as we’re tens of thousands of times smaller than him, but our Primordial Auras somehow tower over his.

“You two are some strange creatures…”

He pauses, then looks back into the forest. A smile creeps onto his face, and a gleam of ambition shows in his grey eyes.

“I won’t ask you how you did that, because by the looks of it, you don’t have any idea either… Come on, I’ll take you to the closest Imperial’s Domain. There’s one I’ve been working on weakening for quite a while now, I just haven’t had the right opportunity to commit. If you two can break through their protection barrier without my help, I could save a large amount of vital energy for the actual battle…”

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