Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power - Chapter 953
Some pockets of the Demon’s past strongest attacks still float in the air or are stained into the bark and leaves of nearby trees. They don’t dissolve or meld well with the natural atmosphere at all.
They become more and more visible to my senses as the barrier Vardon has created slowly peels away and falls back into his long white tusks. The only harmful thing that hits my senses once we’re exposed to the outside is the violent pressure of Primordial Aura and Royal Vibrations in the air. It collides with our psyches, and I witness the battle Ulgar had all over again from a different perspective. It is like the shadows of their intents are all left behind.
Once Vardon’s shielding array is completely gone, the enormous archway between the trees behind us starts to naturally close back up too. The rush of our sacrificed Celestial energy starts to come back with it.
All of the fire and ice has been separated out, and the pure white ether that flows back through the invisible barrier arrays is noticeably more pure than what is still remaining in our soul energy cores. When it floods back into our souls, and we retract our Primordial Aura with it, the most intense flash of enlightenment so far stimulates my mind.
The sensation of the warm semi-conscious being inside these barriers is the strongest it’s ever been, and the imagery of its soul bowing down, praying to both of us can’t be avoided. It feels like it’s hugging both the inside and outside of our souls while information floods in with the Celestial Energy we’re processing.
Our Glyph imprints flash bright white for a full second, and it feels like we’re receiving over twice as much ether back as we put in, and it’s easily five times as pure.
If there wasn’t a mysterious entity holding my soul together with warm hands, I would probably pass out, or even experience fractures all over my psyche like I did when facing the foreign aura of those ascended demons.
Instead, I feel completely fine, and reality around me disappears. Maria, right beside me, is the only other sensation I feel while illusions of past memories start to play in our minds. We’re experiencing a shared memory, or possibly a small legacy reacting with the one we’ve already absorbed.
It starts off slightly blurred, with only shadowy figures moving around in symmetric patterns, but soon they come into focus as glyphs in the air shift and fall into place.
All of the figures in this vision have dense true purple cores and extremely white, smooth skin. They look like humans at first glance, but the more I stare at them all working hard at creating a massive collection of high-quality ether commands, the more I’m certain they’re not like us.
Some have green vines coming out of their skin, and each of them helps to activate ether commands after. Others are covered in leaves, like extra armor on their skin, and they all have bright green eyes and hair to match it.
They are mostly women, yet a very small few among their ranks are men with soft, feminine features.
All of their Primordial Aura gives off an earthy feeling, like they are the embodiment of nature itself.
Through the eyes of whatever is granting us these memories, I don’t feel any pressure at all from their overwhelming power. It feels calming and kind. Yet, the longer I soak in it, the more I feel how similar it is to the Primordial Trees.
When this memory holder looks around, there are no Trees like the thick forest holds now; it’s only flatlands as far as the eye can see.
I look back at the massive structure they all seem to be working on together, and every time a new collection of glyphs is pushed into it, they disappear. It is an enormous wall that spans to the edges of this zone and must have an unfathomable amount of power imbued into it.
A structure this size and with so much complexity cannot be made in a single session. There must be many of these humanoid beings that have given their whole lives and sacrificed all of the High-Quality Ether in their cores to create it.
I recognize some of the glyphs from our three run-ins with these domain barriers, but the longer I stare at these images, I connect more dots and feel as though understandings from this memory holder are bleeding into mine.
It feels like time is speeding up, as a time lapse of more Purple-Cored entities fly in from beyond my vision to help and sacrifice their entire ether pools to create a larger and larger wall. At first, it’s hours, then days, then years, and I lose track of time while watching the sight.
Yet, only a second goes by in reality.
The hold on these memories fades as our Glyph imprints start to dim down after the intense flash, but I start to understand exactly what they’re building as the perfect clarity fades back to a fuzzy blur.
This was a flashback to the creation of this invisible barrier.
The warm, inviting aura fades away, and our Glyphs flicker and glow with a warm dim white light for a full 10 seconds after.
My mind is spinning with new concepts and epiphanies, yet when I come back to my normal train of thought, I realize how strange this really is.
“Why are the Dryads helping us…?” I say out loud, turning to Maria, then back at the invisible wall we just passed through.
Unlike before, I can actually see a majority of the glyphs and understand their function now. There are none that should ever give back the ether that is sacrificed to open it. This is a core function in the barrier; in order to keep it active, it needs fuel from those that use it…
The fact that we’re getting more ether back than given is even more baffling, and clearly, there is a deeper function I can’t yet see.
Maria shakes her head, “I don’t know… It makes no sense to me either, but we might as well take advantage of it while we can.” then shrugs and stares down at her palms that still hold dim glyphs on their surface.
She moves her right hand in the air and channels a small amount of celestial energy into the few remaining patterns, and I can’t help but try the same once I realize what she’s doing.
Blue and red streams of extremely refined celestial energy pour out of our hands, and perfect replicas of the refinement glyphs that were present in the domain barrier start forming. The Celestial Energy squeezes itself through layers of glyphs, then uses the higher refined versions of itself to begin creating more arrays to condense itself further.
Our imprints are growing dimmer by the second, but by the time they fully fade, both of us manage to produce a single High-Quality Glyph that floats up into the air.
They slowly drift closer, then begin twirling and spinning around each other, and eventually collide.
It produces an explosion of violent red and blue light but fades into mist right after.
Maria and I celebrate, but the Fiery Mammoth that witnessed this anomaly occurring below it can’t believe its eyes.
The explosion goes off right between its tusks as it was watching the reaction of the glyph imprints flashing prior, and it reflexively puts up a shielding array to block the blast. It’s nowhere near as destructive as the shockwaves it had to block from Ulgar’s fight, but Vardon’s eyes widen when it feels a few of the glyphs in the front of its array fracture from the impact.
We float forward past the astonished Mammoth and inspect the aftermath of craters and injured trees all over the battlefield.
In the furthest portion of my mind, I feel Ulgar’s Royal Vibrations becoming more known as he’s started to return back to us, but this isn’t the main thing I’m attracted to.
Instead, I float closer to the nearest Primordial Tree that was hit by a stray attack of Demonic Essence. It’s still stained dark purple, and there are very strange glyphs floating inside it like they are trapped. None are able to dissolve into the air, yet the corruption that swirls in my Demon’s Core feels very attracted to it.
Maria stops moving in mid air once we get too close, but I keep floating forward.
