Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power - Chapter 967

Maria crashes down next to me. Her sword glistens brighter than every fractured glyph around.

Her ether pools are exhausted just like mine. Her source resin and soul sword seep back into her body to conserve the small amount of energy she has left.

The corruption that pulled my Astral body back together erupts outward to begin draining the pools of Demonic Essence falling around us, and pockets of soul storage open up to store this demon’s horns and soul weapons.

Maria gains just over a hundred thousand levels from landing this kill shot, and I hear notifications ringing in my inner ear too.

[Level Up] x92,716

I do not receive the memory absorption or buff stealing of the final kill, but my level bursts up to [Lv. 582,052]. This is from Maria’s passive activation of the experience sharing perk. Our soul bond is slightly different than the one I have with Ember. Our mana-based systems are separated, and we do not automatically gain experience.

Our levels are very similar, but my mind is only focused on the facts in front of me.

This Outer Guard must have been at least level 700,000. If they’re only the grunts carrying out the First Blood’s dirty work… I can’t imagine what level the Imperial Family Head’s level might be.

When having this brief encounter with an Outer Guard up close, it felt like the system was lagging behind the automated glyph movements it was following out. While High Quality Ether is extremely powerful, and is these Outer Guard’s greatest asset, I can only wonder what it would have been like if it could have been fully integrated.

Considering every rank up I’ve had adapted me to the environment I was in, the possibility of a Demon going through another rank up in this Zone, and adapting to its Glyph Imprints, is not impossible.

My thoughts are all out in the open, Maria is reading them, and now thinking exactly the same thing.

I get data back on her sword strike, where she used her entire ether pool to activate standard glyphs we watched the demons using; but the actual destructive power came from the High Quality ether stored in her source resin. It only released itself into the attack once her pools were depleted. Maria had no control over its actions, like another consciousness activated the strike within her diamond sword.

Neither of us can figure out how this occurred, but it feels so natural. Before it even happened, both of us instinctually knew it would.

We float up out of the crater, and are greeted by three wide-eyed mana-based monsters.

“You killed an Outer Guard?! Half an hour ago I could have killed you with a sneeze!” Vardon yells, as he’s the first to arrive at the blast site.

He puts out his ferocious flames when he realizes we don’t need saving.

Ulgar and Axel both peer over the edge next, and neither say a word for a few seconds.

Flashes of white energy start to flicker all throughout the forest behind them, and a few hundred Ascended Demons try attacking to avenge the Outer Guard.

A wave of rust-colored flames kills half of them, and gusts of wind push the others back or shatter them to mist.

Ulgar doesn’t move, he just stares at us longer than the others, then does a deep scan.

“You may have won, but you two don’t look great. Do your thing with the rest of the Demonic Essence, and come follow. Quickly.”

Axel butts in next, “He’s right. Even though we took out the threats inside, we need to get what we came for and leave this domain before they notify anyone outside. As long as we can get back to the neutral flatlands before being trailed, they won’t be able to catch us.”

A wave of refined High Quality Ether bursts out of us as my corruption fully digests the essence it absorbed.

Some of it is assimilated into Maria’s source resin, but a majority floods out into the air. The three astral forms in front of us are able to take it in with much greater ease than the raw ether in the air.

All of them realize this is the case as we leave, and the Griffin, Ogre, and Mammoth follow right behind to benefit from this process as well.

We stop from corpse to corpse, and I devour the demonic essence from each and every one of them. All of their horns and soul weapons fall into my soul storage, making my collection surpass fifty weapons in total now.

We pass by a stray pocket of Celestial Energy too, and it satiates us a bit.

However, even after every corpse and stray blast of demonic essence, our cores are still at only half the capacity they were before. My understanding of glyphs has significantly increased, making it even easier to summon arrays, but I still feel slightly more vulnerable than I’d like to.

The sensation of not being able to grab my soul sword whenever I’d like to grows with discomfort. I didn’t notice it as much before because I wasn’t fully expecting to go into battle, but now that I know it may be the case again, it feels like I’m floating around partially naked.

We shift our route back toward the settlement, and Axel flies up into the sky again. Vardon and Ulgar float by our sides now, instead of in front and behind. Their vibrations each give off a new layer of respect toward us. Not just as anomalies with extremely large primordial auras, or fancy sentient lock picks; but as strong allies that can fight near their level.

Occasionally, new teams of Ascended Demons pop out from random places in the forest, and the Ogre and Mammoth kill them before they come close.

The attacks become more constant once the view of the first row of houses in the settlement appears in front of my eyes.

They were nothing but outlines and ether commands in my mental view, but seeing them in person is completely different. Each mega structure looks to be almost the same size as the Primordial Trees behind us.

They are filled with stagnant Primordial Aura and preset High Quality Ether commands. They do not flow with life like the trees.

It looks like a massive amount of the forest was cleared out, or possibly never even existed at all. There are hundreds of structures, and when we come within visual range, tens of thousands more Ascended Demons flood out to attack us on sight.

Caws echo from the sky as Axel sends long-range attacks down at many that have only newly emerged from the towers.

Ulgar and Vardon don’t look very concerned. They start sending long-range attacks out too, then slash and stab at those that come close.

Maria and I summon a few protective arrays to shield our souls from the shockwaves and impacts created by these monsters, but we only have to summon a few hundred glyphs total.

After being directly exposed to that Outer Guard’s raw aura, these blasts are nothing.

As Ascended Demons are crushed to white mist and fractured glyphs, we float upward and forward unfazed. Instead of going deep into the settlement to face the swarm, we just fly above the towers.

The five rows of them I saw in my mind’s eye earlier quickly pass, and another five rows of buildings pass after that. I see even more off in the distance. There are over a thousand of these structures, and more and more keep spawning into my mind’s eye.

They are all built in a symmetrical grid, and have exactly the same size square-shaped foundation. They are hundreds of stories tall, and look like black rectangles flashing irregularly with white glyphs, but all of them vary in height. Some even stand over twice the size of others.

Looking down, it is both an eerie and incredible sight to see.

Over a hundred thousand Ascended Demons have been slaughtered on our way over this settlement, and it seems like they only keep appearing in larger and larger groups.

The dense pockets of Celestial Energy even start to come back in even greater frequency. Maria and I enjoy this delicacy while quickly moving toward our end goal.

By the time we’ve passed 15 rows of buildings, our Soul Energy Core’s ether pools are full with more refined Medium Quality Ether than they ever have before.

As the next wave of pure Celestial Energy hits, we far surpass our previous limit, and I feel as though if I had this much energy in our last battle I could have landed an attack with Maria to end it and still have a small amount leftover.

My soul feels warm. It tingles with satisfaction.

In the depths of my mind, I even feel an extremely dense collection of unreadable glyphs far off in the distance further than my eyes can see. Two loud caws from Axel high up in the sky make Ulgar turn his head toward me and confirm what I think it is.

“Less than half a minute until we arrive. The Ritual site is right up ahead.”

I grin and nod, then look forward, using a small red propulsion glyph beneath my feet to push me forward and keep up with the two Ogre and Mammoth’s movement speed.

The edge of the settlement comes into view, stopping at 19 rows, yet I blink a few times and look forward with my Celestial Grade All-Seeing Eyes a second time as I feel like I just saw a blurry figure floating in our path.

“I saw it too…” Maria’s voice echoes through our telepathy link as we stop moving forward.

Ulgar and Vardon stop out of reflex, looking back at us with confusion, then looking in the direction we are staring at with skeptical eyes.

A wave of Primordial Aura bursts through the entire settlement, hundreds of times stronger than any of the Outer Guards ever showed.

Reality feels like it’s been turned upside down.

Gravity becomes too strong to withstand, and we start falling down toward the nearest tower’s roof below us.

Out of the corner of my vision, I even see the massive fiery Mammoth falling victim to this immense gravity, and Ulgar struggling to keep himself upright in the fall.

Both of them are plummeting toward other towers in the distance.

There is even a streak of white light falling from the sky as Axel lets out a painful caw.

Ulgar’s voice yelling, “It’s a First Blood!” is all I hear through the chaos as I turn my neck hard enough to stare at the blurry outline of an invisible Royal Demon with its hands raised.