Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

The bursts of aura that explode out of the edges of this translucent orb are brighter, thicker, and cause the fabric of the dark membrane around us to bend under its weight.

In the same instance, the churning digestion in my blade comes to an end, and a strong pulse of crimson primordial aura floods out of it.

It surges around Maria and my Origin Bodies, creating a far thicker layer of protection; but even it is rattled by the raw pressure of the energy that collides with us next. It is impossible to avoid every single one of my energy bodies from shattering into microscopic pieces at the moment of impact.

Even after being damped through the crimson filter, I feel the impossibly massive weight crushing down on my mind and soul.

The Demon’s telepathy wave echoes through the cracks, becoming the only thing I can sense for a frame of time. There is no direction, no flowing energy bodies, no concept of the past or future even. There is only the present voice of this demon laughing through a void.

“What is this nonsense you’re spewing? I was right. The Fallen One has brainwashed you to think just like he wants you to. What a pathetic existence. A slave to the ramblings of an immortal whose time controlling this system has run out. That dragon has gone insane too. Letting mortals like you decide his fate. To think he would even let you exit the Upper Realm in your current form. Still relying on Royal Vibrations… Still reaching into your ether pools with that tainted energy to activate glyphs… And you’re still filled to the brim with Purple Divine Threads. Your Primordial Aura is so weak and unconcentrated, it has not even become one with the energy you already wield. Your fundamental understanding of the energy in this system is so primitive, it only solidifies my claim. I am the destined Emperor. The Fallen One was wrong! And every test you throw at me to try and make me sway from my understandings will only be proven to be trivial when the Origin Plane is dead and cold, with one true master remaining!”

As his words stop, I feel every single fractured piece of my mind and soul reforming in the darkness of the void; like I’m experiencing the reversal of every collision I just felt.

Every cell, energy particle, glyph, and divine thread are summoned one by one back into existence; and the Royal Vibrations and Primordial Aura tethered to them reform with it.

For an instant in time, when I’m unable to perceive the void, I do witness the sight through Ember’s eyes. A recollection of events through our soul-tied spectate feed triggers in the back of my mind.

Even when our bodies were destroyed, two crimson shadows remained floating in the void.

The primordial aura that holds our origin bodies together was not obliterated by these purple waves of energy that look like demonic sun flares. In fact, there are a few other identifying factors that are not destroyed, yet are not directly linked to my consciousness.

The imagery of my black and red metallic horns stays intact, while the structure of Maria’s halo and angel wings are not broken apart either.

Both of our soul swords withstand the blast without taking a single crack on their pristine surfaces either.

A sturdy sea of silver threads holds my blade together, while Maria’s appears to be a liquid diamond floating in the void. The waves of purple energy flow right through, and pockets of Source Resin even drain some of its power when it comes out the other side.

When our actual energy bodies start forming again, we are not just instantly back to our natural states.

The waves of pure, dense energy that leave dents in the dark void begin manipulating the space we float in.

There is a residual pressure that instantly begins destroying the re-summoned fragments of our bodies over and over again.

The weight of an entire ocean crushes us as droplets over and over again, billions of times.

I’m able to piece together what is happening by forcing together the moments of perception from small areas on my body that bend into safe portions of space before getting destroyed again; and the data that Ember continuously sends me from his point of view.

The golden dragon’s mood does not fluctuate at all. I get crystal-clear readings of his mental patterns, and he does not think about stepping in to help at all. His words before were truthful, he truly is just acting as an observer.

While this change in events is quite overwhelming, there is no fear in my heart…

The dragon’s indifference floods my own mind with a calmness that slowly starts to match the serene nature of his Primordial Aura.

It is not from Ember’s belief in me alone, it also has to do with the countless new memories of battles just like this from my blade, and the fact that with every injury I take the affected areas grow back far stronger.

I’m gaining the same amount of comprehension every time my energy body is shattered that I received when sending a wave of my telepathy into this demon’s pool of consciousness.

He is foolishly allowing me to map out his entire mind in greater detail with every hit. This incomprehensible difference between us he brags of will soon be quite simple for me to understand.

The extreme stress this pressure is putting our energy bodies under makes for a far different regeneration than last time, when there were just wisps of demonic aura that would flow away.

This time, it’s like Noctus has permanently stained this area of the void, with us tethered to it, bent in space under a mental pressure far stronger than our own. It is like we’ve been deleted. Every time we try to resurface using the mechanisms of the membrane we used before, we’re suppressed entirely over and over again in countless ways.

We cannot move away from the attacks; the only possible way to exist is to overpower them.

These strange bends force our cores to fragment and bend in extremely unnatural angles that they have never been positioned to before.

Flickering webs of pseudo silver threads pulse throughout the cracks in my body.

This only occurred a few times before for a barely noticeable fraction of a moment, but now, it won’t stop. Almost every time my cores fracture and bend in on each other to resummon fragments of themselves, more pulses of these blending energies that should never naturally touch are formed.

The same exact reaction is taking place in the depths of Maria’s many Soul energy cores. Every time the fragments of her energy bodies are destroyed, her near-infinite stacked pseudo cores all trigger their bottomless pools of energy to automatically try to heal, but they are fractured to pieces before they can truly follow out the task. It leads to a strange fragmented cycle, that allows shards of these cores to bend and break enough to twist through the single oversaturated True Purple Core that rests simultaneously in all of the copied soul energy cores’ centers.

Billions of pulses of webs made of silver threads streak through her crystalline angelic outline in the void.