Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

My sword breaks through the dark purple core at its moment of weakness; and I feel it shatter to pieces.

When Celestial energy tries to flow back in, it creates a violent reaction and the cyan core beneath it destabilizes from the pressure.

My blade tears through the rest of its flesh and slams down on the hard black floor below.

The mutilated corpse is blown in half; and a rush of cyan threads, white Celestial energy, and a small amount of dark black and purple aura begins to flow through my soul sword.

Large amounts of this energy also burst outward, forcing me to jump backward. I’m even hit by some of the blast and feel more of my armor and skin melt from the violent last resort move.

Maria and I both fly backward to avoid the majority of the blast, and land on our backs over five meters away from the corpse.

There are scattered icy remains from its shattered limbs, and pieces of its flesh that are still on fire under our backs.

But, our breathing is so heavy, and the relief that this battle is over is so strong; neither of us even care to move. We only stare up into the darkness, grasping our blades and each other’s hands.

Even though we’ve killed this Demon, that doesn’t mean the battle is over…

The final wave of energy rushes through me.

The hot white Celestial Light burns through the insides of my body and makes my mind go white for a few seconds. There is loud ringing in my ears, and it pushes my soul energy core to slightly fracture at the seams under the pressure and heat.

It feels like a ball of fire is spinning in my chest, and all I can do is grit my teeth and let it pass.

The cyan threads that flow through me and into my True Core are quite tame in comparison. I can handle this influx with ease; the excess flows out within the Celestial Energy wave that travels through my arm toward Maria.

Our vibrations are in perfect sync, so she’s already felt the stress it’s put on me and braces for the pain as well. The light surges through my palm and into her.

Yet, as Maria’s vibrations echo her cycling process into my psyche, part of my mind wanders for a moment…

There is a small amount of black and purple energy I’ve absorbed from this Demon that falls directly into my Royal Demon’s Core.

It passes through the barrier of vibrations I’ve created and is entirely absorbed. Not a single drop comes out…

The moment it falls inside, a series of fractured and fuzzy memories of that demon’s life flash in my mind.

Almost none of them come with clear visuals, they are entirely made of emotions and battle instincts.

I get the fractured senses of that demon’s mind for thousands of years in this dark void.

Nothing from the green zone or lower realm is revealed… not even how it got here, or how long it has even been in this place. Its oldest memories are of fighting in the darkness here, as a Cyan Core.

My momentary slip of mental resonance is felt by Maria, but her cycle through this wave of energy has come to its peak. Once it’s sent back, her mind starts to wander too, as we’re not completely focused on survival anymore.

I cycle the Celestial energy that pours back into me.

It has her icy source resin imbued in it, but the majority is still very rough hot white energy from the Demon.

It’s painful to refine again, but manageable.

We cycle this energy back and forth, over twenty times each, until the energy we’re cycling through each other is only our own.

The heavy breathing and heart beating out of my chest finally calms down.

The claw marks on my back are fully sealed up, and the marks on Maria’s side have also been healed from the flow of my Celestial Fire with focused rejuvenation properties as it cycles through her.

My shattered bones in my arm and hand are readjusted by my Celestial Energy, and healed back up too. The stress that the initial wave made on my Soul energy core recovers as well, healing up the small fracture points.

It takes another thirty cycles each before both of us can sit up fully healed. Considering it only takes ten seconds at most per cycle now, it is fast, but we have been lying on this floor beside the dead demon for almost half an hour.

My ether senses have increased drastically, over double the range, making its full corpse within view; and the back wall behind us about seven meters away.

The wall itself looks like it’s scratched up, with deep carvings in some places, but smooth areas in others. I turn away and focus my senses back toward the fallen demon.

The only thing that hasn’t healed is our blood-bonded armor. There are still exposed areas of skin in the shape of claw marks on my back and Maria’s side now as we stand to our feet and walk over to the demon.

A steady flow of Celestial Energy cycles through us even as we walk forward, not with as much intensity as when we were healing, but enough to continue refining our energy.

It’s been weeks of this constant process. Stopping would feel quite unnatural…

I stare down at the monster’s corpse once we stand over it, then tightly grip my soul sword. It pulses with a red and white light, then compresses into my palm and disappears entirely; falling back into my soul as pure energy.

Then, I bend down to use this free hand and feel the Demon’s flesh out of curiosity.

There are still large chunks left in a pile, and some flickering red fire or glistening blue ice leftover. Even the old injuries from this demon’s past battles are still present.

This isn’t what intrigues me.

I lift up a hand-sized piece of meat and feel my hand become covered in an oily, slimy substance almost instantly.

I squeeze, and the flesh gushes between my fingers, almost like it’s melting into a liquid state.

The leftover ether and divine threads are all dispersing into the atmosphere.

So, what I feel between my fingers now is some kind of refined and mutated Demonic energy.

When we were battling it, I really thought it was bleeding like us, and that it had managed to keep its real body from the Lower Realm too.

But, as I rub the liquid that dissolves into almost a watery state in my fingers, I come to the realization this is a strange Avatar, nothing like the ones I came across in the green zone.

All of the rest of its flesh melts in the same way.

The process is sped up when I touch it for some reason, but as I sift through the Demon’s dissolving corpse, one thing does stand out.

Its horns still hold a large amount of white Celestial energy. Even the cracked one pulses with a bright Celestial glow.

The two horns are the only true remains of this demon that rest on top of the hard ground in a solid state.

I lift them both up and look down, as I can barely hold them in one hand, but an idea comes to mind.

If my True Core’s ability to absorb memories is still slightly intact, and I’m able to interact with my soul sword still, maybe there are other powers I still have access to.

I close my eyes and focus extremely hard on the horn, and as another cycle of Celestial Energy comes through me from Maria, I let half of her icy blue energy flow around my core, while the other half I cycle through.

Both blue and red Celestial energy flows up my arm and into my palm that touches these horns.

The feeling of using craftsmanship is all I focus on, and I picture the end result of what I want clear in my mind.

As the Celestial Energy flows into these horns, they melt like malleable metal in my hand, and turn into a pair of perfectly crafted, lightweight gauntlets.

I let out a surprised chuckle into the silent darkness, as I half expected this wouldn’t work at all.

There are no system prompts that show in my mind, or any way to guide this craft to work with machine-like precision.

Yet, I mimicked exactly how the energy flow should feel… and created a very unique weakly soul-bonded gauntlet set.

The memory of the pain that shattered my wrist from trying to block that Demon’s attack is still fresh in my mind, so a stronger brace for it was what I craved most.

One is black, white and red; while the other is slightly smaller and glows blue and white. I hand it over to Maria, as she mimics my movement from before and lets her own soul sword disappear back into her soul.

We both slide the gauntlets onto our outer wrists over our blood bonded armor, and stare at them in the darkness for a few energy cycles as the gear assimilates with us.

The painful feeling of her hand and wrist breaking during that battle is fresh in her mind too, during the craft this is what her vibrations and celestial energy yearned for too.

The moment we put them on, the instinctual feeling of higher defense can be felt. The new small piece of armor feels like an extension of our bodies; like Celestial energy can flow through it just as easily as our flesh.

No words are spoken, but the potential of this ability makes my mind race.

Maria’s heart rate rises in excitement just as fast as mine, but both of our attentions are pulled away from this creation.

A slow-moving liquid pool of dark avatar remains starts to pour in toward us from the outer edges of darkness outside my ether senses.

When I look up, I double-check the surroundings and mentally count all of the lost limbs of this beast, but all of their dark puddles are within range.

Another memory surfaces.

It is of when this Demon was nothing but footsteps in the darkness.

Its inconsistent limp was easily explained by the bite in its thigh, but now that I recall, it was also dragging something…