Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

"I'll be back in a few days. I must leave now to continue my training."

This is all I message through a quick telepathy channel to the two 1st Class Lords who have just helped me tremendously.

The majority of my mind and body is concentrated on maintaining my Noble Vibration suppression, while the rest alters the Ether Commands around me to ensure that, while flying away from the Citadel at extremely fast speeds, I remain invisible like a ghost.

I take deep breaths while airstepping over the green clouds, letting Ellipsia disappear behind me, and allowing the pressure, ringing, and heat to build up inside my body.

For all the mental reinforcement over the last week in my mind, making me believe that I've become immune to physical pain, this sensation makes me rethink things.

It's like my body is being blown up from the inside like a balloon, but the outer edges cannot expand to relieve the pressure.

My purple barrier is useless, as it only holds back mana and pure divine energy-based phenomena.

My large pool of ether doesn't help much either.

While circulating it within my mind keeps the loud ringing and increasing pressure at bay from driving me mad, it doesn't do anything to alleviate the increasing buildup of Noble Vibrations multiplying inside my being, scratching at the walls of my soul and mind to be released.

My vision, and even ether senses, dull more and more the further away from the Citadel I travel, but I still have enough mental capacity left to remember the way back.

Though, over the last thirty minutes or so, as I descend down into the clouds, it is a bit of a blind dive.

I can't sense anything, and it feels like my entire body is on fire with liquid flames far hotter than a sun.

My fear and danger senses actually go off again, as it feels like I cross a point where I'm about to harm myself if I hold this power back much longer...

That is, until I dive deep into the sea of corruption. The moment I feel a lead blanket surround me, it actually makes suppressing my Vibrations slightly easier. Still, I wait almost a full minute, pushing myself downward into the thick sludge further before releasing the suppression technique a few hundred kilometers beneath the sea.

–

Seraphel continues to peacefully glide in circles overhead, as he has been doing, staring down at the grey sea that brings back old memories of its fall to the strongest Morevale Family General long ago.

Back then, there was nothing they could do but watch it fall. Countless soldiers who followed his orders died or became corrupted trying to fight back.

Very familiar cold vibrations come off the sea, like an echo of the past; though a new destructive force erupts from down below as well, making the Wyvern feel an intense warmth as a suppression technique is lifted deep beneath the murky liquid.

–

An immense chaotic and violent pressure from within me is released, paired with a satisfying rush knowing that I don't have to hold it back any longer, and the true increase in strength from my sword leveling up finally manifests itself as well.

I feel even stronger than I did after releasing my suppression after a lap around the Citadel following my first stage of training.

My senses finally return to me, and my mind feels clear again.

I can see everything in this grey sea as though it is a crystal-clear lake.

The massive towers and Citadel parts deep under the ocean that I was manipulating before all reconnect to my senses, and I even sense Seraphel flying high above the sea.

His Suppression Technique is activated too; however, the Blue Wyvern gives off a light aura, not fully holding back all of his Vibrations.

I'm unsure if this is necessary—to let some out in order to keep the suppression activated for long periods of time—or if my senses have just grown so acute that I'm now noticing an aura that I didn't before.

However, even if the first thought is the case, sensing anything this deep beneath the sea is impressive.

I let my Noble Vibrations settle down from their violent and chaotic state by putting them to good use, moving around structures beneath the sea; organizing towers and bringing more upright, as even in the seven days of training before, I didn't get to every single tower of this immense fallen citadel.

Then, once I feel myself settling back to a natural state a few minutes later, I come across a new phenomenon beneath the sea.

After moving a large piece of a broken tower from what I thought was a section of the sea floor, a deep crack in the ground becomes visible to me, leading down a deep ravine even further than I can see.

The pressure feels far denser, and even looking in its direction makes my poison resistance perk work in overdrive.

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I feel cold Noble Vibrations ripple through me, as I sense this pocket of corruption has been blocked off from the outside sea, plugged up by a pile of decaying towers.

Even Seraphel feels the shift in vibrations beneath the surface.

I don't investigate for myself. Instead, I swim upward again, reactivating my suppression technique to fly up and out of the sea.

The Blue Wyvern is already swooping down to greet me.

"I take it you managed to stay suppressed during your entire trip back..."

His eyes shift down to the sea, then back up to me.

"Yes, I did."

I pull out the blue-tinted containment case from my storage to show proof, and Seraphel immediately replies while using ether to pull the box closer to him.

"Good. And I think that pocket of far more potent corruption you found will be perfect for your next and final stage of training. I thought we would have to go much deeper into the sea to find leftovers still as dangerous as the day of the war."

I raise an eyebrow as Seraphel opens up the containment case and peers inside, the bright blue glow lighting up his face with mana.

The presence of water magic and dense ether becomes far more potent to me as he nods and looks back up at me.

"I'll be joining you down in the sea this time. You've managed to become quite skilled at creating and manipulating structures that you have full control over. Your Vibrations have begun to find a path to mature upon, but for this next stage, I have a task for you that is a bit selfish. It consists of training your Vibrations to take control of systems and structures that you are not in control of... kind of like a heavily encrypted code that needs new creativity and growing untainted power like yours to crack..."

My expression doesn't change, as I'm still a bit confused about what he means by this. Though, his next comment, while he turns the containment case my way, makes things far more clear.

"For your last stage of training, I want you to unseal my physique. If you can do this, then maybe I'll finally believe you have a chance at following through with the absurd plan you've laid out to take back the green zone of the Upper Realm."

–

Meanwhile, in the Lower Realm, on a moon base orbiting around a Demonic World; an emergency inside Maria's cultivation chamber is still ongoing.

The restock of divine fragments Alveron has placed inside are drained in less than four hours, and an additional five layers of the dense black walls of the base have fractured and begun to leak dense aura outward.

The silver knight restocks the chambers again but is forced to deactivate the walls of the center room.

The cold icy soul energy that is being emitted from contact with Maria's skin has rendered this portion of the base completely useless.

They're soaked with a royal blue aura and fracture like glass once their connection to the rest of the base is severed.

The reload of divine fragments into the room comes from the second inner wall's system commands now, as there are only 51 intact salvageable walls remaining in the base.

"She really destroyed an inner wall beyond repair... neither of the other generals managed that," Alveron says in a fake amused tone.

Behind this silver knight facade, the yellow slug is analyzing the data over and over again, trying to figure out where exactly this Soul Energy came from.

It's like it's seeping out from her skin at an endless rate, and her perceived energy levels are not changing.

Bri looks up from her system at these words.

"Yes, and it looks like she's spread her aura through half the walls...."

The craftswoman grins but is partially occupied with the World Wide Connectivity system market surge.

Nearly 200,000 active mana-based worlds were just added, and the user base of buyers and sellers increased by almost ten times. While there are no new 1st or 2nd Class superpowers to add to the Galactic Trade Committee, Bri sees massive markets to tap into and many 3rd Class worlds with plenty of resources to manipulate and sell to the new 4th and 5th Class worlds.

–

However, it's less than two hours later before the second wall of Maria's cultivation room faces the same fate as the first, becoming completely enveloped in her ambient Soul Energy just from contact.

An hour after that, the third wall faces the same problem. It is completely destroyed beyond what the self healing system can fix. Her mana control and divine aura surpasses the 31st wall, creating fractures and breaks that are maintained and worsen faster than they can be self-healed, breaking the record for the furthest distance either of the generals surpassed while bonding with their Soul Weapons.

During these three hours, Alveron has to restock the divine fragment stores again, yet no sign of where they're going is known.

In his advanced scanners, the only thing that can be seen is a strange overlap of Maria's Divine Core and Soul Energy Core.

It appears as though they're working together, but Alveron's mental theory is that Maria's Soul Energy Core is overpowering her Divine Core.

In the tens of thousands of True Core compressions this silver knight has witnessed in the past, it has never seen one so bizarre.

Even with special buffs, artifact crafts, or even the aid of Low-Quality Ether in some strong 1st Class civilizations, there is never an energy source that overpowers Divine Threads.

In essence, they aren't even a true energy source. Divine Threads are more of a medium to channel one's power and exert its true dominance on reality around them.

While one that wields different colored Divine Threads may seem like they use them as a power source, as the pure threads can be wielded alone and bent to the user's commands, it is a far more complicated series of events that are really taking place.

Divine Energy—from red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, dark blue, all the way to purple—are all the same exact manifestation of a whole. They are just tightly bound to different densities for wielders to use based on their bodies' and minds' limits.

–

This is the first time Alveron is witnessing a True Core's compression being eclipsed by another force of nature.

The only reason Maria's True Core hasn't collapsed and saturated a hundred times over is that it's been trapped within a gravity field more powerful than its own.

The Dark Blue Soul Energy Core in the Ice Mage's chest has allowed an unfathomable amount of divine energy to be packed into the yellow Divine Core, as it is bending reality around it, keeping it from collapsing in a state of suspended animation.

The usual stress, forces of gravity, and rules of reality have been protected by a shield of overbearing power.

The fourth and fifth inner walls both break at once, shattering into shimmering icy snow while Maria's aura surges outward even more, forcing its way through the 35th outer wall.

When Alveron loads up the fortress with another full replacement of divine fragments, the surge of yellow energy that flows into her core disappears and depletes the base's stores in a matter of minutes.

The sixth inner wall is broken, and she opens her eyes while releasing a wave of blue light that cracks and fractures up to the 40th outer wall, leaving only 12 dense black layers of structures between her and the vacuum of space on this moon.

A telepathy message is sent through the systems as another load of divine fragments is transferred in. It echoes in the minds of everyone present on all of the moon bases.

"I'm going to activate my third Ranked-Up buff... If you are listening, please send in all of the divine fragments you have to spare, then evacuate as far away as you can. I'm not sure how destructive the result of my compression will be, and I do not want any reason to hold back."

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