Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

“Stop! Don’t move any closer! If that Demonic Essence infects you, there will be nothing I can do to save you!” Vardon’s voice echoes out from behind me once he finally shakes himself out of shock.

A collection of shielding arrays starts to form in front of me.

Far past the tree I float toward, the dark outline of a Black Ogre comes into my visual range as well.

“He’s right. Their essence is nasty. It’s a mutated legacy, one mana-based lifeforms like us cannot even interact with. The core of its energy signature is like poison to our souls. Touching it would be a death sentence,” he proclaims.

My new heightened senses take in the aura of this Ogre as he has returned to his calm and collected state.

Yet, he cannot hide the overflowing power that is stimulating all of his glyph imprints. His astral form is hardly even black anymore with all of the white ether commands glowing beneath the surface. All of the plain white, pure, high-quality ether glyphs from those demons have been absorbed into his pool. It appears he’s almost twice as strong as he was moments ago…

All I do is nod, then look back at the Fiery mammoth that has put a wall of glyphs in front of me.

“Thank you for the concern for my safety, but my body is different than yours. I don’t think it’ll be harmful to me like it is to both of you…”

Vardon looks away from me with a grunt and over to Ulgar. “I’ve never met one of this race before, but now I know why. Humans are not intelligent enough to survive in the Primordial Garden. How do you expect me to honor my side of the deal if he’s adamant on killing himself?”

Ulgar rolls his eyes at the mammoth’s words and looks back to me with a serious glare. A large amount of his newly acquired glyphs float up to his eyes and flash with white scanning arrays, floating through me a few times.

At first, nothing happens, and he stays nervous at my words, but I loosen up the barrier of Royal Vibrations holding my corruption back inside my Demon’s core to let a small aura seep out. The next pulse of high-quality ether that streams through me makes the Ogre’s eyes widen with shock. He immediately retracts his scanning glyphs back into his soul.

“Let him through…” He waves a hand in the air, now showing the same face of shock that Vardon did the moment Maria and I produced High-Quality Glyphs for the first time.

The Mammoth grunts, and the white wall in front of me dissolves, and each glyph floats back toward the tusks they came off.

I keep moving toward the dark purple liquid.

It slowly swirls around within a confined space. Primordial Aura and Royal Vibrations of the Demon that came from it slowly seep out, but none of the demonic energy or glyphs inside flow in the natural atmosphere like all of the rest of the energy.

For some reason, these glyphs all make perfect sense to me. I can’t exactly tell what each of them does individually, but when I scan my gaze across all of them, I feel like I have the intrinsic knowledge stored away in my mind.

Their patterns don’t feel harmful; they look like they’d be extremely nourishing, almost like a key I desperately need.

Silence and tension fill the air as I float close enough to reach out and touch one of the white glyphs floating inside the dark purple energy. Instead of using any of my mana-based forms to make direct contact, I allow the entire suppression barrier around my Royal Demon’s core to be lifted and let the thick coiling tendrils of corruption out.

They hold the wills and Demonic Energy of three Royal Demons, tens of thousands of High Nobles, and a countless number of Nobles and Lesser Class Demons from the Ravine. They are all controlled and Dominated by my own will, but one that has been separated from the will that resides in my Celestial Fire.

When these dark tendrils of corruption touch the outside of the glob of purple energy, they immediately pulse and vibrate with life. The vibrations I’m controlling begin to resonate and combine with the leftover vibrations in this essence, and they start to become one.

Purple globs of Demonic Essence start to flow into the tentacle-like feelers of black corruption. The tendrils grow in power and size and dive deep into the pocket of energy to surround the closest glyph. The white symbol becomes covered in strands of darkness, cracked and fractured apart, then consumed instantly.

This only makes the dark energy coming out of me grow in size.

It is like a chain reaction, making the tendrils of corruption flood through the sap-like demonic essence faster and destroy every glyph it can get its energy near.

Rivers of dark purple energy and sparkling white light travel down the tendrils of corruption back into my being, and the enormous mass of Demonic Essence on this tree shrinks at a noticeable rate.

I’m far too engrossed in the process to care for the eyes wide with disbelief behind me.

The feelings of familiarity I had for every glyph become so much clearer once they’re crushed and digested. It’s like I had a dictionary of all of their uses trapped away in the back of my mind from long ago, and now I’m reading it again with perfect memory as a refresher.

In less than a minute, over half of the Demonic Essence in this blob is completely gone, pouring into my Demon’s Core and being compressed, while the raw High-Quality ether is being absorbed as pure knowledge. A dense white mist of residue I can’t absorb is flowing out behind me, where Maria watches.

Her eyes glow with sparkling source resin as more floods out from her core, temporarily ignoring the Primordial Aura of the trees. It appears willing to take the risk of being perceived, as the purity and fine broken up structure of this mist is far too desirable to pass up.

There are no stray glyphs, harmful vibrations, or even divine threads in this mist. Ulgar and Vardon even look down with jealousy in their eyes.

The Demonic Essence glob is shrinking, and this makes the remaining glyphs inside it far more concentrated. My tendrils of corruption could only pick out the stray isolated ones at first, but now it is reaching into the core where collections of far more compact arrays are still intact. I feel myself slipping away into a trance as the information I’m gaining speeds up, and its volume increases as well.

This translates to my senses leaving reality behind again, and memories from this legacy flood into my mind with it.

All I see is a dark black room.

The sound of wings flapping fills the silence, and the eyes of this memory holder turn up toward the noise.

A pair of golden dragon wings fill their vision, and the sound of teeth gritting back and forth follows as they look down again.

I see a Demon’s body. They have a dense, saturated Purple True Core, but I’m certain only their Royal Demon’s Core has combined with Celestial Energy. It’s extremely dense and holds more volume than a million seas that filled the Blue Zone, but it does not have the smooth and refined features of High-Quality ether.

A Demonic yell comes out of their mouth, “Accept me as the Emperor! The Creator’s Legacy is mine! As the first Demon to take control of this system, I demand you show yourself to me!”

Over and over it yells into the darkness, and I hear the slow flapping of wings above.

“I was created for this sole purpose! My race as a whole is superior to all of the lifeforms birthed by mana below. I am the anomaly of Creation itself! There is no one better suited for the Creator’s Glyphs than me!”

His hands start glowing with bright purple auras, filled with celestial-grade demonic essence. He slams waves of them into the floor, filling the air with bright, sparkling light. But nothing seems to happen.

Whatever structure he’s in doesn’t move at all.

The constant bashing of energy fills the air with enough glow to reveal the full glory of the Golden Dragon flying above him, and I see the bright crimson eye of a dragon I recognize.

My inner soul shivers, but the memories don’t stop moving forward.

A statue of a Demon is lit up by the purple explosions on one side of this dark room, and another statue of an Angel lights up on the other.

“If you won’t accept the rightful owner of this Legacy, then I will make my own! You believe only living beings birthed from mana can become immortals; I will show you what true immortality is. None of you shall ever reach the Upper Realm again. The Demons shall reign until this legacy is rightfully given to me!”

It continues throwing a tantrum, lighting up the room with more and more purple light, illuminating Originator’s text all over the walls that do not react at all with its energy.

For a moment, I catch a glimpse of the crimson eyes of the dragon in the air again, and for the first time ever in any memory of Ember, I see they’re filled with fear. I don’t know why, or what he’s become worried about, but as I try to focus more to find out, my grasp on these memories starts to fade.

The Demon’s yelling carries on, but it becomes harder and harder to make out.

The Primordial forest around me starts to come back into view, and I see the dark tendrils of corruption retracting back into my Demon’s Core in front of me. Every last drop of Demonic Essence on that tree’s bark is completely gone.