Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

More notifications ring in my mind as Abby claims all of the worlds held in the Cyan Zone, and my borrowed stats explode upward. I’m only currently pulling 60%, but at my fingertips, I have access to 90% of the borrowed stats from over 70 billion worlds in the Lower Realm.

Moments ago, using my Rising Emperor perks, I could see a small portion of the galaxy below me.

The worlds I was connected to gave me live feeds to countless solar systems, and perfect locations pinpointing the exact coordinates of every one of my links of loyalty. It looked like small pinpricks of light in a dark black veil of mystery.

Now, it’s like a flash of bright light illuminates massive amounts of the darkness in the vastness of space. My access to systems increases by ten times in seconds, and I can finally feel the true expanse of the Lower Realm.

There are still incredibly massive dark blotches of mystery space, but the unexplored areas of this galaxy now all have massive pockets of linked worlds.

Even thinking about it expands my mind. The act of comprehending all of this data starts to exponentially increase my energy control depth, and my Royal Vibrations become extremely stimulated. My will is strengthened many times over by perceiving all of these new worlds that have submitted to me. Perceiving myself as the ruler of over a large percent of the known worlds awakens a primal confidence in my soul, proving to myself that I truly am the Rising Emperor.

An additional unexpected side effect of this is the addition of over 100 quintillion individual soul ties forming all at once. Every single link of loyalty on these worlds creates an invisible tether from my chest down through the zones of the Upper Realm and all throughout the galaxy.

They land on old neglected worlds near the outer edges of this galaxy, on planets forgotten in time with single-digit numbers of living system users remaining on them. Others are thriving worlds with billions of ferocious monsters. Their energy purities vary; some are 5th class wastelands, while others are near Noble Grade worlds with thriving civilizations that have taken over their local star sectors.

Plenty of races are unrecognizable to me, and many more are very similar to planets on the complete opposite side of the galaxy. It is all quite a shock.

However, this shock makes my Primordial Aura bend the very bottom of this Zone with absolute power.

I don’t know how or why, but access to all of these souls has increased my ability to wield this Aura. I even feel my sleeping amplifier tremble inside my soul.

As the authority figure in the Rising Empress control panels within the system, Maria’s aura bursts outward with power too, and grows even larger while seeing and feeling everything that goes on in my mind. My own aura bounces off this increase in power, as I witness this upgrade from her point of view next.

Our breakthroughs bounce off each other over and over, getting stronger until we reach an equilibrium; however, the gravitational force pouring out of our Celestial Bodies has started to pull all of the energy in this zone toward us up in the air.

The Celestial Sea swells upward until it touches our feet, and begins pouring into our bodies.

My Royal Sacred Body, surrounded by Royal Corruption and Celestial Fire, and the Royal Blue Arch Angel’s Celestial Body sparkling with Source Resin grow exponentially larger as the sea is drained.

Even the thick dark blue divine threads that make up the entire atmosphere above the sea, it’s all pulled in toward us.

The more we absorb, the greater our power grows and the larger our Celestial Bodies become.

It could be stopped if we willed it, but the feeling is euphoric, and there is no reason to stop.

Two red and blue suns of pure power pull the entire sea from the floor of the Dark Blue Zone.

I can feel our auras wrap around the edges of this zone, tens of trillions of kilometers away, and drain every last drop of it. It only takes a matter of minutes, and the shockwave of Primordial Aura that pulses off us hits absolutely nothing.

The atmosphere is empty, and the floor of the zone looks like a flat black void, similar to the ravine below the Cyan Zone. There is no energy of any form left to drain.

I float closer to Maria, and raise my palms. She lets go of her sword, and raises her hands to do the same until our fingers interlock. The entire liquid mass of celestial energy and divine threads in the Dark Blue Zone begins to violently cycle through our bodies that have grown to over 10 billion kilometers tall each.

This too only takes a few minutes as we cycle this massive amount of energy through our souls countless times and refine it down into easily digestible energy.

We float downward, and hit the bottom of the zone, standing in front of the silver reactor.

It is the only thing in the entire zone that has survived. The rest has been obliterated and consumed.

Even now, with my perception reaching obscene levels no mortal would ever guess was possible; as I look deep into this silver reactor, it’s as unreadable and foreign as it was the first time I flew past one just like it in the Green Zone of the Upper Realm.

However, through Maria’s eyes, I see glimmers of High Quality Ether commands infused within the reactor’s swirling silver threads. The instant I recognize them, they start to become visible in my own perception too.

It is mesmerizing.

I can’t help but take another step closer.

This single step brings us billions of kilometers closer, almost halving the gap, and many more high-quality ether commands start materializing from nowhere in front of my eyes.

There is nothing here I can absorb, and no primordial aura packed within them like Samir’s Armor’s commands.

I start to take another step forward, but a massive amount of the high-quality ether commands flash in front of my eyes in patterns I can recognize… All of a sudden, a vision flashes in the depths of my mind.

It feels similar to the experience of witnessing a past play out through the eyes of that Hydra, but when I feel my body in these memories, it feels extremely familiar… almost like I’m remembering something from my own past.

Silver divine threads flow through this humanoid body, and bright white high-quality ether commands and glyphs pulse beneath the feet of this body.

He stands on the back of a bright golden dragon. They’re soaring over what looks like an endless forest of pristine white trees. However, as the point of view of these memories try to pan toward the dragon’s face, or upward to reveal the identity or even race of the humanoid’s eyes I’m seeing through, flashes of silver light burst in front of my eyes.

I’m blown backward, and Maria catches me as I fall momentarily unconscious. I quickly shake myself out of it, remembering the visions in perfect clarity, but now looking back, I feel a glimmer of golden light blocking off a part of them I can’t recall.

I take another step back with my eyes widened.

“We’re going to have to ascend another way…” I murmur out, recognizing this feeling from the curse Ember told me about multiple times back on the human world. It is one that does not allow me to learn things about the dragons before I’m high enough level or the right messenger can tell me.

My whole body feels like static has just run through it, and in reaction to this, my perception expands even further.

I can see even more high-quality commands inside the reactor, and now my instincts are sharp enough to realize they’re extremely dangerous. If I tried to touch or manipulate that reactor just a moment ago… it could have killed me on the spot.

These thoughts and revelations are instantly transferred into Maria’s mind, and both of our intuitions grow to see more and more within these High Quality Ether Glyphs. It puts into perspective how powerful the creator of this artifact really is… and how much stronger we need to become to have any chance of even standing in the presence of an Overseer.

The Lower Realm, Green Zone, Cyan Zone, and now this drained Blue Zone all become so clear in my mind, it’s like I’m standing in person in every single spot my links of loyalty’s perceptions can touch.

For a moment, I feel soul bonds reach upward, even higher to a Zone I’ve never even been to.

I see flashes of the fractured memory I just saw stimulate my soul bond with Ember, and my Primordial Aura starts to bend the Blue Zone with far more weight than before.

As these energy readings echo in Maria’s consciousness, she turns her head toward me with wide open sparkling rainbow eyes, “I see it too, a pathway… that’s how we’ll make it to the next zone.”

Both of our minds follow this invisible soul tie through a very delicate wavelength of reality reaching upward through the zones. We try to focus and strengthen its pull, tapping into this new feeling with every bit of mental energy we have to secure an anchor.

Simultaneously, all of the energy resting in our Celestial Bodies has hit its limit on how far it can be refined. With no more additional energy to pull in, the gravitational fields within our souls has begun to pull on our own bodies and energy stores as there is nothing else left in reality to affect.

In just a matter of hours since entering this zone, our newly formed Dark Blue Divine Cores have been oversaturated. At their cores, the dark blue threads have nowhere else to expand to while staying within the confines of our Celestial Bodies.

Shimmering Purple Divine threads are starting to naturally compress, and threaten to fracture and destabilize what is left of this Zone.