Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

“How is this happening?! The King said it would be impossible for you to awaken your stolen legacies without the key!”

The Demon yells out with hatred, and a loud, horrific roar to deal with the pain of losing an arm and a massive amount of its Royal Demonic Form. The shape of this First Blood Demon’s Soul is permanently altered. Even my eyes open wide as I wasn’t expecting Maria’s attack to cause so much destruction.

All of the Primordial Aura in the atmosphere retracts back into this demon, and it pools in its one remaining fist.

A loud, crushing thud, then a series of cracks echo through the domain as it slams its fist down on its own shoulder.

Before the growing diamond ice crystals can expand into the rest of its body, a concentrated wave of Primordial Aura severs its own flesh and disconnects this growing icy plague of death from its body.

Massive chunks of glistening icy diamonds fall into the craters below this demon’s fully intact body, but the Demon that still floats above is extremely injured.

Waves of Demonic Essence, High Royal Vibrations, and Primordial Aura flow into the injured area as it tries to heal, but it’s no use. Left behind is a void, like a portion of this Demon’s soul was just torn out of its very being.

The more energy it uses to try and heal, and the more seconds that pass, the more fear grows in its eyes, and in turn, the rage that shakes this domain grows even more.

Demonic Glyphs pour out from its injury, forming a phantom arm, shoulder, and upper chest in its place; but when the Demon’s aura pours out into the settlement again, it’s clear its domineering presence has been shaken.

“On the day of the sealing… I suffer a wound like this out of pure chance? You will pay for this… I will steal this strange, primordial-aura-defying power you hold and take it for myself!” it yells, and begins forming a whip again in its one remaining good hand.

However, the First Blood disregards its prideful mindset of not moving, and lunges forward in a blur of invisible aura and demonic glyphs.

Without the pressure of its aura in the atmosphere, the aura that surrounds its body becomes many times denser. In turn, this Demon’s movements are incredibly fast… its body is moving at the same speed its whips were cracking just moments ago.

It’s coming full force at us. Challenging this demon in a close-range confrontation would be problematic if this was the only variable that changed.

The fact that it’s pulled its aura back into its body means the overwhelming pressure of the atmosphere has been lifted. Gravity feels like it’s decreased by hundreds of times, and there is no longer a constant Vibration suppression trying to burrow into my mind.

While Maria and my power surge, and our movement speed and energy manipulation efficiency skyrockets, three blurry bursts of white, black, and rust-colored light appear in the corner of my eye.

The Ogre, Griffin, and Mammoth that were pinned to the top of buildings, unable to even move before, catch a moment of relief. I watch them all fly out of the rubble in separate directions as far away from the battlefield as possible.

All of them look in horrible shape, even though they never even were directly attacked. The buildings they were near did not even get hit by the Demon’s whips; the majority of the last impacts happened on the total opposite end of the settlement.

None of them even attempt to help, and I don’t blame them. There is nothing they can do but get in the way right now.

In fact, watching their auras leave my field of view brings an even wider smile to my face.

I no longer have any reason to hold back at all.

In the time this Demon threw a fit of rage, my corruption-wielding soul weapon has already almost fully recharged.

Maria and I have begun shifting our directions through the clouds of Glyphs and Celestial Energy near the center of this settlement too, and now control over 200 million of our own Creator’s Legacy glyphs in a beautiful red and blue collection of arrays.

Even as the gap between us and this First Blood Demon is negated instantly, when it bashes its one good palm holding a shortened yet strengthened demonic whip against our defenses, it does not get the result it desired.

There is an unfathomable shockwave that follows. Over 100 million red and blue glyphs shatter and release their energy. Billions of helping Dryad’s Glyphs that were floating around us, latched onto our souls, also shatter from the impact; and trillions of Demonic Glyphs erupt outward as this compressed whip breaks apart from the force of the impact as well.

The main destructive force of this collision is the Demon’s Primordial Aura.

Instead of getting blown backward from the shockwaves that instantly turn every single building in this settlement to rubble, it grabs onto space itself between us.

Gravity bends in extremely strange ways, and I even watch the pseudo-arm of this Demon fade and lose its strength as most of its Primordial Aura is being channeled into what it’s doing now.

It is an eerie sensation.

We all float in the air above hundreds of destroyed structures, and a clawed Demonic hand latched onto our remaining arrays.

It pours its Primordial Aura into them, and I start to feel myself losing control of millions of them on the outer edge of our remaining defense.

It’s using brute force to tear them open.

I feel the strong emotions in its vibrations right now, and it surprises me.

This is not the calculated Demonic Rage of a Family Head like Miriel Vermillion, or the cool-tempered demeanor of that nameless demon in the Cyan Zone’s abyss, or even the arrogant superiority of Samir Vanguard in the Blue Zone.

Even the Purple Cored Outer Guards fought with logical battle tactics and did not underestimate their opponents.

This Demon’s rage is like a child throwing a fit.

I don’t think this First Blood has ever seen anything in its life that could possibly injure it or even fight back in the slightest like we are.

This Demon is spoiled… it’s never not gotten its way in this paradise stolen from an ancient race in the Purple Zone.

However, it may be for good reason. Despite its unreasonable attitude, the overwhelming strength in its body has multiplied many times over. Even close up and personal, the layers of Primordial Aura around its being right now are like staring at a lead wall. I can’t pierce a single reading through anymore.

Even its High Royal Vibrations have compressed in on themselves and made its clawed fingers and flesh of the arm that tears through our barriers stronger than any substance I’ve ever seen.

I’m positive if Maria tried to send an identical attack to her last Source Resin Crescent toward this Demon now, it would be useless.

To test my theory slightly, I start to fire off some of the smaller black bolts of corruption from my arm cannon. I open up pockets of our defenses and send them through.

I watch black clouds of corruption instantly explode when they hit its aura. They don’t even touch the Demon’s skin.

I’m sure this is the full activation of that ranked-up buff on its status, [Primordial Defense].

I try to even let the raw corruption and black glyphs seep into its aura, but they’re all constricted and starved of energy before touching this Demon’s real body. Before, these bolts could slice right through the less dense Primordial Aura in the atmosphere, but in such a compressed state, my weaker attacks have met their match.

Even so, I try again, four more times, aiming for any weak points I think I can strike, but nothing works. They’re all ground to black mist.

The Demon’s eyes only fill with more rage, and it tears apart our defenses faster.

Clouds of shattered glyphs and red and blue mist begin to form behind this monster while Maria and I begin to feel our ether pools slowly lose mass for the first time since the start of this battle.

We’re able to create glyphs at nearly the same rate as it destroys them, but we can no longer move. Its Primordial Aura has a chokehold on our positioning.

In just a few seconds, we are going to run out of raw Celestial energy to compress into glyphs… yet this Demon still seems to have an endless well of power and rage to spew at us.

Instead of waiting until the bitter end, Maria and I decide it will be better to set up our next attack while we still have the ether pools remaining to launch it.

I don’t recharge any of my smaller bolts again; I pour all of the remaining corruption and soul weapon mass into the single kill shot arrow I haven’t fired yet. Maria channels her source resin to compress in her blade again. Both of us stop creating more glyphs and allow the Demon to tear through the last of our defenses.

We open a massive hole in the bottom of our arrays that were keeping us steady in place on purpose right after.

In the next moment, dark purple claws destroy the last of our defenses.

The sound of a sickening Demon’s roar enters our psyches without any mental shielding.

The horrific pressure of the compressed Primordial Aura crashes down on us with nothing protecting us here either.

It blasts us downward through the holes in our defenses, propelling us backward with a wave of gravity before its claws can even hit us.

A tremor ripples through this entire Ritual Domain as we both slam into the ground, deep into the rubble of the settlement below.

There are only calm expressions on our faces.

We’ve carefully positioned ourselves to the exact point where all of the Ancient Dryad’s complex arrays in this settlement connect. It’s what we have been feeling glimpses of this whole time, connected to a far stronger network below this domain. Now, as Maria and I look up at this First Blood Demon plunging down after us, a rush of warm celestial energy floods into the bottom of our feet.