Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

Two full days pass.

—

An unfathomable amount of High Noble Vibrations are distorting the Sea of Corruption.

What used to be a dark, silent, and motionless cold ocean has turned into one full of raging waves and a unique Radiation that will make any 1st Class or below Lord that comes within one million kilometers feel as though their grasp on the system is being suppressed.

These waves bursting out from the sea peak when two incredible lifeforms overcome their limits.

An ancient Wyvern with a Celestial Grade Physique finally had the intricate seals lifted from its body that have been acting as a pseudo-avatar, binding his very soul to a lower-class lifeform's limits.

At the same time, the process of digesting, understanding, and lifting such a complex seal—filled with millions of fractal-like encryptions and failsafes to kill the manipulator and the seal holder if it is ever tampered with—brings my level of complex system understanding to an instinctual and practical degree I've never even conceptualized as possible.

Completing such a task under the suppression in the depths of the deepest point in the Sea of Corruption only forces my mind and body to work in new ways that are far too abstract for my human mind to normally comprehend.

In my Astral Form, while using the full capacity of my Noble Vibrations and borrowing large amounts of stat points from over a hundred trillion living beings in the Lower Realm, there is a moment in time where I can feel every single intricate seal while also feeling every single Noble Vibration over the last 12 thousand years that it has suppressed.

The Water Stone that Seraphel consumed before I began this process did exactly as he said, linking with his unique physique—one that makes his entire greater form turn into a light blue mass of pure water soul energy.

It does not affect the seal's suppression on his Noble Vibrations, but it makes him momentarily incapable of being hurt by my aura or physical attacks. Anything I throw at him flows through like water, reforming his mind, body, and soul back into its original state and allowing me to use trial and error on the seals without any fear.

Though it only stays malleable like this for the first few hours, I had to learn quickly and be meticulous to pull this off.

Seraphel falls into a deep sleep, and I lock into a flow state of vast understandings to improve with every movement I perform.

Every single trick I have is used—foresight, extreme precision with mana and divine energy manipulation true core abilities, and even variations of my offensive perks like swordsmanship—to use in abstract ways in order to find threads to pick complex locks within each encryption.

My Divine Craftsmanship is extremely helpful as well, opening up hundreds of thousands of windows with step-by-step guides on how to dismantle and rebuild seals with whatever my imagination can fathom.

Over the last three times I had to re-teach myself Noble Vibrations from scratch, I always got a very good grasp on them by the time the next stage of training came. However, now, I'm finally able to flourish using these instincts and knowledge gained so far, to push these understandings further than ever before.

Seal after seal is dismantled and broken, like a sharp knife in my mind cutting through millions of ropes tying this Wyvern down for millennia.

The path of Nobility becomes far more clear in my mind as I do, as the frequency of my Vibrations becomes more and more adept at using them exactly for a complex craft like this one.

The fewer seals that remain, the less malleable they become as the perks of the Water Stone are wearing off. To make things even worse, I can feel another unnatural resistance building up within the Wyvern. It is another natural phenomenon of the seals—if they ever were dwindled down to this point, they would only become more complex, harder to crack, and far more dangerous for both parties involved.

These last few hours are what make or break this entire procedure.

—

Hours later, the violent High Noble Radiation that pours off from the sea is more than enough proof that this final breakthrough was a success...

It is even more telling that the waves of radiation coming from the sea are 100% Seraphel's.

For the last few days, the waves coming out have been almost entirely mine.

—

So, as a single humanoid figure emerges from the Sea of Corruption, it is quite the eerie sight.

Seraphel's horrific waves of High Noble Vibrations do not stop, as he is still far below within the deepest ravine, attempting to stabilize his power as he is in an unstable and dangerous state.

It would be a disaster if he tried to emerge from the sea now.

Myself, on the other hand, am not borrowing a single stat from my Links of Loyalty.

Nor am I even using my Noble Form any longer.

I am simply in my unaided human form, just shy of two meters tall.

A slight grin is plastered across my face, and a gleam of deep understanding is vibrant in my eyes.

It all finally clicked—the moment I broke Seraphel's last seal and freed him from his fate, what it means to be a High Noble... and it wasn't at all what I expected.

—

Now, if one with the same new depth of knowledge that I have were to look at my body, they would be very intrigued with what I've done.

Instead of letting my own power flourish, I've taken the raw energy and intricate patterns of the seals off of Seraphel's body and created a one-time-use limiter for myself.

It is comprised of three layers of millions of seals, placed on my Demon's Core, Soul Energy Core, and Divine Core.

My Low-Quality Ether Pool, which has now surpassed 110 million, is also slightly sealed by the third, most complex layer.

—

This is not for me to be held back for my own good. I would not hurt myself like Seraphel if he was let loose in an unsuppressed state.

It is so I do not hurt others.

I still have quite a lot of business to take care of in Ellipsia, and can't go destroying the Citadel by accident just from taking a wrong step.

While I could perform a temporary suppression technique without these seals, I also did not want the beautiful, complex machines I worked so hard to understand and disassemble to go to waste.

In fact, altering them and improving them further consolidated my confidence that whoever created these seals is no unsurpassable god like I first believed after all.

—

I float upward above the green divine clouds and make my way back to Ellipsia while sending a simple message down to my generals in the Lower Realm.

"Prepare yourselves to ascend. I will be ready to begin the Fast Travel activation in a few hours."

—

Then, I peacefully float back through the ether command surveillance bubble like a ghost.

Even with all of these seals on, and no Noble Vibrations to better understand my surroundings, manipulating these tiny and simple structures is nothing to me.

I want to let out a laugh when I finally float down to touch the welcome point on the Citadel, where I should have checked in the day I came here from the Upper Realm.

I lift a finger and edit some of the entrance and visual flight records while wisps of white ether trickle off my pointer finger in the air.

An automatic ding sounds in my head, as unknowingly, I've just mimicked the same thing Ember did when he first arrived on Ellipsia.

[Welcome, New Lord!]

[Race: Human]

[Worlds Claimed: 1]

[Classification: 5th Class]

[Fast Travel to Nearest Human Embassy] [Free]

[Fast Travel to Your Selected Location]

A fake identity is formed as I link one of my 5th Class worlds to this rudimentary system and mimic the ether commands and flows of a normal avatar using little to no brainpower.

It feels like second nature, playing with such boring simple machines.

However, once I do, all of the fast travel lanes and Citadel perks start to become clear to me as I enter it as any new 5th Class Human Lord would.

Putting on a show, with wide eyes and a craned neck up at the massive green towers, I send a pulse of ether through the entire floating structure in the sky.

I turn right, but a copy of myself appears as though it's turning left in the surveillance systems.

I disappear from the Citadel's view while the ghost-like copy of myself begins to build an alibi for when the next monthly update of Citadel surveillance is sent in.

—

The first stop I make is to the central tower, not wasting any time to begin reassessing my four-sided ascension chamber one more time with my new knowledge.

I float around the tower, making minor tweaks and reinforcing very tiny, intricate places where the blood bonds between Luminite and the sample from the Lower Realm could be tighter to make a more flawless jump to higher floors once conditions are met.

It would not be something I could even see before, but now it seems like such a simple find.

More ether is injected into the higher floors and spread out evenly between divine threads.

They were so compact before, at over 200x the outside density, that it was hard to simultaneously keep track of the ether particle count between threads in every single structure before; yet now, it is such a simple fix.

About 80 more tiny fixes like this are completed all over the structure.

While none of them were really necessary, making things as perfect as possible can never hurt.

—

"Rukor, please meet me in the usual spot. I've returned after three days. Are my new worlds ready?"

"Yes, of course. I'm on my way, sir."

This interaction goes by quickly as I wait on the top floor of the central tower to move to the private trading room again to receive the worlds from my most trusted demonic servant.

A total of 107,032 worlds are transferred to me, raising my world token to [401,584].

At roughly the same 5th to 4th to 3rd Class world ratios as the last pool, it is clear something has changed here. It is barely half of what I gained before. Roughly 50 trillion Links of Loyalty add to my mental pool to pull from, yet there is no massive rise in potential power like last time. It's just about a 30% gain.

I infer exactly what has happened here and turn to Rukor.

"The markets are not as full of supply with worlds to buy, and many Lords must have caught on that the demonic servants find value in these kinds of worlds. So, the average price of these lower quality worlds has risen... Am I right?"

The servant bows his head.

"That is right. I am sorry for—"

I cut him off and still transfer one million more low quality ether back.

"It is fine. It was bound to happen. I told you to spend it all, and you did as asked. Do it again."

—

We both leave the top floor of the tower moments later, and I am a bit confused about the intense fear rippling off this servant.

He did not once mention my new appearance and just acted natural, but was mentally full of far more stress than usual.

I send him a mental message while he flies downward.

"Just another week. I'll fulfill my promise to grant you all new avatars to resemble your true selves and live in the Upper Realm as you wish. There is no need to fear me. I'm no Demon."

"Understood, Sir."

That is all that comes back as I turn to set my sights on the High Orc Tower near the edge of the Citadel.

It is glowing bright with five energy signals in my enhanced ether sense.

One is Ember in his human form, while the other four are unique avatars without the markings, limitations, or natural bindings found on every other avatar I've seen in this place.

"Looks like everyone has made progress of their own while I've been busy..." I whisper to myself while floating over.

—

Meanwhile, in the Lower Realm, a Demonic Force of many 1st Class True Cored Demons leave the massive cloud of Demonic Energy that cloaks the true location of their home.

They are headed to a neutral star system to meet with a powerful force that owns the Great Belt of Brymia.

There is no ulterior motive to this mission; they are merely on their way to make contact and request access to pass through this star sector in order to retrieve data on an old world they lost.

It is a personal request from their Demon Lord as devout soldiers of the Morvale Family. It should be a very simple task at that, as Alveron is known to not choose sides. Everything can be bargained for at a reasonable price.