Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power

I quickly make some upgrades to the shielding in this underground shelter.

With my remaining few million MP worth of mana crystals and a contribution of additional crystals from my four teammates here there's more than enough mana to get the job done. I imbue the shielding in this bunker to far surpass A-Class shielding, giving it additional mythic-grade stealth, hush, and barrier creation protection, lightly imbued with trace amounts of my True Core's divine threads.

This is not only to keep my teammates safe inside but also to keep everyone outside safe from what I'm about to recommend.

"Continue your orange divine core consolidation down here..."

I turn to the isolation pod.

"I want you to keep an eye on Ember and keep his pod within your circle of restoration. I can feel him healing at a much faster rate with it activated."

My eyes track up to the ceiling next, watching as the small red and orange threads of radiation that leak off their bodies become trapped by the True Core-imbued shielding I've created.

All of them have dense Qi barriers up, to not let their mana control disrupt the natural order of the low-level merchants and hunters above in the city, however, this isn't necessary.

I point at the new shielding.

"This should hold in enough power for you all to safely cultivate indoors. You may get quite the efficiency boost too, as a lot of the leftover threads can be recirculated within the bunker."

As these words come out of my mouth, I cough up more blood while the wounds all over my body pulse and burn into my flesh.

An annoying ringing sound in my ears starts too.

Though, I don't bring much attention to it as I walk up the spiral stairs to leave.

"I'm going off to find a place to heal these wounds. It's not safe for me to do it here. I thought it would be a good idea to check in before I left."

There are waves and short messages of goodbye as I activate my stealth skill and leave the bunker to walk out onto the streets and fly above the housing and businesses to make my way over to the canyon of dungeons.

I would have stayed to talk longer, but my fatigue and pain from my injuries are still rapidly getting worse.

On my way, I get the blaringly noticeable visual of the dark black abyss on the horizon.

Just under a thousand kilometers away, the center of the dark continent is visible to me, and the black pillar into the sky is clear as day. However, for most average eyes, all there is to see is the enormous black abyss.

It's a known phenomenon in the dark continent.

Over the years, the mass of darkness filled with mysterious invisible monsters has been creeping further and further outward every time there is a surge.

Today, it sits dangerously close to this settlement.

I have no idea how the darkness would react if it hit my Crimson dome. However, a new phenomenon is showing itself to me now that makes me believe I may not have to ever find out.

Instead of the abyss staying stagnant as it usually does or creeping closer like it does during each surge, the abyss is actually receding before my eyes.

It's incredibly slow, maybe a few centimeters a minute right now, but my eyes are far sharper than the average hunter, so I can see its movement from all sides throughout the entire dark continent.

Flashbacks of some of Celia's memories rush through my mind, as before each planet was consumed by darkness, they all contracted back on a single point before erupting around the globe.

This same phenomenon is happening now.

All of the dark energy from the abyss is being pulled back into this enormous black pillar, like a tsunami pulling back the sea before it crashes onto the land.

One of my top priorities right now is to enter this abyss and see what's really happening inside.

Two of my teammates, Luna and Arie, ventured into this darkness over two full months ago... They are still on my Rising Emperor's domain interface, but their exact location is still unknown to me, and so are their strength levels and vitals.

So many mysteries lie within this darkness, but I cough up another large amount of blood and the ringing in my ears gets louder. This makes me shift my mindset back to figuring out a way to heal myself, fast.

My self-regeneration skill has done its job in healing up the physical wounds as best it can, and Abby's restoration circle has taken away some of my fatigue to give me a little extra time, but I'm far from healed.

I could easily close my eyes right now and fall asleep. It feels like it would take weeks to naturally heal all these wounds.

With the eyes of a True Core, and possibly others from this organization Raven mentioned called the Order watching from afar, I don't like the idea of leaving myself and my teammates vulnerable for this long...

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

I scroll through my status while I float down into the canyon of dungeons, and one skill pops out at me that was upgraded to mythic grade during my fight against the bronze earth dragon.

I click on [Hibernation], and far more details pop up.

The last time I used this skill at [Special Grade] there were two downsides: the fact that during the hibernation process my defenses will decrease by 99%, and also following hibernation my defenses would stay limited by 50% for 12 hours.

Now, with the grade pushed up two ranks to [Mythic Grade], there is only a 10% decrease in defenses while hibernating, and no more post-hibernation debuffs. Once the process is complete, the user is completely healed.

While this is a great perk, it isn't the one that catches my eye the most.

When I choose to activate the skill, four possible options pop up that weren't available last time.

__________

[Use Hibernation] [Mythic Grade]

Cure: Mana Fatigue[Jay Soju], Soul Energy Fatigue[Jay Soju], Divine Energy Fatigue[Jay Soju], Divine Energy Poisoning [Jay Soju], Divine Energy Internal Combat Injuries [Jay Soju]

[Slow Mode]

Cost: 465.22 Million MP

Time: 510.8 Days [YES][NO]

[Basic Mode]

Cost: 95.09 Billion MP

Time: 140.1 Days [YES][NO]

[Express Mode]

Cost: 212.43 Trillion MP

Time: 6.0 Days [YES][NO]

[Emergency Mode]

Cost: 276.95 Quadrillion MP

Time:

__________

My eyes widen, and my stomach drops as I read out all my injuries and the timeframes at the top of the list of options.

While the timeframes at the bottom of the list look far more reasonable, especially the last one which is near-instant, the amount of mana necessary to activate this option is more than there is available in this entire canyon of dungeons.

Every dungeon in here combined, and even the labyrinth itself with over 60 floors, still only reaches single-digit percentage amounts of what I need to activate the [Emergency Mode] option.

My fantasy of just going to sleep and waiting this out may have been a bit too optimistic.

As I touch down in front of a random unattended stable E-Class dungeon, the reality of this situation sinks in.

It took me months to farm all of that mana and consolidate it into the project I'm working on.

This labyrinth beneath the Crimson dome has monsters inside that reach levels that just peak over 3000.

Every floor added to the labyrinth needs increasingly more and more mana. The higher floors needed hundreds of trillions of farmed MP to grow higher. Growing it another 10 to 15 more floors would cost about the same amount of MP necessary to complete this emergency hibernation. This massive exponential increase in necessary mana is part of the reason my labyrinth has stalled in its growth.

However, these thoughts lead me to remember there are two other labyrinths I've been in before that have even more powerful floors than the one I'm building up.

"Maybe those will be enough..."

I smirk while my divine energy-imbued wounds burn my insides, and I grit my teeth again as more blood trickles from my mouth, and now my nose.

Then, I step forward into the E-Grade portal and dungeon walk to the 43rd floor of the Vice City labyrinth.

I'm left in an empty boss room and pull out the remains of the boss from my item storage that I've been waiting to drop here.

I stand with my arms crossed and my eyes closed as I concentrate on healing the best I can until white transport magic brings me up to the next boss room.

The Vice City labyrinth is designed much differently than my own back in the Crimson City.

While mine will have wide-open floors full of monsters on each level all the way to the top from 1-99, and an extra boss room at the end of each one until the final guardian floor at the top, the Vice City labyrinth works differently.

I remember scrolling through the labyrinth options when I created mine, and this layout feels like the option that gives normal free-reign monster floors from 1-40, and special guardian floors on floors 20, and 40-59, until the final 60th floor where the demon and dragon should stand.

This is, after all, if enough mana and luminite are given to the labyrinth to grow.

My own labyrinth isn't fully matured yet, but the fact that this one was owned by Mr. Freeman and has been active in Vice City for decades makes me believe it will have far more mana than my own.

I don't wait for the 44th floor to fully spawn in, I just locate the boss and send a single spear of earth magic wrapped in a minimal amount of True Core threads through the monster's head.

It falls to the boss room floor before the terrain for this room even fully develops.

I'm left standing in silence in a small mana-simulation of a thick dark forest boss room for a few minutes before the transport magic flashes and I'm teleported to the 45th floor.

Again, I kill the boss monster before the floor even fully forms while standing with my arms still crossed and my eyes closed tight, continuing to heal my body as more blood streams from the corners of my lips, my nose, and now my eyes.

It takes a full 19 minutes to reach the 52nd floor.

The ringing in my ears becomes almost unbearable, and my temples begin to pulse with my heartbeat as blood even trickles from my ears too.

The levels of the monsters I insta-kill rise by 300-700 every floor, rising above level 6000.

None of the monsters on any of the floors below were notable fighters at all. With only mana as their energy source in their arsenal, I quite literally beat them all with my arms crossed and eyes closed.

As I make it to this final floor, at first I'm disappointed to feel the presence of a demon core so early.

I was hoping this labyrinth would be fully matured up to the 60th floor, and maybe I would even gain some more levels, but the mana required to maintain such high hopes is understandably unattainable...

Letting out a sigh, I open my bleeding eyes and prepare to have a short chat with the guardians of this labyrinth, but as the final floor consolidates before me, I'm struck with a sight I wasn't expecting to see.

I won't have to subjugate the guardians of this floor because it looks like someone else already did.

In the center of a dark,, wide-open circular standard cave-like boss room, an archdemon with long red horns lays in its center motionless, like it's asleep on a slab of black stone.

It is made of the same material as both Monk's temple and the pillar in the center of the Dark Continent.

The even more eerie detail here is that there is no dragon in sight.

Many questions race through my mind as I take a few steps forward, but the pain from my wounds and the mental fatigue override my curiosity.

To be completely safe, I form a dense crystal sphere around the demon, and imbue it with some of my True Core's threads.

Then, I sit down in the lotus position about 50 meters away from the sleeping demon and activate my mythic-grade plunderer skill while selecting the [Emergency Mode] hibernation option.

"My curiosity can wait until I'm healed..." I mutter in a coarse tone as the ringing in my ears vibrates like urgent alarms in my head.

There's a surge of energy that makes my entire body glow bright white. Then, as it fades, a dark red aura starts to expand from my Soul Energy core.

I allow my plunderer skill to fully activate with no concern for my surroundings, remembering back to the times Ember drained the Titans' domain and collapsed full dungeons in the past. This same ominous all consuming red glow emanates from me now as I do the same.

Instead of directly converting this mana in the air into pure usable MP for my own system interface to use, I just allow it to flow through me directly into the mythic-grade hibernation's activation fee.

The [0/276.95 Quadrillion MP ] hibernation meter quickly begins to rise, and simultaneously a warm and soothing feeling washes over me as I lose consciousness.