Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power-Chapter 859

I've used this skill a few times before, so when my perception of reality around me starts to slow down to a halt, and the majority of my active mind sinks deep into my consciousness, I'm not alarmed.

In the past, the activation of [Mind Palace] created a mental construct that looked like a small white throne and a library with neatly ordered books throughout a few dozen long rows.

When I would walk down the rows and touch each book, it was like all of my system information, past battles, techniques, and experiences from the day I awakened my system up until I activated the skill were all laid out in front of me in a perfectly digestible and orderly fashion.

My brain's processing speed drastically increases, and my ability to move my body or even activate skills or abilities on the outside comes near to a full stop. A majority of my mind and energy is solely focused on the memories of the past.

This is what I remember the skill being like.

However, it's being powered by far more energy than ever before.

My True Green Core is nearly saturated, every single one of my energy forms is being used, my High Noble form is vibrating at its maximum capacity, and to top things off... there are far more memories tucked away deep in my mind that aren't all entirely my own.

When I come to in my Mind Palace, I stand up from a massive marble-sparkling and dazzling seat.

It appears to be made of the same substance that my Noble Body is, when I look down at my hands.

There are no actual measurements of true size in this mental construct, so when I see my hands, and they are sparkling with pristine Noble Human flesh, and I look up to compare them to the bookcases I remember from my last visit here, they are made of the same sparkling white ethereal material, but there is no difference in size from last time.

I take steps forward, and my mind fills in the perception of echoing footsteps to make this imagery all feel real, and I start recalling events from very long ago.

The first book I touch, a resurgence of memories from awakening my first skill and hunting in dungeons for the first time comes back.

Others of watching Maria awaken, and meeting Abby at the Association headquarters, and even receiving my C-Class license while meeting Arie in a Labyrinth and getting to know Bri and Rodrigo better afterward.

Flashes of working for the Association all rush by, and they are paired with the time I fell into a strange black humanoid creature made of pure mana, called a Void Creeper or a Titan. Inside the living mana construct, I almost starved to death, but this is where I hatched Ember's egg and created a Soul Bond in order to escape.

Hearing all of the small black dragon's vague warnings of demons, a throne, soul energy, and greater powers over and over echo in the back of my mind, as they went way over my head as a young hunter.

I walk further and further down this aisle, and then turn once I get to the end and walk through more and more.

The step-by-step process of learning how to build up my mana control feels fresh in my mind as I watch my lessons with Fisher inside the Vice City Labyrinth, then relive the betrayal from the Association in the Dark Continent to meet Lydia, Monk, Luna, and Ally with Lith, the Merchant at the core of Valor City.

Defeating the Lich King re-plays all over again, and I see the actions of that immortal Dark Elf creature as something far greater than he was back then to my younger mind... I even see myself building the Crimson City, and learning of Divine Energy at the B-Class exams.

Then, compressing my true core, meeting Raven and learning of the Order, and the battle within the throne to claim the entire human world rush back in too.

Everything remains so raw and unfiltered, like I'm reforming my cores all over again, and understanding the essence of gaining levels, ranking up, gaining mana control, combining mana with rudimentary qi to form soul energy, and even forming my divine cores.

I walk down more and more aisles, over a hundred, touching tens of thousands of books, far more than any other time I've been in here before.

The last month of memories: finding Ava in the exiled ether stone mines, killing a Citadel Lord to start a zone-wide war, and most importantly, an entire aisle of these memory books all retell the training I went through with Seraphel.

From day one, using the Noble Vibrations I stole from Andras and Drako, to control them and make them my own inside the High Orc Tower.

Then, to evolve them, and create a High Noble path of my own beneath the sea of corruption, unsealing his celestial prison in the process.

I rewatch the instant I broke his seal again and again, and in turn watch the moment where my Noble Vibrations were altered to become something more.

The reaction afterward, to take control of every ether command beneath that sea, from both the celestial seals and the entirety of the old Wyvern's Citadel; this is what is most fascinating to me.

For I thought I remembered it vividly, but now I see I fell into a fugue state of some sort, and my potential is even greater than what I'm tapping into now.

My High Noble Vibrations can be pushed even further.... Over and over I watch what I did beneath that sea and try to work out how I can do it here and now, once again.

I stop at the end of my bookcases full of memories, even reliving the whole Grand Citadel tournament, and the very battle I just started. The only thing ahead of me is empty shelves, and a white abyss...

Yet, that is not entirely true.

As I look further into the white abyss, a mental manifestation of the edge of my mind, many things do float to the surface in my consciousness.

The first is a still image of reality outside my mind.

One dense coiling tendril of corruption still slamming through my chest's armor. The explosions from this armor breaking that cracked off a portion of the citadel were enough force to thrust me downward fast enough for the actual corruption to not touch my cores or true Noble body deep beneath.

However, the half-dozen coiling tornadoes of black, red, and purple energy that follow close behind it are on a crash course to slice through me within the next millisecond.

With such an absurd amount of power surging through my Mind Palace skill, my perception of reality outside is slowed down thousands and thousands of times more. Even though we are moving at insane speeds through the battlefield of the Grand Citadel—now the falling citadel mass, shockwaves of aura, and incoming deadly threats are moving so slow—it looks like I have hours to prepare.

The truth is, I do...

Yet all I can do is think. I can't even feel my body or make it react to the environment in any way while standing here.

My mind wanders even more, as when I look out past the empty bookcases of my own memories, there are lighter-colored holograms of bookcases that appear as a figment of my imagination far off in the distance.

With nothing else to do but sift through old memories, I take a few important books from my own memories with me and leave the concentrated Mind Palace that is grouped up around the throne.

The books I carry are my first times learning mana control, practicing qi with Monk in his temple, consolidating my divine cores in Celia's construct, finding the strange black cube inside the massive humanoid statue that called itself Atom, and lastly the breakthroughs I made with Seraphel beneath the sea of corruption.

When I step away from my own memories and walk into these translucent libraries separated from my own, I start to see hundreds and hundreds of shelves full of books from all of the monsters and Lords I killed while using the memory absorption True Core ability I gained from that dark horse inside the throne on the human world.

Their lives, in far less clarity but more detail than I remember absorbing, all wash through me again when I touch their books.

Yet, the only books I take with me as I pursue the aisles are the monsters' breakthroughs.

The moments they learned mana control, or demonic soul energy, or their divine core consolidation breakthroughs.

For very few of them, I take along the books that keep the very day they unsealed their noble bloodlines for the first time.

It's easy to carry dozens, hundreds, even thousands of books all stacked on top of each other in a place like this.

They don't weigh anything.

Gravity won't make them sway side to side unless I make it.

It's all a construct within my imagination, to help me organize my thoughts.

I relive all of these breakthrough moments over and over. Many minutes are passing, maybe even half an hour—it's hard to keep track. I begin to get lost in the euphoric feelings of these many lives I sift through, mostly of demonic beasts I killed on the mountain below Ellipsia.

Yet, my concentration is somehow interrupted.

A loud echoing dinging sound repeats in my inner ear, and a string of notifications rolls in too.

[Experience Share Perk Activated!]

[Level Share][Arie]

[Level Up] x791

[Current Level: 71,002]

I look around, and even sink back into reality for a moment, to see the coiling corruption tendrils have hardly even made it 10% closer... Virtually no time has passed, yet another series of system notifications are updating in my mind.

[Experience Share Perk Activated!]

[Level Share][Raven]

[Level Up] x733

[Current Level: 71,735]

Another series of dings echo in my inner ear, and as I read them out I sift through my consciousness and pull up the spectate feeds of all my generals.

Firstly, the two that have appeared in my notifications while I've basically stopped time.

Arie's is the first I zoom in on.

A live projection through his eyes becomes a realistic hologram in the sky, high above my library of memories.

His gaze is focused on a massive Demonic Berserker Giant. It looks like he's found a weak point, as one of his arrows collided directly with its core, and I'm witnessing the extremely slow-motion visuals of the beast being torn to shreds by his black and white arrow.

Raven is in a similar scenario, with both of her blades slashing through the chest of a Demonic Scarlet Berserker.

Its body is exploding outward as well, but some of the red scarlet energy is being absorbed by Raven's blades.

The visuals I'm catching now are of her in mid-transition, slipping away into her stealth dimension. Reality through her eyes is shifting from crystal clear to a dark veil where she can move quicker and normal energy waves cannot travel.

Considering the massive jumps in levels when they first started killing these beasts, the gap between my level and these monsters has become much smaller. I see a few dozen behind each of them, so I do a few mental calculations and come to the conclusion that the average Berserker Giant must be around Level 80,000 or so.

While even now I can watch my base stats increase slightly, this amount of levels isn't enough to give me an edge. Though, an odd sensation I do feel now, as in the last few seconds during this battle, my level has nearly doubled; a strange sense of mana maturity rushes through my mind.

I'm not sure if it has to do with the fact that I'm constantly reliving the memories of many mana control and divine core breakthroughs, but I felt a tangible shift when these new levels came rolling in.

It's like the system itself is releasing tension and limiters, allowing me to process mana smoother, faster, and more efficiently.

As I continue walking down the aisles again, I start connecting more dots, and wonder if this is similar to why many hunters back on the human world would start to awaken mana control around level 300 or so, when the system deemed the user mature enough.

Some could wield millions of MP at lower levels, and begin using mana control earlier, but it becomes far easier at higher levels when the body and mind is naturally stronger.

"It has to be something like this... or at least one of the factors..." I whisper to myself within my mind, and continue to go through mental scenarios of how I can get myself out of this situation.

The unfathomably massive Royal Bloodline Transformation is burned into my consciousness—over 7,500 kilometers tall, and possibly still even growing. It makes my High Noble Astral form look like a child's toy in the middle of a war, absolutely too weak and out of place.

Another thought is to call on Ember, but when I look through his spectate feed, an absurd sight crosses my mind as well.

He is clashing with Miriel's dragon. It is dark purple, and humongous... Far larger than Ember... and this demonic beast is covered in extremely dense Celestial Energy. I almost don't believe my eyes when I see dense layers of this hot white energy blocking a wave of fire coming out of Ember's mouth that is imbued with silver threads.

I know full and well that when Ember uses that energy, he gets extremely slow and weak afterward, yet it's always for good reason... Every time in the past he's used silver threads, there was no enemy that could withstand their power.

He has his own battle to deal with.

I begin to make my walk back to my own memories, after sifting through the translucent ones and collecting what I needed.

Now, over an hour has passed inside this small Mind Palace, but I'm really starting to see shifts in reality on the outside.

The additional tendrils of corruption have closed over half the distance, meaning in another hour inside here, at least six more of these thick black, red, and purple Royal Vibration-infused attacks will hit me.

There is still quite literally nothing I can do.

I can see a very low-quality visual of the Citadel from above, where Ava fights a Noble Demon.

The griffin I fought in the tournament earlier is flapping its wings and coming up in the direction of this battle, but my attention is far more focused on the state of the Citadel below. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

It's completely shattered to pieces, and the wall of ether commands protecting this crowd of Lords, Admins, and monsters from the shockwaves of Miriel's awakening is fracturing and breaking apart. It looks like it's going to completely explode into pieces within the same time frame that I'll be hit.

In fact, it already should have burst, but a massive warm white array of light magic has slowed it down just slightly.

The links of loyalty from these Lords giving me access to their worlds have started to flow in extremely fast too. I have a live counter in my mind moving upward, now at 213,929,880, but it's only risen twenty million or so since I activated my Mind Palace.

It may be extremely fast, but I would have to wait days in here for any new buffs to activate at this rate.

Less and less time remains, but I walk over to my pristine Noble Throne and lay out hundreds of books of memories to begin studying even more thoroughly.

With this much time to think, I come up with one possibility for victory... It relies on the last two spectate feeds open in my mind; Abby's and Maria's. They both glow bright blue, playing out in slow motion over my library of memories.

I mentally prepare to brace for impact against attacks far more powerful than my body can withstand, as it seems inevitable I'll be hit again.

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Author's Note:

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