Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power-Chapter 864

The pressure between us fully releases once Miriel has to pull the coiling corruption attacking me from all sides back in, adding to his black living armor.

Instead of attacking, he must go on the defensive.

"What is this madness? A human with a Celestial Body? All of the latent potential in the Lower Realm should have been snuffed out! This does not make any sense!"

I feel my blade slicing through the real flesh of his palms, and vibrant red and purple liquid dense with royal vibrations pours out.

The extra coiling corruption he's pulled back in to block already starts to heal this wound, but it's the look in his eyes as he's blasted backward that makes me realize I've finally gained an edge.

They are not only filled with disgust toward me, and the unbreaking arrogant pride of demons.

There is confusion and fear, like I've shattered his version of reality, doing the impossible.

It only makes me focus harder, and grin wider while following him upward.

As the darkness seeps back into this Royal Demon and his hands heal, his body grows even larger.

Yet, at the same time, I'm absorbing all of the fragments of the Citadel that have burst outward for millions of kilometers.

Massive portions of them have been deflected off of a white wall in the sky, and the huge 50,000-kilometer white wings and explosive aura of a dragon's body that emerges from the bottom of the Citadel.

My mind does not focus on either of these two entities, only the battlefield before me.

As I let out a yell and push my Plunderer's true core ability to its limits, the gravity completely shifts, and all of the mana and divine threads in the atmosphere stop bursting outward. Every single one of them falls down toward me again.

I kick off the air, leaving dense white bends in space behind me as I do, and swing my blade across my body again to clash with the Royal Demon.

He lets out a roar while turning back and blocking my incoming hit with a single clawed hand.

The shockwaves that come off it are equally as devastating as the first. Yet, there are no structures around us to destroy.

We float in the center of empty space in the Green Zone.

Even the clouds have all been drained and refined inside my celestial body.

Deep inside, my cores process this energy and my power increases even further. My True Green Core fully saturates. But there is no colorful change at all. Neither my Greater Form, nor Astral Form is activated.

In fact, they cannot be activated.

This Sacred Body feels like a completely separate manifestation. One that is made from Celestial Soul Energy, mutated from my base Noble Form. The white energy feels like flesh to me, and in reality, it kind of is. This entire Sacred Body is my Ether and Mana pools brought out from my mind, to create a true manifestation of my soul.

It is the most powerful manifestation I can produce, while equally being the most vulnerable.

The white soul sword flickering with red flames that collides with Miriel's hand feels just as much a part of my soul as the arms, legs, and heart of this Sacred Body.

At first, we're even again...

But, I feel his outer barriers of corruption give way finally, and I slice through, digging far deeper into his flesh, and this time even slicing off a few fingers and a massive chunk of his forearm before he lets waves of corruption explode and forces himself backward to escape.

I laugh louder and follow, colliding with his other hand higher in the air.

This one explodes too, but as I lunge in further, expecting him to try and run, the demon sacrifices the rest of this arm all the way down to the shoulder.

I'm caught off guard, and the remaining three clawed fingers on his first hand spear dark black holes through my chest and down my side as I twist away before he hits any vitals.

His deep laugh returns as we're both blasted backward.

Both of our bodies are near equal size now, just over 10,000 kilometers from head to toe.

His arms grow back as the corruption coils around him like an oil slick. White marks are left behind burning in the slice points, but he only scoffs at them.

I vibrate with energy too, burning some of my ether pool to use my self-regeneration true core ability, imbued with Celestial energy to slowly mend my wound into a set of three dark purple scars.

Miriel breathes heavily, but landing that blow has given him enough confidence to look me in the eyes again with rage rather than fear.

"The system gave a fool like you this much power? What kind of sick, twisted joke is this? I have fought thousands of times more battles, yet the lowest-class beast from the Lower Realm has landed a strike on me... At least these scars will remind me to never get too comfortable again. Raw battle talent will still have to win in the end..."

He positions himself in a stance that protects his vitals even better than before. Instead of arrogant confidence, it looks like this demon is actually facing me as a real opponent. But—he still believes he can win.

I will change this fact.

"Oh yeah? You really think you can still win? What's to say this is everything I've got...? What if I've been playing around with you this whole time instead...?"

It is quite certainly a lie that I have been toying with him, but I still have a lot of skills left to use, and anything to break down his confidence further will give me even more of an edge.

I immediately release a wave of my strongest intimidation.

It's followed by a combination of two skills, my phantom step and my body doubles.

The strange wave of intense aura to the atmosphere carrying the hot light of my celestial energy, paired with these words, ripples into the already fragile psyche of the Demon and begins to play tricks on its subconscious.

All of the body doubles that burst out from my Celestial Body are only weaker mana copies, but even they all begin to splinter outward and burst into dozens of holograms each.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

This, combined with a light magic array to dull the visual senses, my flash step technique to burst forward even faster than usual, and the body double teleportation swapping perk to scatter my Celestial body all throughout the massive display of exploding copies of my body that unravel like a 250,000-kilometer-large flowering fractal, it's an unexpected mental attack that makes the Demon's eyes widen with unease.

The instant I feel this reaction, I activate another set of skills: Dark Mist, Heavy Hand, and Shadow Step.

There is a burst of darkness that fills the air.

Its diameter is over a million kilometers wide, like a foggy cloud of black mist. A very common demon skill, making Miriel even more confused at the sight of it.

Heavy Hand is a gravity manipulation skill, and I only use it on the small contained area where he stands in the air, but it's used simultaneously with the sensory overload to make it feel like this is just another side effect of my natural intimidation.

Shadowstep is used next, not only by me, but my body doubles too, in order to spread out to all edges of this cloud and easily swap between places, while using Shadowstep to even instant-teleport into areas where I am not.

Any bits of data this Demon can still comprehend using its Royal Vibrations to locate me will give it readings that will only make him more terrified.

To make things even more confusing, I use my stealth skill on and off, to make some of the readings weaker and stronger at random.

I use the remaining mental space and availability in my mana and ether pools to activate even more skills: solid barrier creation and dense malleable mana manipulation casings around all of my replicated soul swords. They spin around the real me to create a satellite-like defense system, and a combination of foresight, swordsmanship, and my new select skill in order to lock onto my target, creating mental paths where there would be near-impossible probabilities for me to miss.

The Royal Demon's survival instincts and danger senses all blare off in his mind, faster and more drastic than he has ever experienced in his life.

His reality goes dark, his arms and legs feel heavy, his mind feels suppressed, and when he uses his only trump card to try and locate the threat, it is moving around him from every angle through space faster than he can possibly keep track of, or comprehend even how such movements are possible.

The look of despair washes over his face, only visible to me.

I let a few of my doubles use the Screech skill, paired with Whisper and a broad telepathy wave, to make my words hit him from all angles in ways he's never heard before.

"I told you, Miriel. I've already won. A Royal Bloodline means nothing to me. I am the Rising Emperor. You think I would fall on the first step toward glory? You are just another Demon that has stood in my way..."

I go in for an attack, Shadow-stepping in right behind his left side, and swinging downward to slice right through his shoulder and neck, in a straight line down toward his chest and cores.

For the first instance of the attack, the Demon is still in shock, frozen in terror.

However, its battle instincts still kick in the moment he's struck, and I feel him turn extremely fast.

Not only with his clawed hand, but also his foot.

The satellite array of copied soul swords is only strong enough to block small corruption tendrils, they are not suited for full powered attacks like these. Upon contact, thousands of them are shattered.

I feel both strike my side and dig into the surface of my Sacred Body, but I swap for a nearby body double before he can get anywhere as deep as his surprise attack on my chest.

I let my echoing laugh blare into him from the body doubles in the Dark Mist domain, and then use a new set of skills: Laser Creation, Various Elemental skills, and Astral Spears.

There is a deep burning white gash in his shoulder and chest, not far from his cores, and I can see corruption starting to flow inward to heal it. This is not what I want.

I begin teleporting nearby, within close range, and release dense waves of concentrated Celestial energy from the many Soul Sword manifestations surrounding me.

They work well as extensions of myself to send off these attacks. I imbue them with a random set of attacks. Some of them burst out in a pure and straight beam, like a laser; others with slower waves of pure supreme grade elements.

As these attacks come at the Demon from all angles, he manages to block them just fine.

Flowing oily pockets of corruption move around the outer layer of his body, sensing where these attacks are coming from and creating thick enough layers to block their full force.

Yet, both he and I know that these attacks are not meant to hurt him. They are a distraction, to keep his corruption occupied to make the wound in his shoulder and chest heal slower.

Even the elemental attacks, some filled with lightning, earth, water, fire, wind, and ice; they're all blocked too.

Yet, even though it is meant to be a distraction, there is another layer to this attack: The Astral Spears.

They are invisible attacks. While technically possible to sense if the power gap is high enough, in these conditions, they are so faint the mana signatures aren't even picked up in the chaos.

I start stacking Astral Spears into other visible attacks, to make them hit harder than they look like they should; and begin to add Astral Spears into the mix at random on their own to land hits on the Demon's thinner areas of corruption armor.

The first explosion of flesh in an unguarded area I see makes me laugh with joy.

More and more start hitting, and the Royal Demon starts to roar out in fear, confusion, and agony.

I go in for another stealth strike using a last-minute Shadow Step and swinging with my true Soul Sword at the peak of his anger. I slice right through his right arm.

It's severed off before he can even turn my way, and my white blade sinks even deeper into his lower chest, breaking ribs and falling toward his cores again.

The furious Demon slams his head down toward me, using his long curved horns as weapons too.

One pierces my left shoulder, and his right foot twists upward at a strange angle to dig into my leg next.

I swap with a body double away once again before he tears too deep.

The wounds on my body are healed while I continue my extremely fast circling barrage of elemental, laser, and astral attacks around the monster to weaken its defenses more and more, while making sure my two solid strikes so far are not mended by its corruption.

"Impossible! This cannot be happening! I am Miriel Vermillion! The Last Royal Guard that shall stand above the Lower Realm for eternity! It is my duty to the Great Families—I cannot let any race ascend without the Emperor's word! That is the law!"

"Come on! Duty this! Royals that! 'The Demons are the strongest race in the galaxy!' That's all I ever hear before I kill every single one of you!" I yell back, Shadow-stepping inward to slice off one of his legs, and continue the upward momentum to stab through his abdomen.

Miriel jerks downward in the pitch darkness, still using his horns as a shield. I teleport away before I get hit this time.

Though, his yells that echo throughout my Dark Mist domain this time do not sound intelligent.

Instead, they begin to sound like a cornered feral beast.

He raises his one hand upward, and his dark horns pulse with a dark black and purple aura.

I even shiver slightly, as I feel his Royal Vibrations shift slightly...

I'm in total control here.

He cannot heal, he cannot see, and best of all, he knows he can't win.

Yet... there is a version of a wild beast inside this intelligent Demon that does not believe that.

"I am the gatekeeper... the ultimate wall between Lower Races and those the Demons shall bring with them to the Immortal Future above... If it is my duty to die and destroy the Green Zone in order to fulfill this legacy, then so be it. I am a Royal. I am Miriel Vermillion. I cannot fail!"

He yells out through the furious roars as his mind is dragged back and forth from an uncontrollable demonic state.

I feel pure rage, hatred, and darkness start to boil through him.

It's almost unbelievable...

Yet, when I go in for another vital shot, aiming to slice his other leg off, the instant I pierce his flesh, an extremely cold and bone-chilling aura vibrates through me.

I'm able to slice further, but I swap with a double backward before he even strikes at me.

The very flesh in his body is starting to melt into pure corruption...

Not because of the relentless attacks I'm throwing his way... but because of some internal switch that has been pulled.

Through this isolated black cloud in the sky, his screeches; like a dying bird, mixed with a lion's roar, and even the essence of a horrific demonic dragon's might, it bends and shakes reality itself.

My Intimidation and Heavy Hand techniques are being challenged.

I only remember seeing something similar to this one time before...

It was a visual from the war outside of the throne back on the human world.

A 3rd Class Demon tried to unseal its bloodline, but its talent was not great enough. It completely lost control of its body, mind, and soul. Many of the other Demons on the battlefield ran away, and many screamed that he was becoming corrupted.

This is the act of a Demon attempting to rise to a power tier its fate-bound talent cannot withstand.

"I've done it once... I'll do it again... Or we all perish! This must be my final test! I cannot be remembered as a Demon killed by a mere human! I will be remembered as the last Demon to hold the line and Seal the Upper Realm by force!"

He screams out as the last of his sane mind is consumed by this feral rage filled version.

The roars of a monster echo out again, and I'm faced with a far larger problem than just a Royal Demon.

It is the youngest Family Head that has lost his pride, and does not fear killing himself and every single living Lord in this Zone to prove his worth.