Kae
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Dungeon Diver CH963
🕑 Added 2025-08-17 23:00:06 +0000 UTCThe moment I begin to focus on the barrier in front of me, and pour my Primordial Aura into the faint signs of glyphs I see, the entire collection of arrays becomes crystal clear. It has a very similar structural makeup to the small Domain barrier we opened in the Ogre’s domain and the border between the neutral lands and the ones now owned by the Demons.
This one is extremely thick and far more complex.
Bright blue and red Celestial Energy pours out of our palms, and it drains over 75% of my soul energy core.
I’m certain that I wouldn’t even have had enough energy to sacrifice if we didn’t run into those Outer Guards on the way here.
Not as many compression arrays are needed, the ether is forced into the shapes of perfect white glyphs, and countless chain reactions of spinning commands and complex mechanisms activate.
My Primordial Aura can feel the intricate details of everything happening in between these two trees. While I’ve seen all of these glyphs before, every second that passes shows a far larger amount of them working together than I’ve ever seen.
Multiple epiphanies ripple through my consciousness during the process, and my ether proficiency increases drastically.
Both Maria and I start exerting a large pressure on the environment around us.
Our True purple Cores churn in our chests, and the Royal Vibrations that are guiding this Primordial Aura become so intense, even the Ancient beasts behind us grimace.
Vardon grunts, “These humans make no sense at all… How could their wills be this strong without fully awakening their Glyph Imprints?”
Ulgar only smirks, but grabs both of his blades once he sees a small pinhole opening up in the barrier in front of us.
Axel flaps his wings and dives forward first without saying a word.
I feel the barrier opening up, and the warm aura floods back into my consciousness as though hands are pulling back the barrier again. This time when I feel it, I’m certain I recognize the presence. It is extremely similar to the green hologram of a woman I watched step out from the Tree of Life in the inherited Demonic Memories I saw…
I try to make sense of it, but in front of my own vision, once the hole in the barrier gets large enough, a flash of white light slips through it. The White Griffin saw its opening and took the chance.
Seconds later, the hole widens and starts to form the shape of an archway.
It grows larger and larger until it’s big enough for Vardon and Ulgar to fit through.
Instead of opening it all the way, from tree to tree like last time, the energy we poured into the domain seems to have run out. Even the aura of the helping hand stops pulling. Once its job is done, it fades into the depths of the barrier, only watching from afar, no longer out in the open to be felt or seen.
I find it strange, but when I see the Black Ogre charge forward, I decide to follow. If what Axel said was right, we do not have much time before Outer Guards come sweeping through this way, so entering before then would be the stealthiest move.
We walk through, holding the barrier open with our minds, as our Primordial Aura is still embedded in the glyphs we’re controlling.
Once Vardon comes through, there is an instant shift in the air as we allow all of the connections to the domain barrier to release. The automatic reversal commands make every spinning glyph and array move in the opposite direction, as though time is being reversed.
The friendly aura returns for a moment while the hole closes up, but completely disappears once all of the decompression arrays are activated. Once it is positive we will receive our ether back, it’s as though we’re only staring into a machine…
The flood of warm pressure back into our cores follows with the exact same amount of energy that we put in. No extra was granted, but the pool we received back is far more refined.
I feel filled with power once I take a deep breath and look around, but that is when I realize even the energy in the air here is more potent with all kinds of energy. The Purple Divine Thread Count is easily doubled, the amount of raw High Quality Ether particles floating about is over four times as rich, and most strange of all, there is a very large amount of Celestial Energy too.
It’s extremely refined, even more pure than what’s in my core now. However, it doesn’t float in even ratios like the rest of the ether in the air. There are large chunks and pools of it that pass in gusts of light wind.
Some even sticks to the underside of the leaves in the trees, or sides of bark.
It must be the byproduct of a glyph creation reaction, or maybe it’s naturally produced by something in this ritual domain. It feels very out of place. However, when my Primordial Aura touches these waves of Celestial Energy, it all flows toward me, and instantly seeps into my energy pathways, empowering my soul energy core.
I don’t know why it’s here, but we might as well take advantage of it while it is.
My glyphs aren’t stimulated, but the rest of my body and mind are.
At the same time, Vardon and Ulgar stand in front of us ready for battle. Axel is already out of sight. The Black Ogre occasionally looks upward to the trees, but hears nothing back. I can feel the tension in his vibrations as he waits in silence for a few seconds, then turns around.
“Your part is done… Now all you have to do is protect yourself until we make it to the Ritual Temple. This is one of the less-used Domains, so I doubt they have more than 30 Outer Guards stationed inside. It’d be optimal not to have to fight all of them at once, but there's a very high chance we will.”
“Why’s that?” Maria asks.
Vardon looks back next, “There is no way to get to the Temple without moving through one of their active districts. They’re full of failed Ascended Demons. They’ll alarm their King once we’re spotted… you’ll see, it's inevitable.”
Ulgar nods. “It’s true. We’re going to have to slaughter this entire Domain and leave before they call in reinforcements… But, without having to blow all my strength on breaking down the defense barrier, it will be much easier.”
A single caw sounds out from the trees above, and Ulgar puts on his serious expression again before moving forward. “This is do or die, do not hold anything back.”
Vardon’s flames fill the atmosphere as he follows, and both Maria and I put up small protection glyphs to shield ourselves from the aura.
When the intensity passes, we don’t take them down. The tension in the air makes me believe at any moment, we’re going to need to stack far more than just these.
The next minute or so is extremely long.
We change direction sporadically whenever a Griffin’s caw is heard, and sometimes even when there is pure silence in the air.
We pass by dozens of trees and dive deeper into this ritual domain.
The clouds of passing Celestial Energy I manage to absorb slightly increase the purity of my ether base, but the noticeable increase is the raw volume of energy I’m taking in. My capacity increases by over five times.
The only thing holding me back from increasing this volume before was lack of absorbable energy in the atmosphere, it was almost entirely dominated by High Quality Ether. Right now, I’m finally finding pockets of rich energy I can actually use.
So, despite the fact we’re willingly entering a hostile territory with far more enemies than I’ve seen before in this zone, I’m actually starting to feel more and more excited.
After successfully blocking that Outer Guard’s Demonic Essence, and now becoming incrementally stronger with every passing second, my hands are tingling to see what else I can do.
After about a minute passes, and we’re over a hundred Primordial Trees deep into this domain, a series of loud caws pierce into my inner ear.
Ulgar instantly stops his movements, and Vardon slows down to a walk, commenting in a serious low tone, “He’s saying the settlement we have to pass through is right up ahead…”
They both stare in the same direction and wait in silence before three more caws screech out through the forest.
This time they get louder and louder, until the fourth comes and I can see the Griffin’s whole body swooping down from the trees.
Ulgar tightens the grip on his swords and stares into the trees ahead. “And that means we have company…”
Before I can reply, it looks like all the space between the trees is turning a lighter shade of white.
My first thought is that it’s a denser wave of Celestial Energy, or maybe High Quality ether residue from the glyphs on whatever is approaching.
However, the more I pour my aura out to direct what I see, the wider my eyes get.
Thousands of white coreless Ascended Demons flood through the trees.
I couldn’t sense them because they give off no vibrations or Primordial Aura, they’re only made of leftover high quality glyphs.
When I turn to my left and right, the backgrounds of the forest get lighter and lighter.
Every direction except the way we came becomes completely filled with Ascended Demons.
