Kae
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Dungeon Diver CH876
🕑 Added 2025-05-22 23:00:07 +0000 UTCI try to activate my telepathy channel with Maria, but nothing comes back.
My throat feels heavy, and I can’t even move my lips to speak.
It is a combination of the overwhelming gravity, mixed with my fatigue, but even though my body is stuck, my mind still wanders.
It’s so quiet… and dark…
I can’t even summon a system screen in my mind.
It feels like I’ve died…
I can comprehend that time is passing, but there is no stimulus to alert me of danger or confirm that I’m safe.
It is terrifying.
However, in the same instance, I do not have any notifications, or system messages, or links of loyalty interrupting my attention.
I am also at peace, my mind can finally freely wander…
No stress, no anxious feelings, no need to control everything around me.
All I’m left with is my last memory before this storm, kissing Maria.
Even though darkness consumes my mind and all my senses, I’m positive she is still on top of me. I can feel her figure’s indentation on my own body from the pressure, yet I cannot sense anything else.
There is something else strange in the air; it is not only fatigue and the pressure of this zone holding us back.
Though, the mystery of how or why we are in this situation becomes an afterthought in the peaceful silence of my mind.
A strong warm emotion still vibrates through my consciousness, one that has been suppressed due to constant distractions and always being in a state of survival.
My whole life as a system user flashes before my eyes. However, through a different lens, one of intent rather than just the passing moments.
At first, I would dive into dungeons only for myself, to make enough money to pay for food and rent.
Then, allies started to fight beside me. None of us had any reason to hunt monsters, other than to enjoy each other’s company, and get stronger in the process…
But, the power struggles of the Association got in the way of our peace.
It gave me a reason to fight back, to become stronger to defend and protect those around me, and the innocents that were involved in these struggles.
Since that day, there has always been a bigger enemy.
Those that controlled the Association, the Demon that threatened to enslave my home world, and now a Demonic Hierarchy that dares to rule this entire galaxy.
Yet, I’ve put myself at the center of it all again.
Why?
What am I doing here…?
Who am I…?
When I reminisce on the memories and the words of these demons, dragons, and monsters, they all talk of endless wars in the past.
Over and over, many of them taking control of the Upper Realm; others dominating large areas of the Lower Realm; races suppressing others to climb to the top.
But why…? What is it all for? Won’t their victory just result in a repetition of the past?
The strong suppressing the weak, and using every resource they can to stay the strongest.
Yet, the only way for the weak to break their shackles of suppression is to rise up, and take the crown from the strongest. The only way to stay in power again would be to repeat the actions of the old rulers.
That is what all of these monsters do.
All of these Demons that call themselves family, yet they share hatred for each other, and will backstab one another to climb the ranks at any chance they can get.
If I ever become the strongest… will I become like them?
I don’t think I would… but given enough time, there will always be another force in this galaxy that believes what I’m doing is wrong.
So… what is it that I’m even doing? And Why?
Why would I be different than any of these beasts?
What is the true reason I want to become the strongest?
Why… am I the Rising Emperor…?
–
A single heartbeat is felt above my chest, or at least something that feels similar, breaking my concentration. It is not from me, but from Maria.
I feel her moving, and the faint sensation of Celestial Energy surging through her body.
Even though there is no distance between us, it feels so far away, that it is just a small white sparkle in the depths of my mind.
In reality, she is using her full power, to attempt to get up or sense the surroundings.
This struggle goes on for a minute, and eventually halts, as she runs out of energy again, and my mind slowly returns to darkness.
However, my skin tingles where our bodies make contact.
It is reacting ever so slightly to whatever Maria just did.
There are small specks of white Celestial Energy that fade away, and some even fall into my core before everything goes black again, completely devoid of stimulation.
I let my mind wander again.
Yet, the intensity of the ideas that were streaming through me do not return. Instead, I am distracted again, a part of my mind is still fixated on the sensation of Maria’s outburst.
I felt something… maybe this is how I can communicate with her. Or, at least it’s a start…
I don’t waste any more time, and concentrate solely on my Soul Energy Core, to let Celestial Energy build up with as much power as I possibly can.
Without my system to help me seamlessly activate my mana, the sensation is very strange.
I can feel my ether pool stirring, and a small white glow forms in my chest; but the amount of mental and physical energy it takes to keep even a small fist-sized glow of Celestial light activated in my chest is absurd.
It feels like my whole body is being cooked from the inside, yet, I still can’t move at all…
There are still cyan divine threads that flow through me with ease. They start to bend around this small glowing white light inside my Soul Energy Core, and flow around it as it grows.
I mentally yell into a black void, but my lips are too heavy to actually move in the outside world.
My mind is pushed to its limits as the small orb of Celestial Light grows in my chest, and fills my body with warm energy.
For a moment, I’m able to twitch a single finger ever so slightly at the peak of my output, after minutes have passed.
I’m filled with fatigue again, and forced to stop, releasing the pressure and letting this Celestial light die back down and return to my core.
Yet, I’m certain small amounts of it, where my body touches Maria’s, have been absorbed.
While I fall back into a relaxed, almost dormant state to regroup my mind, I feel her body begin to cycle Celestial energy again in the same fashion.
Minutes pass, and the energy inside her builds up so intensely that I feel her body shift ever so slightly, just like mine.
At the peak of her rise, I’m able to absorb a small portion of the Celestial Energy runoff.
This time, I was paying full attention from the start, and I pull in as much as I can during every moment.
As her cycle dies down, I’ve regained my mental vigor enough to go again.
This time, as I hit my limit, it feels slightly hotter than last time, but not by much at all. I’m able to move the same finger I wiggled before, possibly a few millimeters higher before the gravity and fatigue kick back in.
–
In the silent darkness, we repeat this cycle of Celestial energy back and forth.
It is impossible to tell the time, but my mental clock guesstimates that every Celestial buildup takes at least five minutes to complete.
When ten full cycles each pass, I can only assume it’s already been around two hours.
Yet, the only progress I feel is my ability to finally move two fingers at once.
The shifting movement that Maria makes at the end of her cycles becomes more prominent as well.
I even feel her adjust her head a full centimeter after one cycle.
The amount of Celestial Energy that seeps through our skin, into each other, gradually increases too, and it feels as though it’s becoming hotter and hotter.
The same energy is being cycled through our Soul Energy Cores, and refined under immense pressure.
While the progress is slow, and the result of doing such a thing has no guaranteed outcome… there is no other way to communicate in this black void.
Not only are we working toward a way to become strong enough to face this new environment, but it is a way to reassure the other that we are still alive and fighting.
–
Over a hundred cycles each pass.
It is what I imagine must be nearly an entire day.
Only four fingers on my hand can move at once, and a few centimeters up and down max.
Though, the most intense change I feel is not my ability to move my body.
It is the shift in quality of the Celestial energy that cycles through my core.
It does not stop getting hotter and more refined.
With every cycle through my core, it is tinted slightly red, and gives aspects of Celestial Fire; but when it is cycled and refined through Maria’s core to return to me, the fire has been tamed, and the icy Source Resin becomes part of this energy.
While the base of the Celestial energy is still a pure ether and raw mana, the fact that it is merging with fire and ice, and forcing us to refine the ether down to purify it for use in our own elements, seems to be speeding up the process very quickly.
If I were to only cycle this Celestial Energy within my own core, it would not be anywhere near as difficult, as I would not have to refine out a foreign substance.
Every cycle, however, this icy energy becomes less foreign.
The fact that I’m even able to channel this energy through my own Soul Energy Core in the first place is because our Celestial Bodies mixed energies on the way through the rift to this zone in the first place.
It happened when our Royal Vibrations were consolidated at the same exact instance, creating a resonance with strange properties… almost like a weak soul bond.
Without this, my body would be rejecting every stray particle that is not useful.
Now, instead, it is consolidating further, and is beginning to become a part of me.
Not only do I feel this hot white energy at the surface where our bodies touch, but I start to feel it as it is cycled through as well.
My ether senses are finally beginning to expand.
I can feel outward about half a meter around me at the peak of my cycles, but all there is around me is open air. Below me, a flat black slab of rock, and above me, Maria.
The true use for this sense is getting a far more accurate read on the energy flows.
We naturally start to concentrate where we push the Celestial energy, through the closest points to our cores, through the center of our chests.
In turn, far more energy is passed through each time.
I can watch the flow, as it moves through her body, and disappears into her Soul Energy Core.
For the first time, I finally see inside that endless cold black core of darkness.
The outer edges finally appear in my mind, and they vibrate with vibrations at a strength equal to my own.
I see her True Cyan Core still resting inside her Soul Energy Core, but in a layered state.
Similar to the stacking of zones in the Upper Realm, they are in the same area of space, but do not touch or interact.
The Celestial energy flows past her Divine Core without making any bends or waves like mine does.
I can see the beginning of her Soul Energy Core’s cycle as well, however, at its very center there is still a black point that escapes my senses.
No matter how far I push my mind, my senses are all pushed away, like the secret at its center is invisible, or like it doesn’t want to be found.
When the cycles of Celestial Energy come back into me, I feel Maria’s mind probing my body as well.
Her ether senses wash through my Cyan True Core, and watch the Celestial Energy flood into my Soul Energy Core to be processed, refined, and cycled back.
Yet, her ether senses bend around my Demon’s Core.
There is an incredibly strong barrier that surrounds it. Made from the combined Royal Vibrations of Miriel, and a part of my will, trapping it from releasing the corruption outward.
To Maria’s ether senses, this too just appears as a black void, invisible, and unable to be seen or properly detected.
Comments
Tim Scripter
Sick chapter for this new arc! Thanks Kae!
Alexander Perez
Imagine if they could both go to the land of the void walkers now. They’d be absorbed in a heartbeat
