Kae

Dungeon Diver CH583

Thousands of kilometers to the north, an old man with long white hair and a beard speaks under his breath, just loud enough for his two disciples to hear.

“This new growing nation is strong. The Association and Demons may not be the only forces we need to keep on our radars. We should watch out for their growing warriors once the throne awakening becomes active.”

They sit atop the tallest mountain in the area, covered in snow, surrounded by hundreds of mountains that look exac...

Dungeon Diver CH582

All three of my doubles fly into formation, surrounding one side of the dome to face off against five golden-collared B-Class Hunters.

Fisher and Lydia burst with blue and white light, getting into their own battle stances and releasing a wave of energy brighter and more powerful than anything I’ve ever felt from them.

Both of them surpassed level 2000 while training in the Labyrinth, and when they activate their energy forms, it isn’t just reinforced with Qi like in the battl...

Dungeon Diver CH581

The waves of gravity grow more intense, and the red aura surrounding the two A-Class hunters glows brighter.

While the levels of all three of my body doubles are quite similar to these two, the fact that they’re A-Class hunters and more than double Rodrigo’s level makes me certain they have powerful Soul Energy that will likely overpower my body doubles’ pure mana control.

The wind user speaks up after I remain silent in response to their threat, he pulls a bright white bow ...

Dungeon Diver CH580

The memories of the entire month of surveillance over the Crimson City come rushing back to me.

Just after my main body left for the exams, another order of materials was picked up by my double in Vice City.

All of the new apartments, grocery stores, businesses, streets, and installations to the outer city that I witnessed through the eyes of Maria and Abby become far clearer to me.

The trade routes that stretch out of Sector 2 now connect to many villages in Sectors 3 and 1...

Dungeon Diver CH579

The room comes into focus around me, and I can’t help but stare at my status screen in my mind’s eye as all of these notifications go off like blaring alarms in my head.

My body doubles have been farming this entire time I’ve been inside the construct, and for whatever reason, all access to my system has been cut off until now when I’ve returned.

A massive surge of power flows into me as my base stats nearly double in an instant from all of the extra stat points awarded, a...

Dungeon Diver CH578

The sky darkens as I sit in front of the rift and close my eyes, reaching into the far corners of my mind to think of possible ideas.

After a few seconds, I get up and begin testing everything I’ve thought of.

I open my status and scroll through, trying to activate my body double skill many times, but nothing happens because all three of my doubles are still alive and well back in the real world.

I even attempt to create lifelike manifestations of Emrie out of earth magic,...

Dungeon Diver CH577

I fly closer to the floating forest as the dark void falling down on me expands and descends at a constant rate.

While it appears at the far edges of my perception, hundreds of kilometers in the air, it’s still rapidly descending, and my assumption is I only have a few more minutes to find a way to transport the trees with me before they’re engulfed in the void of nothingness too and I lose my chance.

With soul energy and yellow divine threads powering my footsteps through the...

Dungeon Diver CH576

I pull a teleport crystal from my item storage and crush it in my fist.

The cloud of divine energy below me is impossible for me to pass through, so this is the fastest and only way down I can foresee.

A flash of light envelops my whole being seconds before the void of nothingness makes the very platform I stood on a moment ago disappear like it never existed.

My assumption is if I’m caught up in this too, I’ll dissolve away and return to the real world outside of this c...

Dungeon Diver CH575

The shimmering purple threads continue to flow out from the crystal and bring reality into existence all around me as I think about her last question.

“What do you mean? The Demons are trying to take over our world? All they do is guard labyrinths. If anything they’re growing the economy of large cities and helping our world thrive… no?”

All of the times I’ve conversed with demons in the past flash through my mind.

They’ve all been hostile and human-hating, but I...

Dungeon Diver CH574

The shimmering gold and silver light grows larger from Ember’s chest and begins to cover his entire body.

There is a pulse of light that completely envelops him and spreads out like a shockwave around us.

In the moment, Ember’s dragon form looks like it is made of pure, indescribably bright, and powerful divine energy.

Even looking at it through a screen that is replaying the events, something deep in the back of my mind tells me these shimmering threads are somehow at a...

Dungeon Diver CH573

The further I’m pushed upward, the more purple tendrils of divine energy I see flowing out from a single point.

It all flows from it, seamlessly creating the edges of this massive sky that angles downward to form the dome-shaped world I’m currently floating in.

My eyes widen as the purple light gets brighter and brighter, then the blue hand of the giant finally stops moving upward.

The air is cool up here, and clouds are being blown around in slow circles by a light bree...

Dungeon Diver CH572

Seconds later, there’s another loud crash and explosion as the serpent's downward momentum hits another island's base.

Then, another, and another.

Before my eyes, a path of destruction is created through the sky.

Some of the islands begin to crack and disintegrate even before the monster hits them. The sheer overwhelming pressure of its green aura obliterates everything in sight.

I’m held high in the sky in a blue orb of light, like a tiny lightning bug shimmering ...

Dungeon Diver CH571

I stare up at the large green glowing fruit for a few minutes in awe as vitality streams back into me.

A large aura of vibrant green tendrils of divine energy flows off the fruit itself and begins seeping into the atmosphere.

Only now can I visualize how much of that green aura I really absorbed while falling through the sky.

I hear movement in the trees above as some of the yellow-cored lizards hiding high in the trees start to move downward toward my vicinity.

At the...

Dungeon Diver CH570

The last image that is etched into the back of my mind as the green divine energy completely covers my body is the enormous mouth of the serpent before me, open wide.

I can’t tell if it's the mental and physical pressure from the green aura around me that rattles my mind, or the ear-piercing hiss that comes out of the creature's mouth.

It feels like a dream.

My body is pressed inward by the pressure as if mountain-sized anvils are pushing toward me on every surface of my b...

Dungeon Diver CH569

It feels like the harder I focus on staying conscious, the more my mind is forced to concentrate on less and less around me.

At the same time, the pure physical pressure of the air high up in this sky here forces my aura to shrink down the higher I climb.

My whole body inside my greater form is sweating and shaking to push onward, and I can see Ember’s wing movements are severely slowing as well.

The pure gravity alone that pushes down on me feels almost 50 times heavier t...

Dungeon Diver CH568

Two bright green eyes, larger than the islands themselves, look down at me from the sky.

They’re in the far corners of my perception, so it’s hard to see the entire picture, but it looks as if an enormous serpent floats high in the sky, unmoving and unblinking.

Its body trails off higher than I can perceive, and the part that I can see stretches for kilometers and looks to be semi-transparent, made entirely out of green tendrils of divine energy.

It looks like I’m star...

Dungeon Diver CH567

Ember doesn't stop flying through the air for almost half a minute as the final bursts of the yellow fruit wear off.

He powers down his full dragon form and we both float in the open air in our base forms while staring back at the black forest.

My body and mind feel many times sharper than they did just minutes ago, before eating this fruit, but at the same time, I feel a massive wave of exhaustion come over me as my body isn't used to exerting that amount of mental and physical f...

Dungeon Diver CH566

Millions of hot yellow tendrils of divine energy flow through the enormous fruit in my Greater form's hand.

It looks like a meter-tall peach that glows with a golden radiance, vibrating and humming, bending reality around it, making it seem heavier than my entire orange core.

However, at the same time, it feels as if it’s as light as a feather, almost trying to float above my greater form’s hand.

Ember’s voice echoes through my mind in our link.

“That fruit has...

Dungeon Diver CH565

We approach the dark treeline, and it's not only the lingering gaze of the golden lizard that makes me shiver.

The trees themselves give off an aura of danger that I can't quite figure out.

All I know is it's best if I don't touch their trunks. Every time my gaze falls on them at this close distance, I get the instant reflexive feedback to stay away.

Even so, we enter the dark forest.

I activate my stealth skill along with my greater form.

The orange threads that...

Dungeon Diver CH564

“The island… it’s moving again!”

Ember and I watch from a safe distance as the rippling purple barrier pushes the enormous mass of stone upward again.

Its upward momentum is far slower than when it initially fell, but every moment that passes, the speed increases.

Now, more than ever, more insects flock to the island as if the chance they’re getting now is a life-or-death situation.

Hundreds of orange-cored locusts fly above me, deep into the trees, and I air...

Dungeon Diver CH563

“Instead of letting the energy flow through you, control the threads from the orange core to create a barrier around your body. While the red core boosted your perception and innate abilities, this experience will reinforce your strength, defense, and consolidate itself as an impenetrable barrier.”

I picture the orange threads intertwining with the insects' limbs earlier, making them so tough that I had to use my full power to break through them.

The threads of orange light pe...

Dungeon Diver CH562

The impossibly large mass of stone connected to the top of the nearest chain turns the entire sky dark as it falls toward us at a speed impossible to measure correctly.

The closer it gets, the larger the stone mass seems to become.

What I assumed to be a few kilometers wide stone turns into a few dozen, then even larger, reaching too far out of the depths of my perception skill to even see.

Ember and I airstep toward the outer edges at first, but as the huge mass of earth ge...

Dungeon Diver CH561

The higher we float upward, the fewer birds there are circling here.

Once we make it to a certain point, they stop soaring higher.

We approach the slowly swaying chains, and I watch one of the highest-flying awakened birds glide peacefully through the sky between two of the massive metal links.

As it flaps its long graceful wings glowing red with ethereal threads, another creature comes rocketing toward it, jumping with strong dark green armored insect legs.

It’s alm...

Dungeon Diver CH560

One after another, I consume the red cores that Ember farmed for us and allow the red threads of energy to surge through my body, consolidating into a crystalline form in my chest.

The burning and tearing sensation consuming my being only intensifies. It feels as if every cell of my body has been destroyed and regrown countless times.

Hours pass, and the time between every red core consumed gets shorter each time.

While the red threads of light don't harm my physical body an...

Dungeon Diver CH559

We continue climbing the massive mountain together.

The monsters up this high make gaining hundreds of millions of MCP fairly easy for my teammates over the next 24 hours.

Their controls rise to the point where they begin needing far less food and rest.

In just a few days, I've managed to bring them from barely passing the B-Class exams alone to rivaling the mana control of the Apex Region's elite applicants.

At this point, they're all thoroughly convinced that there i...

Dungeon Diver CH558

“Not yet. You’re not ready for another one. Give it an hour or two.”

I drop the red fragment back into my storage and speak back to him while staring at the rock wall in front of me that is no longer made up of millions of violet ethereal strands.

“What was that…? I— I could see it. Everything. I could see everything.”

Ember turns toward me with a curious gaze.

“So you could see it? It must be that perception skill of yours, impressive. That saves me fr...

Dungeon Diver CH557

Ember grins.

“I’m going to need to borrow that self-regeneration skill of yours; this would be quite painful without it.”

I activate my buff and give him access to this mythic-grade skill. Then the imagery of Trax losing control of his body and power flashes through my mind as I watch the red gem float above Ember’s hand.

“Is this really safe to do here…?”

The gem slowly spins above his palm, and I feel small portions of his true mana control vibrate out ...

Dungeon Diver CH556

At the echoing sound of the fiery bird's screech, the five circling vultures turn my way and don't hesitate to send red-tinted attacks directly at me.

I easily dodge them and twist through the air, sending crescents of mana into each of them, but make sure not to injure the magnificent bird behind them.

Even when pushing my senses out as far as they can go, I don't sense any anomalies like this one nearby, so I want the chance to study it before killing it or damaging it to the po...

Dungeon Diver CH555

At the edge of the forest, an impossibly high mountain stretches up into the sky.

It is too wide for me to see its edges, so the structure just looks like a stone wall that tilts back at a hardly noticeable angle and fades up into the pale blueness of the realm above.

My enemy detection skill picks up on monsters that are stronger than the jaguars in the forest high above as well. They’re ugly-looking scavenger birds, 5 to 10 meters in wingspan, slowly gliding through the sky in...

Dungeon Diver CH554

“We’ll wait until everyone else enters the woods. I have something I want to test out before we go hunting.”

Ember still stares off into the wilderness while Dane and Nat both patiently wait near him.

Marcie watches the rift far off in the distance with one hand on her spear and the other on her waist while she replies.

“Why wait? And what’s in it for me to join up with all of you? Wouldn’t splitting the loot five ways make us a lot slower than any of the other g...