Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power C.615

Back in the outer desert, just about a hundred kilometers away from the Crimson City, my teammates sit in a circle, absorbing orange divine fragments.

Weak ripples of yellow radiation from my fight reach their senses, and Maria is the first to speak up.

"That's Jay... First, he leaves in a hurry claiming that we'll need to use this power sooner than we think, then he borrows our stats and mana control. Now, these pulses of energy can only be the result of a fight."

Fisher smirks, looking up while still sitting in the lotus position, and responds.

"And he didn't even think to invite us in on the fun. Come on, even though we haven't consolidated our orange cores yet, we're still leagues above what we were days ago..."

Lydia turns to him, opens one eye, then closes it and shakes her head.

"It's too dangerous. He isn't one to draw out a fight... whoever, or whatever, he's facing, they're definitely at or above his strength... We wouldn't last a full second near that battlefield."

Abby is the last to add to the group's words.

"I can't sense a thing, he's so far to the south... As far as I know, there is only a dead zone of desert for thousands of kilometers until..."

She pauses and thinks for a moment.

"I might be right... There are more Association-run Nations far to the south, and word of the director's death must have already traveled to the higher-ups..."

They all sit in silence, knowing that the only thing they can do is become stronger and wait for good news.

That is, until the outward ripple from the center of the abyss meets its outer ring.

A wave of invisible grey energy pulses outward, similar to all of the surges triggered by the abyss in the past, but this one is far stronger than ever before, easily three times as powerful.

The outer edges of the dark abyss creep outward a few more kilometers into the desert.

The four of them feel it harmlessly ripple through them but recognize that feeling from past surges that have caused mass dungeon breaks and calamities.

The grey shockwave that erupts from the abyss begins triggering even more breaks throughout the Dark Continent, and even further into the 8 Great Regions, spreading further out into the world like a massive sonar.

My doubles back in the Crimson City feel it too and immediately jump into action. One of them heads out to Sector 3 to handle the breaks in the farmland, while the other alerts the Crimson Army to stop their training immediately and begin securing all of the dungeons within the canyon.

Once they are stabilized and guarded by the proper ranked hunters, farming will be allowed for rare and unique loot for a limited time, just like the last surge.

Lith and Monk have the proper strength alone to handle Sector 1, and the armed guards led by Chester are high enough level to manage the overflow in Solara and surrounding villages up in Sector 4.

Far out in the Apex Region, my double that's farming dungeons feels it too and uses a teleport crystal to head back to the guildhall immediately, breaking up the family reunion of Bri and Rodrigo to learn the proper protocol to handle breaks in the 8 Great Regions.

A double nationwide dungeon break emergency has been triggered by the battle that has just begun.

—

High above the impossibly large crater dividing the Dark Continent and the Volcanic Region, our battle rages on.

Every clash in the sky we exchange leaves both of us milliseconds away from making a fatal move.

I don't even try activating my elemental or extra magic as a distraction; it's impossible to predict what direction the silver sword wielder will come from, and I only have fractions of a second to make my counter each time.

The most effective strategy is using my fully charged blades, which happen to be my strongest offensive and defensive move.

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True Core-enhanced Soul Energy within these two blood-bonded weapons is the only thing that can possibly block her relentless strikes, and it's the only weapon that can pierce through her defenses as well.

Both of us must keep total concentration on solely the fight in front of us, or it will be the final lapse in attention one of us will ever make.

The fight only becomes more intense, colliding up to ten times per second, releasing more nation-destroying shockwaves into the atmosphere, and riddling each other with holes and slashes.

Her excitement and thrill for the fight only grows the longer it goes on, and the worse shape both of us look.

The woman I'm clashing with may be the only human in the world I've ever met with a crazed obsession with battle that matches mine, or is possibly more severe than my own.

I'm enjoying every millisecond of our battle.

It feels like the most natural, free-flowing dance in the sky.

We both want exactly the same thing: to kill the other.

No emotions are being held back, and the other participant in this deadly dance knows exactly what the other wants without a shadow of a doubt.

It is the most pure exchange of feelings there is, a graceful dance in the sky that can only end with one of the dancers falling to the abyss below, covered in their own blood.

However, our fighting styles differ.

I have something I want to protect, a city of loyal citizens, and teammates that have watched me grow and never once betrayed me, waiting for me back in the Dark Continent. The woman I'm fighting seems to fight for a different reason.

I feel with every strike she sends at me that the essence of battle itself is what she strives to protect. Every one of her strikes feels like she's continuing to search for the perfect kill, but craves an equal or even superior exchange back to allow her own fighting skills to evolve further.

The conviction, confidence, and absolute certainty of each one of her strikes make me believe there has never been a single opponent that has ever witnessed this side of her, and lived to tell a soul about it.

She would rather die on this battlefield right now than let me escape.

—

The clashing of our swords drowns out the state of the entire world, blinding us to the fact that deep in the abyss, enough divine energy harboring an uncountable amount of mana has triggered it to pulse again.

Mere minutes after the first, a second bulge in the pure darkness of the black and purple demonic energy of the abyss forms.

It ripples out to meet the edges and sends another powerful surge, twice as strong as the last, throughout the surrounding nations.

The edges of the abyss crawl out deeper into the Dark Continent once again, becoming visible now, from the Crimson city by normal human eyes.

Above the abyss' center, the clouds continue to part, creating an opening of bright sunlight to peer down into the endless darkness that swirls within the Abyss.

As the second surge triggers more and more breaks throughout the Dark Continent, my doubles, teammates, and Crimson Army have secured all of the most volatile breaks. Over 10% of all the dungeons have been triggered to break by the surge, and up to 50% of them are showing signs of elevated mana levels.

My doubles are able to use element stones imbued with my plunderer skill to settle dungeons back to their resting state, but this process isn't instant.

Traveling from dungeon to dungeon still takes time outside in the real world.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo, Bri, and one of my doubles head back to the Apex Region to give orders to all of the A-Class Hunters and send transmissions out to all of the Regional Directors to begin their usual surge protocols.

—

The battle in the sky rages on, as we're unaware of the mass destruction being caused all around us.

Now, over a dozen pulses of energy from our clash radiate out from our blades every second.

We're both losing blood, mentally and physically fatigued beyond the limits that either of us have ever pushed.

It looks as though two glowing yellow suns are colliding in the sky over and over, digging a deep crater into the side of the world, and every living being on the planet is paying for it.

—

As enough shockwaves hit the abyss, a third bulge in its center starts to form.

It rises higher than the previous two, and the clouds that have begun to part in the sky continue to be pushed away as the abyss looks like it's being pulled upward, like a swelling wave of Demonic Energy.

It swells so high, that the center of the abyss can be seen in the sky from the outer ring, even hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away.

It looks like an impossibly large rounded pyramid of dark fog, and only takes its shape more and more as the round bulge in its center looks like it's pushing upward like a point.

This all changes when the large circle of parted clouds in the sky turns dark as well, to match the color of the abyss.

The point at the top of the swell breaks, and out from its center, a cylindrical structure dozens of kilometers wide shoots up, materializing out of it, and quickly continues growing up into the sky.

From the depths of the abyss, a jet-black tower grows high into the darkness above.

A final surge ripples through the entire world as the swell falls down to its natural state, and the clouds roll back in to fill up the circular portion of sky that parted.

This shockwave is far stronger than both of the first two combined.

So strong, that it reaches far into other nations while keeping its overwhelming strength.

While no physical damage is done by it, as the pulse expands outward, an eerie sensation is shared by millions of people nations apart.

—

As I clash with the silver sword wielder in the sky again, the third surge ripples through both of us, and the shiver it sends down my spine is reciprocated in my opponent.

Despite being mid-clash, both of our attentions waver. We've been in a flow state of pure battle for hundreds of exchanges, but this powerful burst of energy is too strange to ignore.

Our eyes meet, simultaneously realizing there is another threat among us, and both make the decision to use up valuable Divine Energy to send out pulses of perception to see the result of our actions at the center of the Dark Continent.