Kae
patreon
Dungeon Diver CH989
🕑 Added 2025-09-12 23:00:08 +0000 UTCThe thin veil of protection around us disappears like tissue paper being burned in a fire.
Small holes form at first, but they open up and spread quickly, exposing us to the open atmosphere almost instantly.
I was already on guard, ready for an attack at any moment, but this is far beyond what I expected. It feels like the weight of the entire zone is pressing on me from every side. It starts off in a small pinhole, but quickly starts compressing my entire soul from all directions.
The dagger above this demon’s head moves forward at an extremely quick speed. Again, it is not too fast that my eyes can't track it, it is just so elegant with fluid movements that it feels like it's meant to hit its target no matter where it’s aimed.
When the seal is completely lifted, the gravity around us increases by tens of thousands of times.
If I wasn’t completely focused, I probably would have been pushed out of the sky and pinned to the forest floor.
Yet, my soul is layered with millions of structural glyphs to keep my Sacred Body intact.
The moment the seal is lifted, not only does this Demon’s Primordial Aura press inward on us, but our Primordial Auras are able to push outward again.
My advanced senses rush back in, but only in a limited range.
I can feel that behind us, the density of the Primordial Aura is less dangerous, and if we were to take a few strides forward, closer to this Demon, it would become so overwhelming that I probably wouldn’t be able to move a finger.
So, I don’t even try to push my aura forward, I only let it ride the path of least resistance, downward and backward, into the forest and back the way we came.
It’s tough, like spreading thin tendrils of mental power through thick molasses, but a large amount of the aura makes it far enough away that the resistance becomes less overbearing. Thin lines of my Primordial Aura touch the trees and begin sliding across the forest floor further and further away.
At the same instant, using another active part of my mind, I raise both hands to create a protective array. It’s flooded with red, black, and white glyphs. Maria holds up her sword in front of her body with one hand, and holds up the other to form blue, white, and sparkling source resin-infused glyphs to combine with mine.
Her Primordial Aura stays around her as she uses the mimicked versions of my Primordial Defense and Primordial Resonance buffs to strengthen her techniques.
Hundreds of millions of glyphs form in an instant and create hundreds of layers of shielding in front of the single dagger this Demon has thrown.
Yet, on impact, the tip of this invisible dagger, covered in dense Primordial Aura, makes every single array it touches shatter to dust.
There is a fine pitched breaking sound like glass that echoes through our minds every time, as the dagger sustains no damage and doesn’t slow down at all.
Not only are our summoned glyphs destroyed, an even more horrifying phenomenon occurs that I didn’t believe was possible.
As the dagger tears into our defenses, it slices through our Primordial Aura and High Noble Vibrations that are imbued into these arrays. No matter how close or far away the attack is, this weapon is directly touching the essence of our wills and breaking them down after every single glass-crunching sound.
I feel my High Royal Vibrations losing some of their vibrance, and even the capacity of my Primordial Aura is limited before my eyes. It’s like it’s being deleted, not in a brute force way, but in an elegant cut, deep into the soul. It feels worse than any physical attack I’ve ever taken, and this dagger is only touching summoned glyphs.
As both our eyes widen and it tears through half of our defenses, I decide to activate my escape route. Trying to block the rest of this strike will only waste energy.
I lower my right hand and grab onto Maria’s arm, then activate [Primordial Resonance] for complete focus and trigger one of my newest skills I upgraded from killing the First Bloods: Primordial Grade Shadow Step.
There is a slight delay in its activation, like some kind of lag. My mind flows through the currents of Primordial Aura beneath the trees that run further and further away. When I close my eyes, I can already feel my position in reality shifting through trillions of forced mechanisms and pre-made glyphs of a language I cannot comprehend.
It isn’t an instant transfer, like I’ve seen the generals use before in the lower zones, or like the Dungeon Walker skill I often used when teleporting inside mana-based constructs. It isn’t even like crushing a luminite crystal.
Then again, I haven’t tried any of those methods with my current level of comprehension and perception.
What I feel now is both my body and Maria’s turning into a pure energy state, where I have no ability to move or think until the actions are completed.
We only flow through the pre-destined Primordial Aura pathway I selected in my mind, connected to the system.
When I open my eyes again, we’re on the other side of the Domain, deep in the forest almost a hundred quadrillion kilometers away.
All of our summoned glyphs are left behind, and a portion of our Primordial Aura evaporates under the pressure of this Demon, but it is nowhere near a fatal amount.
In fact, without such high pressure coming at us from all sides, I feel the strength of my vibrations coming back, and my Primordial Aura growing outward again, recovering to its natural state.
Even the loss in our ether pools was not that great, it was about a quarter of the energy from one ritual domain. We could summon over fifty of the same amount of glyphs before we run out. While reassuring that we’re not in a low-energy position, the fact that this Demon is hundreds of times stronger than us is still clear as day.
The white-hot glyphs on the inside of my soul also start to cool down as we move further from the stump of the tree. I can feel the barrier it was eroding before stop melting, and even begin to solidify and harden back up.
“Oh? Now that’s quite the trick. You can use the skills of demons? Maybe you do have something special about you, but I’m not convinced yet. Come on. Show me more!”
From the edge of my senses, I feel an invisible dagger splitting through the air from the direction we just came. It turns slightly, avoiding trees with ease, and flows with a beautiful rhythm.
Part of my mind is distracted for a moment, completely in awe of its elegance, but other parts are already creating countermeasures.
Red, black, white, and blue formations are summoned in front of us to attempt slowing the dagger down while my mind wanders through the tendrils of aura I’ve spread throughout the forest.
I try to get closer to the tree stump if I can, but I can feel this Demon still standing on its edge. An impossibly strong force is repelling all of my aura that gets near.
Even the walls of this domain suppress my Primordial Aura when it gets too close. While it’s not as overwhelming as the Demon himself, it still slows down the rate at which I can make my aura travel. It’s a limiting factor that could put us at a disadvantage.
There is only a thin ring of forest between the domain barrier and the stump in its center where our travel can be guaranteed to be fast and seamless.
Just as the dagger hits our defenses again and starts to shatter the first ten or so like frail glass, we disappear and reappear under Primordial Trees even further away.
This time, our backs are only a few tens of billions of kilometers away from one of these trees. If I reached a hand out, I’d touch its trunk.
This is close enough to be the strongest aura nearby, and a comforting feeling flows into my psyche along with new links of loyalty notifications.
Despite the feeling of that same beautiful, glistening dagger of death coming our way again, I start to do calculations in my mind about how many Primordial Trees there are left in this Domain’s forest.
“It might be enough to gather a hundred billion worlds… There’s a good chance it will trigger another perk in my Rising Emperor’s system.” I send to Maria using telepathy, while I show her scans of the forest and a detailed plan of my thoughts.
“It looks like enough. This will work as long as he doesn't catch on, we have to play it right.” She starts to summon another defensive barrier, as the dagger has already split through the forest and found us again.
