[CH399+ Continued] Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power

Chapter 455

They shake hands, but as soon as they release their grip, Ember does something unexpected.

He points his hand toward the abyss and a thick stream of Demonic Energy comes swirling toward him, compacting and hovering right above his hand in a dense ball. He shapes it into a fluctuating long sharp crescent and sends it flying back into the darkness where it came.

The powerful and dense attack of Demonic Energy slices through the abyss, leaving a wide open gash in the black mist.

He turns to Arie.

"I see you've recently obtained a Demon's core and need some assistance in mastering your Demonic Energy. I'm sure I can help you reach the next level."

Ember's methods for manipulating Demonic energy are fairly different than mine. He does not have a core, so he manipulates the energy outside of his body using some unknown force. However, he was the one that taught me how to use Demonic Energy in the first place, so I see no better fit for a teacher.

I have a lot of work to do, and guiding Arie through the next phases of training would take quite a while. I could use a body double to assist him, but Ember's insight will speed up his progress even faster.

So, I interject.

"Ember was the one that taught me most of my Demonic Energy techniques, so I trust that you'll be able to progress much faster with him watching over. Plus, this will be a good way for you two to get to know each other."

In the same moment, I share my body double skill with Arie, and he immediately feels the rush of energy and creates three doubles that spawn behind him. His main body speaks.

"It would be a pleasure. If you have anything to add, I'm all ears. I can tell I'm on the verge of another breakthrough."

They both turn toward the abyss, and I sit back beside the same small rock formation as last time and open up my item storage to take out piles of mana crystals and the Isolation pods to begin running a few more tests.

"That was easier than I thought it'd be. Now... back to these pods."

I start up right where I left off, staring down at the [Current Dilation: 1.2040x] reading that glows above the control panel.

After roughly another 100k MP worth of crystals, the number ticks up again showing [Current Dilation: 1.2041x].

I continue feeding the machine more and more crystals, after an additional 1 Million MP, the reading shows [Current Dilation: 1.2051x], further proving that my hypothesis that it would take nearly 1 Billion MP to make it up to a 2x dilation.

Seeing that in all the hours I farmed in the labyrinth, I only came back with a few million MP, I begin to rack my brain for more ideas.

Although an average rate of 1 million MP farmed per hour is enough to sustain the economy of a small country, it still isn't enough to fund my science experiments here, so I'm going to have to think outside the box.

There must have been some other way that the old Sector 2 Leader charged these machines up with so much MP.

I sift through my inventory and find crates of over a hundred C-Grade MP potions that I took from the warehouse earlier today and feed them into the machine to see the rating rise again to [Current Dilation: 1.2054x] and realize even magic items can be put into this machine as fuel too.

I dump junk gear from my farming that I'll never use or sell like swords and axes from D to C grade monsters until I see the number tick up again [Current Dilation: 1.2055x].

Then, I sift through a portion of my storage where many element stones from my time in the labyrinth sit. There's a few ice stones from the Elite Yeti floor, two earth stones that dropped from the giant worms on the 38th, a handful of unique stones from the Wyvern Boss on the 30th. Then lastly, the 9 black fire stones from the 39th floor mutants sit untouched, waiting to be unleashed.

Beside all of these is the corpse of the massive lightning wolf in suspended animation inside my item storage. I'm curious what kind of items it will drop, but am unsure if taking its body from the Boss Room will trigger any unique reactions. So, I'm holding off on letting its body fully dissolve until I can get back to the Labyrinth and see the current state of the 40th floor.

I make the decision to play things safe and use one of the less rare stones first, feeding an ice element stone into the machine.

It disappears the moment I take it out and press the [Input Mana] feature, but the dilation does not increase.

Confused at this reaction, I try a few more of these lower powered Element stones, and it takes over half a dozen more to trigger the counter to rise [Current Dilation: 1.2056x].

"They are just element stones after all..."

This machine doesn't care how rare or powerful an item is, it only cares about how much mana it possesses.

I let out a sigh, but then remember the time I crafted a cursed overcharged wind element stone to drain all of the available mana from a dungeon.

"Maybe something like that could work..."

I look up from my tests and see Ember and Arie about 20 meters away getting along nicely.

The streaks of Demonic Energy are flying out from Arie's double's palms much faster, and the energy is far more condensed and deadly than before.

I put the isolation pod away into my storage and walk over to them.

"Ember, I'm going to need some assistance from you to run another test."

I expand my All-Seeing Eye's range to do a quick deep scan of the desert and pinpoint a weak rogue dungeon far in the distance, about 50km away from where we currently stand.

Then, I point in its general direction.

"This will only take a moment, we'll know if it works or not pretty quickly."

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Author's Note:

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