Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

Ember's Astral form adapts to his hybrid form being activated, and he grows close to a kilometer tall.

His sharp-clawed hands and feet glow hot with white physical and mental ether, and his long, pointed tail waves behind him; showing everyone in the room that he is clearly not a human.

Outlines of ether-infused fire flicker all over his being, and the Demon's purple eyes widen in fear.

Andras completely forgets about the warlords he's fended off and moves his spear forward, letting out a beam of dark energy at the new largest threat in the room.

A white outline of indented scales forms all over Ember's arms, legs, and vital areas, and a toothy grin is visible on his face as he raises one of his clawed hands to block the beam of darkness. The palm making impact glows with far more fire than the rest of his being, and when the two forces collide, the black beam disintegrates into nothing as it falls into the intensity of the flames.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

The Demon's heart drops, as it doesn't understand what it's seeing right now.

All it thinks to do is go on full attack mode and kill the enemy before him before it can do any harm. So, Andras disappears in a shadow step and appears right behind Ember with his spear pointing right into his back.

However, just as fast as the Demon travels through space, Ember rotates his body and moves his free hand in front of the black crystal to intercept the blast.

Another burst of ether is visible in the abyss of darkness as translucent fire is summoned to completely disintegrate the entirety of this dark blast.

The Demon shadow-steps again, appearing above Ember, aiming his beam directly down on his head; but Ember moves his clawed hand bursting with fire in the way again.

The Noble Demon's yells of frustration are drowned out in the darkness as he disappears and reappears dozens of times all around the hybrid dragon, aiming for fatal blows, but Ember predicts his moves with impossible precision.

What the Demon does not know is that the moment he used this demonic domain and allowed his true form to leak out from his avatar, a strange vibration only found in Noble beings began leaking out from his body.

Advanced mental ether senses are enough to pinpoint his location the moment he appears back in the physical world, making the three 1st Class Warlords that fought Andras earlier more capable than most.

They have honed their perception for tens of thousands of years and can see through a divine grade perception impairing technique like this, even if their avatar strengths are weaker.

However, Ember can see a step further.

The vibrations of a Noble being once awakened cannot be hidden with normal means.

Those who have tapped into this wavelength even once before can never unsee its power.

Even as the Noble Demon slips away into a shadow form, moving as pure energy rather than interacting with the physical world, Ember's senses can still track his location and predict where he will reappear to strike.

Andras yells into the void, filled with rage.

His mind replays his Demonic Dragon being taken down in front of the entire Citadel, and his own disgrace within the darkness of 1st-class lower lifeforms actually making him bleed.

Now, a strange human with an odd monster transformation can predict the movement of his ultimate ability and disrupt his custom Soul Weapon granted to him from the family head himself like it is easy.

Another dozen attacks go by, and when it's clear the Demon's movements are getting sloppier and more desperate, Ember strikes back.

He perfectly predicts the appearance point of Andras' next attack, and just as the three-pronged spear materializes, Ember's tail acts as an extra limb for the first time in this battle, and the spiked point at the end slams against the middle of the Demon's spear.

It creates its own shockwave of force, nearly equal in strength, but overpowering him isn't the goal.

It is merely a distraction so he can twist around the Demon's body while it's occupied and use the fiery clawed fist meant to block the black beam and instead thrust it into the side of the Demon's dark black armor.

There is still a dense area of strange protective black mist-like aura around the Demon, but the flames covering Ember's body burn it away.

A second shockwave of ether ripples through the room on contact.

The Demon's spear is pushed to release its full strike at the ceiling, pointlessly wasting energy, while deep fiery claw marks rip into the Demon's side, crushing through its armor and tearing out flesh.

From the energy released, both fighters are blasted backward, but only one is badly injured.

Trails of white fire are left on the Demon's side as it roars into the void and its eyes turn darker and darker purple.

At the edge of the dueling room, Zashen lights up with amazement, as this kind of battle is what he lives for.

The Berserker King is covered in dark burns with leftover demonic energy all over him, but adrenaline is surging through his body as he's never been able to fight so long with a Noble Demon before, and it was everything he's ever hoped it'd be.

Now, he gets to see a great leader from his past take down the Lord of this Citadel that has been suppressing his people for over ten thousand years.

Torvak and Asic watch the battle with more stoic expressions, as they're quite spent and have used over half of the refined ether available to them in order to take out that dragon and face off against Andras for a while.

Deep down, they too feel quite the rush, as that very demon has been publicly humiliating them every few years, taking 2nd- and 1st-Class worlds away to damage their public image and drain their wealth.

After this first successful hit, Ember does not hold back one bit.

He too feels a rush, as he hasn't had the opportunity to use low-quality ether to this extent in almost 20 thousand years.

The Demon tries to flood the area of damage with demonic energy, but the white flames left behind disintegrate everything they touch like acid.

The edges of the armor that are broken cannot heal, and the deep gashes in the Demon's skin burn hotter than anything it's ever felt before.

A white flash of fiery ether in the shape of claws, scales, and a long tail comes zipping his way through the air.

The Demon shadow-steps to safety, but Ember's eyes and flight path follow him.

A game of cat and mouse ensues, and every shadow-step to safety this Demon takes hurts his pride more and more.

Ember yells into the void, "A Noble Demon running away? They should send you back to the Lower Realm for disgracing the Five Great Families in such a manner!"

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No one can hear him, but the Demon's acute senses within its own domain can read his lips and find truth in Ember's words.

It hesitates to run, delaying its next shadow step by a few fractions of a second, and this is enough for Ember to leave another deep claw mark in the Demon's back.

More of its glossy black armor is shattered, and its avatar's simulated flesh is torn out and burned away. More and more ether and demonic energy flood in to automatically heal with avatar commands, but it's no use.

The Demon's white bones are exposed in its back, and the purple and green cores within it are much closer to the surface.

It lets out a cry of agony, shadow-stepping to a far side of the room and attempting to turn its body and send a beam of darkness Ember's way; but Ember is already many steps ahead.

The hybrid dragon waves his hand across his body, and out of his claws, many crescents of white ether-imbued fire burst out.

They hit the black beam coming his way head-on and split it evenly into pieces, traveling all the way down the beam of darkness and colliding with the crystal.

An immaculate burst of fire and demonic energy covers the entire back wall of the dueling room as the crystal at the end of his spear shatters and explodes.

The shockwave from the blast pushes the Demon up against the green wall with so much force that Ember has enough time to fly forward and land another point-blank attack with his other clawed hand across the Demon's chest. It tears the remaining armor from his upper body and exposes his cores now from both the front and back.

The Demon shadow steps hundreds of kilometers across the room to safety.

Now, as his body burns with white flames, unable to heal himself and unable to defend or attack without a weapon, the Noble Demon now understands defeat...

It watches the imagery of a clawed creature coming his way and knows even if he tries to run again, he will lose this battle in the next few moments no matter what he does.

His avatar and mind will end up like the two 1st Class Demons they brought in earlier, and the Family head will surely relieve him from his post.

Most likely, he'll be sentenced to a few thousand years of re-education training in The Fortress Citadel, and the Noble Demon that is meant to come within the next few weeks will take over Ellipsia.

All this races through his mind as the sharp, fiery claws of his opponent draw near, but the pure killing intent on its being doesn't stop.

Andras believes that maybe in this veil of darkness, whoever this mutated human is, believes if he kills a Demon and no one sees it, he can shift the blame to someone else... Possibly... there really is a threat of dying today.

This momentary thought makes the Demon shadow step away, down to the center of the dueling room, and make a rash decision.

"Enduring shame for the family is better than a Noble needlessly losing their life," is what he whispers as the vibrations of his Noble being retract back inside his avatar, and the black void filling the dueling room disappears in an instant.

Ember notices this and grins even wider as he deactivates his hybrid form right before the lack of darkness exposes what he really is.

A loud thud ripples through the room as he shrinks back down to his human form, just over 100 meters tall, standing before the 3-kilometer-tall Demon in the center of the room that is without a weapon and covered in white, fiery claw marks.

The Demon's eyes widen, and hope drips back into his heart as he realizes this mutant hasn't gone in for the kill.

"I was right... you won't kill me..." he mutters to himself, then looks up at the ceiling that is covered in black burns and white fire from the spear's beam and Ember's attack residue.

Then, he begins to laugh, making the room shudder.

"You won't kill me! Ha! That's right! You cannot kill me!" he yells in between laughs as demonic energy grows around him but is clearly still being burned away in his injured areas.

–

Shock moves through the crowds outside too, as the scene before them is not what they imagined there would be once the black-out pause in the broadcast ended.

"Did the human do that...?"

"No way, it must have been the Berserker. He was the only one that could pierce the Demon's skin."

"How is this possible? I thought Noble Demons were invincible."

"They are... you hear what he's saying. If any of them kills him, the Family head will burn this Citadel to the ground and extinguish the race that killed him in both the Lower and Upper Realm."

"So what...? They have to surrender now... even though they won?"

"They're the Demons. They took over this Zone of the Upper Realm, their rules are law..."

"I wish I got to see what happened when the broadcast went out... I just don't see how a Noble could lose."

"You're right... me neither... against a human too. It's just absurd."

"Maybe it's a test. Maybe they're listening to us... to see if we're still loyal even when the Citadel Lord seems to be outmatched."

"Y... You could be right. In that case... I-I think Andras can still win."

"... Yeah, this is nothing. The Demons are the strongest race in the Upper Realm. This is just a scratch..."

–

As the public reacts, and the servants below this dueling room scramble to figure out what is happening, Ember wastes no time and continues the show.

He sends balls of translucent white fire from his fists at the Noble Demon, which are nowhere near as strong as the attacks he sent moments ago.

The Demon is able to dodge these with ease, and even summon enough demonic energy within his own fists to block and neutralize some of the attacks when he isn't fast enough to dodge.

Streaks of white, green, and black energy move around the center of the dueling room as the two continue their fight, both significantly less powerful than their true forms.

A series of familiar vibrations ripple tens of thousands of kilometers below the citadel, vibrations that cannot be felt by anyone but Ember and Andras. This cues Ember to send telepathy waves to the other three warlords to follow through with the final stage of his plan.

Andras knows one of the vibrations quite well, and as he's battling for his life and reputation right now, he brushes it off as probably just another rogue Lord being crushed by the Exile Guardian below them.

"Come on! Give up! All of you! Look what you've done. This display is enough to get all of your races completely erased... There is no reason to continue on. Surrender, it is impossible to kill me. I am a Noble Demon!" This is what Andras yells as he watches the three warlords begin to creep in from the other corners of the room with their Soul Weapons glowing bright white.

Ember's eyes look sharp, nothing like a man who has given up or has any plans to surrender.

This is clear to Andras, but he knows these recordings will be shown over and over again, and he believes he must preserve the little face he has left.

He grits his teeth and blocks a powerful fiery punch from Ember.

The rotation of his avatar exposes his ribcage and a bright green view of his True Core.

Torvak's voice echoes out from the side of the room as static energy grows around him and his massive club.

"Now that doesn't make much sense, does it...? You say we've done enough already to doom our races? Yet we should spare your life?"

Zashen grins ear to ear as his red eyes glow and he scrapes his swords together.

"At the rate you're suppressing every race in this Zone of the Upper Realm, aren't we all doomed anyway if we don't fight back? Might as well go down fighting!"

Asic slowly walks forward with shards of bloodstone forming like walls of spikes behind him.

"You have taken everything from us, and believe we should bow our heads and thank you?"

A surge of energy erupts from Ember's being, giving off highly increased mana radiation, and the ambient divine energy in the air pulls inward toward him more too. The world token on his palm ticks upward again, showing [1242] worlds.

The next punch he throws is not so easily blocked...

The pure force of it sends Andras skidding backward, and the fire imbued in his fist spreads over the Demon's armored hands that blocked it.

His glossy gauntlets begin melting away before his eyes while he uses his other hand to block another attack.

The flashing lights and shockwaves of impacts become faster and faster; melting away all of this Demon's protective armor, and its dignity with it as tens of millions watch.

Andras tries to fight back, but the overpowered blows of this human are too strong and fast to block or even see coming.

He relies on instincts alone to survive for the few remaining seconds he believes he has but yells out with rage.

"The Vermillion Family will curse you all. You have no idea what you have done, lower lifeforms. The Royal Family head will show you true despair. If you dare kill me, you shall all soon wish you died here with me today once you understand your new fate."

Ember flies through the air with even faster speed and kicks the Demon in the back of the leg.

Andras falls to his knees as Ember yells back.

"A Noble Demon has admitted his defeat? You cannot stand your ground against a human and three 1st-Class Lords? What a shame, the Demons have grown quite weak..."

The entire central building starts to rumble at these words, and Ember uses both hands to create a white fireball and send it flying toward the kneeling Demon's chest.

It tries to block with crossed hands, but the force of the attack shatters his battered bones, setting his hands into a white fiery mess in the air while the remainder of the attack hits his chest and sends the Demon flying backward to the floor.

Lightning bolts and bloodstone rain down from the air, pinning the defeated Demon to the green dueling room floor.

A High Orc and a Blue Ogre land beside the Demon with thuds, pressing their axe and club down onto the Demon's shoulders; making their hot ether burn against the Demon's face.

Zashen lands with a thud between the Demon's legs and stabs both of his red glowing blades into his thighs, shattering the last remaining pieces of armor left on this Noble, and a weak cry escapes the Demon's lips.

Ember floats above with his arms crossed, counting down the milliseconds left before the end.

The entire central tower shakes more and more; and that, in turn, makes the live broadcast vibrate too.

Yet, no one inside the dueling room is the root cause of the shaking.

When it looks like the four Warlords are about to kill this Noble Demon and directly challenge the Five Great Families, something not a single Lord on the Citadel could have predicted happens.

The floor of the dueling room cracks open, and a massive purple and black soul sword with an eye on its base plunges upward through the Noble Demon's chest.

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