Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

I don't even take the time to watch the portion of the artifact I sliced off dissolve; I just let the cluster of crystals fall into my item storage and swim forward with the extremely fast-flowing water under enormous pressure.

The jet of water floods inside the artifact, dispersing down into the hollow shell of the statue plunging into total darkness below the ocean floor.

It is hot and humid, but I airstep away from the water stream and hover in mid-air, deciding to take a breath while sending out a pulse of perception to get a reading on my surroundings.

The inside of this structure is filled with stale air.

I send a message through my telepathy link to Marcus through the small hole in the side of the artifact's wrist just as it completely heals itself.

"Understood, I've run into a small detour... this may take a moment."

The hole letting in massive amounts of ocean water seals itself, and the raining salt water all falls into the darkness below.

I can't see anything at all, but instead of sensing nothing as I did from the outside, now I can sense the energy particles in the air trapped within this massive structure and feel its exact shape.

I'm floating within the wrist, which leads upward to create the enormous hand that stretches up and out of the ocean, with the infrastructure of an enormous city built atop it.

It even leads to a shoulder, and that shoulder connects to a neck, torso, and three other limbs.

The impossibly large artifact appears to be lodged hundreds of kilometers below the planet's crust, and the deeper down I sense, the denser the air becomes filled with Qi.

There is no mana present within this structure other than the small amount that radiates off my body.

However, the further I push my senses into the depths of the artifact's darkness, I do feel the flash of divine energy again.

It comes and goes, giving off extremely strange readings.

One moment it's invisible, and another, it's creating a gravity well with the intensity of a True Core; other times, it's hardly the strength of a newly awakened red.

I don't sense any intelligent life, but every time my perception touches the odd divine energy reading down below, I get the intuitive feeling that it is looking back at me.

Overcome with curiosity, I float further down into the darkness, following the flow of denser Qi and divine energy.

I slowly make my way down the entire arm, deep below the ocean floor, and find that a large amount of water that fell in through the hole I made has pooled in the lower tricep of the bent right arm that reaches out of the sea.

As I pass it and move through the shoulder joint, steam rises up, adding to the humidity as the water down here instantly boils from the heat and pressure.

I'm flying many kilometers in a matter of a few minutes, but in this state of total darkness, it almost feels like I'm not moving at all, just pushing myself through endless hot air while following a mental map.

Despite this, I eventually end up right below the head, staring down at the void that leads to the statue's midsection and legs below.

This is where the heat, pressure, and Qi density are the strongest. However, my attention now shifts upward because beneath the statue's head, where its neck would be, there is a narrow hole, roughly 100 meters wide at its entrance, but as it goes further up to meet the head of the structure, it gets far more narrow.

This is where the strange, inaccurate divine energy readings come from.

I airstep upward into the narrowing passageway. Qi is abundant, but strange divine artifacts are much harder to come by.

Touching this structure on the outside doesn't drain any divine threads, and there was definitely no way for me to perceive it from just putting out a scan.

While cutting through the black stone is very difficult, I'm sure it would be possible for almost any order member with a True Core to do the same.

Either this artifact is completely new and was only activated by the small amount of divine energy it took from me, or it's been collecting energy from the atmosphere for millennia, overlooked, with no one ever caring to examine it closely or attempt to look inside.

As I float upward and the narrow passage through the neck becomes smaller, I hope for the latter, and I believe it may be true. The dim glow of my True Core's aura lights up the walls around me, and the illegible Originator text I've seen before in the Saint's recordings appears all over this place.

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I have no way of interpreting it, so I simply follow the source of the odd blinking and changing gravity well readings until the narrow passage squeezes so tight that it's barely 3 meters wide.

It comes to a halt near the base where the jaw is on this massive statue, and instead of going straight up, there is a rectangular hallway with ascending stairs at the top of the upward funnel to the head.

I float down onto it and begin to walk up the path, illuminating more and more Originator text on the walls.

The passage is dark, hot, and cramped, with thousands and thousands of etchings all over the walls.

My echoing footsteps are heard only by me as I continue upward, the cramped stairway spiraling higher, creating a circular spiral leading into the skull of the statue.

I activate my All Seeing Eye, not holding my True Core's power back at all, trying to see everything there is to see in these halls, but nothing comes back.

All I get in return is the same dull fluctuating signal at the top of the statue's skull and the minor tugging at my core that siphons small, negligible amounts of divine threads from my aura as I continue upward.

The yellow light coming off of me is so bright that it seeps into the walls, making each of the bold etchings in the black stone vibrant and reflective, searing every ancient letter into my mind with each step. There is nowhere else for my perception to go, so all of it concentrates on these unreadable words.

As the minutes pass and I walk higher up, many of the letters become recognizable, as they're repeating over and over in my head.

It's basic pattern recognition, but with millions of characters being scanned and imprinted on my mind, I can begin to guess which characters will come next without even understanding what they mean.

By the time I reach the top of the enormous spiraling staircase, my mind is split between wondering what I'll find at the top and whether I'll be able to understand Originator text if I stay here long enough...

Just like when I entered this rising hallway, there is a single rectangular door to walk through when I exit it.

I find myself in another massive, wide-open dark room, hundreds of meters tall and wide, with even more Originator text printed all over the walls.

As my True Core's aura hits it, millions of letters shimmer yellow and white while I walk into the center of the room, gazing in awe at the main attraction here.

A floating yellow disk is visible in the center of the room, no larger than my palm.

It's a few centimeters thick at most, giving off a gravity well almost identical to my own.

The moment I blink, the disk shifts its form, shimmering white, then turning completely black and forming into a perfect cube.

No divine light comes off of it, and the gravity well present moments ago is no more. There is a faint amount of Qi still inside the black artifact.

I take another step forward, and it shifts again, growing in size and turning red, transforming into an elongated sphere.

As it turns, the coloring shifts to orange, then yellow, bending and stretching to become a long cylinder until its edges meet to create a spinning donut shape in the air.

Its gravity grows stronger as it becomes brighter yellow, and the hole in its center shrinks until it disappears and becomes a disk again.

It collapses into a small pyramid, completely black devoid of energy, then shifts to red, repeating a seemingly random yet similar cycle again and again.

I'm mesmerized by the phenomena and get extremely close to the floating object in the center of the room.

So close that the edges of my purple barrier begin to interact with the aura it creates when it's at its peak.

This, combined with my own perception reading millions of now-recognizable ancient Originator texts, causes a strange shift to occur in my mind.

For a moment, at the peak of the artifact's cycle when it reaches the strength of a True Core, I feel as if its emotions are rippling through my barrier, and a moment of clarity washes over me.

My eyes widen as I step closer again, and as the cycle repeats, the clarity hits me even harder this time.

"It... makes sense..." I whisper to myself as the words in my mind start to shift and come together in fractured, barely readable states.

Every time the cycle resets, the understanding I grasp fades from me as well, but I'm able to mutter out words each time it happens and look back on my memories.

"They have left..."

"Not enough light on this world for all to ascend..."

"I will die here, but one day, I believe another wave will come."

I take steps closer to the oscillating artifact, and each time, I feel the tug on my core grow stronger.

"Left behind treasures for future generations..."

"The race will begin again, whether it is for light, or for ruling of the physical world."

"If you have found my tomb, please hear my words. I wish to follow you through the doors."

At these last words, I can't tell if I'm reading them off the walls anymore or hearing the words of the artifact itself.

I'm so close to it now that if I were to put out a hand, I could touch it.

It doesn't feel alive at all, but the afterimage, like an echo of desire, still emanates from it.

The moment I stop repeating its words and allow my aura to retract to ponder them more carefully, the artifact changes its movement patterns again.

Almost as if it is tired or scared I'll leave, the object stops mid-cycle while it's bright orange, shifts back into a black cube, but continues to slowly rotate a few meters off the floor.

No more divine energy radiates through the room, and it becomes eerily silent.

I stare at the palm-sized black cube. Curiosity is flowing through every cell of my body and becoming stronger with every rotation.

Almost a full minute passes, and nothing changes. No more divine light permeates from the artifact, and my knowledge of the runes and text all around me is cut off. However, the artifacts message is clear, and I know what I have to do if I want to learn more.

I take a deep breath, and slowly reach out my right hand until my index finger makes contact with the cube.

It stops rotating and again, a gentle soft pull on my core activates, and small amounts of divine threads are siphoned out.

A ripple of yellow light becomes visible over the cube, and it disperses all over the room, lighting up all of the text with a bright divine glow.

Simultaneously, a voice echoes in my head. It doesn't sound human, more like a wild animal mixed with metal scraping against metal, but in a gentle rhythmic pattern. I'm certain it's some kind of ancient dialect, or means of communicating, because my telepathy skill and purple barrier translate its meaning.

"Another wave has come; my hypothesis was true. This world is rich with light once again."