Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

Notifications continue to ring in my mind as more hours pass. I absorb over a thousand more low quality ether through a few dozen more biomes, and [Hush], [Iron Fist], [Bloodweaver], and [Dagger Mastery] are all upgraded to [Divine Grade].

I managed to absorb Bloodweaver from another premium 2nd Class quest, taken from a vampiric beast race. They all looked like overgrown wolves, but their blood-red eyes felt like they had merciless, intelligent minds behind them.

Even after killing over a dozen 3rd Class beasts, without their real memories, it's hard to tell if they were truly intelligent life or not. Ava does most of the heavy hitting, after all—I just get the lucky shots.

We hand in the bounty at another safezone and sell our two crown coupons for another 168 biome maps, expanding our horizons even further, making it past the furthest point that the Ant Lord's odd collection of biomes showed us.

Ren keeps the coupon, and I don't ask why nor pressure them to sell. My mind is more focused on what's less than three biomes away—a black hole of darkness on the mini-map, not labeled with any popups.

There is one safezone between us and this black zone, and when we travel through it on our way out, there are fewer than 40 Lords in total. The wilderness around these parts is quite barren.

I see massive 5 meter long claw marks in the dirt all over the place for tens of kilometers, carving large holes into rock walls and toppling many trees at a time.

"I heard it was a 1st Class..."

"It's been over a full month, and that admin still hasn't responded."

"The poison has leaked out from the black zone barrier. If they don't send someone in soon, all of the surrounding zones are going to be blacked out."

The whispers and rumors from the few brave Orc Lords who have stuck around near the safezone play back in my mind as we get closer to the zone in question.

In my minimap, all I see is black ahead, but with my eyes, all I see is a reflective barrier off in the distance.

It's like I'm staring at a massive mirror—one that would be invisible to the eyes if not for my advanced perception, which picks up on the intricate movements of ether and mana in the air. There's even a light magic array that pairs with the ether commands crafted into this complex machine before me.

As we walk through the ends of a patch of desert sand, leaving a canyon-filled biome where a strange armadillo-like race with body-hardening skills roamed about, the dirt beneath our feet grows far more damp.

It even turns maroon in color, and the sour smell of poison fills the air.

"Those Orcs were right," I whisper under my breath while walking closer, not slowing down a bit.

Ava borrows my divine-grade self-regeneration skill, but she also doesn't slow her pace while walking beside me.

This air is quite infected, and it's strong. Ren stops moving forward, eyes wide, and speaks up for the first time in hours.

"You're not actually going into a black zone, are you? You remember what I said before... only admins can handle them. Walking in is a death sentence... especially this one."

The white-haired Lord takes a step back as a cloud of light purple mist rises from the ground below us, and the rotting smell of poison spreads.

I only stop walking forward once I'm less than ten meters in front of the shimmering wall.

Even now, the illusion is strong. As I look forward, it appears as though the desert canyons we just left go on forever.

However, the different-colored dirt beneath my feet and the barrage of warning notifications that have popped up in my mind the moment we all stepped within about a hundred meters of this wall tell me I'm certainly on the right path.

I turn back, wanting to confirm my suspicions.

"This is a wild beast, right? The poisoned land isn't normal when admins go dark... I assume..."

Ren nods, and that's all I need to know before turning back and walking forward to place a hand on the barrier. It feels just like air, as though we could walk right through.

However, I send a message to Ava, instructing her to cause a large disturbance as cover—just in case there are additional ether commands I can't perceive right now.

"Then all we need to do is kill that beast, and the black zone will disappear! Right?" she yells out, releasing a dangerous aura of premium-grade ether commands—enough mana control to rival all of the 2nd Class beasts we've already fought on our journey here.

Through this release of aura, I become more confident in sending my tendrils of perception into the strange construct, revealing its complete outer layering to me instantly.

Instead of an invisible mirror, in my mind, it looks like a dome of ether commands—just like the safezones we've been checking into, but inverted. Instead of keeping wild beasts out, it's keeping whatever dares to enter inside. No exceptions...

Though, even though these ether commands are locked down tight—dense enough to keep 2nd Class monsters on the loose confined—I do manage to sense a flaw in the defenses...

Well, not a flaw. More like a key.

All of the densest strands of ether come off the inner wall of the dome and lead to a single point within the small area that spans about 8 kilometers wide. From here, I can't see exactly what it is, but my educated guess states it's a tracked target that is connected to the zone.

Ren said earlier that these zones don't disappear until the threat locked inside is dealt with, or an admin interferes.

I can tell that if those strands are severed, so will this barrier.

Upon realizing this, Ava's aura is still at its peak, so I have another moment to dig deeper and use the same style of searching for information as I did inside the arena of a safezone.

Instantly, more black zones pop up in my mind. Of course, not in perfect clarity, but I can guess their relative positions to each other based on the few I have saved in my biome minimap.

It starts off as just a dozen, but then hundreds show in my mind, and soon thousands.

The closer to the inner city walls I look, the more clumped together the zones are, and the strength of their ether commands increases as well—most likely holding back stronger threats...

My mind sinks deeper into the construct, and I start to feel the ether commands that lead upward to the admins. I pull my hand away from the barrier just before I mess in places I'm sure to get caught.

Ava lets out a laugh as her aura settles down, and I lift my hand from the barrier.

"Yes, let's kill this beast. It'll be a trial run—I want to see if my theory is correct."

With grins on our faces, we walk right through the one-way barrier, locking ourselves out of the rest of the wilderness—into a black zone.

When I turn back around, the mirrored barrier is, in fact, jet black. Instead of reflecting anything, all I see is a void. When I look out into the zone we've entered, the damp soil gets mushier, darker, and the sour poison in the air intensifies.

Both Ava and I are healing far too fast to even notice the effects on our bodies.

However, I do reflexively shiver with disgust when I hear a familiar clicking and scraping noise that I thought I'd never hear again.

The rolling hills of loose maroon-colored dirt and slow-moving poison-filled clouds reveal the silhouettes of disgusting, mutated rat monsters at the edge of my vision.

I see a mixture of 5th, 4th, 3rd, and even a few 2nd Class Rat Lords—all gnawing on bones, eating each other's flesh, and mindlessly roaming around this desolate zone.

Their chomping and clawing sounds are horrific, yet a portion of them stop what they're doing when they sense the presence of new Lords in their biome.

This peace only lasts for a few seconds before it's followed by screeches, more clawing, and the shaking ground as a wave of Rat Lords begins tearing up the terrain to mindlessly come our way.

Ava's fists start to glow white while I charge up a fireball in my right hand. The rumbling noise prompts even more rats farther away to turn their heads and follow the mindless crowds. It looks like the entire biome has turned into a sea, with hundreds—maybe even over a thousand—rats flowing our way like a tidal wave.

I speak with an irritated tone. "I'd normally go straight for the boss, but this black zone is in need of a total extermination. We're killing every last one of them."