Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

Strange system users begin popping up all over the message boards, and dungeon loot never seen before on this world becomes abundant in the digital marketplace.

The massive general chats grow over 100 times in size, but many other specialized chats naturally emerge for races, user strengths, and types of worlds.

In the fortress within a mountain in the Apex Region, Bri sees these messages flood into her mind too. She takes this information in the fastest out of everyone, and just as she established dominance in the human world's marketplace, she sets out to do the same here before anyone else figures out what is happening first.

Bulk messages to high spenders are sent out in rapid succession to any and every world that will accept her offers, creating trade relations with all of the high rollers on every one of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Class worlds before they even get used to their new systems.

Bri sends telepathic messages to the 4 generals with admin permissions and ensures all of her trade offers and custom forums she creates are always pushed to the front of every new organic search. In return, she takes a special request from the generals to look for a rare item.

As the minutes pass, the entire world goes through another massive shift.

Without a live recorded explanation like the first time, as the Rising Emperor has gone silent, the four generals create their own custom [Spectate] feeds, available on the home page of everyone's systems to watch, showing them as realistic 3D holograms speaking to the masses.

Raven is the first to give a proper explanation. She was the first to explain the history of the wars and struggle for power that has ended after the throne was claimed, so many humans trust her words.

"There are other planets just like us, connected to the system, and the man who saved this world has claimed even more. We are connected, and if this pattern continues, there shall be many more..."

For the next few hours, questions are answered, and contact from other worlds begins, with goblins, Hobgoblins, and Goblin Kings entering the chatrooms just as confused. They have a similar intelligence and processing speed as many humans.

While at first the appearance of monsters in their minds is overwhelming, the constant stream of information soon makes things quite normal, and the hype dies down.

The generals turn off their live holograms, and the moment they do, Bri asks them to come to the Apex Region headquarters for an urgent matter.

Four teleport crystals are crushed instantly, and they appear on a lower floor where Bri requested they visit.

She is surrounded with piles of priceless gear, piles of gold, and massive containment cases full of pure compacted mana.

Just from the natural senses of the generals, they can feel hundreds of craftsmen and workers, solely employed by this woman above and below her on private floors of the Apex Region's base that were used in the past for hotel stays and training rooms.

However, she's commandeered them for extra help to take advantage of this new system upgrade to corner the markets, find planets that are low in certain resources while others are abundant, and begin acting as a middleman while marking up the prices before their rulers can even conceptualize how to use this marketplace.

As a result, in mere hours, she's multiplied the planet's wealth and set her sights on one world that seems to have far more capable system users and high-level hunters than this world.

The main reason she is still managing to churn an abnormally high profit through them is the interference in the search algorithms she requested from the generals earlier.

When Bri senses they've all arrived, she pulls her widened eyes from her system screen and looks up while holding a single translucent containment case with a glowing yellow fragment in it.

"That request you made, to acquire Divine Fragments at any cost? It looks like I found a dealer. There is only one world that has these yellow ones so far... but from the profits I'm making from the initial surge in hype, I'll be able to secure much more without even dipping into this planet's base resources."

Raven walks over first and replies with a smile.

"Excellent. We're going to need a few thousand more of these. At least."

Her gaze turns back to Arie, and she speaks again.

"Get a few hundred red and orange fragments too. I doubt they'll be anywhere close to as expensive."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

Arie nods, as this is true. He still needs to start from scratch. While he's absorbed the essence of many demonic beasts and grown stronger on this path, it's clear he'll be limited in growth now that the abyss has dried up.

Over the last few hours, a few dozen new planets have been added to the system user base, but none have any intelligent life that have entered the forums or marketplaces.

He adds to Raven's request.

"Demonic Energy, and Concentrated Essence. I need these to grow stronger as well."

Bri raises an eyebrow.

"Demonic Energy I can do. These new planets coming in are growing with strength every time. The sandworms are too simple minded, they'll never join the marketplace. These Demonic Orc and Cyclops planets look hopeful, though. I'll keep sending messages to their strongest until I get a hit... but... Concentrated Essence? I'm not sure I've heard of this before."

Arie raises his left hand, and a white energy swirls above it. Bits of purple and black light glow within it too, but Arie tries to filter it out as best he can, making it pure.

"I killed an extremely powerful Demonic Beast during my training within the abyss and managed to adapt its essence into my system. It has a base of Qi, and since killing that first Ascended, I've managed to cultivate it from almost every Demonic Beast I kill, in very small amounts from their fresh corpses. It is compressed and refined in their bodies and minds over hundreds, possibly thousands of years. This is a rudimentary form. The Qi I use from crystals helps keep it in its physical form for me to wield it properly; but pure crystals dilute its refinement. I need real Essence from Demonic Beasts."

Bri taps her system while listening to Arie's words, but nothing shows up at all. She just nods and replies.

"Nothing yet... but I sent a query out to all of my craftsmen. They'll be on the lookout too."

Her gaze moves to Abby next, and she just crosses her arms, shimmering in a strange green light while replying.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Just yellow fragments for me, no special requests... well... I guess if there are any healers on other worlds with unique items or skills similar to mine. I'd like you to forward me their system contacts. I'm looking for information."

She pauses and thinks for a moment, looking up at the ceiling.

"My only clues to what my Immortal Form really is has gone dark. The new buff I received isn't helping to make things any more clear... If anything, I'm even further from the truth again."

Bri nods, and at the same time, a rush of notifications streams into all of their minds again as 1,000 new worlds are added to the system.

Over 900 of which are unintelligent demonic worlds. However, a small amount of the incoming 1st Class worlds have triple-ranked-up beasts that are capable of complex thought.

The single Noble Grade World has thousands of intelligent system users as well.

Bri is completely absorbed with this time-sensitive matter, and looks away from everyone, diving deep into her consciousness and making contact with these strange new worlds to try and strike deals before anyone else can.

Her entire team of workers is on it too.

–

Maria's eyes light up at this news as well.

Initially, it is not because of the possibilities of profits, but because whatever strange barrier was limiting all contact from the Rising Emperor for days has now been completely lifted.

As the display of his levels and available skills just rose, it's clear he is in the middle of deadly battles.

This is reinforced by a second influx of 79,550 worlds to the system interface just moments later...

–

Trillions of new links of loyalty instantly join into the chaos of the [World Wide Connectivity System], and all of the generals are granted a new strange perk called [Fast Travel] along with an additional 1% of borrowed stats.

The absurd amount of new links of loyalty makes the possibility of pulling a large percent from this pool of power no longer an option. Doing so would create a well of gravity and aura too dangerous for this small world to withstand.

This intrinsic knowledge becomes clear in all of the Generals, Commanders, and Knights of the Crimson Army...

–

The Generals tend to their duties, dropping their trains of thought, and carrying out the same welcome speech for new system users. An explanation of why and how they've been connected to this system to the many new worlds is necessary for order.

While a lot of the initial surge of planets were unintelligent demonic wastelands, a large amount of the higher-grade worlds that haven't been drained completely of their resources by the Noble Demon as their past ruler are actually full of intelligent life just like humans.

Ogres, Trolls, Kobolds, Griffins, Berserkers, Variations of humans, Goblins, lizardmen, Yetis, Golems, Elementals, Elves, Werewolves, Giants, Trolls, and countless other races fill the message boards with their homeworlds' languages all melding into a common tongue translated seamlessly by the system.

–

This influx of worlds is far greater than any in the past, all of which have equal or greater resources than the human world.

Over half an hour passes before the public messages to and from the generals wind down. New links are satisfied with the explanation and wish to explore the system themselves.

In this time, Bri has multiplied the world's resources again, all sitting within her system and the walls of the Apex Region, and secured many new supply lines for divine fragments. Plus, she has even found a few leads on this strange 'Concentrated Essence' Arie asked for.

Her full mind is occupied, and she has begun formulating a plan to sell teleport platforms to other worlds. However, she has had the generals make transferring any items containing luminite through the system a blocked transaction for all worlds until the logistics are fully figured out.

Allowing thousands of Noble Grade Demonic Beasts the potential to teleport onto a world that isn't ready for that infrastructure could cause mass war and a collapse of the system before it has even started.

The Generals see the truth in this potential and patiently wait, as the craftsmen work beneath a growing pile of wealth while single-handedly holding together tens of thousands of worlds from destroying each other with too much freedom.

–

At the same time, Maria logs off her live feed to the world, and still feels the telepathy link with the Rising Emperor hot and ready to be opened. But just as before, she doesn't want to forcefully open it just yet because he just felled another monster, hence the new skills and levels.

However, to her surprise, the link is opened from the other side, and a voice comes through audible only to her ears.

"Getting to a safe place to call took longer than expected, but I made it. How are you? And what's the general status update of things back on our world...?"