Dungeon Diver CH596 (Patreon)

As I turn to the real yellow divine fragment in my hand, the body double that was on its way here as this display from the Lich King unfolded sends a telepathic message as it arrives nearby.

“The last remaining isolation pod has been recharged up to a stable 10.5x dilation. Ember can begin his hibernation beneath the guildhall with my supervision right now.”

It touches down, and I think about a response while it pulls the large cylindrical metal contraption out from its item storage.

As it sets it down, I walk over and open the front, typing into the control panel to give myself a 3-minute session, which would be the equivalent of just over half an hour inside the chamber.

“I want to test something quickly.”

I take a step inside, then turn to my teammates and nod.

“Tell me what you see while I’m inside. I’m curious if this will work…”

Once the door closes and I’m left inside the small mana-shielded room, the air becomes thick with pure mana while the pod activates.

The thought of channeling divine energy inside a pod made only to hold mana seems like it might be too stressful on the structural integrity of this magic machinery. However, if there’s a chance it will speed up the process, I have to give it a shot.

I sit down in the center and consume the small yellow gem that I had hovering above my hand while the Lich King gave his presentation. The same sensation as the last hundred times I did this rushes into my body.

Yellow threads flood out of the concentrated fragments and enter my core.

They swirl around and give me a surge of power for a few seconds before flowing out through my chest, arms, and legs on their way to leave my body like usual.

However, this is the first time I’ve consumed a fragment with the purple barrier that wraps around me, skin tight.

My first instinct naturally allows the excess threads that have already filtered through my core to flow out.

However, by the time most of the energy has left, I realize that it is only leaving because I allow it to.

I pull another fragment from my storage with different plans on my mind this time around.

The moment I swallow the next gem and its built-up energy starts circulating in my core, I concentrate hard on making the barrier made of semi-dormant purple threads to keep all of the filtered yellow threads from leaving my body.

A few seconds later, a wide grin creeps onto my face as the yellow threads circulate through my body and collide with the outer limits of my skin once they hit the purple barrier, keeping their momentum and pushing back toward my core.

A few minutes pass, and some of the excess energy does, in fact, filter back through my core, but at the same time, my flesh and body containing so many excess threads is ripped apart at a much faster rate. It is very painful, and pretty exhausting to activate my self-regeneration to maintain while concentrating on keeping it inside.

Even so, I’ve been through far worse, so I eat another fragment once the flow of the first excess energy starts to slow down.

There's another cycle that passes, and the purple barrier holds all of its energy inside my body, slowly circulating through my core again and again.

However, this energy starts to become stagnant too, just like the first.

I eat one more fragment, and the cycle continues yet again.

I find that keeping the energy inside my body and using new fragments to stimulate the leftover energy increases the efficiency by roughly two to three times at most.

After about 20 minutes pass, I sit in the center of the isolation pod with the excess divine threads of three fragments slowly circulating around my body, ever so slowly seeping into my core.

I don’t have control over the threads that have been expelled from my core; the extra energy in my body now is only harmful, and there seems to be diminishing returns as every minute that passes, the speed of flow back into my core doesn’t continue at the same rate unless I eat another fragment.

At the same time, the increased density of threads in my body is eating away at my flesh at even faster rates.

Self-regeneration is working as fast as it can, but the rate at which I’m getting fatigued doesn’t seem to be worth it, considering I only have a limited amount of fragments in my storage.

Only a fraction of the threads even stayed in my saturated core, so even if I ate every single fragment in my storage right now, it may be a total waste of all the divine energy I have left to test with.

My core would grow slightly, but at this rate I wouldn't even get close to growing my core to the size of the directors. It would still take decades and tens of thousands of fragments to do so at this efficiency level. My goal is to surpass that by many times, and awaken a True Core. Something needs to change.

I think things over a little bit longer, considering eating another fragment to speed up the process again, but decide not to and take down my purple barrier to allow the trapped yellow threads to flow through.

It all slowly seeps out, and from what I can see, it all just flows right through the outer walls of the isolation pod.

While still deep in thought, the isolation pod opens up, and I’m met by curious gazes.

The whole pod is void of any leftover threads, and from what my teammates and the Lich King describe, there was yellow aura flowing through the walls of the pod the entire time I was inside.

I nod, open up my storage, then let Ember’s sleeping body gently fall into the isolation pod where I just sat, and turn to my double.

“This pod won’t be useful to me at all. Set this pod to 30 days our time, almost a year in isolated sleep. He may need more than that, so get ready to recharge the pod once the time is up. I want a double watching him all day and night beneath the guildhall. If I need to use it, I’ll send Bri a message to have you transport it back. We’ll be training out here for a while.”

The double closes the pod after entering a few codes in the control panel, then lets the pod fall into its storage.

“Understood. Good luck with your training.”

Then, it flies away to leave us in the empty desert.

I nod and think to myself.

While the extra time within an isolation pod would be helpful, losing pretty much all of the energy that I filter through makes all the time in the world useless.

I have had one breakthrough, the fact that I can hold the divine threads inside my body, but I need to think of a way to compress a higher percent of that energy into my core while not losing all of the excess into the atmosphere.

While I think about this, I open up my storage and pour out all of my red divine fragments and look to the Lich King and my teammates. Then, I share my self-regeneration skill with Maria and Fisher, as Lydia and Abby already have functioning healing skills.

“I need time to think. These are no use to me now, so use all of them if you wish. They should be enough to bring all of you to the red core stage.”

My gaze turns to the Lich King.

“Guide them while I solve this problem on my own.”

Each of them takes the red gems and puts them into item boxes while the Lich King begins to go off on a tangent about his first time awakening his red core, the optimal way to awaken, and the effects it has on the body and mind like an arrogant record player on repeat.

Satisfied with the fact that they will be able to achieve this on their own, I turn away and begin walking to a more isolated part of the desert.

I watch a cloud of red mist form around them as I walk further and further away, then sit in the sand until an idea comes to mind.

“This could work… Or become a disaster… I’m far enough from the city where I think it’s worth a try…” I whisper to myself, then shrug and reach into my inventory to pull out four black seeds of the trees I managed to pull from the ocean inside the divine construct.

I place them in a diamond shape around me, then use my new skill [Barrier Creation] to create an invisible dome around me with a small tunnel that leads deep underground as an escape route.

Next, I pull out a fragment of yellow divine energy and consume it, letting the same process as before play out.

Instead of keeping all of the energy inside my barrier, I let it seep out through two artificially manufactured weak points in my purple limiter in the center of my palms. I don’t just let these excess threads flow into the atmosphere and out of sight, I push them toward the black seeds that sit inside this barrier with me.

The instant the yellow threads touch the obsidian seeds, they all start to grow upward and create branches that mimic the outer shape of the dome.

At the end of the branches, four small yellow fruits dangle in front of me containing a large amount of the energy from the fragment I just expelled.

Some of the energy was lost, but it’s far better than what I was dealing with before when all of the excess threads just dissolved out of the pod and into the empty desert..

I smirk and use small air blades wrapped in yellow threads to cut the four fruits down from their branches and eat them on the spot one after another.

Every time I eat a fruit, it cycles through my core, leaving trace amounts of its threads behind, and the expelled energy is collected and presented right back to me with a small tax taken from the trees.

I use my purple barrier to keep the yellow threads circulating through my body and back into my core while I consume the fruits one by one. Letting my core take in larger amounts of energy at smaller intervals seems to be even more efficient and less energy taxing on my body too.

I go through another two dozen cycles, of four fruits each, until its taxed away every bit of energy from the single fragment I started with. Over this half an hour of cycling, the black trees create a midnight-colored dome above me, catching every fiber of energy that is expelled from me now, no matter where it flows out of me.

I take down the top portion of the dome barrier and only leave it activated on the desert floor, making sure I have a way out of this obsidian death trap, but allowing the trees to grow high into the sky using the excess energy from me if they wish.

It is a symbiotic relationship.

The trees get to consume the energy I cycle through, and in return, one fragment becomes an additional 25 times more efficient.

I pull another fragment from my storage and stare at it, preparing to repeat the process. It is another step in the right direction, but my core hasn’t even grown a measurable amount yet.

Thoughts continue racing through my mind as I try to picture new ways to improve the efficiency of this awakening even further. I need to speed up a process that should take decades or even centuries down to just a few days.