[CH399+ Continued] Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power

Chapter 563

It feels as if days have passed before the pressure begins to go away, but in reality it's only been a few minutes.

Once it does, it feels as if I can finally breathe. The 5 minutes as the pressure subsides and the orange shell dissolves into the air, watching the threads fade away, is one of the most relieving feelings I've ever felt.

I let out a long satisfied sigh and fall to my back once the process is done.

Small threads of orange light still shimmer in my skin and make a small shell-like aura around me, burning my flesh and tearing me apart from the inside out; however, the minuscule pain now compared to what it was moments ago is nothing.

It feels relaxing to only have to regenerate at this slow rate.

I lay on my back for almost half a minute, breathing heavily, then let out a laugh and sit back up.

"You weren't kidding! That was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be..."

Ember grins, then sits back as well.

"We'll do another round in a few hours. It's going to take a while for the excess to leave our bodies, and we both need time to recover."

He's right.

Despite my mythic grade self-regeneration skill working at its maximum capacity, there is still fatigue leftover from that excruciating experience.

After just one stone, it feels like my entire aura has changed. I feel much more rooted in reality. The threads of energy close to my body feel much thicker and heavier. On top of all of that, looking down into my chest I can already see shimmering orange threads slowly floating in and out of my red core.

Despite this, I feel a bit frail. If I ate another stone right now, the experience would be far worse than what I just experienced.

It takes a full 5 hours for me to fully recover and feel like my mind and body are back to 100% again.

While I rest, occasional swarms of insects fly by headed toward the island in the distance, and Ember picks off the stragglers to collect more orange cores.

Then, we repeat the process again.

My skin, muscles, and bones are slowly melted by millions of orange microscopic threads and regrown to harden and reinforce my body from the inside out, leaving me sweating and out of breath with a smile on my face when it's all over once again.

I feel heavier, denser, and stronger once I get a few minutes to recover.

This time, it takes just under 4 hours before I'm ready to go again.

If there was a sun in the sky, it would be rising and setting multiple times while the insect creatures completely ignore us, flying by to flock into the obsidian death trap of a forest.

The time-gap between orange fragment consumption becomes less and less.

The excruciating slow-moving pain that comes with each one becomes far more bearable.

So much so, that I don't have to use my full concentration when the orange threads stay behind more and more, intertwined inside my flesh after every cycle.

My skin, muscles, and bones harden to the point where they feel like they're not even organic tissue anymore.

My rate of self-regeneration increases even when I'm not consuming stones, and the heavy presence that ripples like gravity waves while consuming fragments starts to lag behind to be present even when all of the excess energy has faded away.

My core and aura fade from a deep crimson to slowly shift toward a bright orange.

Over 5 full days pass before I'm capable of consuming fragments without having to wait any extra time in between.