[CH598+ Continued] Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power

All over the globe, nine silver devices ping simultaneously.

Some are locked away in item boxes and magical storage vaults, while others are worn around strong hunters' wrists and necks like ornaments.

Every one of them sends the same signal: a flashing yellow light among nine other lights that glow brightly.

Some of the lights are a dim yellow, just like the one that is blinking, while others vary in brightness. Some are so bright they almost shimmer white.

The dull yellow light that blinks flickers and fades away, signifying that one of the ten members of this mysterious group of leaders has perished from this world.

The first leader to witness this phenomenon is a woman with long black hair, flying high over a dangerous volcanic region on the back of a monstrous earth dragon.

She looks down at the small device, rubbing her pointer finger over the dull, clear crystal that once glowed with yellow luminosity, and curses under her breath.

"That idiot... Picking a fight with an opponent he clearly couldn't defeat..."

She presses one of the strongest glowing crystals on the device next. It glows bright yellow-white, matching the color of her core and the dragon she flies on, and she speaks again.

"It seems the old man, Mr. Freeman, met his end. I take it none of you were incompetent enough to break our ceasefire pact?"

She clicks her tongue and takes her finger off the glowing crystals as her dragon flaps its wings, and they soar further throughout the volcanic lands.

Everything is silent for a few seconds, other than the flow of lava and eruptions a few kilometers below her.

However, this moment of silence is broken by a yell back through the device as one of the other strongly lit lights shimmers and projects the clear audio of a grumpy man.

"Raven? Is that you? Who are you calling old? He was hardly a day past seventy; I'm almost twice his age and have more fight in me than he ever did. He must have died in a desperate attempt to ascend to a True Core before his body failed him."

The voice stops coming through, and the woman stares down at the device with a grin on her face, amused that the old man took offense to her words.

She's about to press her own button to respond, but one of the other strong yellow-white crystals flickers, signifying that its recipient has pressed it on the other end.

She waits patiently for five seconds, but no voice comes out, and the crystal returns to its resting state, implying the person on the other end decided not to say a word.

Raven presses her button and speaks back to the man who actually answered her call with a snarky tone, ignoring the lurker that didn't speak.

"Nice to hear your voice too, Mr. Redgrave. I hope Central Headquarters is treating you well. Your guess on how the Eight Great Regions' branch leader died would have been my assumption too. However, there is a growing power in the Dark Continent that I presume ended the Director. All my sources tell me he goes by the title of The Flame Emperor."

She chuckles to herself while keeping her finger on the crystal for a few extra seconds for all to hear, then changes her direction in the air, slowly starting to turn toward the north, anticipating the angry yell back through the silver device from the man on the other side.

"Well... Then this changes everything. Mr. Freeman may have been stubborn and suffering from a slower cultivation rate, but he wasn't weak. Whoever this rogue force is, they must be taken out. While we have no rules stating that a fallen council member of The Order must be avenged, I would hate to let a force like this continue to grow and potentially harm one of our remaining nine members before the fight for the throne."