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

As white light envelops all three of us, I create a barrier of pure mana shielding around the Vice Region's director.

If not, the pressure of dense orange divine energy filling the underground bunker in the Crimson City would have shredded him to bits in a matter of milliseconds.

An additional upside to this barrier is that with this man's lack of strong mana control, it will be impossible for him to see or sense through it, essentially bringing him into my fortress blind until I decide he should be able to see.

When we finally materialize, the sight before me is fascinating.

To my right, I instantly sense two fully formed orange cores inside Maria and Abby. On the other side, Lydia and Fisher hold two red cores, almost fully saturated and on the verge of transitioning to orange.

The room is densely packed with swirling divine threads. From my experience in the past, when I was trying to compress my own divine energy, once they're ejected from the cultivator's body, the threads usually stay stagnant or dissolve into the air. But something different is happening...

As the orange shimmering threads are consumed by my four teammates, small amounts of energy stay contained in their bodies, and a large portion is ejected. However, at the back of the room, the faint consciousness of Ember lingers inside the isolation pod that continues to dilate time inside of it by over ten times the normal speed.

As divine energy seeps in at a slow rate, it is expelled at a far faster rate, though in slightly lesser quantity.

It's like Ember is subconsciously processing the divine energy and taking a small tax, but in doing so, allowing the momentum to keep pushing it around the room, creating a whirlpool effect rushing through all four of them and adding additional threads to their bodies.

The enhanced shielding I created is doing its job perfectly, allowing for the divine energy cycled out from each of them to stay in the room and forcefully continue to cycle through them, compounding the effects of each fragment consumed.

Alone, this would be quite detrimental to the advancement process. The body can only handle processing so much divine energy at a time.

However, with Abby's constant use of her mythic-grade [Restore] skill, and [Area of Total Restoration] buff everything can be expedited. Now, with all of these unique healing traits enhanced by the power of a fully awakened orange core, everyone in the room is being constantly healed physically, mentally, and held together with extremely strong divine restoration threads.

What took Ember and me nearly a week to accomplish while fighting orange-cored insects in the construct has taken my teammates under two days.

I assume it would have taken even less time if they'd started inside this bunker, but when the process began, I was more worried about getting strong enough to take on the Apex Region's Director than anything else.

Now... I've taken over the entire Nation and have quite the special gift to surprise my teammates with.

The first to sense our presence as we enter is Maria, as she's not actively trying to awaken her core, nor is she focused on healing the others like Abby.

Her blue eyes pierce through the plumes of orange divine threads and meet with mine as I power down my illusion magic, but keep a tight oval-shaped bubble of dense mana around the director.

A telepathy link between us opens as a wave of perception ripples through the group.

"Welcome back, Jay—Wait—That's... The Vice Region's... No way..."

I smirk as Abby's eyes open, and she does the same scan of the room before speaking through our link as well.

"It's him... What—what are you planning to do now...?"