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

It turns its entire black heavily armored body faster than I've ever seen any monster move before.

An enormous single white eye with a jet black pupil locks onto me, and its spiked ball on a chain spins around its head a single time before it lunges forward.

A streak of red and white light is left behind, and my Divine Foresight skill begins tracking the many multiplying options I have before me.

Its speed is absurd, and a shockwave of aura is bursting out from its being, but it's already acted and begun to run my way before the aura has even hit me.

Once it does, every bone in my body vibrates with unease. It is the natural intimidation, far stronger than a Demon's. The red mana within its aura triggers a feeling I know very well—it is some kind of berserker skill, enhancing all of its stats.

Knowing what is about to hit me won't do very much, as every option I see in my foresight ends poorly.

I can see the hundreds of links within its chain connected to the thick ball and chain down to the handle in its grip, with a bright [1000] on its world token.

While the number of worlds is one thing to be enamored with, the way every single chain link moves with purpose catches my attention even more. It's as if the soul weapon has many minds of its own.

All of the foresight predictions streaming through my mind recalculate thousands of possibilities per chain movement, quickly forcing me to use more and more mana to predict hundreds of thousands of movements instead of just a fluid and predictable path.

Not to mention, it's closed the gap between us, dozens of kilometers, before I've even realized it's attacked.

I have no possibility of dodging. Within a fraction of a second of entering its zone, I've accepted that this opponent is truly an overwhelming adversary. I have no way of fighting back, nor even time to dodge in this form.

There is no time to do anything else, so I retract my aura entirely, forcefully put up my purple barrier, and brace for impact.

–

A heavy thud makes the entire mountain shake.

The massive spiked ball creates an impact crater over 15 meters deep into the compacted black rock with me beneath it.

An ear-shattering, horrific roar echoes throughout the entire central peak, middle ring, and even the hollow district thousands of kilometers away.

I would be in awe of this monstrous battle cry if my mind and body weren't in a white-out of shock from being hit straight on by a Noble Demonic Beast's attack in its Divine Berserker State.

From a physical standpoint, my body is fine. The mana, divine energy, and demonic energy imbued in the monster's strike are all completely blocked by my protective barrier. Even the force of the blow feels like nothing more than a light tap.

The shockwave of physical and mental ether that enters my being, on the other hand, is far more dangerous.

It is so intense that for a fraction of a second, all of my internal functions shut down from shock. It feels similar to the streaks of pain I felt while punching the Goblin King for the first time, when sharp pins of physical ether attacked my being from the force. But this is happening all over my body, and so many times simultaneously, that I can't even conceptualize where I'm being hit.

It feels like every cell of my body is being attacked a million times over, so my bodily senses just shut down to deal with the overload.

My mind, on the other hand, senses that a similar condensed version of ether—not found in avatars—seeps through my barrier and heads straight for my consciousness.