Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster’s Power

More notifications stream into my mind, ranging from a massive MCP absorption option, an upgrade option for my [Extreme Strength] skill to [Divine Grade], and 166 notifications for the transfer of worlds into my possession. However, there are no level ups.

In the deep sea of darkness within my mind, where the 3rd Class human world lies, tons of new planets begin flowing into my consciousness. Billions of links of loyalty, along with a full expansive view of their worlds down to the last mana particle, become visible to me—crystal clear in my mind.

While this overstimulation of information is immense, so many more things are happening at the same time.

The Goblin King's memories start to flow in, just like Drako Vermillion's, and my mind temporarily blanks out while thousands of years of information play out as if I'm witnessing them in real time.

–

Vivid images of a small green goblin being born into a village in the mountains rush into my mind.

Their leader is an old hobgoblin that holds power over many villages in this isolated mountain range. Many dungeons form all around this wilderness, regulated and maintained by small societies of a few hundred goblins at a time.

Their technology is not advanced at all, relying on hunting the local wildlife for sustenance and using weapons found in dungeon drops to level up.

It is fascinating to see the early memories of this goblin flash by, as it trains in lower-grade dungeons against human mobs with nothing more than swordsmanship and body hardening as their skills.

About a decade passes, and the goblin grows used to this simple life. It becomes stronger, leveling past the mid-200s to 300s, and begins its journey in learning to gather mana and refine its energy control. Not only does it become stronger in being, but in society too, becoming a local leader of a village run by the hobgoblin elder that controls them all.

That is, until one fateful day, their peaceful mountain grouping of villages are attacked by a rogue clan for resources.

Their army of goblins outnumbers this peaceful village clan ten to one, and their front lines are filled with dozens of hobgoblins of varying strengths.

Some goblins awaken their hobgoblin forms at level 500, while others achieve this feat at level 1000. Just as with humans and their energy forms and special buffs, it is a culmination of fighting style, life experiences, and some luck of the draw.

The goblin's mountainous home is decimated by the overwhelming forces. It manages to fend off some of the lower-leveled goblin hordes, but watching the hobgoblins kill its leader with a single energy slash from kilometers away—and decimate over 90% of the goblins on this mountain in minutes—makes it realize it is weak.

The goblin runs away and never looks back.

What it thought was a stable life was swept away from under its feet. Its reality is forever changed.

That day, it realized the only way to survive was to become stronger than others.

Images of this goblin's long and arduous life flash by as more decades pass. The goblin travels to many mountainous villages like its home, working as a mercenary and seeking out the strongest dungeons while honing its mana control, slow and steady.

Without a single skill other than extreme strength, its mana control increases far slower than humans with elemental skills.

This is clear as, at age 47, the goblin finally hits level 500 and receives a buff called [Heavy Strike]. It allows it to pool all of its mana stores into any weapon in its grasp. This increases its growth speed significantly, giving it new hope.

Merciless training in the shadows continues, never showing its power to others, replaying the destruction of everything it ever knew and loved from its childhood in the back of its mind.

This speeds its travels and ambitions up, never spending more than a few months in any small village, searching for what other goblins and old hobgoblin elders call the Golden City.

After five years, this goblin finds what it is looking for.

A massive civilization surrounds a great lake, with millions of goblins living together and countless dungeons to farm.

Their two suns—bright yellow orbs in the sky—rise to reflect off the massive source of water, shining a golden light upon their civilization every morning.

Just 13 years later, at the age of 65, the goblin hits level 1000 in a central clan's labyrinth, highly regulated by a council of Goblin Kings at the heart of the city.

The many years that pass go by in a blur as this goblin joins the central army and leads many battles in the world's vast wilderness to subjugate smaller clans that are growing too fast, bringing the dungeon resources and goblin women back to the Golden City for the Kings. �

Countless battles, ruthless killings, and endless training flash by as the hobgoblin carries out the bidding of his kings to gain rewards of access to the labyrinths, slowly leveling up higher and higher—reaching level 10,000 at the age of 173.

This Goblin King gains access to the council of kings, being granted his Goblin King form from his 3rd rank-up, now giving orders to new promising hobgoblins that visit the Golden City.

The council of kings are the only beings on their known world that cultivate divine energy. They have made agreements not to fight for power, as they already rule their world in harmony.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

At the age of 411, this Goblin King becomes the first to achieve a True Core in the history of their world, now being the oldest king left, welcoming new loyal kings to their council when they are granted access to the ranked-up labyrinths capable of producing level 10,000 monsters to train with.

Their greatest labyrinth, only accessible by the kings, has been stalled at 199 floors.

It has consumed a large amount of their 2nd Class world's resources to reach this point. The Noble Bloodline Demon and Dragon within it are on less-than-good terms with the Goblin Kings that have been keeping it for centuries, just one level away from completing its final vetting test.

The kings are able to train and bring their levels just below 24,900 max.

Another 200 years pass, as the new age council of kings takes over the daily tasks. This Goblin King goes into closed cultivation to attempt reaching a realm above what they believed was the limit.

Using all of the farmed Divine Energy from their entire world, as it continues to fly through space and collect more threads from the stars and clusters of divine threads in the unknown, enough consolidated energy has been trapped for their One True King to use in a final push to ascend past the known limits.

Many of the new kings appointed to the Golden City's council have never seen this King in person; they have only heard rumors of his existence.

In silence, one day, with only a handful of kings understanding the significance of the rumbling beneath their city, the Goblin King manages to fully saturate its True Core and compress it into the next stage: creating green divine energy.

Its body is eaten away and destroyed by the pressure, and the shockwave breaks the shielding in the old bunker, creating a sinkhole that destroys a portion of the Golden City.

However, system notifications fill this Goblin King's ears, and a green rift opens before him, notifying this Lord that he now owns a world and has the option to accept a free basic avatar.

More of these memories flash by even faster now, showing the Goblin King arriving in the Ellipsia Citadel, learning of what dungeon contracts really are, and optimizing his world's dungeons for maximum profit.

Looking down at the world below him in his world token, images of the battle that destroyed everything he ever knew still plague his mind.

The Goblin King trades contracts and invests wisely in other worlds, using the machine learning fighting pods to have his avatar sent out to many other worlds as Boss Room monsters.

However, his efforts do not make him rich. They actually bring far lower than average results despite following the local guides and tactics meticulously.

He must face the reality that goblins are a weak race in the Upper Realm.

Even as a 2nd Class Lord, three times ranked up, with a green True Core, he still stands no chance against some ogres, high orcs, wyverns, and berserker kings that come from 3rd Class worlds.

Most of all, he fears the demons.

There are so few races that this Goblin King can feel superior to: humans, some wolf races, slimes, and the occasional horned boar or other unintelligent awakened beings from 4th and 5th Class worlds.

Even humans sometimes make this goblin feel insignificant, as their battle IQ and general intelligence range higher than goblins'.

After 500 years of work on the Citadel, the Goblin King has managed to get nowhere, barely making it by in the Upper Realm, feeling as though he is merely ordinary.

I see vivid imagery of the Goblin King looking up into the endless green sky, with two massive towers on either side of him in the Divine City run by demons, feeling as though he is nothing but an ant.

Feelings of insignificance wash through this King as he realizes this climb for endless power to feel safe will never end.

This is when the Goblin King decides to put away its desires for glory and becoming the strongest. He makes a deal with a criminal group of other 2nd Class Goblin Kings and lower-class orcs far in the outer ring of the Citadel.

They work in businesses like acquiring illegal avatars and forced exile subjugation for worlds on the unascended market.

The most profitable long term scheme is in renting Exile Zones beneath the Citadel and buying slaves to do labor with predatory contracts once worlds are forcefully subjugated. Their appointed Lords are brought up from the Lower Realm with minimal knowledge, and thrown into the mines.

For the pure resources alone, the cost of acquiring an artifact to open a green rift on low class worlds is not worth it at all, but hundreds of years in the Ether mines can make a hefty profit if done right.

This Goblin King goes all in, renting a few zone plots far from the Citadel's center, with mostly human and unintelligent beast slaves from 5th Class worlds as his first investment.

Many of the workers die after a few hundred years, and none ever make it to the end of their exile terms, as designed.

The Goblin King profits a few dozen ether and, in turn, gets to live out his twisted fantasy of killing whoever he wishes and forcing labor in the mines.

Things begin to dull after some time, as worlds die out, and the King starts renting larger zones closer to the Citadel, acquiring the occasional 4th and 3rd Class worlds to speed up the Ether profits.

This Goblin King's memories of its home world gradually fade away as 2000 years pass.

The reason it ascended to this realm becomes a mystery, and it lives out the rest of its days bullying and killing lower lifeforms of its own race, surveying its zones, and swinging around its Soul Weapon that it proudly purchased with its first thousand years of profit.

That is, until one day, the mindless tasks of surveying its slaves take an unfathomable turn for the worst.

A human breaks into its zone.

All humans are good for is labor and solving fancy puzzles. None of them can ever defeat a Goblin King in a fight...

However, on this day, in mere minutes, thousands of years of domination are brought to an end by a pair of hot fists and a human whose skin can't be pierced.

After millennia of mindless agony, inflicting pain on others because it knows it will never reach its ultimate goal, the Goblin King's mental torment is finally burned away.

Everything goes white.

–

My head sears with the blow-by-blow memories of the mental attack I sent forth on this Goblin King. I let out yells as my physical senses are battered by green divine threads with so much weight and pressure I feel like I too will be crushed into nothingness if I don't act fast in the next few milliseconds.

In the vastness of my mind, the 167 planets float before me with all their glory.

The Goblin King's home world floats right beside my human world. These two planets have the most prominent and abundant life on them.

Both have a similar number of awakened, roughly half a billion. However, the strength of the average awakened on this goblin world is over five times, making the average overall level about 250.

My inner gaze shifts to the other seven 3rd Class worlds now floating behind these two.

Four of them have prominent life on them as well, all of them goblin civilizations. They range from 50 to 300 million links of loyalty each. Their average awakened strength is close to the human world I come from, with the average of all awakened being about level 50.

Three of the other 3rd Class worlds are in utter decline, with less than 10 million links each remaining.

There are 22 4th Class worlds, with only half of them having significant life on them, averaging 100 million links each on their thriving worlds, with level 15 average awakened. There are single-digit awakened beings on these planets that ever surpass level 500.

Finally, the 5th Class worlds—136 of them—float behind all of the others. Only one-third still have abundant life on them, but their links of loyalty range from 100 to 300 million per planet. The average level on these worlds is about level 5. It is extremely rare to see any beings on these planets surpass level 100.

–

With all this information surging into my mind, and my body rapidly deteriorating, I make the split decision to forcefully use my Rising Emperor's Domain and steal 60% of all the stats available to me on these worlds.