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

Chapter 699

Ava raises her massive hammer, and it glows with a faint white light; nowhere near as bright as it was when she was trying to kill me.

"Alright, let's spar. I'll be activating the lowest setting for my attacks; otherwise, an hour of fighting will use up more Ether than I can extract from ten stones."

She picks up the last stone from which I had absorbed the majority of its Ether, inspects it, and her expression changes to confusion while extracting the rest of it and throwing it to the floor.

I can tell she wants to ask more questions but instead grips her hammer with both hands and readies herself.

While I'd love to face her at full power, going easy at first is probably better for me too. I can't argue with her logic either; if sparring would cost more Ether than we mine, it wouldn't be worth her time.

"Sure," I reply while raising my hands to fight, taking deep breaths to summon Ether from the depths of my consciousness.

–

Over the next hour, we spar at the bottom of the abandoned mining pit.

I use the same technique to summon waves of translucent white energy over portions of my body to block Ava's incoming strikes.

She's far faster than me, both in reflexes and attack speed.

Every time her hammer swings, I watch an identical machine-like rush of Ether come out of her avatar and pool inside the hammer's base.

Instead of the many layers I needed to block her attacks before, just one small wisp of Ether from my consciousness is enough to combat the attack's Ether force.

However, even though it's enough to block, Ava doesn't hold back and uses her superior speed to hit me all over, landing blows that aren't covered by Ether at all.

For the first half of our spar, I'm thrown around like a rag doll, similar to our real duel before.

No physical damage is dealt. My purple barrier completely blocks all blunt force and even the mana and divine energy force produced from Ava's avatar. The only energy that makes it through to hit my flesh is the Ether itself.

Now, these small hits just make my skin tingle a bit; it's nowhere near as intense of a reaction as the full-powered blows from before.

This constant stream of non-lethal attacks allows me to concentrate on what really matters: my own Ether summoning speed.

Over the last half hour of our spar, I get hit in unguarded areas more often.

Not only am I getting accustomed to Ava's attack patterns, but also the instinctual feeling of summoning my Ether out of thin air becomes much more natural.

I don't have to close my eyes and focus on my breathing for almost a full second each time; I'm able to start summoning wisps of hot white energy at a moment's notice.

By the last few minutes of our session, every three exchanges, equal force blocks echo out as her hammer hits my arms, legs, and even torso, covered in dense areas of white energy.

Each time Ether is used, both in my defensive shields and in Ava's hammer, it dissipates from both of our bodies out into the air.

It's still hard to conceptualize exactly how much Ether is being used each time because it feels like I have an unlimited pool to drain from. However, I do have the knowledge to compare; the total amount used in our spar is less than the ten Ether stones we mined before.

We finish our spar when Ava speaks up and puts her warhammer down by her side.

"That's it. One hour paid. Now let's gather more stones."