[CH399+ Continued] Dungeon Diver: Stealing A Monster's Power

Chapter 459

I walk down the narrow spiral stairs into the mana-shielded basement but decide not to close the hatch above me.

With my most recent boost in mana control, I'm able to get a better reading of this A-Grade Mana Shielding. With all of my skills and mana control on full blast, I'm sure I could see through it now, but it's not worth the trouble.

Leaving an opening allows me to use enemy detection and my all-seeing eye on a vast area around the town without having to stress my senses.

Once I make it down to the bottom, the middle wall is up, making it feel like an empty white-walled room. I press the tablet setting to open the wall to reveal what's on the other side.

The center table where the green and red armored gang leaders used to sit lies empty in the center of the rectangular half of the room. On the far wall, there are dozens of High C-Grade and some B-Grade items and materials lined up, and their stats noted down on sheets of paper.

Beside these, I see piles of gold, silver, and bronze coins are sorted in large crates.

Then lastly, in a pile of its own is the fractured black armor of the Dark Guards I fought earlier today, none of them give off any mana readings, they just look like black shattered junk metal. However, in a neat pile in front of the shredded up armor is a small bowl with 5 glowing orbs inside that show up with [Wraith's Essence Stone][Hidden Passive Ability] reading with various Mental strength buffs between 170 and 210% on each of them.

Next to the damaged goods and black cores from the hearts of the wraiths, there's a suit fully intact, and it's the one that was worn by the 7th ranked Dark Guard. Even after death, the only readings I manage to see on this armor set say [??? Access Denied].

Ember peruses the other items and closely inspects the mana shielding walls while I walk over to these artifacts.

The closer I examine the armor set that's still intact, the more curious I get. Even using my craftsmanship skill to try and examine portions of the armor, or imbue it with skills of my own, the set doesn't give any extra readings other than [??? Access Denied].

I try to push my perception skill further, but all it shows me once maxed out is that it's a normal piece of metal.

My best guess is the armor is similar to a blood-bonded weapon with a concealment perk. Once crafted and bonded with a user, it's worthless to everyone else that tries to manipulate it or put it on.

However, I'm still optimistic that I can get some kind of data from it at a later date. So, I open up my item storage portal and let the entire armor set fall inside. For the sake of it, I let the trashed sets of the lower level wraiths fall into my storage too but leave their cores for further use.

I use telekinesis to lift the 5 dark orbs into the air above my hand, and activate my craftsmanship skill to get a better look at my options.

The last Wraith Essence I merged with my cloak significantly raised its stats and added a hidden ability to it, so I see no better place to put the remainder of these cores as well. As I ponder this fact, the 5 cores that slowly spin around each other push me toward a new option on my craftsmanship window called [Merge].

Usually, items have maxed out in receiving new merging ingredients and imbued skills at around 3 to 4 power-up imbuements per craft. Some with higher material ratings can take more, and some with lower ratings take less.

I already gave my cloak a few upgrades, and I'm not sure how many more it can take before it hits its max. However, with this [Merge] setting and the fact that they're all the same or similar base item gives me the idea that I may be able to bypass this limit.