Both of his physical arts were at the absolute beginning of their current stages, and would require months of consistent practice to reach the next level, or at least, a month or two. He would work on them later since it would require consistent effort.
Rather, his eyes fell on his Inferno Ascension Technique, and Dante couldn't help but smile. Immediately, he began to chant the familiar mantra he had already memorized, and a huge blaze erupted around his body that was the size of a 5-story apartment in Detroit.
A wave of intense heat swept over the entire island, causing the already thin ice to instantly melt into water and the nearby water to evaporate rapidly. The androids and all of the tools were fine as they could even work near sun-level temperatures, so Dante was not worried.
Dante continued to chant the mantra and maintained the intense blaze for over 2 hours nonstop. When the time passed, the blaze was suddenly sucked into his body, and Dante seemed to release an imperceptible shockwave as a special flow of blackish-red fire condensed around his temples.
Dante's body shone until he opened his eyes, and all these phenomena seemed to recede into the ether. The man himself checked his Inferno Ascension Technique progress with a smile.
[Magical Powers: Inferno Ascension Technique (Level 3: Lustful Ignition, 28%)?
[Level 3 - Lustful Ignition: With each step, the user stokes the fires of desire and ambition, allowing them to manipulate the minds of others for brief periods depending on the intensity of emotion. Strikes fueled by lustful flames deliver severe mental damage, breaking through physical defenses with ease.]
Dante's hellfire could not pierce any physical defense, including your literal body, and just burn your mind into nothingness. Against enemies with high mental power, it was not very valuable. However, against enemies with physical power, it was fatal.
So whether it was the True Martial World or the Magus World, knights and external arts practitioners would have to beg Dante for their life. However, against other Internal arts users, it would have to clash with their Internal Force even if they do not have mental defenses while against mages, who literally trained their minds, it was not very useful.
Whatever the case, this breakthrough from level 2, 54% to level 3, 28% increased the quantity and potency of his hellfire by more than 150%. It also saved him more than 4 months of cultivation, even at the stats of 500 in all fields previously.
Now, to reach level 4 in the Inferno Ascension technique, Dante would need 8 months of nonstop cultivation. It seemed long given his stats, but once again, compared to even the best talent with normal stats for their stage in the True Martial World, Dante took around 5% of their time.
As you could imagine, regardless of External Art or Internal Art, lifespan was not an issue as long as you had sufficient talent. Each breakthrough increased one's lifespan by a great amount. Currently, Dante could not even fathom how long his lifespan was.
To be honest, he didn't really want to think about it. Unlike those crazy dudes who wanted to live forever, Dante didn't exactly desire endless life. What he wanted was a good and enjoyable life. If he lived forever, what was the point?
At some point, you would get tired of the pleasures as well as even the pains of the world and want to die. Not to mention that the value of life came from a relatively closed life loop.
Definitely, only 70 or so years of life was a bit too short to enjoy everything, so 200-300 years was not bad at all. Anything above 500 was meaningless to Dante, and he doubted his opinion would change on that.
Anyway, Dante then focused on his Void Speaker Chant and smiled. He closed his eyes and entered the area of his spiritual mind. It was still the same void with many clumps of elements outside the range of his spiritual core's barrier, which was his body.
Interestingly though, within the area of his spiritual core was his large main core that was definitely huge for his level. It glowed with perfect and pristine purple light, being the source of his space element power.
Around the core were new clumps of generated spiritual power from his increase in Intelligence. He condensed his first core when he had 500 points, so the quantity at 1000 points was the same. It also did not merge with his other core because it was perfected and could not be increased.
Dante simply gathered the new clumps into a new spiritual core, and this was done instantly. Immediately, a spiritual core of the same purity and size as his first one appeared, and a shockwave seemed to appear in Dante's mind space.
The elements outside the barrier became chaotic as they seemed greedy for Dante, wanting to rush into that spiritual core and taint it with their hot essence. This feeling made Dante speechless, as if he was some young maiden who walked in a dark alleyway with a bunch of hoodlums laughing menacingly by the side.
Dante paused and hesitated. He understood the mage system very well. It was simply the act of cultivating spiritual power and condensing it into a spiritual core of sufficient size to break through. Once the spiritual core at each stage is condensed, you then filled it with the element(s) you wanted and broke through.
What made Dante hesitate was that, now that he had condensed his second core for the 1st Rank, what element should he fill it with? It seemed like there were many options, but not really.
The problem was that, whether it was power systems or even superpowers, Dante was likely to collect more in the future. If he chose the water element for his core, for example, it would be useful now but become redundant when he gained an Aquagenesis superpower when he consumed the Fruit of Condensation later on.
At that point, he could not redo his spiritual core unless he shattered it, but not only was that painful and probably fatal, it was something that came with complications. Even if you could recondense it, it was sort of like being an adult and shattering your leg bone.
Even if it healed enough for you to run, it would never be the same, and you wouldn't be able to exert as much power on it as you did before. Dante was also a relatively normal 21-year-old guy; he wasn't some ruthless person who could torture himself and endure inhuman pain for power.
So Dante was thinking of specializing fully. Even though his space element power overlapped with Quantum Entanglement in many ways, it was still very useful since Quantum Entanglement lacked a level of versatility that his space spells could provide.
Eventually, he made his decision after weighing the consequences. If he chose to continue with the space element, it was somewhat likely that Quantum Entanglement at later levels would overlap completely or even make redundant his space element spells, but there was a low chance of that since quantum entanglement focused on quantum space, not all of space.
However, if he chose other elements, he would weaken his bonus elemental multiplier from specialization, not to mention that if he did get a power later that had the same element, it would completely be a waste.
At least if he stuck with space, he would have offensive space spells similar to the famous planetary devastation, al
mighty push, and universal pull that were boosted by 150% for each spiritual core of the space element he had.
Whew, at the 9th rank, could he create a new planet from scratch? What a crazy thought.
Dante ran the Void Speaker chant and grabbed the thick space element in the atmosphere for miles outside of his body. Even with two spiritual cores, his magical senses could not go too far out of his body, but his spirit sense now reached 1000 meters in all directions.
As such, within that range, a vacuum soon formed as a torrent of spatial elements were dragged into Dante's new spiritual core. Unlike other mages who had to be careful and slowly absorb within a limited range, and even rely on special arrays to gather the elements they needed, Dante was like a tyrant.
His powerful spiritual and mental power that was at the level of an Advanced Wizard (3rd Rank) at 500 points had now jumped to the level of a Master Wizard (5th Rank). A Master Wizard could do things with their spiritual power that would shake entire continents, so this was nothing.
Well, the issue with Dante was that his intelligence stat and mental power were far higher than his stage, and this was half a good thing and also half a bad thing.
This was simply because his spiritual core was more than 5 times larger than a wizard at the same level. A Novice Wizard who just broke through would have an intelligence stat of 100 points. Meanwhile, Dante condensed his using 500 points of Intelligence!
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