Chapter 169 Bottleneck
Dante left Liang to his devices. If Jameson was the type to develop silently while trying to fix his reputation, then Liang was going to be the ruthless clan-genociding type who offended everyone and was chased up and down, but only got stronger and stronger.
He was done here, so he returned his virtual body to the bed and left the True Martial World with his real body. He had less than two days until his next class, so he spent them relaxing in his room, something he hadn't done in a long time.
After doing this, he felt much better overall and seemed a bit refreshed. It was important to take a break every now and then. While attaining magical powers was intoxicating, it did not make you immune to stress and mental illness.
In fact, it could be said that the rapid attainment of extraordinary power rather made a person more susceptible to mental issues because why else would anyone shout 'impudent', 'arrogant', or 'junior, you dare' if they were mentally sane up there?
When the day came, Dante exited his residence and saw the other students once more. This time, they didn't dare to look at him directly, but it made no difference since Dante had reined in his aura and fully controlled his two magical powers.
They took the teleporters to their destination and stood before their teachers. As usual, the teacher glanced at Dante with greed and probing, but the events from the last session still weighed on their minds.
Not only did Dante have some strange ability related to fire, but that fire even struggled with the headmistress head on, meaning that it was not simple. Five teachers had been crippled by it, and the headmistress only needed to exert a little strength to end their lives.
As it were, there was no value in trying to capture Dante until they were 100% sure they could escape. Now, with every week this damned boy came here, his superpower became stronger and stronger, catching up to them.
If they knew that Dante's SDI was higher than theirs, they would likely freak out and abandon all thoughts of capture unless he was outside the school and they could surround him with an armada of dreadnoughts.
The teachers led their wards through the formal procedures and then through the gate into the black land. Having seen the true Zero Gate and Black Land in his home universe, Dante began to observe this one carefully.
He had assumed that this black land was naturally formed, but he knew better. This expanse of soot-colored rock that extended as far as the eye could see was likely man-made, gathering all the fragmented asteroids as well as the dead planets and compressing them into a plane-like structure.
But where was the gate?
Dante had seen it with his own eyes, and even millions of kilometers away, he could not take the entire gate into his limited field of view as a mere human. No matter how large this black land was, one should be able to see the gate, even from outside the Eternal Academy.
Unless… they used technology to hide it? Maybe the entire horizon that was sunny and full of blue skies in front of him was fake? Yeah, that was damn obvious, how could there be a horizon on a plane?!
Dante thought like this until Xue Bing and co brought them to the cabin. He could have teleported here, but there was no point in skipping the school bus by driving. It made you stand out, and your fellow students may cheer you on, but they would actually resent you inside.
Moving to their familiar rooms, they each sat down on the cushion and switched up the incense.
He immediately went into a trance and connected with the essence of his Quantum Entanglement superpower, which was like an endless void of emptiness, where only the thinnest strands of ethereal threads crisscrossed the darkness.
These threads were the very essence of existence, the lifeblood of the universe, and they held the power to shape reality itself. However, grasping these threads, let alone understanding them, was a task of near limitless difficulty.
Dante spent countless hours in meditation, delving deeper into the mysteries of his power. He knew that with each passing moment, he inched closer to unraveling the secrets hidden within these threads.
His senses extended outward, and he felt the sturdy threads brushing against his consciousness, like strands of industrial-grade steel rope. He reached out tentatively, trying to establish a connection, in order to communicate his will.
The threads resisted, as they always did the past few times he tried this. They were elusive, slippery, like trying to catch a gust of wind with bare hands.
Dante's brow furrowed with concentration as he focused his mental energy, both from his high SDI and from his spiritual cores into the task. They gave him a huge advantage compared to others, but that advantage was negated because Quantum Entanglement was far more powerful than others.
It was an annoying balance, but it kinda made sense. If Dante could use powers from quantum worlds to increase his superpower - which allowed him to cultivate those powers in the first place without dying - it would be like an infinite money glitch.
Minutes seemingly turned into hours, but Dante persisted. What was painful was that unlike mindlessly absorbing energy, he was actively trying to understand and control the superpower, so he felt every minute passing, sort of like how it felt when it was time to study.
He pushed his mind to its limits, exploring the intricate patterns and structures that made up the threads. He sensed their vibrations, their resonance with the universe, and he knew that they held the power to weave any reality he desired.
A small breakthrough came when Dante felt a faint response, a quiver within the threads. It was like a whisper in the dark, a subtle acknowledgment of his presence. He latched onto it, nurturing it, coaxing it to grow stronger.
However, he was at his limit, and if he looked outside, he would see that smoke was literally wafting out of his ears as his brain was overheating, and his spiritual cores were trembling, small cracks forming on their crystal bodies.
Dante opened his eyes and grabbed his head, rolling on the floor with his mouth open in silent agony. His body flushed itself and tried to knock him out in order to repair itself, but he knew this would take a while, so he opened his bloodshot eyes and teleported back to the home universe base, right into his Vitality Pool.
The moment he entered it was like bacon touching hot oil as the water began to sizzle around Dante's skull area, but the man himself only sighed with endless relaxation and relief. In the end, the sheer comfort made him relax and fall asleep, which accelerated his recovery.
Given his monstrous stats, he was not out for a few days, but only a few minutes before he was back in tip-top shape. Dante jumped out of the pool and spun in the air before landing easily, looking very cool as he did so.
He flexed his taut muscles and checked his mind to find that everything was back to normal. His brain was fine, and his spiritual cores were shiny and pristine.
After this experience, Dante was speechless. He had hit a small bottleneck in the acquisition of power systems because his body could not bear more until his stats and genetic power were raised, and he had hit a bottleneck in the raising of his superpower because his body could not explore more until his stats were raised.
What the heck!
Dante was thoroughly embarrassed because the universe had given him a face slap. Wasn't he the same one who went on about how stats were not the most important thing and that superpowers as well as other abilities could negate stats?
Now, wasn't he the same one who was knocked out not because his superpower couldn't take it, but because he himself couldn't? Tsk, tsk, how embarrassing. This was why 21-year-old young men should not think they knew everything even though they had superpowers.
Welp, his actions now were clear. He needed to get up off his ass and practice his physical methods to the limit as quickly as possible and then grit his teeth and head to the student enhancement center.
While he may not have enough Supercoins to get the latest one, he had enough to upgrade his AI chip, Bionics, and Psionics by one level, which should increase his output.
Also, he had to go for his free gene treatment and use that to stabilize himself. Dante would have to make some backup plans for that to protect himself from the greedy teachers who might attack him the moment he went under.
After all, the gene treatment process, while easier than breaking through in External Martial Art and Knight Breathing, had the inescapable limitation of needing him to go under for about 24 hours.
That was a long time to be vulnerable.
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