Chapter 174 The Treacherous Zero Gate World
At his current speed, Dante had already crossed more than 300,000 kilometers while running for just about 4 hours. Yet, despite this, he did not see an end to the forest he was in, nor did he reach the end of the world.
This confused Dante as he stopped, his body smoking and releasing waves of heat that caused distortions in the air. This had nothing to do with his hellfire but from the heat he had built up traveling at such speeds with no real barrier around him except his skin.
He panted slightly, like a person who had run for a bit and was only lightly exhausted. There were slight beads of sweat on his forehead due to the exertion, but it was quickly evaporated by the heat coming off him due to the friction.
Dante sighed as he gauged what he had seen with his mind on the way here, making full use of his powerful brain to calculate everything. It should be obvious that at this level of Intelligence, Dante had a photographic memory.
By doing this, he smiled as he had found a problem. There were many beasts and scenes that he had seen on repeat as he traveled the entire distance until he got here.
In other words, Dante had fallen into an illusion that was based on looping circumstances!
The very idea was ridiculous if you thought about it, but reality was often that unfunny and obnoxious.
Dante, with the most powerful illusion ability with his eyes, his SDI that was in the top 1% of the Eternal Universe, his hellfire which automatically resisted such a thing by burning them in his mind, and his spiritual cores which made him resistant to all mental related effects regardless of his element, was caught in an illusion.
It was as if one were being told that there was a mysophobic pig or that a fish had drowned in the sea.
Dante analyzed that whatever put the illusion on him was truly fearsome and powerful. This could only be the effect of a superpower, and it made sense since superpowers were naturally stronger than magical methods.
After all, every one of Dante's magical methods was only as strong as his Quantum Entanglement, which was partly why he wanted more superpowers.
Dante realized that he was probably not seeing a fake realm but rather was running in circles. It was likely that the illusions should have been the type to completely incapacitate him and leave him free for the caster to kill at their leisure.
However, Dante's various methods and defenses reduced the effect till it reached the stage where he was only directionally confused. Dante wondered two things, what rank the assumed superpower was and how it had been cast on him.
Dante decided to stop relying on his legs to move and spread out his spirit sense to decide his direction. This illusion could barely mess with him, only hindering his sense of direction, not even hindering his vision so it definitely could not hinder his spirit sense which was esoteric.
Dante scanned himself and his area to see that regardless of moving in circles or not, he had traversed quite a distance because as we all knew, unless it was strictly planned and maintained, it was impossible for a human to run in a perfect circle more than a set number of times.
Without lines like those on Olympic tracks to guide you, one would deviate slightly with each lap, and when you considered how fast Dante was going, his current location was definitely a few hundred kilometers away from where he dropped.
All he scanned was the endless forest around him and a large monster that was trembling in its nearby cave that was up on a nearby cliff as it looked down on him, wondering why this monster of locomotion had stopped.
The monster was in the form of a large badger with huge claws that could likely tear steel apart. If any student met it, they would have to fight a desperate ranged battle in order to prevent it from getting closer and mauling them into pieces.
Dante had an idea as he looked at it. He used his 1st Rank Blink Step to disappear from where he was and appear behind the carefully scouting monster that was looking over the edge.
Dante was pleased that his spatial senses at least were not messed up and that as long as he could knuckle down the coordinates through his spirit sense, he could safely teleport anywhere even when his sense of direction was messed up.
This showed the versatility and the spirit sense and also told Dante that he had to learn how to protect it from outside influence. He would definitely need to pay the Immortal World a visit and acquire some spirit sense cultivation methods.
Those ones didn't require a spirit root, but only a spirit sense, so it should be possible for him to practice it.
Anyway, he focused back onto the monster that was now puzzled as to where he had disappeared to and then cast the 1st Rank spell, Celestial Tether! This allowed him to link his mind to another and communicate in a two-way manner as well as share thoughts and images.
Dante was amused by its mental questions as to what he was and the fact that it named him a 'locomotion demon'. Since he cast the Celestial Tether and had control over it, he could decide whether or not to share his thoughts to the other but the monster could not do such.
"Hey, tell me all you know about this world, this area and where the nearest tree is and I'll let you live." Dante spoke mentally, making his voice thunderous and oppressive in its mind.
The beast froze as blood leaked out from its ears and it slumped to the ground in pain. Its thoughts were jumbled, but it cycled through many things like its life, its mate, its knowledge, and the scene of it peeking through some bushes at a group of stronger monsters fighting near a giant tree for the single golden fruit that hung off its branches.
Dante did not even need it to reply; he got the answer on his own from its thoughts. As such, he cut the connection and left the beast there while teleporting away. If he had been in the real Zero Gate, he would not let a potential future threat live, whether it seemed pitiful or not.
However, this was just a virtual world created to replicate the environment of the Zero Gate. It would suffice that he had an understanding of it, but if he based the real thing 100% on what he saw here, he would be harming himself when the time actually came to enter.
After all, the real Zero Gate world, upon each opening, shifted up greatly. One could say that it was procedurally generated every single instance, though the entire world was shared for the students who entered it.
Dante sat down and meditated, using the force of his various techniques to whittle down the remnant effect of the illusion on him. When he checked to see that he could move correctly by comparing his directional movement with his eyes along with his directional movement with his spirit sense, he was satisfied.
As for actually falling, he was not worried. The main reason was that his SDI and various methods were not high enough. When he was done with this spell of training, he would naturally advance them further and also advance his stats.
When his Inferno Ascension technique reached the 10th stage and generated True Qi, he would like to see who could outmaneuver him under an illusion, superpower or not. When he had 10 brilliant spiritual cores full of potent space elements, he would like to see how any mental influence could bypass them!
Dante began moving toward the location of the tree in the badger monster's memory rapidly, and it was not too far from here given his speed. It was less than 200 kilometers away, which, given Dante's speed, was crossed in seconds.
Since this environment was to simulate when the Zero Gate opened, it meant that the fruits were already ripe and could be taken. This was perfect for the students who only needed to swipe it and leave.
Of course, Dante now encountered what was the biggest headache of the students who entered this world during their 5-year tutelage. A bunch of powerful and menacing-looking monsters surrounded the tree, manifesting their potent superpowers to each other to ward the other off.
It was a tense and frightening scene, full of gunpowder. The slightest disturbance could set the entire place off.
It was with that in mind that Dante calmly walked into the clearing. At first, his diminutive size compared to the monsters here went unnoticed, but they were forced to acknowledge his presence when he clapped his hands and caused a shockwave so strong that many of them were blown back a few meters.
The source of this c𝐨ntent is freewe(b)nov𝒆l