Chapter 184 Focused Practice 3
Dante did not continue but settled in for the night. He did not dare to send his real body outside again and leave it in the hands of the evil Beatrice. After being denied her meal once, who knew what crazy actions she might take to get her fill?
As such, Dante cast some space spells to secure his area like the 1st Rank Quantum Distortion to create a sturdy personal pocket space, then dual-casting both the 1st Rank Starry Shield and the 2nd Rank Dimensional Shield.
After securing himself, he then made himself comfortable and slept soundly. He only slept here to keep himself in the mood for training and to make sure that nothing untoward happened to his avatar.
When he woke up, it was barely midnight. He had only rested for about 4 hours, but he was more than lively enough to continue, but his blood Qi had still not settled. As such, Dante could only repeatedly practice the Advanced Knight Realm version of the Primal Ape technique.
Because he always assumed that one day he might be trapped somewhere that didn't allow him to get back to his base easily, he had already mass-produced many Quantum Vitality Serums and Enhanced Energy Elixirs for his two physical methods.
As such, even though he swallowed one every two hours, he did not feel any worry looking at the hundreds still in his quantum space. Dante started at midnight and spent 10 hours practicing 5 sets of the Primal Ape technique, leading him to reach 60% towards the next realm.
He only stopped because… well, what do you expect? Even if his body could handle it, Dante did not yet have the mental tempering and drive to push himself so hard, especially when he was already so strong.
Maybe those other main characters could endure great pain and spend every minute seeking power, but that was mostly because there was some overarching threat like a demon king, an apocalypse world, or a cutthroat world with no laws.
Dante did not have much, if any, external pressure. Every task he had taken on was due to his own ambition to rise to the top, so what empowered him was his ambition, not fear of death or harm.
And there was a limit to how much ambition could push him forward. He was still a 21-year-old young man pushing 22. He was driven yes, and he understood the necessity of power and the lucky chance he got, yes.
However, he simply could not enter machine mode. Training arcs were only training arcs because the protagonist needed to rapidly accumulate power to match the super-high power level of his enemy, so they take shortcuts and use pain-inducing means to get there.
Compared to Dante whose main motivation for acquiring power was to devastate his significant other… yeah.
Anyway, the fellow took a break and just lay down on the ground while thinking, staring at the sky. His mind was occupied by many thoughts and ideas about his future, while he thought about his past and things he had to do on earth.
However, not even an hour passed before he got up and continued. It wasn't that he was trying to push himself, but because his mental fatigue washed away very quickly given his high Intelligence stats.
What would take others days of such silent solitude to wear off took only an hour. If Dante had access to some form of entertainment, he would probably have gotten rid of it much faster.
What was interesting though, was that while he did not have any limitations in practicing the Primal Ape technique due to its 'softer' nature in terms of being more about stability and vitality, it even had the extra benefit of calming his surging blood Qi that was more tyrannical and violent, more fit for direct killing and strengthening.
So Dante could continue with the Raging Blood Halberd technique, and he did so without hesitation. He spent another 6 hours of 36 cycles each to break through from Minor Accomplishment peak to Mastery peak.
He only needed 3 hours of practice to reach the peak of the Martial Blood Realm and break through to become a Martial Master. However, his blood Qi refused to be tempered anymore as it was surging in his body due to the rapid growth and practice.
However, he no longer worried as he knew that his Primal Ape technique could alleviate the surging stage with enough practice. However, a whole 17 hours had passed since he woke up, 10 spent on the Knight breathing, 1 spent resting, and 6 spent on the External Art.
Dante decided to rest once more and enter the land of dreams in order to let his body resist the accumulation of fatigue from repetition. This time, Dante put himself deep under and slept for exactly 8 hours before he came up.
He did this because he knew that if he slept, his superior stats would make him rest for a short while, and while that was fine, he wanted time to pass a bit so that he could balance his own sense of progress.
The funny thing about the human mind was that slow progression in any field of interest caused depression and declining motivation, but rapid progression in any field of interest caused boredom and unappreciation.
Dante woke up feeling much better and more 'normal'. He felt his motivation climb higher as he knew breakthrough was near and he could finally consider attempting one of his ideas without any feeling of regret.
As such, he spent the next 8 hours finishing up the Primal Ape technique and bringing it to the peak of the Advanced Knight level, just a hair-thin distance from breaking through to a Peak Knight.
After that, he naturally rested for an hour before continuing with the Raging Blood Halberd technique which he only spent 3 hours bringing to the peak of the Perfection realm, ready to break through to enter the Martial Master stage.
Now that he was finally at the peak of both stages, Dante could break through and stabilize his genes once more. While this was an exciting thing to do, one was forgetting the huge problem.
You see, for Dante's self-growth system to work, he had to be able to enter the Apocalypse World with his real body overlaid on his avatar to access the free Absorption superpower that was given.
And currently, there were two things stopping him from doing this.
Firstly, he could not 'log out' of this world; otherwise, the school would count it as a failure. His consciousness had to be present in this avatar body 24/7 with not a single break for the entire 30 days.
Dante wouldn't usually care about such a thing even if it involved his scores. After all, his performance in the real Zero Gate would be so thunderous that who could care about the mock version? Would a school still whine about poor results on mock exams when you scored all A's in the main exam?
But in this case, failing this one could affect his entry into the actual Zero Gate. It should be obvious that for 'safety' reasons - but mostly for efficiency - the school would not let every first-year enter the Zero Gate if they didn't match up to a certain standard.
That was what these 'mock' exams were for.
Secondly, Dante's time in the Apocalypse World was long up. He had started his third run long ago and extended it for as long as he could, raising his genes twice in this one session, but his 30 days were up and the avatar he left in there was naturally dead and gone.
Of course, he could use his quantum markers to forcibly enter the world with his real body, but he would not be given the privilege of having the Absorption superpower because only his avatar could have that.
And to get that avatar, he would have to log in and start a new session in the Apocalypse World, which he couldn't do because he couldn't log out of this one. It was quite the conundrum indeed.
This was why Dante wanted the split soul or multi-mind ability so much. If he could find a way to leave part of his consciousness in his virtual body while the other part was in his real body, not only could he achieve two things at once, but he could also avoid issues like this!
Currently, he did not have the abilities to accomplish this in any way, so he could only sit down and ponder. His initial idea was to let the AI chip try and control his body, but it was only the first version of its model, unable to handle such a task.
As for upgrading it, if Dante could have easily done so, he would have long done it. Unfortunately, only the gene treatments were free, only up to 15 times across all 5 years. Bionics and Psionics from the school were only free the first time which Dante had already redeemed, and AI chips were paid for right from the get-go because the government supplied you a basic one already.
In order to upgrade any of them, Supercoins were needed. It was why, despite Dante always bluffing and saying he didn't care about his Supercoin earnings, he still humbly worked hard and obeyed the rules.
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