Chapter 224 Uproar
Brother monster, is our grudge really that deep? I'm here to see if I can get a fruit and assess Dante's abilities in real-time to report back to my faction. But why have you not only formed a group but also look at me as if I killed your mother?
Is there some misunderstanding? There's no need to go as far as deliberately herding the remaining 27 of us into one shelter and then easily crushing our defenses, slowly and methodically ripping our virtual bodies apart while roaring with glee and joy as if you were venting your injustice.
And where is that omnipotent Dante fellow? Why is he not being bullied along with us? With his level of power, he should be able to take on all of them, right? Or did these beasts get agitated because of something he did?"
The students had no idea they were partially correct until they were all ejected simultaneously. This unprecedented event set off alarms in the Central Server of the school and even alerted the headmistress to investigate.
While the students were summoned back, they noticed that Dante was fine and still logged in. This piqued Lara's interest, and she forcefully connected to the students' world to investigate what was going on herself.
She inspected the site of the battle, the cleared-out trees, and watched from afar as Dante contemplated the virtual fruits while surrounded by hundreds of virtual monsters training in harmony.
No, not just living in harmony. They were rigorously training like elite soldiers, undergoing movements that would make humans laugh at how silly it looked, but the sheer unity and synchronization, as well as the professionalism, would make any discerning person feel a chill.
She observed one from afar and inspected it using her power, and her eyes flashed.
"Its Spirit World is completely intact and undamaged, and its mind is untampered with. However, after forcefully soul-searching, I see now why they follow him. These set of memories are easily alien, but they have been inserted so naturally that if it weren't for the fact that I know they absolutely cannot have memories like this, I wouldn't know better," Lara muttered to herself.
"What... a frightening illusion ability," Lara admitted with a deep sigh.
She glanced at Dante from afar, and her tone became heavy and less casual, with a hint of respect.
"Dante... I underestimated you wrongly. I won't make such a mistake again. See you in the First Gate," Lara spoke under her breath cryptically before disappearing.
Meanwhile, Dante glanced towards the place Lara had been with narrowed eyes but did not comment. His current power was not enough to determine if the headmistress was friend or foe, so there was no need to provoke her.
Hmph, just wait until his mother-in-law came back to life and give him time to power up his family with the fruits, not to mention himself. At that point, he would be able to determine everything, and if she was an enemy, she would be dealt with accordingly.
If she was an ally... well, it depended on the exact situation of their mutual interest that made them allies in the first place. Not every ally was necessarily a friend, nor a trustworthy one.
There was an immediate uproar outside when Lara simply stated that nothing was wrong and that Dante had used some special means to 'tame' the beasts of the virtual world and set them against his classmates.
Of course, she wasn't going to reveal his illusion ability because it was something even she feared. She did not want to give him a reason to use it on her, so she severely downplayed the actual reason for the subjugation.
But even this caused many powers and factions to froth at the mouth in horror. Most of them were alumni from the very same Eternal Academy, so they knew the quality and superiority of the school's quantum worlds.
If they were not 100% comparable to reality in terms of stability, then they were at least 99%. Heck, as someone with the only quantum-related superpower, Dante could even say that this estimate was not giving enough credit to the school's quantum worlds, as they were literally half of the reason for his rise to power.
So, to them, what they took away from this was not 'oh my, Dante is awesome' but rather that 'whatever means he used worked on those beasts in the virtual world, so it could likely work in the real world'!
Initially, Dante was a problem because of his shockingly high SDI, which meant he could bulldoze through everyone and everything in the Zero Gate. However, just like how even Portia Portinari could be dealt with despite her crazy power, there were means to deal with such things.
They might be limited, obscure, very expensive, and maybe even one-time-use with a huge price to pay, but they definitely existed. That was even the point of that teacher's actions towards Xue Bing, a unified message from various powers towards "Dante's faction" that anything could happen, so he'd better not go overboard.
But the effectiveness of such methods solely relied on the information they had of Dante's previous attempts, which was his use of martial force. They did not have anything to deal with controlling the beasts in the entire realm to be his subordinates!
The heck!
Those beasts were 1005 of the difficulty of acquiring fruits every goddamn year!
Just because there were ten fruits a year with students entering did not mean that ten fruits came out each time; this should be quite obvious. More often than not, coming out with five fruits collectively by the students was seen as a win.
If there was someone who could deal with the beasts, then that person would likely have the best harvest, depending on their level of effectiveness. There had never been a precedent like Dante, who could just get all ten each time because all of the difficulty disappeared!
In fact, if Dante had previously been a final boss that was a huge obstacle from allowing the students to achieve the reward at the end, then he was now the heavens itself, the being that allowed good and evil to fight each other for its amusement.
When people realize that there is no hope of victory, they would naturally resort to other means. Previously, due to pride and some other reasons, the students did not dare go too far because they believed they could deal with Dante eventually.
However, now that this hope was thoroughly crushed, they used the tried and true method of twisting public opinion!
They and the factions behind them began to protest, very loudly. You might think that no one should fall for such tripe, but when there were billions of 'sentients,' there were bound to be individuals who would be captured by moral highground slogans and buzzwords.
Especially since Dante did not bother to speak for himself or refute, these factions had a field day not only tarnishing and smearing his reputation, making him seem questionable, violent, vicious, and traitorous, but they also began wanting to use the public to put pressure on the Prime Human Council.
They made Dante seem questionable through his origins; his first appearance was on Planet Etonia, and nothing was known about him before then. What if he was some impostor playing at being pure human or some invader from somewhere? How could they trust that he was one of them?
Then they made him seem violent and anti-social because he never interacted with his peers and had even 'attacked' some of his teachers. The fact that it was in self-defense was heavily glossed over and suppressed.
After that, the ploy was to make him seem vicious since two students rumored to have visited him a while back had disappeared without contact for more than a few months. Their families also came out to say that Dante had threatened using his connections and power to remain silent, or else.
As for the family members who came out to say this, one had to ignore their unwilling and bloodshot eyes as they spoke. After all, no matter how treacherous they were, how could they be willing to be brutalized and bullied by the very same factions forcing them to pin the blame on someone else?
But did they have a choice? If they didn't want to be destroyed any further, they could only flap their gums and hope for the best.
Then, the various factions painted Dante as traitorous because somehow they had dug out his contact with the Portinari clan and found that they had no control over him.
Not only that, they sponsored his everything at the cost of other clan members and even married off their most powerful daughter to him, yet he refused to give any fruits he might acquire to the clan!
Well, there was no evidence of Dante actually saying that he wouldn't give the Portinari clan anything, but there was also no evidence of him saying that he would, so...
Anyway, forget about all that; the point was that this lad was traitorous and would bite the hand that fed him! Such a person could not possibly be allowed into the Zero Gate, could he?
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