Chapter 265 True Qi
Anyway, dexterity at this level was basically more than just hand speed. It also affected the 'cooldown' of many attacks under the physical methods system both for the Martial God and the Grand Knight systems he currently practiced.
As for Intelligence, it mostly buffed his Eyes of Illusion, raising the threshold one needed to be at to avoid being affected. The best part was that his eyes were also affected by tech boosts, so his full power 20 million boost was effective, meaning that in a tight spot, if Dante really wanted to subdue an enemy, they needed at least 40 million intelligence to break out.
Also, this was 'Intelligence' not 'Wisdom'. It allowed Dante to calculate things he knew and turn data into information through processing, not infer things he did not know and had no idea of knowing, as well as things he had never experienced.
Doing things like that was in the realm of low-quality fiction like on the big screen where that famous Mary Sue could master any power she saw without training and know anything she wanted because she wanted to.
Constitution was the same but opposite of Strength in the sense that if Dante could punch out the equivalent of a galaxy's total mass condensed, then he could now receive a blow worth the entirety of a galaxy and be hurt but not fatally injured.
Basically, it was the amount of damage a man with 1 point of Strength could deal to a man with 1 point of Constitution. Obviously, we have seen street fights and know how many blows a person could take before going down, so Dante would need the equivalent amount of galaxy-destroying blows to go down.
In terms of Vitality, Dante could totally outlive the Dark Crow and groom his own Emperors with the Heaven's Mandate. He could even be like those ancient sky-prides who sealed themselves during the Age of Spiritual Extinction while waiting for the Age of Spiritual Revival to usurp the opportunities of the young ones.
As for regeneration, well. If you managed to preserve one quark of Dante's existence, he could probably fully resurrect from that in time with ambient energy. Like Portia, his corpse could not be destroyed after death and would be full of vitality for millions of eons to come.
The only thing that could hamper his regeneration would be antimatter because it was the polar opposite of matter. No matter how high Dante's SDI became, like Portia, he was still susceptible to antimatter of the right quality.
After all, his body was still composed of matter, so this weakness was inescapable unless he changed his state of being.
As for why antimatter of the 'right quality' was needed, it was because their cells were too strong to be broken down by normal antimatter. It was like water, at 1 degree Celsius and 1000 degrees, it was still water.
However, pour it over your skin, and your reaction would definitely be different.
Interestingly, looking at his Bionics, Psionics, and AI chip, they had changed from 'Unique Student Version 15' to 'Quantum Lord's Special Version'. This was because Dante had naturally used his Nanite Resonance to restructure the nanites that formed the tech enhancements from the ground up, imbuing them with greater power.
That was why his stats now could still be boosted by a hundred times. One should know that Beatrice didn't limit herself to 20,000 in each field because that was her limit, but because her special military Bionics and Psionics could not boost anything above that.
Of course, Dante had already restructured her own enhancements, so Beatrice would start actively increasing her power again. Though her progress would be slower than Dante's because her abilities were a broken-down version of Portia's and could not achieve normalcy.
After all, only one of the same superpower could exist at a time within a universe's database. Beatrice inheriting a broken version of the superpowers was already a special anomaly not seen before, much less now that Portia was alive again.
However, it didn't matter to Beatrice much as her current power was more than enough, especially since her mother was back. She was more focused on enjoying her life with her family, her husband, and her upcoming child.
The only reason she would even bother to progress was to secure more power to protect her child, to assist Dante in achieving his ambitions, and to be able to match Dante physically so that she wouldn't be barred from intimacy with him.
At this time, Dante smiled and left the Apocalypse World right away. Rather, he traveled to the home universe and chose to use his space magic to teleport him to a random dead planet just outside our solar system.
Standing on the planet's surface, Dante did not feel uncomfortable despite the lack of atmosphere and gravity. He felt perfectly normal and could forcefully attach himself to the dead ground beneath him, which only required a simple thought.
He flexed his body and felt amazed at how the void of space could no longer realistically affect him. After marveling for a bit, he focused on what he came here to do.
It was obviously time to raise his magical methods to perfection!
With the amount of stats he had gained this time, he could take them both up to the limit without exception! The first target was the Inferno Ascension technique as usual, and Dante sat cross-legged on the ground as he began the usual chant.
BOOOOOOM!
Previously, the fire that surrounded him was huge and spanned many kilometers at a time, but this time it directly exploded outwards and engulfed almost half of this dead planet!
Even though it was slightly smaller than the moon on Earth, this was still a very large area! The hellfire surged and coiled in this area, burning the dead earth ruthlessly as if it owed it money, but soon stopped bothering when there was nothing to take from it.
This did not stop or affect Dante, though, who surged through the levels of the technique until he reached the tenth level's peak. The moment he reached this stage, his main dantian surged with a blackish-red light, everything exploding outwards as the other 1023 dantians released their full potency.
Under this explosion, it seemed like Dante's entire existence should end here as blood mist, but what happened was that the hellfire energy froze just as it broke free and then was suctioned powerfully into a single point.
This also included the hellfire that raged around Dante's body for the size of half of this planet. It was quickly dragged back into his body like a whale sucking on water, soon leaving the entire area as clean as when he came.
Meanwhile, within Dante's body, where his dantian had previously been, was now a blackish-red orb the size of a bean that gleamed with untold power and spun on its own. Just looking at it made Dante feel fear, and he was the goddamn owner of the thing!
He had done it; he had achieved the tenth level of the Inferno Ascension technique and acquired the special characteristics that came with it!
[Level 10 - Paradise's Inferno Awakening: The pinnacle of the Inferno Ascension Technique merges the flames of all levels into a transcendent blaze. The user becomes a vessel of pure hellfire, radiating an aura that engulfs the surroundings. In this state, Internal Force coalesces and upgrades into True Qi,?a unique and unmatched energy on the same level as the Spiritual Energy of the Immortal Worlds.]
Dante felt the plentiful and potent True Qi in his body and knew that he had truly outdone himself this time. It seemed like the tenth level of the Inferno Ascension technique was equivalent to the late-stage Void Core realm for Immortal Cultivators, or the Golden Core as they put it.
Dante had the same benefits of that realm, including automatic cultivation, rapid energy restoration, and many others. Even better was the fact that he could now freely use all the special fires from the 1st to 9th levels of the technique.
Level 1 was hellfire manipulation, level 2 was spirit sense, level 3 was mental attack, level 4 was devour, level 5 was storage boost, level 6 was berserk, level 7 was demon conversion, level 8 was passive cultivation (i.e., early stage void core equivalent), and level 9 was illusions and clone creation.
However Dante chose to use these abilities in the future could greatly benefit him and change any situation into one that benefitted him. The best part was that his cultivation did not stop here.
While the technique had no more levels, he could now limitlessly increase the hellfire quantity by refining his base energy into True Qi for his core, allowing him to become linearly stronger and stronger.
In fact, due to how much he had crazily increased his stats this time, his core rapidly swelled from the size of a bean to that of a small football, its potency having grown much greater.
By the time it stopped, Dante felt bloated. If he released all his True Qi right now, he could probably fill a huge lake. If converted downwards, his True Qi could probably make an entire Jupiter-sized planet of hellfire internal energy.
However, this wasn't the end. After dealing with the martial side, it was time to deal with the magical. For this, Dante naturally encountered his first problem relating to the system.
The Magus power system could only accumulate 10 Spiritual Cores full of elements in the body. Anymore would simply shatter upon forming, and this was the absolute rule of that power system.
Unfortunately, as someone who used this power system, Dante was also bound by this rule. So if he created the remaining 5 Spiritual Cores needed to hit the 9th Rank peak, he would be wasting 195,000 worth of Spiritual Energy and only using 5,000 worth of it.
Completely unacceptable, right?
So the solution was quite simple: Dante immediately shattered all of his accumulated spiritual cores and let the converted space elements go free, while the formerly condensed spiritual energy became messy and unclumped again.
A normal mage doing this would be suicide because they raised their Intelligence and mind power precisely through their Spiritual Cores. However, for Dante, it was the opposite, as his Spiritual Cores rather benefitted from his innate mind power, so minus the loss of power and affinity with space, there was not much else.
Dante was familiar with the process already, so he gathered up 20,000 points worth of spiritual energy - or 1/10th -?and squeezed it into the shape of a core using his extensive psychic ability.
Like a baker turning dough into cookies, he gathered up the spiritual energy and then shaped them nicely before moving on. Soon enough, he had 10 gleaming spiritual cores that were the size of a skyscraper in his mind space.
However, as much as they were perfect, they were not complete yet, as they had to be filled with elements in order to work. As such, Dante stood up and teleported to the Solaris Horizon E7 and set a course for a nearby Earth-like planet.
After jumping through warp space, Dante hurriedly descended upon the planet, which was still in its 'dinosaur era,' with only wild beasts rampaging around the planet without any sapient life present yet.
Just as well, for Dante arrived near a forest fire and opened the hatch of the spaceship. He closed his eyes and collected all the ambient fire elements into his first spiritual core, soon filling it up to the brim.
The consequence of this was that the fire was quickly put out, and the area even became chilly, with ice forming on the burnt trees and ground. After all, the very elemental essence that denoted fire and heat had been sucked away by him to fill his huge spiritual core, and given its size, its demands could cripple any inhabited planet, which was why he chose this 'empty' one.
Done with the first core, Dante moved to a sea area and filled his second spiritual core with water elements until the sea level quite literally dropped drastically.
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