Chapter 273 Hello Summoning World!
Well, Dante only inspected the world but did not enter right away. In truth, while he did consider the 'external' help type of power system, beast mastering or beast taming had different iterations.
There was the rank system of beast taming, where beasts were separated into stages and broke through each major stage in a similar manner to Eastern Fantasy martial arts or cultivation. Beasts of this system usually were Asian or oriental in nature and they possessed attributes.
Naturally, Dante least considered this system for his use because they were the most useless to him. Beasts of this system typically required a lot of time and work to manage, and although they sometimes fed power back to the beast master, it wasn't much.
Besides, elemental beasts were the most useless since Dante could cast any spell of any element himself, why would he need a beast to do it for him?
The other type were the capture-type beast mastering, which was based on the famous Pokémon. These beasts do not harm humans and naturally live mostly in tandem, but can be captured using special means and enslaved into battle until death.
Of course, there were things like 'bonds' and 'trust' that the humans often said to comfort themselves that they weren't actually just taking part in a massive, cross-continental animal fighting ring.
Dante also did not need this system. While he did not necessarily need the beasts to feedback their power to him, the capture-based style also featured elemental monsters in the end. Though they were convenient because they leveled up and evolved on their own through fighting or even experiencing life.
There was also partner-based beast mastering to consider, which was the type seen in mostly Dungeons and Dragons-style settings. This involved a single man with the right aptitude binding his life within a single beast where the two shared their senses with each other.
For example, a man and a wolf, a man and a bear, and so on.
There were other styles of beast mastering after these, and Dante flipped through them but did not come up with anything that felt like it was the one for him. Eventually, he did fall on one option which made him pause and actually sit up a little.
It was a world for summoners!
That's right, while it was not exactly full-on beast mastering, one could call it an offshoot of normal magic and beast mastering combined!
This one featured classical summoning rules, a stable power system with stages for each summoner to reach to unlock 'soul tethers' that could bind summoned beasts to them. Similar to other school worlds, the levels only reached up to 10 from what Dante could see from the forums.
"Well, let's take a look first," Dante muttered as he chose to enter this world.
It was a school world, so the usual rules applied. When Dante began designing his descent, he decided to go with the biggest possible background after doing some research. There was no need to enter a faction and be low key because he mostly surpassed the maximum level of this world conventionally.
When he made his decision, the system even warned him that there would be a 90% reduction in his Supercoin payout at the end, but Dante did not much care. The current wealth he had in that regard was enough to make the school's Central AI bite its teeth day and night.
In fact, there was pretty much nothing that the school could offer that Dante could not afford. Finding something useful for him to buy was the biggest issue.
When he landed in the world, he opened his eyes to see that he was currently seated in a majestic hall that was large enough to comfortably fit giants. He was currently in the center of focus, sitting on a throne beside a man that was guarding him to his left.
The man was staunch yet fully cloaked, only revealing his serpentine yellow eyes that were curved into slits. In the room, spread across a row of stands were men and women, even children, of extremely potent attire radiating energies that made Dante's eyebrows rise.
Based on his senses, most of these men and women could one-tap Mei Leiluo while others were either at her level or slightly lower. Even the children were stronger than ordinary Internal Grandmasters.
In the center, where most of the space in this gigantic chamber was left, was a huge array that Dante immediately identified was for the purposes of summoning. He could tell because due to the background he chose, the AI of this world was forced to place some knowledge of his current situation in his mind in order to generate this scene.
"Saint Child Dante, please go ahead and begin when you are ready," the man to his left spoke softly, trying to convey respect but his raspy voice made him sound sinister.
That's right, Dante chose to be the literal Saint Child of the biggest 'sect' in the Summoner's World, the Holy Saint Summoners. They weren't exactly an eastern fantasy-style sect but did have many characteristics of one.
Today was his first summoning session, which would decide his fate. In this world, summoning was decided by two things, the quality of your soul (and soul tethers) and your affinity (luck basically).
Students who descended all started out with the usual 1 point in all fields, and this didn't really affect anything. The quality of the soul had nothing to do with the Intelligence stat on your SDI; it was purely spiritually based.
How this quantum world detected something like that and calculated it was part of the secret of the Eternal Academy and their notoriously high-quality school worlds.
Dante was curious as to what he would turn up, so he raised his head and smiled at the crowd. Every eye focused on him, waiting to see how?his first ceremony would go and whether he lived up to the 'hype.'
"Greetings, envoys and friends from afar. I am grateful you could make it here to see my first summoning ceremony," Dante greeted everyone pleasantly, surprising them.
This was his first debut in public as the Holy Saint Summoners had hidden him from the world as part of his training, then invited all of them here to witness this event with pomp and arrogance.
It was nice to see that he was good at public relations, which was also strange since it was a well-known fact that such Saint Children, even in other factions, usually had their noses so high up in the air that one could see the hairs within.
"I will now release my aura. Due to special training and circumstances, it might alarm you all, so please be prepared," Dante warned with a soft smile.
He did not wait for their reactions and directly descended with his main body. While he said he would release his aura, that was obviously not true because if he didn't, they might all burst into a blood mist.
However, just being around them could cause extreme stress since he could not conceal his stats. Blood Qi, True Qi, Spiritual Cores, and Life Essence he could hide, but not those 200,000 points in all fields.
Just as soon as he descended, the faces of everyone changed greatly as sweat formed on their brows and their bodies trembled. Some directly spat out blood and lay in their seats weakly, glancing at Dante with horror.
The serpentine man beside Dante morphed into a wyvern and leapt away from Dante, his slitted pupils dilating rapidly as he stared at Dante with shock and fear. The humans could only sense Dante's bodily strength, but for this wyvern that disguised himself as a human, even though 200,000 in all fields was exemplary among the Dragon race, it was not enough to make it recoil so strongly.
However, as a magical beast with one of the best bloodlines, he could sense something deeper. In his eyes, Dante who sat there was surrounded with a cloud of blackish-red flame that seemed to burn reality itself.
Suddenly, the blackish-red flame congealed and formed the face of a supreme demon. The demon face turned to glance at the wyvern with utter disdain and released a red light from its eyes that struck the draconic beast head-on.
The man-turned-wyvern was immediately sent flying the next moment, crashing into the wall and becoming nearly unconscious.
All of this, of course, occurred only within the wyvern's spiritual mind. He was still sent flying in reality, but no one else could see the manifestation of Dante's True Qi, only thinking that he had suffered a backlash for being the closest to Dante physically.
Dante glanced at the fellow speechlessly, wondering if he was alright in the head. He was standing there one moment and then sent flying the next; was this some kind of theatrical play?
Seeing the speechlessness on Dante's face, the slowly recovering wyvern felt unbalanced. It was clear that Dante could not see the spiritual apparition of his own power, which made the wyvern feel more secure because it was less likely to mean that Dante was an evil force implanted into their faction.
Because frankly, what was the point of summoning with power like that? More than nine-tenths of the beasts in this world would crumble under your aura, much less be able to take blows head-on from you.
In fact, the wyvern suspiciously sized Dante up and down then wondered if he was a Divine Beast that had transformed itself into a human. Damn, that would actually make so much sense!
Just as the wyvern comforted himself with made-up lies, Dante did the unthinkable, at least, to him. He actually managed to activate the summoning array the next second and begin the process of summoning.
After all, it was obviously logical that summoned beasts could not summon their own beasts. Otherwise, why would they bother with humans? Just sneak one or two beasts over at first and let them summon and summon more compatriots, then take over the lush and lucrative human world for themselves.
So this proved that Dante was definitely not a beast. If so, then what the heck was he?
The array on the ground shone brighter and brighter each second, the light and palpitations causing everyone to fall into silence. Dante himself had closed his eyes and was experiencing the feeling of summoning for the first time.
He understood why they called it soul tether because his mind was currently in the form of linked chains that floated within a pseudo-void-like area with hundreds of lit platforms containing beasts of various kinds that were looking around.
The beasts seemed to be actively looking for soul tethers of their liking to bind to, and this formed the summoning ceremony. When Dante spawned in this realm, his soul tether was around the size of a small star, causing all the beasts nearby to be displaced as they screamed with fear.
If it wasn't for the rules of this world, their minds and souls would have been destroyed by being in close proximity to Dante. Dante himself was surprised by his soul power, but felt it was normal given that all his magical systems enhanced the soul subtly.
Even superpowers enhanced the soul to a larger extent, and he had two normal ones at the Ex Rank, and one higher-dimensional one at the B Rank. You obviously had to expect that his 'girth' would be huge.
Dante looked around and saw that even the mighty Dragons and Phoenixes paled in size compared to his soul tether, looking on with a mixture of fear and greed as they sent invitations to him crazily.
If they could bond with a powerhouse like this, their future would be set!
Before Dante could do anything, the entire realm quaked as a massive hand formed in the void that grabbed his chains and brought him elsewhere. He became dizzy for a second or two until he realized he was now in a new area.
This one was far smaller, but to Dante's shock and surprise, even the smallest platform in this area was twice as large as his soul tether!
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