Dante appeared in his bedroom on earth, specifically within his rented apartment. He fell face-first onto the floor and passed out completely due to the effects of Sylphia's attack.
Dante completely fell asleep and woke up only 3 hours later. He rubbed his head with fatigue and pain on his face. He also received a report from his AI chip about what happened and how it regulated his system after he passed out in order to get him to wake up so soon.
Dante sighed and rose to his feet before moving to sit at his desk. He glanced at the mini quantum computer that was still working hard and shook his head. He had the idea to check on its progress, but was not too hot on doing that right now.
He currently had bigger fish to fry and that was mainly in the sense of what to do now. The reaction of the teachers and powerhouses to his 'specialness' coup-led with the abilities she had unlocked in this upgrade had caused his plans to shift greatly.
Before coming to a conclusion, Dante had the AI chip list out the facts he knew and projected it in front of him using his eyes as a lens.
1. He was not a fugitive. According to Xue Bing's words, the Central Server that governed the system of the Eternal Academy had passed judgment and ruled him as normal.
2. It was dangerous to return to school. He did not know whether the teachers who attacked him would come after him again.
3. He was too ignorant and uninformed. He only cared about pilfering technologies and such from the Eternal Universe in order to create a foundation for this one. He hadn't actually taken the time to sit down and research the Eternal Universe's military, political, and social structure in full.
4. His superpower allowed him to come and go. Between entering the Quantum Universe to hide or teleporting to anywhere he had placed a Quantum Marker, his mobility was extremely high and would grow continuously.
5. He couldn't abandon the Eternal Universe. His foundation was on earth, but his path to ascension lay in the Eternal universe. Whether it was the Black Land or entering the Zero Gate to acquire a new superpower, they were both things he couldn't give up on.
Dante considered these five things and decided to take his next steps while making sure to account for these things. One thing was that he could not return to the Eternal Academy yet, at least not openly.
The reason was simple, because he simply did not understand the consequences of his actions nor did he understand the consequences nor reasoning behind the actions of all the others. He also did not know the aftermath, so his main objective was to investigate that.
In order to investigate, he would need to make sure of his mobility. He could return to the Eternal Universe, but he definitely could not return to anywhere that was open and accessible. So he would have to live in the shadows for a while just like he planned to, but not entirely.
On top of that, while in the shadows, he had to investigate and research thoroughly what superpowers meant to the Eternal Universe, the top factions, and why they even cared.
It obviously couldn't be just because superpowers were cool and somewhat surpassed the limits of their technology. It had to be a deeper reason, and Dante had honestly wondered about something like that when he first arrived in the Eternal Universe and heard about it.
His suspicions had peaked when the headmistress had told him those words. It seemed like superpowers at a certain level were a gateway to something larger?
Dante would not have thought much about it, but he knew the origin of his abilities. If higher-dimensional beings existed in that universe, then there was a higher-dimensional plane that they existed in.
Were superpowers a gateway to that plane? There was a Zero Gate that released superpowers every year in the form of ten fruits, and every other day it released the energy needed for superpowers to progress.
So was there a First Gate after the Zero Gate? Or a Second Gate?
Was it really so easy for the Eternal Academy to resist the pressure of those alumni like Xue Bing said? Even if it had the best tech and a powerful backing, it had released so many superpowered beings who were hungry for its power.
If it was just the Zero Gate providing a way forward, they would never let it go. However, there was probably something more that could at least mimic the effects, but was not as convenient as the Zero Gate.
Dante reasoned this out and sighed. Whatever the case, he needed to get on with it. He spent one more time looking around his room before checking any missed calls he might have gotten these past few days.
He saw that his socials had been bombarded with a lot of questions and greetings from certain interested parties who felt his theories were quite special. Hah, there was even a recruitment letter from a certain reputable institution within Canada.
However, the AI wisely declined all and replied to the others with politeness. No need to offend anyone and come off as brusque, but it also could not appear in person. Besides, Dante did not plan to join any faction but establish his own, or there would not be a need for all this.
There were also a lot of notifications from some cheap online novel site called webnovel. It seemed that the novel that the AI had been writing and posting on there had gained some traction.
Dante idly checked it and found that it was called "I am the God of Technology' and it was about a person from modern earth traveling to another universe with fantasy elements and magic, but he had this thing called a system that allowed him to buy and control any piece of technology from earth in exchange for the souls of people he killed.
ραΠdαsΝοvel.cοm How barbaric.
Dante scoffed at this idea and got bored after the first few chapters. The Quantum Computer had studied hundreds of popular and failed novels on the web and had understood the pattern to success.
The novel had no depth and was filled with tripe and spectacle, but apparently, the crowd was eating it up. Sad.
Dante saw that he had a call from his mother which he returned. He then chatted with her about many things and even told he about his courses in science as well as some of his 'discoveries'.
Rather than be excited, his mother looked him up and down strangely through the video call.
"You? Science? But your highest grade was in Senior High Sophomore year where you got a B minus. Even that was because you confessed to me that you snuck in some papers."
Dante's face became red with embarrassment. Yeah, fine, he hadn't always liked science because physics was kinda hard but okay for him since he excelled at maths, chemistry was Satan's subject which had caused him to burst into tears many times during revision week before exams, and biology was only fun in the beginning.
"Well, what can I say? I probably inherited my beautiful mother's high QI and skills this late in life." Dante immediately lavished praise and attributed his success to his genes.
His mother looked unimpressed. "Hmph, your father was far more eloquent than you when he was your age, what didn't he tell me before? If you want to coax me, you have to be slicker than that."
She said that, but Dante knew his mother was extremely happy because her brows always relaxed when she was praised like this.
Hmph, Mom your mouth is dishonest but your eyebrows won't lie!
After all, the first skill every son learned was how to coax his mom. You couldn't even coax your mom as a man and you wanted to capture babes into your bed? Go back to the drawing board!
After that fun family call, Dante was in a good mood, so he finally dealt with his bank. It was nothing big, they just noticed that Dante had not received any income for a while and were worried that he was facing difficulties.
Of course Dante, and every adult who knew the true despicable and cruel nature of the bank, understood that the real purpose of this was to check if he was trying to run away from his debt. After the bank had given him almost 15k in credit and he had used over 8,000 of it.
Most came from registering for those various courses and classes. As for his income, the webnovel site only paid out monthly so where was he to get it from? Dante rolled his eyes and created a new child AI called the Artist AI.
This one would do commissions-based work on the internet using any artstyle, primarily anime, and was free to draw extreme fetishes. After all, its name wouldn't be tied to him and he would not have to bear the mental consequences of drawing such stuff.
Tsk, it seemed like the fetish community was about to eat good this time around.
Th𝗲 most uptodate novels are published on free(w)ebnov(e)l.𝒄𝒐𝙢