As the mist cleared, Dante's eyes narrowed with sharpness. Emerging from the chambers were creatures that resembled the monsters he had encountered outside, the clicker-like mutants. However, these mutants were different.
They were more advanced, more controlled. Not only were they larger and more sinister, but they also moved with a coordinated purpose, their movements fluid and deliberate.
It was as if they were no longer mindless creatures being lightly manipulated, but rather puppets being directly controlled by unseen strings.
Monster Name: Elite Deformed Zombie
Monster Rank: D
HP: 510/510
Strength: 48 (34)
Agility: 87 (60)
Dexterity: 76 (59)
Intelligence: 35 (13)
Constitution: 45 (18)
Vitality: 51 (20)?
(AN: The numbers in the brackets are the stats of the previous version of this same monster.)
Dante's heart raced as he realized that these were not ordinary monsters, but definitely a low-middle grade D class monster.
They were probably the result of the Apocalypse Research Syndicate's experiments, enhanced and controlled to serve as a formidable force. They were also probably frozen to prevent them from consuming energy given their high stats.
Without hesitation, Dante readied his halberd and prepared for battle. The mutants approached him with eerie clicking sounds, their glowing eyes fixed on their target. It was clear that they had been unleashed to eliminate the intruder.
Dante's training kicked in as he engaged the mutants. He utilized his absurdly high agility at 230.6 points as well as his budding combat skills to evade their attacks with unparalleled ease while striking back with precise and powerful blows.
Dante weaved through them like a leaf being blown by the wind, or like a string that was refusing to be threaded into a needle. Each time the monsters struck, it was always seemed so close but was not even able to touch Dante's armor.
The mutants' enhanced abilities should have posed a challenge, and would have definitely forced an elite team to fight tactically by using the stairways to narrow down the assault, but Dante's situation made things child's play.
The battle was still quite intense given that every being in here moved at speeds that the average eye could not hope to follow, with each clash of metal and flesh reverberating through the freezer room.
Dante's halberd sliced through the air, leaving trails of sparks in its wake as it scraped against the natural body armor of the mutants that was like striking iron, but Dante's superior strength allowed him to 'smash' them if not slice them in half.
Like this, he managed to take down several mutants, but their numbers seemed almost endless. This did not bother him as the more the merrier, and he could raise his SDI to its current limit.
As he fought, Dante's mind calmed down and began to pay attention to his usage of technique. He realized that the more his stats grew, the more his raw power grew, but his finesse dropped sharply in contrast.
After all, the way he was raising his stats was unorthodox. Normal people use gene treatment, so it occurred over a period of time, allowing them to kick in their basic and advanced training to recalibrate themselves.
However, an entire day had not passed since Dante descended, and he went from 10.7 points in all fields to having hundreds. It was inevitable that his control would slip and he would revert to the clumsiness of an untrained person.
This chaotic battle was not perfect, but it was a start. Dante used it to hone his strength and reaction speed, mostly in terms of how much force he used to kill an Elite Deformed Zombie while avoiding their quick and brutal strikes.
Soon, he cleared out the entire floor and checked to see if there would be more. Since there were none and the current mutants were neutralized, Dante took a second to catch his breath. The freezer room was eerily silent once again, the only sound being his own pensive breathing.
He knew that his time here was running out. The quantum computer would undoubtedly detect the disturbance and respond accordingly. He walked up to the corpses and gathered them up before absorbing the lot of them.
Player Name: Dante
Player Race: Human
HP: 661/661
Strength: 146 -> 250
Agility: 230.6 -> 250
Dexterity: 231.1 -> 250
Intelligence: 60.14 -> 235.14
Constitution: 102.1 -> 250
Vitality: 109.5 -> 250
Mutation Index: 0% (Safe)
Radiation Index: 0% (Safe)
Superpowers: Quantum Entanglement, Absorption.?
Dante roared with pain as his body expanded and contracted rapidly, steam coming from his body in different places. He was releasing a huge amount of heat that countered the cold of the freezer room and even caused many parts to defrost into water.
His current limit stats-wise seemed to be 250 in each field, which was only possible thanks to his first gene treatment expanding the limit of his genetics. Otherwise, with his current harvest, he should have 386 in Strength, 665.6 in Agility, 611.1 in Dexterity, 327.1 in Constitution, and 364.5 in Vitality.
As for Intelligence, it was less than the limit, so everything worked out. All the excess power was directly released as heat energy, which meant that it had fully and thoroughly gone to waste.
Even if Dante went out and increased the power of Absorption to higher levels, it would not make a difference but rather cause him more pain as he 'expelled' the unabsorbable power.
Dante cooled down and rose to his feet. He noticed that his halberd was scalding hot, and so was his Barret. As for his backpack and what had been on his side, they had long melted. Parts of his arms had melted as well, though they maintained a general cohesion.
At least the mutation cores he accumulated were fine, being a few hundreds F rank and one E rank from the Goliath.
Dante mused on his situation and understood with a dark face that he was wasting time here. He would best raise his intelligence to the limit of his genes and then head to the treatment center for the next batch of upgrades.
However, that would only be possible if his genes had settled down and were ready for the next upgrade, or he could suffer genetic breakdown. Given that his genes had been worse than even the most basic pure human of this universe, that was very likely.
Welp, his stay in the Apocalypse World was going to be short again. Since he could not increase his SDI, he did not see much value in staying here, even if there were Supercoins to be harvested, since he could partake in other worlds to get such rewards.
As such, Dante quickly made his way back to the stairs, his mind racing with the information he had gathered and the ideas he had scrambled up as well as thoughts of the next step from here.
First things first, up or down? To continue with this 'dungeon' and enjoy the reward at the end even though he probably could not absorb any monsters after this point since he would just cause himself agony or head up and hunt F Rank monsters to slowly raise his Intelligence to
the limit.
Absorption didn't allow him to pick and choose which stat he could absorb, at least not at its current Rank. As such, if he absorbed one monster, he would swallow all its stats, and that would just cause needless pain.
However, F rank monsters had low stats so even if he 'vented' some out, it would be mild and almost unfelt, but it would take longer to reach the limit. However, Dante was also curious about what lay at the end, so he decided to cut to the chase.
Like a blur, he rushed down the stairs and reached the bottom floor in a jiffy. He brazenly kicked the door open and saw a huge monstrosity that was made up of tubes, wires, and a mass that was connected to the wall at the opposite end, with only one large screen on it.
Before he entered, there were hundreds of strange looking quantum commands scrolling down the screen, but it stopped abruptly and became black. Then, a few words wrote themselves on the screen, saying: "You're here."
It was more of an acknowledgment than a question, and Dante did not bother to chat. He let the AI chip stop cloaking him and send a message to the quantum computer that he wanted full access to its database or he would destroy it.
The quantum computer went silent, and Dante simply disappeared from where he stood and appeared near one section of its mass. With a single swing of his halberd, he cut off a huge chunk immediately.
It did not make any physical sounds, but a slew of commands appeared on its screen, and the AI chip told Dante that it was screaming in a quantum frequency.
"Stop trying to waste time and stall so that the monsters on the other floors will come. Either give me what I want or suffer." Dante stated cruelly, his patience wearing thin.
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