Chapter 166 Human Experimentation 2
Dante... had a confession to make.
In truth, he had slowly been becoming arrogant after seeing his stats rise like the sun. He made breakthroughs in methods that took even the most talented natives of quantum worlds years in mere seconds.
Even if he was reasonably more sensible than most youths his age, he was still a hot-blooded young man with endless ambition, which was his driving force. It was inevitable that this would happen.
The scary thing was that changes like this never happened in the frontend, but in the backend. It was like becoming fat as an adult. When you completed high school, you might not have been fat or were even skinny, but after years of being mostly a NEET, you put on weight.
The relatable part was that you would not notice it until it was too late. It seemed to happen in the background as your body always constantly adapted to the new weight, so you didn't feel awkward until it was hard not to notice or someone pointed it out.
However, now, especially after first seeing how powerful the Eyes of Illusion was even on Beatrice, and now knowing that something like this existed, Dante was wary. He was wary that he would look at his bloated stats and think he could overcome anything.
Stats were the foundation of all powers, that was indisputable, but certain methods could ignore them like a curse, fate, divination, and more. Unless he had methods or powers to counter such things, he could easily fall to them.
Speaking of ignore, Dante also understood why he was immune to this. His Quantum Entanglement superpower was obviously protecting him from this. No, protecting him was not enough to describe it.
It was as if Dante was like Danny Phantom. While Danny was half ghost and half human, Dante was half quantum and half 'real'. If this was a typical xianxia novel, Dante could be described to have a 'transcendent' physique called the Quantum Body.
This allowed him to 'cultivate' quantum techniques and methods with ease and not face any backlash.
It also explained that strange energy that infiltrated his body when he first transplanted the illusion eyes and tried to upgrade them. Dante had assumed this and feared this, which was what he shared with Beatrice, but there had never been any confirmation before.
Now, there was.
What was it? It was the danger of various quantum worlds!
Or rather, in taking in the powers of different quantum worlds into his body.
Quantum worlds came in different forms and qualities. It depended on the level of quantum AI that presided over the world as well as the level of design and realism that went into it. Most importantly, it depended on the hosting of the quantum world and its energy source.
Like a website, the quality and speed of the site depends on the server hosting it. The more powerful the server, the more 'resources' the site will have when dealing with multiple users, same with quantum worlds.
In this case, the servers are graded in different categories by the Etraverse Corp and sold to world hosters at different tiers.
But we already knew this. How it affected Dante though, was that entering a quantum world was subjecting himself to its rules which he would then imprint on himself before taking it out to work in the 'real' world.
Err... to put it aptly, it was like going under for surgery. However, going to quantum worlds owned by the school was like going to world-renowned doctors with near-perfect success rates while going to public worlds was like going to cheap quack doctors in a third world country.
It was even more impossible to create his own quantum worlds. Not only was the infrastructure required massive, more than his little base could handle, even the simplest design for a quantum hosting server was absolutely protected by layers of laws.
So essentially, only the Etraverse Corp could make them, so they had an absolute monopoly in this regard. Even the Eternal Academy could only commission extremely high-end servers and then modify them using superpowers to achieve its current perfection.
Dante was not even 0.1% qualified to come into contact with the ability to create quantum worlds like those. If he wanted something like that, realistically, his best chance was to advance Quantum Entanglement as a superpower.
It might unlock something along those lines at the higher levels.
Back to the problem at hand. Despite sensing the quantum poison in Harold's body, Dante could not do anything about it. He couldn't suck it out or eliminate it because he was only immune to it, it did not mean he could control it.
So this put a dent in Dante's plans. He definitely was not going to bring his parents over nor was he going to send Beatrice over until he could find a reasonable way to eliminate this problem lest he take down his loved ones with his own hands.
Dante sighed and beckoned to Lucian. Even though this had stumped him, since Harold and Lucian were not yet dead, they could be used for further experimentation until it was too dangerous to continue.
As for the quantum poisoning, he would find a way to eliminate it when he got stronger. Either that or if they died, he would casually find a resurrection resource later on and bring them back.
Lucian entered the pod obediently and lay down. Dante repeated the same process as before and put him in the quantum space, but this time for only one second before bringing him out.
Unfortunately, Lucian was still poisoned, but the quantity was only a very tiny clump. He would likely survive much longer than Harold at this rate.
Dante sighed, it seemed that until he either developed a special method for it or gained a power to negate it, he would not be able to find shortcuts. Hm, just as well then, he would continue.
**Experiment Number 2: Can humans be taken into Quantum Worlds and survive?**
Dante put Lucian back into his quantum space while asleep in the pod and then entered the True Martial World. His body had been lying in his residence for almost a month or more without moving since he had been busy with other things.
His virtual body had never been trained before and was still a weakling, so Dante experienced a slight bit of agony from his muscles before his real body overlaid upon it and took over.
He released a bit of sweat as he sat up and decided that no matter the quantum world he entered, his virtual bodies could not be left as is. He might not be able to train them but if he could find a way to split his mind or create clones, it should be possible.
Anyway, he did not bother to leave his room and released the quantum pod that was on battery mode. It seemed to malfunction a bit before successfully entering charging mode, as psion energy technically existed here in this quantum world.
Only that the quality was not only sub-par, but it was mixed with... something. That something was what caused the pod to almost go kaput but barely recovered itself after limiting the energy intake and mixing it with the battery consumption.
Dante checked on Lucian in the pod and his face changed greatly. A thick cloud of the purple-black mist was visibly pouring into his body, causing him to deteriorate rapidly like a human turning into a withered corpse.
Dante quickly collected Lucian back and left the quantum world before hurriedly releasing his body in reality. Despite being quick, the damage was done. What lay in the pod was not a handsome young man with lush white skin, but an
aged being with barely any hair and its bones peeking out everywhere on its body.
There was also a copious amount of quantum poison mist lingering around his body. When Harold looked over and saw him like that, his face blanched and he could only ask himself what the hell the demon supreme was experimenting with.
He looked up and saw Dante frowning and understood that things had likely failed. Well, in that case, it was probably better to die quickly and then be resurrected than to prolong the suffering, right?
That was what Harold thought, but unfortunately for him, Dante decided to end the experiments here as further testing would be pointless without dealing with quantum poisoning first.
As such, he simply made Harold enter the pod and be put into sleep. He then collected both pods into his quantum space and then returned to the Inferno Battleship.
Dante then removed the bodies and gave them to the Research AI of the ship. Since they were now incapable of helping directly, it was best to have the AI dig into their bodies and thoroughly research this quantum poisoning phenomenon and find out if something can be done about it.
If an answer could be found before they died, they could be saved. If they died, the promise still held true, and Dante would revive them later on.