Chapter 239 Sinister Dante
The important thing to note was that each of these fruits could be eaten by anyone other than Dante, so his friends and family had a great selection.
As for Dante, not being able to eat these fruits was not much of a pain for him. When he entered the real Zero Gate in a few days, he would have the option to select between 20 fruits on both sides.n--0vE1b1n
Given the power of his current Quantum Entanglement, there was more than likely a 100% success rate for the relatively cooler superpowers among them.
Of course, he wasn't going to swallow all of them because he would need to train them like Quantum Entanglement, and not everything might be as simple as 'sorting out wires' when he reached the C Rank and above.
Anyway, now that he had the fruits, it was time to effect his plan. Dante's clone rose up from the ground and pointed into the distance, releasing a wave of spatial energy that covered the entire quantum world.
"All weaklings of the realm, here are my coordinates. I have collected all ten fruits and await a challenger to seize them from my hands!" Dante spoke to them through the spatial channel and even imbued them with a mental mark of his location relative to them.
Once he cut the spatial broadcast, every being seemed to contemplate its chances against Dante, the students moreso than the ignorant beasts. After all, they knew more about Dante's terror and were worried that this was some evil trick.
Well, it was, but not what they thought. Dante's clone did not have the Heretical Inferno since this was back in time before Dante's main body made the breakthrough, and he just wanted to test his mettle against the others in this realm since he was 'nerfed' to their level.
The monsters moved out en masse and decided to attack Dante head-on, to which he met them with a single 2nd Rank Celestial Rift to call starlight down to attack. This directly cleared an area section of the onrushing army who were bolstered by their numbers.
In their minds, as long as they took down Dante, everything would be alright!
But well, everything wasn't.
Dante was shameless in the sense that he released his hellfire to form a domain around him for 2 kilometers in all directions, meaning that any monster that entered this zone would be burned to death.
Meanwhile, he was clearing out huge swathes of them cheaply by using a mixture of the 1st Rank Astral Flare and the 2nd Rank upgrade, Celestial Rift. These two had near-instant cast time for him due to his space element boost and his high wizard rank compared to the spell.
Now the important question was, how did mages under the magus system fight long-term battles? We knew that Internal Arts users had dantians for internal force and had to convert base energy into Internal Force through meditation if they ran out.
The truth was that mages did not have anything like mana, which was why Beatrice even pushed Dante to adopt this system back then. They consumed their own mental stamina in casting because spells were a visualization of combining elements in the atmosphere to form the effects they performed.
Spiritual Essence was only used to condense cores, it could not be lost or turned into energy for other things unless the magus exploded their spiritual core in a crazy attempt to take the enemy down with them.
So looking at Dante's current intelligence stat, he could not cast too much even though he could display the full power of his main body at 2000 points in all stats.
Hm, wait? Mental stamina? Wouldn't that be restored as long as one's base energy was high?
And didn't Dante have a technique called Gluttonous Inferno that allowed him to break down anything within range that had energy into base energy for himself?
Wait, was that why he created a domain of fire around him and occasionally allowed a wave of beats to rush into and be burned into ash?
How sinister!
Hello, I would like to submit a ticket for complaint! This person is hacking the server! He is using a cheat to gain infinite stamina and mana to cast large-scale spells continuously!
Excuse me? What do you mean 'git gud'?! Hello?? Hello?!?
While Dante continually dropped death upon the monsters, the students had to watch by the side like cuckolds watching the burly Russian man with a baseball bat as his third leg turning their wife into a skewered kebab.
Their faces were red and full of impotence as they could not imagine the length and breadth of Dante's strength. This was especially true for the seniors who had heard about Dante and had been warned about him by their teachers and respective factions.
However, like Humphrey and Slessor of the same batch, they felt it might have been overexaggerated and that they stood a chance against him. After all, the situation behind the Zero Gate changed every year, so who knew what might happen?
For all they knew, Dante might fall into a hole when he entered the Zero Gate and be killed.
However, looking at the fellow now, they realized how stupid their thoughts were. The fellow was soloing all the monsters in the realm, monsters that they usually had to sneak past or fight in groups to stand a chance were being killed like roaches being sprayed by insecticide.
None of them could even dream of doing that, so with pale faces, they knew that fighting for the fruits was useless. Many directly committed suicide to leave the Zero Gate world because what was the point?
If the school wanted, it could cancel their right to enter the Zero Gate. Who knew, it might even prevent them from crossing this monster and having their precious lives taken away.
Besides, rather than waste time watching him dominate like an impotent cuck, they would rather spend their time productively in other school worlds or performing other extracurricular activities for their benefits.
Dante's clone spent the next few days in continuous siege like this, pushing his battle stamina to greater degrees. Of course, it helped to have 'another' mind that was relaxedly practicing and increasing his power in another place to balance him out from all the killing as well as casting.
In the first few days, he killed them in huge amounts, but afterwards, he began to experiment with spells of other elements and familiarized himself with them. All sorts of spells were sent forth, first those of a single element, then upgrading to a mixture of two elements.
After he repeatedly cycled through many elements, he gained a good grasp of their killing power compared to each other and especially compared to his spatial spells which were in a whole different ballgame.
Meanwhile, the monsters were occasionally scattered and full of fear due to the slaughter so Dante had to repeatedly stimulate them using the fruits, even bringing one out that he replicated on the spot and almost pretended to take a bite from it.
Seeing the much-desired superpower right in front of them, the beasts naturally went crazy and forgot everything with bloodshot eyes and continued to rush over like moths to the flame just for that slight chance that they might be the one to eat the fruit.
It wasn't until the day that Dante made a comprehensive breakthrough in all his methods and SDI that Dante's clone stopped its actions and left the area. By this time, more than 95% of the monster population in the entire realm had been vanquished.
Dante came to a quiet part of the virtual world and then looked around carefully before allowing his main body to teleport over. The main body came to overlay on the virtual avatar while the quantum clone was disbanded and then reestablished.
This way, the virtual clone was 'refreshed' and gained the current level of abilities that Dante had. After that, the main body left as there was nothing to do anymore while the refreshed and empowered clone created to the declining battlefield and resumed his arrogant behavior.
As for Dante's main body, he returned to the home universe and appeared in the central base on Earth. After all, after almost 3 months of brewing, his parents and uncle had finally reached the end point of their transformative journey and were ready to come out of hibernation.
As his only family and part of the very tiny circle of people he would truly die for in this life, he naturally would not let them face any danger while also endeavoring to his best to be there for them.
Dante glanced at the three whose cultivation pods full of the nanites were lowering themselves and beginning to enter a slant near the floor. Somehow, Dante was reminded of the scene of Master Chief coming out of hibernation on the Pillar of Autumn.
While he thought this, the pods slid open and unveiled his parents and uncle who were wearing skintight jumpsuits of a gray and black color.