As Dante and the other students were about to descend, they were made to go through a set of annoying procedures first. They had to sign death waivers, stating that whatever happened while they were in the Zero Gate could not be used as evidence to find anyone liable in the real world.
Of course, this was balanced out by the fact that the agreement acknowledged the fact that anything they earned while within the Zero Gate exclusively belonged to them and no one could take it away.
Naturally, those in the know knew that this was bullshit as students might have been forced to sign other agreements by their factions or clans before this that superseded this agreement, but that was a problem for them to face, not the school.
Only Dante seemed cool and unbothered while all the other Unique Batch students were like conscripted warriors going to fight a battle against a legion of flesh-eating monsters. The unwillingness on their faces was so palpable that it was a bit saddening.
Eventually, they were all given a set of exosuits made by the school, though Dante rejected it as he had the superior military version, and were led through the Black Land at full speed by all the teachers.
Soon the bypassed the place where Dante usually mediated, which was the cabin for the top 3, and went past almost 400 kilometers from there. Luckily, everyone's exosuits had jet thrusters that could move at mach 5 at its base, which was over 6,000 km/h.
In but a few moments, they had arrived as a patch of blackness that went in all directions. Due to the construction of the black land and tight control of the area by the school, it only seemed like a very large black hole, but Dante knew the true face of the Zero Gate.
It was the kind of thing that would give a normal person severe mental issues if you made them look at it due to heir minds not being able to comprehend something so large and engulfing.
The teachers lined up outside the Zero Gate, gazing at it longingly but with a hint of fear that made Dante wonder. They then turned to face the students and wore solemn expressions, as if telling everyone that from here on out, the kid gloves would be off.
In the lead was Lara, who sat in her mechanical floating throne lazily, her cape billowing to the side as her sanguine eyes glanced down at the group of students emotionlessly. Every student felt like they were being pressed under the weight of those eyes and she wasn't even releasing her aura or anything.
Dante himself was surprised to detect that he could feel a bit of pressure, and this made him doubly sure that this woman was lying. She had long taken one of her superpowers to the S rank and above!
Well, that did not bother Dante. The woman was not his enemy yet and even if so, he could find many ways to beat her. Just let him get into this Zero Gate and get the ten fruits. With the Mutation Cores, he could raise any superpower to the S Rank minimum and turn a person into a universal powerhouse.
While Mutation Cores could not work on Quantum Entanglement because it was the producer, who said it could not work on other superpowers that Dante might activate in his body?
You could be damn well sure Dante had always planned to take that shortcut, it was why he made those choices whenever he ranked Quantum Entanglement up, as well as why he was not too bothered by the fact that he could not use quantum fruits.
The excuse of 'don't get high on your own supply' that the cosmic tree gave him could not work forever!
"Students, I won't say much. Just remember what you've been trained to do these past few months and use your head, and survival should not be a problem. Anything after that is on you, so make sure you're qualified before you try any stunts." Lara said coldly and bluntly, not giving them a moving or lifting speech.
She then glanced at Dante briefly before turning her eyes away and looking disinterested. She waved her hand casually towards the vice headmaster, Andrais.
The scholarly looking young man in a white robe smiled and laughed gently, but everyone glanced at him with hatred and murderous intent. After all, he was the one who outed them in all their respective orientation ceremonies.
It was not a well known fact, something Dante had only learned recently, but Andrais actions were not necessarily school tradition. He was simply a plug put in by the top universe factions to forcefully announce the powers of students so that they - the outside factions - could see who to recruit and suppress early on.
If Dante had rejected Beatrice and come here on his own, his fate would have been much different. The kind of suppression and forced recruitment he would have undergone in those early months would like alike a shitty reactionary webnovel where everyone got offended by him and tried to kill him, only for him to kill them, their uncles, the father, the grandfather and then the ancestors.
Having the Portinari Clan as an umbrella saved him from all that until he began to show too much value anyway and had to be suppressed from top to bottom regardless.
"Alright, everyone can enter in by their ranking. The weakest ones go in first to scout the way while the stronger ones wait behind and enter last to enjoy the best locations." Andrais stated, something which made the faces of the seniors darken slightly while the first years were shocked.
Such blatant discrimination and favoritism!
However, their shoulders slumped the next moment. Yes, they had spent almost an entire year here and were used to this school's behavior by this point. The only thing one could do was hate impotently and have wet dreams about smashing the school to paste.
Under Andrais led, the students from the weakest to the strongest began to enter one by one. This meant that Dante would be the last to go in while the person in front of him for the next 7 slots were all fifth years.
No matter how awesome Humphrey and Slessor were, they were geniuses that had yet to grow and could not match the geniuses that had already grown.
Dante did not know that while the students were entering and he was waiting, all the teachers had retreated behind Lara and were glancing between her then him with playful smiles. :Lara herself only glanced at Dante with a hint of mockery and pity in her eyes.
"Dante, Dante, Dante. Truly an exceptional lower dimensional lifeform and I knew from day 1 that the source of your superpower was likely a higher dimensional being, probably from the same dimension as those two cretins." Lara began to mutter to herself while crossing her legs.
"However, that means nothing to me nor my plans anyway. However, the other lower dimensional lifeform of this universe as not so open minded and will not tolerate someone like you appearing to ruin their own schemes. Do you really think you are the first student of the Unique Batch to have overwhelming power during your stay?"
Lara rolled her eyes with disdain. "All of them have undergone the same fate you are about to, and I pity you. Out of all of them, you are undoubtedly the best and you might even have a chance to survive, but its unlikely."
"Those factions you took for granted could not harm you in person, but that does not mean you should take them for bumbling fools. From the beginning, the fact that the 10 Clans, 5 Corporations and 20 Factions never directly made a move on you should have alerted you, but at the end of the day, you are just a young man without the ability to scheme deeply." Lara continued as she saw Dante about to step into the portal.
"The Prime Human Council summoned you many times in order to secretly help but you misunderstood their summons and rather ignored them, you can't imagine the mockery of yourself you've made to the powers that be."
"In war, anything goes and one of the easier ways to defeat your foe without bloodshed is to use the knife of another. However, for that to work, one often needs to manipulate the perceptions and information of the enemy faction, and your information had been severely cut off young Dante."
Lara sighed and leaned back. "You are about to experience one of the worst ways to die: death by ignorance."
At this moment, Dante had touched the Zero Gate portal and accepted its pull, being sucked into it fully. The moment he went through all the teachers roared with laughter and some even burst into joyful tears, as if a great burden had been lifted off their shoulders collectively.
Xue Bing and Lara simply remained silent, a hint of pity in their eyes. The two had been forced to make a choice between a student and the very controllers of the universe, and they had easily made their choice.
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