As the sun began to dip below the horizon, casting long shadows across the partly devastated area where the left was a giant gully and the right was a lush forest with strange black-colored trees, Dante stood at the center calmly, ready to embark on his first practice of the Advanced Knight Realm chapter of the Primal Ape Technique.

This particular realm focused on harnessing and extending one’s life essence outside the body more adeptly, using it for offense, defense, and support. It was a realm of greater power that seemingly connected the knight to the vitality of the world.

Dante naturally started with the first technique, ‘Primal Resonance’.

With the grace of a Silverback Ape, he moved his body in a rhythmic dance, feeling the life essence within him resonating with the natural energy of the world. It was as if he were attuning himself to the heartbeat of the earth.

The second technique was ‘Foliage Ward’.

Dante extended his arms, palms outwards, as if mimicking the protective embrace of the Silverback Ape towards its family. He channeled his life essence into a visible shield that mimicked the form of a silverback ape, looking a little like a susanoo, basically creating around himself a barrier that would ward off attacks but could not attack back at this stage.

With ‘Vitality Surge’, the third technique, Dante unleashed a burst of life essence from his life seed.

It surged through his limbs, enhancing his strength and agility. He moved around a small area of about a hundred or so meters with the power and grace of the Silverback Ape, his every action infused with newfound vitality.

The fourth technique was ‘Nature’s Embrace’.

Dante knelt and pressed his hands against the earth, connecting with the life force of the land. He could sense the flow of life energy beneath him, drawing strength from the very ground he stood on. While he couldn’t extract it into his body yet, it was torrential in nature and helped temper his own meager life essence in comparison.

‘Resilient Echoes’, the fifth technique, allowed Dante to create echoes of his own presence.

He moved with such speed and agility that afterimages trailed behind him step by step, confusing his enemies. It was a technique of misdirection and evasion, much like the evasive maneuvers of a Silverback Ape. Visually, it looked similar to the Neon Run of Delsin Rowe.

With ‘Mend the Fractured’, the sixth technique, Dante focused on repairing his own wounds and fatigue.

He channeled his life essence into his body, accelerating the natural healing process. It was a move that allowed him to recover swiftly from injuries. It was one of the main selling points of Knight Breathing compared to External Martial Arts after all.

‘Thicket’s Grasp’, the seventh technique, allowed Dante to manipulate life essence into tangible tendrils that could ensnare and immobilize his foes.

He extended his arms, and from his fingertips sprouted ethereal silver-green vines that moved with a mind of their own. It was a very useful move for controlling foes, another thing he could not do as a Martial Blood realm martial artist, at least not until he became a Martial Grandmaster.

Finally, Dante concluded his round of practice with ‘Eternal Vigor’.

This technique allowed him to temporarily extend his life essence to enhance the abilities of those around him. He stood at the center of a radiant aura, invigorating his allies and bolstering their strength and resilience. ．

Another specialty of the Knight Breathing technique was a focus on group enhancements the higher it went, higher knights buffing lower knights as they formed cavalries and armies.

Obviously, the arrogant martial artists would never trust another soul with pieces of their power and focused on self-empowerment. In fact, the knight’s system only worked because of their dedication to the Knight Code.

If it was just another power system focused on strength without a code of ethics that was strictly followed, it would never go down this path of camaraderie and leadership.

Right now, King Breathing had never actually been used in battle by Dante because the Martial Artist equivalent was always better. It was so much so that he hadn’t even bothered to craft a special knight armor or weapon for himself from Soulforged Steel or the researched sci-fi equivalent.

However, that was only temporary. Once Dante got himself a group of subordinates or clones, the Knight Breathing technique would reach its peak with each one amplifying the other till they became a behemoth.

Dante cricked his neck with a smile as he completed his two-hour training session and felt a lingering connection to the world’s vitality. If he could find some way to sneak his Gluttonous Inferno into it, he would be able to extract energy from any planetary zone or plane by just touching the ground and achieve infinite energy for his body.

Naturally, this was useless in space and made him hesitate because even if he did get this, his future lay mostly in spatial conquests and battles. Right now, his army on earth in the home universe was under rapid construction, to the point where the materials he ported over were almost done.

Harvester-type and research-type ships had already gone out of earth’s orbit to start mining resources of the nearby planets of the solar system. As for the people of earth, they were naturally none the wiser.

Whether they used their eyes or any technology, they would never find a trace of Dante’s movements until their technological capacity jumped 8000 years at least.

When it was January next year he would return from the Zero Gate with fruits new superpowers and probably an enhanced body that could take in more power systems from quantum worlds.

With a quantum marker in the Zero Gate – which he would obviously place when he went inside – Dante would no longer care about or need the Eternal Academy apart from maybe the Student Enhancement Center and the high-quality quantum worlds.

As such, his second year would be mostly spent in the home universe personally leading his conquest of the various systems and galaxies. Interesting members from different races he met would be contracted under his ‘protagonist’ system and empowered through various means, becoming his hard-working bees.

Of course, Dante was not going to randomly enslave people, he hadn’t fallen that far yet. To him, it was a simple transaction, the protagonist fulfilled tasks for Dante and they got their ‘exp’ reward and ‘leveled up’.

As for whether the protagonist would grow arrogant and no longer want to serve Dante – or rather, their system – after being stronger, Dante was fine with that. After all, no matter how much they worked, they would never achieve the same level of power and knowledge as himself.

If they decided to stop working, with their obviously lacking natural talents, they would stop growing on the spot. If they wanted to experience that easy and fast growth they had enjoyed till then, they could only rely on Dante.

As for the protagonists experiencing some sort of cosmic event that made them special and overcame Dante’s influence, allowing them to either learn ways to empower themselves without him or achieving more power than him in a short time…

Well, Dante was not a fool. He was confident it wouldn’t happen, but it was not impossible.

Just 7 months ago, if you asked him whether he would have superpowers or be able to perform his current magical methods, he would have felt that it was cool, but his heart would be filled with doubt.

It wasn’t that he didn’t believe it could happen, but rather that it would not happen to him specifically, because what was special about him? But it happened anyway, and here he was.

Besides, the simple fact was that risks were ever present in life. Going out to buy food yielded a 0.0001% chance you could get run over, stabbed, or something. Driving to work or to go somewhere had a low chance of being in a fatal accident or knocking someone’s kids over and becoming a murderer.

Most of us had such a worry in mind, but it didn’t stop people from living their daily lives and doing what they wanted because the chances were so low they were negligible.

Likewise, even though Dante’s idea could backfire, the chances were just as negligible as the examples above while being just as fatal. If a person in the above situation could push forward, Dante could also do the same.

Dante shook his head and decided to postpone such thoughts until he came out of this virtual world and could pop back home to make a check-up on the progress of his army.

As for right now, he checked the progress of his Primal Ape’s technique for the Advanced Knight realm during his short 2-hour session just now.

Physical Powers: Primal Ape Technique (Level 3: Advanced Knight, 10%).

Alright, a 10% increase in 2 hours of practice with the right resources. That meant he needed a total of 18 more hours of consistent training to break through.