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nDante naturally decided to do neither. He grabbed a whole wad of clothes and covered himself. With them on him like this, he looked to be a lazy fellow who didn’t want to carry more than two batches of clothes from the drying line into the house.

nHe then smashed through the window of the shop and charged towards the enemy who was walking over slowly. Naturally, Dante’s actions had been quick enough that he maintained a slight element of surprise, not to mention the randomness of seeing a man layered with unworn clothes charging at you.

nEven worse, Dante threw the bundle of clothes at him, blocking his view. Even as he fired, he could tell he missed Dante and tried to take a step back to create distance, but he was forced to dodge when an axe flew through the clothes and tried to latch itself to his forehead.

nIt was only after his desperate dodge that the man understood what happened and how he was about to die. After all, he could see the shadow of Dante from his crouched position since he ducked to avoid the axe that was thrown as fast as a bullet.

nHis expression became solemn and he was about to beg to distract his foe when he felt a leg smash the back of his head and sent him nose-first into the tiled floor of the mall. His skull burst open like a watermelon, the innards and pieces of brain mush flying about like splatter.

nDante stared at the corpse for a short while before picking up the gun he held. It wasn’t that a young man like him was mysteriously immune to death, but rather that he had ordered his AI chip to suppress the urge to vomit and the rising chaos of emotions forcefully.

nHe would deal with it after.

nNow that he was armed, Dante could begin the proper process of the testing. He detected that the rest of the men were heading toward his location, giving up on their plan to slaughter civilians. They could also detect with their own psionics that their teammate had been killed, and they were aware that Dante was likely armed.

nBasically, it was like playing an online multiplayer shooter with both teams having access to radar. While you could see the blue and red dots, it didn’t mean you could see the exact details of what was going on.

nDante also rapidly approached his enemies head-on and began firing when he encountered the vanguard. He had not taken any gun lessons because he never felt the need to, but with his dexterity boosted to 20 times the standard of a pure human in this universe, which was more than twice the standard of a pure human on earth, his aim was enough to get the job done.

nDante shot, rushed forward speedily towards new cover, shot again, and then challenged a swarm of foes in hand-to-hand combat. Once again, no training, so the battle was more like a street fight but unfortunately, his foes had basic hand-to-hand combat training.

nSo he got his ass beat up and then shot many times before fleeing. Dante evaded the pursuers long enough that his injuries healed under the starkly increased vitality and began fighting once more. He lost again and was shot many times until he could barely walk.

nEventually, he was captured and once he reached this stage, the instance came to an end.

nCongratulations, user Dante! You have completed an instance of the Testing World using random parameters! After calculation, your score is valued to be at the C Rank!

nDante was not bothered by the average score. He had no training, no skills, and no techniques. His tactics were unrefined and barbaric while his choices and decisions were questionable at best and suicidal at worst.

nIf it wasn’t for the fact that he wasn’t killed but was only captured, his score could have been worse.

nHowever, it was enough for Dante. He had tasted the full power of his new enhancements and understood how much stronger they made him. The test had been perfectly completed, now all that was left was for him to train these abilities.

nStill, that was for later. Right now, Dante had to deal with the after-effects of the suppression of his emotional reaction to the cold-blooded killing of his fellow man, so he logged out and got up, calmly walking to the bathroom before emptying out his gut.

nAfter clearing his internals, he forced himself to remember that nasty scene of his legs squashing the opponent’s head like a watermelon and began a new round of dry heaving.

nDante then washed his face and rinsed his mouth thoroughly before going to sit on his bed. He simply sat there for a long time, thinking about many things and what to do next.

nHe sighed, lay his head down, and then slept after making his AI chip secrete the necessary hormones to induce sleep. His plan was to rest for a bit before thinking about what came next.

nThis was naturally a great idea as when he woke up a few hours later, when the sky was darkening, he felt refreshed and his mind was clear. His reaction to his memory of killing was much weaker than before and he was sure that active conflict would not disgust him so much again.

nNow that he was much better, Dante thought about his next step. This was naturally to increase his SDI by as much as he could until he caught up to the others. There was no reason for others to have such high ‘base’ stats and he did not.

nThe only way to achieve this was to utilize the gene enhancement technology of this universe. This was a gradual process requiring multiple treatments over time as he boosted and perfected his genetics bit by bit.

nThere was no shortcut for this unless you had a superpower. There was nothing like a super secret military gene enhancer that could turn a dog into a god, and all he needed to do was ‘have willpower’ and ‘grit his teeth’ through the pain.

nIt would take years of treatments and the only thing that can quicken it is if you want big treatments or small treatments. Also maybe your genetic chains were more adaptable and resilient than others, so it could take more modification in a shorter period of time.

nThat was far more realistic and was probably what separated the geniuses from the average ones in terms of raw SDI.

nAs a student of the Unique Batch, Dante could get up to 15 progressive gene treatments for free, over the course of his first year. Everything after that would have to be paid for through Supercoin.

nAs far as Dante knew, the Elite Batch should get 10 free treatments and the Normal Batch 5.

nNow, Supercoin. This vaunted and much-valued currency of the Eternal Academy. How does one earn it?

nTo discuss Supercoin, which was integral to all of the academy’s systems, one would also have to discuss the academy’s systems themselves.

nThe first was tuition. The Eternal Academy did not take a tuition fee. From the arrogance those teachers displayed, it was likely they would directly say that they did not need your money. The school was run by donations from almost every faction in the universe.

nIn fact, wars were literally fought over who got to donate to the Eternal Academy and by how much in a given school year. As for why factions would do this, it was easy enough to guess.

nTuition was handled not through typical classroom teaching. This was an advanced sci-fi universe, and even modern Earth was trying to move the classroom to the online platform. How could this society still rely on such things?

nEspecially when you considered the effect of AI chips and Psionics. With such tools why should a person sit in a library or read books when they could carry an entire library right in their brains?

nAnd the truth was as such. When Dante received the information at the orientation, it included everything he needed to learn for his freshman school year. All the learning materials and information that a teacher would normally explain bit by bit were airdropped into his brain.

nWith the AI chip, he could then ratify it and then master the knowledge, accessing it at any time.

nSo why have schools? Why not just do this for every citizen from childhood and let them learn what they needed to from a young age? 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝐞𝐥.

nThe truth was that this solved only one problem with regards to tuition, and that was the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. We wasted most of our youth stuffing knowledge into our heads to apply it in the middle stages of our lives with varying success.

nHowever, AI chips cut out all those years and allowed one to acquire the knowledge now. So what else would education intuition do but use all that time to make sure that the theory is turned into an applicable skill through practicals?

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