BXBX NOVEL Chapter 54 Quantum Lifeforms
BANG!
The men holding the bag were blasted away in shock, screaming in pain as Dante landed on his knee and rose to his feet. He looked around to see that he was within some sort of dark tunnel passageway, and the men who had been carrying him were nothing but a bunch of hooligans.
Rather than run, these men simply cursed and swore as they sat on the ground in defeat.
"Fuck! How could we be unlucky today? Just at the final stretch too!" One of the men with a rat-like face spat to the side.
Dante glanced at the three to see that they had sincere resignation on their faces, as if they had factored in something like this happening and had been ready for it though they hoped it wouldn't occur.
"What is going on here?" Dante asked with confusion.
One of the other men glanced at Dante up and down then chuckled. "Well, since we're gonna die anyway, might as well drag them down with us."
"You mutant superpowered freaks think that after so long we don't know that there is something wrong with you? You guys appear out of nowhere with extraordinary abilities, having questionable identities that can never be tracked, and have functional knowledge of our world but none of the despair nor sadness that we who live here do." The third man spat with resentment.
"You motherfuckers are some sort of alternative dimension beings, or otherworlders as we personally like to call you. Ain't that right?" The rat-faced man asked with a grin.
Dante looked at the three silently and then sighed internally. This was one of the fears that many had propounded on earth, when Artificial Intelligence became too smart for its own good and began to realize the issue of its existence.
However, it was far worse than using a digital network in the home universe to theorize this.
These beings existed in a quantum space, so what was virtual to Dante was real to them. The fact that Dante could enter the quantum world with his real body was enough proof that it was not so simple.
Besides, quantum spaces like the Apocalypse World were shared words. Such worlds required more than just a creator or designer to put some things together for them to remain functioning in perpetuity.
Even in the instanced worlds like the training world, that elder who taught Dante had seemed to be very aware of many things but kept to himself. If Dante could see it, so could other residents of the Eternal Universe, so they likely had more information about this.
In fact, it tickled to a certain dreadful theory Dante had thought up while he was lazing about earlier. Could it be that both the home universe and the eternal universe were just larger Quantum Worlds? Or rather, Quantum Universes?
And the higher dimensional being that saved him was a 'player' of a higher world that saw a silly NPC do something funny and decided to humor him?
Dante shook his head as he understood that such rabbit-hole thinking would only lead to more trouble. In the end, he folded his arms and swept his eyes over the trio who were convinced of their speculation and smiled.
"Sure, probably. What does that have to do with kidnapping me?"
"Heh, I knew it. You otherworlders have to return to your world every now and then and leave your bodies in a safe place, in a comatose-like state. After we discovered this, we began kidnapping your bodies to a research facility where those elites try to dig out the reason for your superpowers as well as ways to decipher where you come from." The second fellow stated with a look of arrogance.
"So they get lowlifes like you to monitor people like us and then kidnap us when it seems like we are in this comatose state?" Dante asked with a raised eyebrow.
The faces of the trio darkened from being called lowlifes, but they were already meat on the chopping board. They knew that Dante would not let them go, so they wanted to spend their last moments feeling smug.
"Hmph, whatever. We know we're dead already and that's as much as we'll tell you, so get over with it!" The third guy snapped, not wanting to drag it on and get their hopes up.
Dante nodded and seemed to blur in their eyes due to his higher SDI. Before they were aware, their heads were smashed in gruesomely, allowing them to die instantly without feeling anything.
Dante could only wipe the remnant matter off his hands gingerly with a wry smile. "Well, it's all I can do since I don't have any weapons."
He then paused and thought about something. He looked around and then quickly scouted the area to make sure no one was around before returning to the corpses.
Dante then closed his eyes and accessed his Soul Space. There he saw the familiar giant gate and beside it was a smaller void that seemed to extend green tentacles outward, wanting to drag everything into its depths.
However, while the quantum gate was real and very solid, the green void was thin and very illusory, looking like it would dissipate at the slightest touch. Dante knew that this illusory power was likely the 'free' absorption ability that he gained.
When Dante actually saw it appear in his Soul Space, he was shocked. This meant that this Apocalypse World and the mechanics behind it allowing people to have superpowers was not as simple as he thought.
Dante then returned to what he planned to do and accessed his new ability, Quantum Transposition. He decided to merge his real body with his quantum body and he immediately felt the change.
His body in the room disappeared with a pop that was undetected by the cyborgs protecting him. If it wasn't for the fact that his AI chip had given them a command that it would stop sending signals for a short while, they would have panicked.
Likewise, in the office of the headmistress, Moira who was calm saw something shocking and stood up. She rushed to the office of the headmistress once more and reported that she could not detect Dante's tracker.
This made the headmistress annoyed as she explained that Dante's teleportation ability made him disappear completely for a while, but Moira naturally knew this. The issue was not that Dante could not be tracked, but rather that he was still read to be active, but did not show up anywhere physically in the universe.
He was pinging them, but not pinging them at the same time. The conundrum caused Moira to be worried and report it. This time, Lara was interested as she stopped her meditation to check the readings for herself.
Her eyes narrowed as she had some speculations in mind, and then dug up Dante's records. She glanced at the column describing his superpower according to what the Central Server recorded, but she didn't pay attention to the details in so much as the name itself.
"Quantum Entanglement, huh?" Lara muttered, her lips curling into a smile.
Lara dismissed her aide and told her to keep an eye out. As for she herself, she left her office and disappeared into the folds of space, heading to a place unknown…
Meanwhile, Dante glanced around and felt like everything had become more tangible.
To give the roughest and rawest analogy, it was like the difference between having sex with a condom and doing it raw. He had gone from using a condom to raw, and he could feel the subtle differences.
Suddenly his screen appeared before him.
｢Warning! Detected that there is a functional anomaly within the SDI value of the player! Resetting the SDI to the lower recorded value of the two!｣
｢Player Name: Dante
Player Race: Human
HP: 105/105
Strength: 19.3 -> 10.5
Agility: 23.3 -> 10.5
Dexterity: 18.6 -> 10.5
Intelligence: 2.28 -> 10.5
Constitution: 10.2 -> 10.5
Vitality: 11.8 -> 10.5
Mutation Index: 0% (Safe)
Radiation Index: 0% (Safe)
Superpowers: Quantum Entanglement, Absorption.｣
Dante felt himself weakening greatly till he returned to the level he was in reality. It seemed that the conflict between his in-game character's SDI and his real body's SDI had confused the system and forced it to reset him to the lower values of the two, which was his real SDI.
This was not what was important though. What was important was what came next.
Dante squatted and placed his hands on the bodies of the three fellows he just ended and activated his absorption superpower. Immediately, he felt a visceral pleasure that caused his body to convulse slightly as the energy of their existence was drained into his body.
When Dante eventually released them, he stumbled backward and bit and fell onto his ass. He panted slightly at the intense experience, but he was dazed when he felt the slight but noticeable increase in his power.
｢Player Name: Dante
Player Race: Human
HP: 105/105
Strength: 10.5 -> 10.7
Agility: 10.5 -> 10.7
Dexterity: 10.5 -> 10.7
Intelligence: 10.5 -> 10.7
Constitution: 10.5 -> 10.7
Vitality: 10.5 -> 10.7
Mutation Index: 0% (Safe)
Radiation Index: 0% (Safe)
Superpowers: Quantum Entanglement, Absorption.｣
Dante sucked in a deep breath. Now came the important part…