Dante pondered his next steps and decided it was about time to return to the First Gate. Everything he needed to do within the local universe was mostly done, except some loose ends he had to tie up before then.
The first one was sorting out Beatrice's current state. His darling wife had been the epitome of strength and power when he first crossed over, representing a mountain that he could never cross.
Just to qualify to have sex with her in his base form, Dante had worked tirelessly for months and relied on boosting from technology to be able to bridge the gap.
However, things mostly changed when Portia, her mother, was brought back to life.
You see... Levi had said it pretty clearly before. There is supposed to only be one daughter of heaven at a time, and because the universe will could not predict the power of technology, Portia was able to give birth to Beatrice, who inherited her special powers.
However, Beatrice's were broken because the rules were clear. There can only be one holder of a certain superpower alive at a time in the universe's database. This was not a rule set by the universe will, but by the fabric holding all universes together.
But Beatrice was an anomaly.
Because of her semi-daughter of heaven state, she could partially bypass this rule, right?
That was only half of it.
When Beatrice was a child, she never manifested her powers.
She only manifested the broken abilities AFTER Portia died.
When a person dies, their hold and right to the superpower they have is wiped off. Even if they are resurrected, even using a superpower for resurrection, they come back without the superpower, as seen with Dante's schoolmates.
However, the Nirvana Fire of Phoenix was almighty and tyrannical. Not only did it recreate the body, but it snatched the soul from wherever souls go and even snatched back the superpower and any inherent abilities from wherever they were stored.
Not only that, but it boosted SDI from 2 times to 10 times depending on the person, the ambient energy, and the circumstance.
Otherwise, the whole Black Spire that had existed since time immemorial and was arrogant beyond compare would not personally message a mere Dante to sell more vials of phoenix fire.
So yes, even if in the 20 years that Portia died, some lucky bloke had found either a Devour, Gluttony, or Regeneration fruit for her abilities, that person had now lost it since the Nirvana fire had snatched it back to Portia.
That was how overpowered it was.
But now, this had come to bite Beatrice in the ass since her little bypass that worked for her was now gone. So not only was she stuck at her current level with no way to proceed, but she was even having great difficulty staying alive.
After all, at 20,000 in all fields, her energy consumption was monstrous. She had stated that she used a special energy capsule prepared for her to survive, but that capsule only worked because of her broken gluttony and Devour abilities.
Just like the current Portia, her SDI was in the millions, so she had to condense the energy of supernovas into marble-sized capsules to swallow, her abilities breaking it down and slowly absorbing it for sustenance.
Beatrice only had the strong digestive capability of someone with her stats, but she had also been pregnant, having to provide for a baby that was above the norm and required buckets of energy for gestation.
If you ever wondered why Beatrice was almost always in bed being catered to by so many android midwives per second, this was the reason. After all, someone with her stats should be able to even fight freely despite being pregnant on paper, not be like a normal woman who was delicate during pregnancy.
The truth was, Beatrice was technically even more fragile than a normal woman in this case.
It was simply that the woman was tough, having received both military training and being the heiress to a top clan in the entire universe; her willpower was like titanium... when she wasn't enjoying being babied by her beloved husband or parents, that is.
But as her husband, Dante was not going to let her continue to bear this problem. He had previously discussed it with Beatrice and gave her the option to select new superpowers from the list he had, but she didn't like any of them.
She was too familiar with the set she already had and idolized her mother too much to abandon the 'one thing that linked them together,' she said.
Dante had been forced to take a deep breath and count sheep to calm himself down when she said that because seriously, you are literally a carbon copy of your mother to the point where Augeus genes are suppressed to the minimum possible!!
What do you mean by 'the one thing that linked you together'? According to Levi's revelations, 99.99% of the things that made up the two of you were linked, except your husbands!!
Anyway, he was like any husband/boyfriend who asked his girl what they wanted to eat and they said they did not know. He was left agonized and wracking his brain as to how to make things work because unfortunately for him, many of the methods he could use for himself would not work on Beatrice.
One way was to have Beatrice use the Nirvana Fire. Rebirth by phoenix flames did not necessarily require death and could be done while alive, but every being could only use phoenix flames 9 times during their existence.
That was 9 times to come back from death if any mishap occurred, so it could not be wasted so casually.
Obviously, the simple solution was to tie Beatrice's superpowers to the Centralis Universe since the Eternal Universe was occupied, but that was not possible, at least on paper.
Dante could not contact the will of the home universe to ask for this benefit, and he didn't have any item that could achieve this effect. If there was anything that could do this, it would be the Black Spire, but that required Beatrice to not only register but acquire Spire Points.
Dante tried to cheese his way out by bringing Beatrice to the Centralis Universe through his quantum entanglement ability. Apart from marveling at how low quality this universe was compared to her hometown, even taking Beatrice into the Zero Gate world did not activate her superpowers.
Initially, Beatrice did not want to enter because she knew that Dante's plans for the home universe involved preventing it from being registered on the First Gate until he could beef up its strength.
So if she, with her abnormally high stats entered the portal, it would send her straight to the First Gate like what happened to Dante and ruin everything he built up. However, Dante assured her that he could prevent that and true to his promise, when the side quantum tunnel came to try and drag Beatrice away, Dante simply closed it off with a glance.
Still, it was meaningless in the end since they were not able to achieve their goal.
Even as Dante seemed frustrated, Beatrice simply patted his shoulder.
"Don't take it too seriously babe. I already have a lot of strength, enough to defend myself should anything go wrong."
Beatrice then walked over to sit by Antonia's crib and stuck a finger into it to tease her cute little darling. "Besides, I'm going to spendmost of my time raising Antonia. As for fighting and killing, I've been doing it since I was 7 years old, I'm pretty much tired of it."
What could Dante say to that? Even though he suspected Beatrice was just saying this to reassure him, he did believe that some part of it was true. Beatrice was forced to mature early and seek power to protect her clan, become its stabilizing force and seek revenge.
Now that she had a husband, both her parents, as well as her own child, she was pretty much surrounded by love and family. She was clearly addicted to it and had no intention of going back to the life of struggling and fighting, her only entertainment being browsing the Etranet in between missions to kill or capture.
This was in contrast to Dante who was the opposite, having grown up sheltered by family and shown love throughout, now seeking to act on his ambitions through killing and conquering. It seemed that his connection with Beatrice was even more profound than he thought, being opposite sides of the same coin.
In the end, he could only put it aside for later and make the preparations to travel. Since he would be moving, he had to make sure things were done properly because even if he could come and go as he pleased, neither Portia nor Beatrice could.
Especially in the sense of where exactly he would situate Beatrice. He was not arrogant enough to place his wife and newborn daughter in a place literally called the Wasteland of Death, a place he himself barely survived in.
As such, Dante would have to appear in the base area of the Eternal Universe, where he should have popped up when he was first transported if not for a strange anomaly that he still had not identified up until now.
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