Chapter 2: Prologue: Essence Gathering
As soon as Dante's soul entered the child's body, he instantly became aware… Albeit barely.
He couldn't move his body, open his eyes, and his thoughts were extremely sluggish. Well, that's to be expected seeing how his new body (fetus) hasn't even formed a complete brain yet and his body is nothing more than a few cells clumped together.
'What… The… Hell…'
That's all Dante could think before he lost consciousness.
From that point on, Dante would come in and out of consciousness while barely being able to form any thoughts until his body became more developed and his brain was semi-functional.
'Phew! What a pain in the ass it is to be a fetus! Luckily, I should be born relatively soon now that I can move my body a bit and form coherent thoughts. However…' Dante narrowed his eyes in his mind.
'It seems that I didn't come with any golden finger unique to transmigrators. No matter! I didn't waste all of my time studying only to rely on some half-baked golden finger! Honestly! How fucking useless can those protagonists be!? Who needs a system?! Who needs some OP immortal inheritance or some other bullshit!? It's not like cultivation manuals, techniques, and various other things just drop out of the sky for people to use! If some shitty primitive humans can come up with such heaven-defying techniques, then I, who comes from the modern age, should be able to come up with something that topples the heavens!'
Naturally, Dante was full of pride even without knowing anything about the world he is currently in.
In fact, if Dante was given some sort of pity prize system for transmigrating, he would've definitely declined it and if he was unable to decline it then he would've committed suicide again.
He doesn't need anyone or anything to help him reach the peak and he is quite sure that he'd be able to go farther by himself than with some golden finger.
After Dante finished cursing all Wuxia protagonists, he lost consciousness again.
This happened until finally, he was born. But even though everyone around him was celebrating, Dante was anything but happy.
It was at this point that Dante realized his starting spot in this life was the absolute worst. He was even 80% confident that his new body's talent for cultivation was most likely below average seeing as how everyone around him looked like dirty villagers.
Days went by and soon enough years passed for Dante as he learned more about this world. Well, as much as he could possibly learn from villagers.
Apparently, the world he is currently in isn't a world at all, but a realm. The Immortal Realm. Another interesting thing to note is that although he lived in a remote village, everyone here was still a cultivator. Although that was the case, the average person in the village was probably only 2-3 times stronger than the strongest people on Earth.
It may seem like a lot at first, but Dante had already set his eyes on the peak! How could he possibly settle for such measly power?!
He also learned from people in the village that there were 3 different cultivation systems. There were Body Tempering, Essence Gathering, and Soul Cultivation.
Body Tempering and Essence Gathering had 18 Realms with 9 Layers in each Realm, while Soul Cultivation only had 9 Realms with 9 Layers in each Realm.
Although the people in the village knew of this information, they've only heard of the first 6 Realms, or what's known as the Mortal Realms.
Body Tempering has:
1: Strength Training
2: Meridian Strengthening
3: Flesh Training
4: Viscera Strengthening
5: Muscle Forging
6: Bone Forging
Essence Gathering has:
1: Body Strengthening
2: Meridian Opening
3: Qi Gathering
4: Qi Condensation
5: Foundation
6: Revolving Core
And Soul Cultivation doesn't start until the 10 Realm of the Essence Gathering cultivation system.
Needless to say, Dante could hardly believe his ears when he found this out.
"That's 45 fucking Realms or 405 Layers if one were to cultivate all 3 Realms!! The fuck is this?! It's going to take me at least 10,000 years to reach the peak in all 3 systems! Honestly, I can't see myself reaching that realm before 50,000 years even if I get extremely lucky! That's not even counting the experiments I want to do and creating/training in techniques! I also want to learn every single profession, acquire bloodlines, acquire physiques, and many other things! Fucking bullshit!"
But although Dante said this, he had a massive grin on his face. This is exactly what he wanted! He didn't want to be like some protagonists who can reach the peak in a few years while some system or inheritance just downloads the knowledge into his brain and does most of the work for him.
Having this information allowed Dante to come up with a plan on how he's going to reach the peak and his first step is going to be to leave this god-forsaken village! But before that, he needs to run a few tests.
Dante refuses to use any cultivation manual made by someone else. So in order to create his own, obviously he needs to be careful with how he proceeds. For this, Dante figured that the best thing to do is to focus on a single cultivation system. The easiest in his mind is the Essence Gathering due to there being Qi everywhere.
So, until Dante reached 16 years old, he was constantly training, theorizing, and planning until he finally reached a point where's he's confident in bringing out 100% of his potential while retaining a perfect foundation.
The only problem that Dante noticed was how slow it took him to cultivate, but he also noticed that he was significantly stronger than those at the same stage as him and that was taking into consideration his low cultivation Realm.
Naturally, this isn't the best comparison since these villagers were probably barely able to draw out 30-40% of their body's potential with their shitty cultivation manuals.
After Dante turned 16, his Cultivation Realm was at the 1st Layer of the Meridian Opening Realm (2nd Realm in Essence Gathering).
He told his parents that he is going to leave the village in order to explore the world and get stronger. Obviously, his parents begged him not to, but Dante couldn't be shaken by such meager attempts. He barely cared about his parents back on Earth, much less these people who Dante was at least twice their age mentally.
The first thing Dante did was search for the nearest City. Not to live in, but so he could trade for resources in the future.
This is another thing that people might consider a negative about Dante, is his extremely anti-social behavior. He finds talking to other people to be a useless endeavor and a waste of time.
To him, friends are more like leeches. Whatever they get has to be shared. Friends often want to waste time doing useless things like hanging out, drinking, partying, and other pointless things. Not to mention that they might betray you at any time based on their feelings. Plus, he'd have to do things that are better for the group rather than himself!
How can that be?! These fucking apes not only want to waste his time, share his resources, and even bother him about useless things, but he can't even take missions or go to places with them if they don't benefit the group?!
Well, enough about Dante's superiority complex. After Dante scouted out the city and noted down places that he could trade with in the future, he left the city and made his way towards whatever beast-filled area is nearby so he can train.
***
Months went by and slowly turned into years until Dante eventually settled into a reliable schedule.
He would live in the danger zones for around 3 months before returning to a city to sell his goods. He'd then leave the city with 3-6 months' worth of resources so he can keep training out in the wilderness.
He never bought a single weapon, he never bought any new clothes, he never bought any armor. The only thing he did buy were Spirit Stones to help with his cultivation.
He was quite infamous amongst the people in the surrounding cities. People would often ask him why he only buys Spirit Stones and not any weapons, armor, techniques, or even just some spare clothes. His answer to these people was always the same.
"I'm poor as fuck and have no money to waste on useless things such as those."
Everyone would become speechless after hearing his exclamation. Then they'd get a bit angry at Dante's arrogant remarks telling him how he's going to get himself killed doing such something reckless like that, but Dante couldn't give two shits what these people thought.
He just traded his goods for Spirit Stones and went on his way back to these danger zones, but every time he left these cities Dante felt nothing but disdain for the people that live in them.
Reckless? Going to get himself killed? Arrogant? If he can't even survive in a place filled with mindless beasts who only react on instinct, then he might as well kill himself now and save himself the effort!!
He doesn't have some heaven-defying talent that allows his cultivation to soar with little to no effort! Nor does he have some A.I. level comprehension speed. If he lives in a situation where death is but a hair's breadth away, then his mind and body will slowly adapt to the pressure allowing him to understand things at a great pace, cultivate faster, and also won't ever have to worry about his foundation being unstable.
He won't even go to a city even if he feels like further comprehending his cultivation technique, martial arts, or anything else because he doesn't want or need a Plan B like a city.
There's also another reason he likes to stay outside of cities and that's because he likes to hunt down humans as well. Not only are humans great targets to practice on, but the amount of loot he gets from killing a group of humans versus a group of beasts is infinitely more. The only thing he can immediately use from a beast carcass is its meat and maybe its hide. But humans always carry with them herbs, pills, spatial rings, Spirit Stones, and even sometimes books containing useful information.
The only problem with doing this is for some reason humans are very vengeful creatures. If he kills too many people, then he'll almost for sure get hunted by stronger people. And although Dante isn't a little bitch, he doesn't want to die a needless death that could easily be prevented.
But it's very hard to catch Dante. He only takes what's actually useful to him. He won't take useless shit like weapons, techniques, cultivation manuals, and things like that. He'll leave that stuff with their dead bodies. But then again, he'll usually feed their dead bodies to the beasts and toss their spatial rings in a river or throw them up in a tree or something after he's done looting.
Even after taking these precautions, he'll move to another area so as to not be hunted.
Like this, the years went by…
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone