14 - magic

Dante was looking down on some cells.. he had mixed his blood with some of the gene's and was seeing how everything reacted to one another..

He clicked his tongue as he looked away from the sample he was looking at..

"Another failure.." Dante had been trying for a week straight, and was done with it.. noting down another failure he turned to another page containing a list of cells with slight alteration to them..

Almost everything in his clinic was somewhat automated to let Dante work alone.. most rippers didn't have a assistant or system or anything of that matter, but they also didn't have extremely time-consuming hobbies like Dante did..

His blood reacted better towards the cells, but were still hostile after a while.. he would need to look into making it work along side each other.. that compared with the fact that he still had Kingo's body with him meant that he didn't have much free time.. he hadn't even opened the clinic as eh simply didn't have the time..

But now he was finished with the current batch… the next one needed time and he needed to relax, unwind for a bit.. he could go to the forest like that one girl suggested.. the weather was much better.. completely different from his last world.. in cyberpunk the weather was always around the same temperature.. only differing due to the clouds and gasses in the area..

In this world they had real seasons, snow was present in winter, instead of just in the up most north reaches of the planet.. he had missed most of the snow because he arrived int his world in the later parts of the snowing season, but did see some.. but now it was almost summer..

Thinking about it the beach would be a better location.. he could even swim in the water without worrying much about any deceases he might get from ingesting some of the water.. Searching up some places online revealed that there were beaches in the area but they were either full of people or didn't have anything.. as he looked around for locations to visit he stumbled upon the news.. they had made a report on the increasing temperature and the increase of trash on the beaches…

While looking at the report of the news he came across something new… The golden gate bridge was destroyed, needing to be repaired.. the reason for its destruction was because of a attack on a compound near the bridge, that was targeted by mutants who sought to destroy the 'cure' they got stopped by the x-men, a team coming from Charles Xavier's school… that combined with the reputation for defeating rouge robots in New York allowed the Beast, also know as Hank McCoy to become a senator within the government, securing the rights and fair treatment of mutant kind..

The X-men seemed to still be operating, but now with more legal overwatch.. Dante didn't think they would become directly connected to the government, but suspected that there may be some agency's that would like to cooperate with them..

All in all the news didn't surprise him that much.. it was logical for magneto to strike the place where the cure's origins was even if it was highly guarded.. and the response from the x-men was equally as predictable.. he could almost call it boring.. except for the fact that Jean Grey had died.. he had heard some things about her, as she hadn't been really hiding after coming back to life..

Dante was curious as to how she came back.. as far as he knew mutant powers wouldn't be able to revive someone, even if one had a regeneration factor, they would still need the x-gene in some shape or form, so if once body was completely destroyed then there was no way the x-gene could have brought her back.. meaning that it was linked to something else.. sadly she had died again..

'If she was reborn once than why not again?' Dante pondered as he thought about something else..

"If the x-gene is not the solution then maybe.." He walked to a machine that he had set up a week ago.. the process wasn't quite done yet, but Dante couldn't help but open it up, revealing the eternal core from Kingo..

He had let machines study everything about the robot, finding out how he operated and furthermore how his core worked.. the heat had burned his skin previously, but that was because it was uncontained.. the energy that the core was drawing from seemed infinite, resulting in it being expelled non stop, causing heat to build up..

So while the machine worked Dante looked into expelling or containing the power.. obviously there was a way as Kingo would have simply exploded from the energy building up in his body.. So he moved on to studying Kingo himself.. Kingo had lost all his skin and was just a faceless robot now.. with the joints still somewhat bent after Dante ripped them..

His findings were that Kingo had pathways for the energy similar to that of veins on a human body.. So Dante tried recreating it with a cybernetic arm.. if he could power the arm with the unique energy then that meant he only needed a way to store it in his body..

Sadly for him, nothing worked.. all results came up empty.. so instead Dante searched for new ways.. the energy needed to come from somewhere and it wasn't explainable with science and other methods he knew, so that meant that he needed to use methods he didn't know..

Problem being that, how could someone search for something they didn't know.. they needed to ask for someone else's guidance, or search in places that hold fundamental truths and myths.. Dante didn't have a mentor, but searching for myths and Legends would be something he could accomplish with ease..

He would search for magic, find it and experiment… in just minutes he found myths and legends containing spells that could help him, but before he could see if any of the were viable a knock came on the door…

Normally his door would open for anyone, but as the clinic was closed he had shut down the system, even turning of notifications because of working on something.. getting a view of the camara he found a monk, a familiar one.. opening the door mentally, he walked to the entrance and found the strange lady he had met months prior…

"I have been looking into the future for a while now and I must say you are a strange one.." Dante looked at the lady who had just entered his clinic… he recognised her from a couple months ago.. she had entered asked a few questions and had left, without explaining anything..

"You call me the strange one?" he looked at her simultaneously finding nothing matching her description.. she seemed to be a lady in the middle stages of her life, but no one like her was anywhere on the internet to find.. he knew it was still primitive, but Dante could find almost anyone..

"Yes, well a person coming from a different dimension is quite strange, wouldn't you say?" This lady clearly knew about him, confusing Dante a bit..

"Mhh, you seem wise beyond your age, but I am in no need of someone explaining my origin.." Dante didn't know anything about the other dimensions, but he simply didn't care… who was he to question how and why.. he had tried to, but after years of no answer he just accepted the situation.

"Wise…" she seemed to linger on the word clearly thinking about something..

"Do you want something form me, or have you just come to ask me questions?" He didn't know what she wanted, last time she left after getting her answers, this time she may want more, resulting in a confrontation if he had to..

"Well I came here before you would do anything containing the rituals you had found.. how did you find them anyway?" She didn't seem to know everything though, clearly her vision of the future didn't contain the details as to how such a future was achieved…

"On the internet somewhere.." He didn't remember where he found every source, not even mentioning what ritual she was even mentioning..

"To think they would publish these rituals online for the masses to see, how did I not know of this before.." She sounded concerned, Dante didn't know what the ritual would do but considering her concern he suspected at least one to be real..

"It is on a locked archive, not public.." Dante could find almost anything, the only difference between him searching for something and a computer would be the quality of the results..

He didn't have advertisements or distractions to keep him away from the information he was looking for..

"So how.. never mind… I have come here today to give you a option." She sighed, clearly finding everything exhausting..

Dante nodded allowing her to continue "I will allow you to learn the ways of the mystic arts or I will take the eternals core away and keep it save.."

'What kind of option..' Dante didn't want to answer immediately, but was somewhat outraged in his mind.. he knew that the choice was obvious, but he just wondered why she would give such a choice..

"I will learn.. I trust that this will not be impossible for me, seeing as I am technically..." Dante pointed at his hand where his skin was yet to be replaced.. he had forgotten it and was just planning on covering it before he went out somewhere

"Anyone can learn, even if they don't have their original limbs anymore.."

"I am not quite sure what the mystic arts are.. could you explain it for me, just briefly.." the woman clearly looked to be tired, as if she had been spending to much time on something that didn't seem to be worth it..

"The mystic arts are a way of using energy from other dimensions to fuel spells.. everyone can learn it, but talent and determination are two driving factors in how far you can reach.."

"So how would I, hypothetically be connected to these other dimensions.." He was sure that it had something to do with this universe, he had heard nothing of magic in his last two worlds, so that either meant they hid extremely well..

"I have seen you use magic in the future so of course you would be connected in some way.." her answers confirmed his suspicion of her not knowing everything.. but he didn't know how much she did know.

"I am curious as to what you see.." Asking it was the easiest way to find out..

"I don't see everything and I don't know everything.. I simply peak into a future of possibilities…" the answer didn't really reveal anything to Dante..

"Could you show me.." The woman nodded conjuring up a portal to what seemed to be a mountain range, with ancient looking buildings adorning the mountainous terrain.

Dante looked not as much through the portal as to the portal itself.. the portal was a golden yellow with sparks coming off of it

"How fascinating…" the sparks didn't seem to do anything to the surrounding infrastructure and no wind seemed to come from the portal..

"Are you willing to go now?" The lady seemed to want to go, contend with everything she had said and willing to leave..

"Oh, why yes.. I can return whenever I ask right?" He could go now, but that would mean leaving behind all of his projects, he could do that, but it would mean setting him back for some time..

"Yes.. we got a portal that goes to New York.. just go there if you want to travel back and forth.." Everything seemed somewhat to convenient.. maybe he shouldn't trust the strange monk claiming to be able to see the future..

"Perfect.." Trusting someone didn't matter much, he only needed to see the value in agreeing, as long as they were both valuable to each other, nothing would realistically stand in the way of their cooperation..