The Oracle Paths

From the outside, a massive black bowling ball floating in the water suddenly shot forward like a cannonball, not towards Corvac's presumed position and his troops, but towards the 'exit'. If they could destroy, or at least breach the barrier confining them in this basin, their predicament would be instantly solved.

Hephais, Crunch, and Lord Phenix found themselves brutally slammed against the back wall by the sudden acceleration, with only Jake—charged with piloting—remaining firmly rooted in his stance. The plump cat served as a cushion for the other two, the assassin using its belly as a trampoline to land upright, hands in pockets.

'Since when has my role been reduced to that of an airbag?' Crunch almost sobbed internally as he spat out a feather from Lord Phenix that had ended up in his throat. The gloating bird even went as far as to wipe his feet on his fur instead of thanking him for his sacrifice.

"Do you see anything?" Hephais asked with a grim expression that cut through his usual indifference.

He wasn't referring to sight in the traditional sense, but to Jake's overall perception. If he was asking, it was because he himself couldn't see anything beyond their submarine, even his Oracle Scan struggling to penetrate the water more than a few inches. So, he was right to wonder how their leader was navigating. If it was thanks to his sensory abilities, then he had underestimated him once again.

"Nothing at all," Jake cut off his speculations. "I just remember the topography of the area and where I left my artifact. While it was tossed by the current, Xi kept reporting its movements so I could position us. Knowing where we were, figuring out where to go isn't hard."

The assassin frowned slightly as he considered the feasibility of the idea, then nodded, deeming the explanation reasonable. It was also within his capabilities.

BAM!

Midway to the barrier, the steel sphere serving as their transport vehicle hit something, violently deviating from their course. As they quickly righted themselves, Crunch meowed impatiently,

"An enemy? Are we there already?"

Slap!

"Shut up, idiot, it's too early," Lord Phenix scolded him sharply, pulling his ear mercilessly. "Besides, we're surrounded by Lumyst Water. How do you expect us to fight?"

It was the first sensible thing Jake had heard all day from the orange turkey. Well, he had already taken a beating with the enemy's forbidden light spell. If he was showing restraint, it was mostly because he wasn't confident he could resurrect from his ashes in such a vast expanse of water...

Ignoring his companions, Jake's body tensed and remained still in an intense effort to concentrate on what they had just hit. He decided to spend another portion of his Force Lumyst to 'feel' the unidentified floating object. A few seconds later, he relaxed upon discovering it was just a piece of volcanic rock about 60cm long.

"False alarm," he informed the others. "Just a piece of cooled magma from when the ground collapsed."

The eyes of his three companions, including Hephais, lit up upon receiving the info. Fortune favors the brave, and after the storm comes the rainbow never sounded so true. If they survived this battle, all those treasures waiting to be picked up awaited them!

To make a long story short, the sabotage work of the Nematodes had collapsed the ground of the region into millions, possibly billions of fragments of varying sizes from rocks like this to mere dust particles. Like everything else, upon contact with enchanted water, they had undergone a baptism. The 50% rule applied, and due to the large number of fragments, a certain number of enchanted treasures at +26 or +27 were bound to appear by the end of this farce.

'I guess this is what Corvac was counting on to recover if he survived all this,' Jake thought with a certain admiration for the old general before resuming control of the submarine.

Their vehicle resumed movement, producing a sonic boom greatly muffled by the mass of water. They collided with several other debris on the way to the barrier, until—

BANG!

"We've arrived," Jake smiled, immediately feeling that this impact was different from the previous ones. They had just hit something immovably heavy.

Now, it was just a matter of destroying it. Blindly, Jake maneuvered their submarine close to the barrier until the outer shell and the barrier touched.

'Oracle Scan.'

He used his bloodline ability Artifact Incarnation for this. Although restrained by the laws of Twyluxia, it was more powerful than Hephais's bracelet scan. Just enough to allow him a cursory analysis of the barrier.

Unfortunately, to Jake's great dismay, it took him five or six tries to succeed, wasting a lot of Spirit Power. This was because the purity of the water outside had already reached +21, and by a stroke of luck, the outermost layer of their submarine's shell had endured six consecutive baptisms, defying the odds. This had multiplied the insulating properties of its material.

It was only when it disintegrated after failing the seventh baptism that Jake managed to project his Spirit Power beyond their vehicle.

'Phew... For a second, I really thought we'd never get out.' He exhaled, wiping the sweat from his forehead with relief. It was the first time he was thankful for his bad luck.

Alas, even worse news awaited them.

[Light Sanctuary Array (+28): A large-scale array belonging to a Goblet of Ethershine (+28). The light barrier created can resist Life Lumyst Water of equivalent purity and use the latter as fuel to sustain itself. The purer and more energy-rich the water, the more powerful the light barrier.]

"Fuck!" Jake cursed out loud. Even his Goblet was custom-

made.

He had completely overlooked this possibility. Corvac was even more thorough and cautious than they thought him capable of. Yet, Jake had already set the bar very high.

Noticing the contortion of their boss's face, Hephais and the two beasts felt something was off.

"A problem?"

Jake's facial muscles twitched, then dejectedly he said,

"Change of plan. We're going to have to take on Corvac. The barrier is indestructible."

It might not have been, but Jake was objectively more confident in his abilities to take down Corvac than this barrier. The real issue was that time was of the essence, and they had a limited amount of Lumyst.

If the Light Sanctuary came directly from the enemy general's Goblet of Ethershine as described by the Oracle Scan, then the barrier wasn't going to run out of energy anytime soon, the artifact's purest Lumyst Water being its immediate fuel.

In other words, the barrier didn't have to wait for the ambient water purity to increase. The spell was already at full power. This was the real trump card behind the enemy's confidence.

In the meantime, two more layers of the vehicle had disintegrated after failing their baptisms, intensifying his sense of urgency. Alarmed, Jake decisively turned around and propelled the submarine towards the center of the barrier where he thought he had heard the previous roar. If he was right, they shouldn't miss it...

And bingo! When the hollow metal shell arrived at the destination a few dozen seconds later after shedding a few more layers, Jake suddenly felt pulled towards the center of the region with the current without having to do anything. Something massive seemed to be siphoning the ambient water with insatiable gluttony.

In their cockpit devoid of portholes, none of the four Players had any idea what was happening outside, but that didn't prevent them from sensing that the final confrontation was imminent. Hephais drew his scimitars, while Lord Phenix, who had been useless since the beginning, began compressing his Fire Lumyst in anticipation of a powerful counterattack when the time came.

As for Crunch, for the first time, he began to control the rubbery and padded substance made from Lumyst that he had painfully condensed to cushion the interior of the submarine in anticipation of future shocks.

It did him good, for a second later a thunderous impact, rivaling that of their collision against the barrier, shook their submarine. However, there was a significant difference: Instead of the unyielding resistance of the light barrier, distinct sounds of wood cracking resounded at the point of collision, and their vehicle didn't stop abruptly either, advancing several more meters.

As with the barrier previously, Jake then took the opportunity to scan the object into which their vehicle had embedded itself, and a smug 'as expected' smile lit up his face.

[Corvac (Treant Puppet): A former general who ingested a seed of Anthace after trusting the wrong person...]