The Oracle Paths

The atmosphere in the cantina suddenly became heavy and unbearable when Miya drew a dagger from nowhere inside one of her boots. The blade was one inch wide and 10 inches long.

The dagger was pointed, slightly curved, double-edged and shiny like a mirror. It was a weapon of excellent quality that had no place in the hands of a recruit.

Far from panicking Lu Yan nevertheless abandoned her haughty pose. Her condescending countenance left her, replaced once again by her predatory reptilian look. Even unarmed, she adopted with painfully slow gestures a kung-fu stance. The fight was inevitable.

"I must kill you before Jake and your brother arrive, or I will have failed in my mission. "Miya declared with an expression as cold as that of her opponent.

"Mission? It doesn't really matter. "Lu Yan decided to end the discussion by taking the initiative first.

Miya was prepared. Now that she knew that Lu Yan could evade the predictive calculations of her Oracle, she asked her Oracle to predict a Path from her own senses. The bracelet was not limited to the Oracle's theoretical omniscience.

The Oracle could also make far-reaching predictions from the data he collected in real time. This role was performed manually by the Oracle AI and was not dependent on the global Oracle System.

Unsurprisingly, she avoided Lu Yan's first punch without blinking, quickly followed by a second one. Miya shamelessly admitted that the young woman was a genius whose potential far surpassed her, but for now she was just a harmless lion cub.

She may have been able to lie about her Oracle Rank or pose as a harmless, herbivorous little girl to her brother, but she couldn't hide her stats. The stakes of the Ordeal were too high to deprive herself of the benefits of training.

Unlike Jake's friendly fights against Gerulf, which were impossible to spy on, the daily sparring fights between Khazus and Lu Yan were totally public and a hot topic of discussion among recruits and professional gladiators alike.

She may have had a prodigious talent and an unbeatable progression curve, but it was a fact that apart from her agility and correct strength the young woman was rather weak physically. Although she had trained as hard as she could to compensate for her lagging stats, without a good constitution and initial vitality she could not endure the frequency and intensity of the training Jake and Elias underwent every day.

Hiding her potential from Khazus meant losing every day without doing her best. Even if she could partially hide her stats in this way, the result would be counterproductive. Especially since it was impossible to develop her martial skills without fighting at a sufficient intensity. After all, Jake was already able to fight like a genius using his Oracle if the pace of the fight was slow enough.

This meant that Lu Yan... was weak! After dodging and blocking a few blows without difficulty, a murderous intent sprang from Miya and her dagger pierced the young woman's heart like a bolt of lightning. At least that's what she thought.

She realized a split second too late that her dagger stab was slightly off-target. The skinny woman couldn't figure out how she had missed her target. Then she caught the bluish-purple glow radiating from the Asian's pupils and realized what had just happened.

Lu Yan's Mind Control ability was not limited to physical contact. However, Miya gleefully discovered that this power came at a price. After controlling her Aether this way, Lu Yan gasped lightly and began to drizzle with sweat. Controlling an opponent from a distance seemed extremely grueling and this feat could not be repeated many times.

Knowing full well that the young woman had no chance of resisting her, Miya leapt back and pulled shorter daggers from her other boot. These had a triangular appearance, more aerodynamic and reminiscent of Japanese Kunais.

Certain that the cost of mind control increased with distance, Miya simply decided to play it safe by showing her dart skills. Decisively, she immediately threw a first projectile, then a second one at the helpless young prodigy.

Expecting Lu Yan to dodge the first dagger in a hurry before being intercepted and pierced by the second, Miya changed her expression when a different scenario unfolded before her eyes.

Lu Yan indeed leapt to the side, narrowly avoiding the first kunai, as expected. It was then that the planned scheme abruptly turned in a completely different direction.

The Violet and Blue glow appeared again behind the young woman's irises, to which other colors were quickly added, namely Red, Orange and Yellow. A faint light composed of these three colours radiated from her body for a short moment before migrating to her right arm and part of her face.

The arm in question which until then was much too slow to hope to block anything then miraculously accelerated, catching the said kunai between two fingers. The two fingers in question, protected by the yellow glow were not even injured.

Miya, paralyzed with stupor, had no time to react before Lu Yan's Aether doped arm returned the dagger to its sender. The kunai flew like a rifle bullet straight to the heart of its owner at a speed many times faster than Miya had thrown it.

Blocking catastrophically, Miya barely managed to deflect the trajectory of the shot with a backhand stroke of her own dagger, but the force of the impact was too great and the parry imperfect. The projectile missed her heart, but it went into her right lung up to the guard, then completely through her chest and out through the scapula.

Her assassination attempt was a fiasco, and it was she instead who was at death's door.The dagger was preventing her from breathing properly and hurting like hell. Miya coughed up a stream of blood as her vision became blurry.

Blood flowed abundantly on both sides of the wound and her lung gradually filled with blood, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Soon a dizziness forced her to kneel down, hands on the ground so as not to collapse.

Raising her head with difficulty, she watched the one who had defeated her come closer with a look of reluctance. When Lu Yan arrived in front of her after picking up her dagger, Miya let go with a barely audible murmur.

"I...am not...your enemy. I had to... protect... the recruits..."

Lu Yan stopped her gesture for a short moment to consider the credibility of the dying young woman's words. But she dismissed her uncertainties without hesitation. Whether Miya was telling the truth or not was of no importance. Whoever tried to kill her deserved to die.

And anyway, one could not really die in those early Ordeals... If the young woman was really innocent, Lu Yan would compensate her at the end of it once she had received a proper explanation.

"I'm sorry, but you should have told me this earlier. I can't trust you. Goodbye Miya. "

Lu Yan then took a slight run-up and plunged her dagger into the heart of the defeated woman. From the beginning to the end of the deed, Miya didn't flinch, as if she didn't feel any pain. The only expression she wore until her death was a grimace of frustration and injustice.

Like Lutex a little earlier, her gaze faded and like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she tilted forward before collapsing and never getting up again. No Aether orb appeared on the young woman's corpse. You had to be dead for that, and the young woman's real body was still alive.

Despite Lu Yan's apparent easy victory, it had not been easy. Walking with difficulty and the articulation of her aching arm, she limped up to one of the columns and leaned against it with short breath, then let herself slide to the ground before closing her eyes.

She needed to take a little nap.