The Oracle Paths

His rewards had been distributed, but the Red Cube didn't seem ready to spit him out. It was still dark and he had no idea when he would receive the Myrmidian and Kinthar pure blood and more importantly in which form.

Jake hoped that the Oracle would at least provide suitable containers, because otherwise he would have to hurry to find a means of preservation. If it worked like the Digestor Blood, only a few days would be enough to spoil the liquid and make it unfit for consumption, or at least useless.

He remembered that Cassius kept the Myrmidian Blood in some sort of archaic refrigerator that he had filled with ice, but he had no refrigerator in his backpack.

If the pure blood of his rewards behaved like that of the Digestors, its effectiveness would probably be halved after only 36 hours and would be rendered totally ineffective after 3 days. Without proper storage, he would have no choice but to consume the blood immediately.

The other solution was to reach an Oracle City in less than a day. With its current stats, it was definitely feasible. An Oracle city was theoretically less than two hundred kilometers from him wherever he was on planet B842. The Red Cube was no exception.

The problem was that it wasn't certain that Will and Tim could follow him, and Kyle and Sarah were not invincible. Their strength was probably enough to handle a few Rank 1 or 2 Digestors, but it was no match when faced with other Players like Yerode or Lamine.

All of a sudden, a point of light appeared in the center of his field of vision, putting an end to his thinking. Focusing his attention on it, the spot of light began to grow little by little, giving him the impression that he was heading straight towards it. When it became large enough to cover his view, he finally recognized the cyan desert on the other side of the Red Cube.

There was already a crowd of people out there, be they humans, animals or aliens. But this mass of people were stirring, reminiscent of the panicked anarchy of a herd of antelope after an attack by a pride of lions. The moving life forms appeared blurred, and no sound could penetrate the Cube's black space.

"What the fuck is going on?" Jake yawned inside his head, wondering if one of the super-powered aliens before the Ordeal had suddenly decided to wipe them all out for sport's sake.

The dimensional window to the outside world continued to expand, until it completely engulfed him. At that moment he felt a slight fluctuation in Aether and space that he couldn't really understand and realized he was outside. The restlessness and deafening sounds of panic then struck him all at once, making him abruptly realize that he was not going to rest any time soon.

As in the previous Ordeal, in which Cho Min-Ho, the Korean star, had emerged victorious with his bodyguards, the Ordeal participants had indeed left the Red Cube in three waves.

The first wave included those who had died during the Ordeal regardless of whether they had achieved the objective of the main mission or not. The second wave included those who had survived by completing the requested objective while the last wave included those who had gone beyond it.

Unsurprisingly, Jake was in the third wave and discovered in amazement with the hundreds of other aliens who had performed well during their Ordeal the mess they were in.

Jake recognized the bubble alien and the Predator-like alien covered in long dendrites nearby. They both completely ignored him to his greatest delight, their eyes riveted on the sky. The bubble alien obviously didn't have eyes, but it was his own personal feeling.

A shrill cry reminiscent of that of a bird of prey, but far more loud, resounded above his head, urging him to raise his eyes to the sky in turn. Immediately he looked for his gladius at his belt, but found his trusty machete instead. He also became aware of the weight of his heavy backpack on his back. Hopefully, his rewards were inside.

In the sky above him, strange birds as big as fighter jets were cawing around.There were hundreds of them, of which two were as big as bombers flapping their wings passively in the middle of the flock.

Regularly, these birds that looked halfway between an eagle and a pterodactyl would dive down to the ground like a peregrine falcon. Anyone unlucky enough to be targeted would end up impaled by their beaks or captured by their sharp claws whose embrace was strong enough to deform steel.

One by one, aliens, animals and humans exiting the Red Cube or waiting their turn to enter it were carried up in the air without being able to resist. Once separated from the ground, other flying Digestors would then split the vulnerable prey among themselves at several hundred meters above the ground, the bodies of the victims quickly shredded into pieces like a hunk of meat in the middle of a pool full of pirahnas.

Squinting his eyes, Jake noticed that the monsters' skin was greyish and slightly translucent. The talons had the characteristic colour of liquid metal, while their wings of similar texture and colour were membranous and featherless. Their heads were similar to those of an eagle, but the absence of feathers and their four silver eyeballs made them look like nightmares.

"Digestors?! Shit! "Jake cursed by recognizing the creatures' distinctive features.

Searching for Will, Sarah, Kyle, Tim and Crunch was his priority, but with the prevailing chaos they were nowhere to be found. For all he knew, they were somewhere in the stomach of one of these birds or had already fled to safety, since Will, Sarah and Kyle at least had gotten out among the first ones.

Seeing one of the creatures racing towards him, Jake instantly made a decision. He immediately used 500 of his remaining 680 Aether points to infuse his machete with 100 points of Grey Aether.

The Grey Aether was designed to increase the hardness and sharpness of inanimate objects, and this was the first time he had used it since Aslael gave him the Silver Cube containing this Encoding. If he still had one of these Myrmidian swords, he could have done without, but with his current strength his machete was in danger of breaking with just a few blows. He couldn't take that risk.

It was the right choice.The flying Digestor of indeterminate rank fell on him like a meteor, causing the air to tremble. Jake stiffened for a brief moment, then moved aside at the last second as he swung his weapon laterally with a glib gesture.

The giant body of the monster was immediately chopped in half, the part containing its skull sinking into the ground without any means of braking. After nailing itself, Jake bisected the buried part again, finishing off the creature once and for all.

A stream of Aether was absorbed by his bracelet, far more than the Rank 1 and 2 Digestors he was used to.

[Oracle Rank 5, Sergeant = 8300/ 100,000,000]

The experience for his Oracle Rank and the Aether of Digestor obtained being proportional, it meant that he had just obtained 8.3 pts of pure Aether. That was surprisingly little for a creature larger than a fighter plane. This meant that the Digestors' Aether stats were not evolving much with their rank, while each rank drastically improved the quality of their bodies.

Meanwhile, other aliens among the top percentage of the Ordeal's participants that had just finished went into action one after the other.

The bubble alien started deflating, spitting bubbles like a gatling gun. All the Digestors in its line of fire were quickly punctured through and through, the bubbles exploding on contact shortly afterwards, generating a thunderous shock wave.

The Predator-like Alien emitted an ultrasonic roar, and then the long luminescent dendrites making up its hair gathered to form a long gun-like structure. An intense blue light radiated from the alien's scalp, rapidly rising to the head of the improvised cannon.

A luminescent, plasma-like projectile gushed out from the connected dentrites at lightning speed, spraying the head of one of the two 'bomber' Digestors arrogantly overhanging them.

The second giant Digestor with a wingspan as wide as a basketball court uttered a shrill cry of rage and all the flying Digestors that had been randomly capturing targets began to charge towards the alien responsible for the murder of one of their Alphas.

The alien in question, far from being terrified, was more than happy to take up the challenge. After another ultrasonic roar, a black blade grew from the device above his wrist to over five meters long, then all the monsters pounced on it at the same time, quickly making it disappear underneath.

Taking advantage of the diversion and far from feeling any sense of camaraderie for the psychopathic humanoid, Jake escaped without a second thought with the firm intention of finding his companions and his cat.