The Oracle Paths

Despite the apparent urgency of the situation, it was not enough to scare Jake. Quite the opposite, it was just another challenge and when the hyena pack pounced on him, he immediately kicked the nearest beast in the face. The monster's snout was crushed on impact and the creature yelped in agony as Jake used the victim to carve out an escape route.

As the hyena was probing its snout whose red blood - as phosphorescent as the crystal in its hand - was pouring out abundantly, Jake rammed into it and continued his charge, jostling two other hyenas in its path.

Once free of the encirclement, he finished off the hyena stunned at his feet with a slash of his machete. A spray of red blood spurted out, but this time he was careful not to get splashed.

The blue blood of the snake had made him faint for half a day, and this red blood also had the unusual property of glowing at night. If he made such a mistake again, he might as well stop investing his points in Intelligence and focus fully on his physical strength.

The two other hyenas he had bumped into were already coming to their senses and he took advantage of the short respite he had left to decapitate the nearest monster. Thanks to the Grey Aether his blade was so sharp that he felt almost no difference on impact between skin, flesh or bone. The sword flashed briefly and an indignant head rolled to the ground with its tongue hanging out.

This action had given the second hyena the time it needed to get up and he felt more than he saw the creature charging from behind toward his crotch. As a shiver of anticipation ran through him, he swivelled on himself and threw his knee between the monster's two eyes. The beast's mouth was wide open and instead of hitting the desired target, a fang was stuck in his leg, causing him to growl in pain.

Now that the monster was holding his leg in its jaw, the monster did not intend to let go and instead clung to the ground firmly with its claws and pulled back. These mutant hyenas were far more intelligent and evolved than their counterparts on Earth and their cooperation was impeccable. By the time Jake got rid of the hyena glued to his knee with a machete, he was surrounded again and three more hyenas had pinned him to the ground in one leap.

As experienced hunters, one of the animals went directly to his exposed carotid artery, while the other two targeted the arm holding the machete and the already injured leg, respectively.

His arm gleaming with a red and orange halo, it suddenly accelerated, leaving an afterimage behind, and managed to slice the monster's head in half vertically before the monster could disarm it. He was then tackled by the other two hyenas.

As for the hyena targeting his carotid artery, Jake simply forced his entire Aether of Strength and Constitution into his forehead and threw a vicious headbutt, while shifting slightly. The beast went back where it came from, and an upward kick to the chin at full power sent it into orbit with an incredulous bark.

The last hyena chomping on its leg was crushed just as the first one did, and another spurt of blood gushed into the air. Jake staggered slightly this time as he got up and a significant amount of blood was spurting from his injured leg, but it was still not enough to endanger him. He had experienced much worse during his adventures in the ocean.

Unfortunately, however brief the altercation may have been, it was more than enough to give the entire pack time to reposition themselves. Moreover, he had not had the time this time to avoid the blood spatter. His injured leg, his chest and his cheek had been sprayed with hyena blood and at night the red phosphorescent liquid made him appear ethereal, as if he was covered with ectoplasm.

In one-on-one combat, he was able to use his multitasking ability to employ telekinesis while facing the enemy, but when facing several he was already fully using this ability to react to different threats.

In any case, it was too late to redo the action and he could only grit his teeth in the hope that it would remain without consequence.

Feeling his brief hesitation, the whole pack this time threw themselves at him like a swarm of bees on a field of flowers. Even for Jake it was an impossible threat to overcome and he let himself be swallowed up by the ground to escape. The hyenas collided with each other and crashed down where he was supposed to be.

Soon a living mountain was formed and the hyena at the bottom of the pile was mistakenly eaten alive without having time to cry out for injustice. The ferocity of the pack was such that it looked like they hadn't eaten for weeks.

Jake, who had remained motionless several meters underground, was sweating profusely. He felt abnormally hot and his heart was beating fast and hard. His breathing was also heavy despite his high constitution and vitality.

''What's...happening to me?' He wondered as he hurriedly reviewed his Status.

His vital parameters were good, but his body behaved as if he were... angry, but not exactly. And the symptoms were getting worse.

HIHHIHI! ROAR!

Above ground, the situation was also taking a new turn. The roar of what he thought was another large carnivorous dinosaur had just resounded nearby and the laughter of the pack had just answered it fearlessly.

While Jake was overwhelmed by an ever-growing irritation, his Spirit Body was also sending him alarming signals.

The Aetheric signature of the hyenas above him was growing in intensity second by second, but also in volume. Controlling the air to blast a hyena's ears as he had done a moment earlier would now be virtually impossible at this distance.

Soon the fight between the pack and the dinosaur broke out, and roars and growls of rage and suffering pierced the silence at regular intervals. The violence of the clash had already far surpassed that between Jake and the hyenas a few seconds earlier.

Meanwhile, Jake was slowly dying of heat underground, which should have been impossible with his bloodline.

Unable to bear any more, he climbed to the surface without realizing that a thought would have been enough to get him out of the ground. It was as if he was gradually plunging into a state of animalistic madness beyond the reach of any form of rationality.

At the sight of the shining blood covering the bushes and jagged tree trunks around him, his stomach began to gurgle and his mouth to salivate. His translucent fangs, which he usually kept retracted, grew so long that they protruded out of his mouth disharmoniously, and his claws became as long as daggers.

His muscles were also red and congested as if he had been lifting weights for hours, and the air around him was distorted by the radiant heat of his body.

By the time the hyenas and the dinosaur that turned out to be another feathered T-Rex noticed his presence, Jake had already sunk into a state of semi-consciousness. The monsters closest to him that were in a similar primal state immediately lost interest in the dinosaur and threw themselves at him.

Several hyenas bit his legs, a few others aimed at his arms and a last one, carried by his instinct, attacked his carotid artery once again. But where he had barely managed to neutralize a group of three assailants on the previous occasions, Jake stood still, indifferent to the attacks.

The monsters' fangs broke on an invisible force field a few millimeters from his skin and an unbearable heat burned their eyes and mucous membranes, forcing them to let go.

The same fiery, red eyes that inhabited these monsters appeared in Jake's extinguished gaze. Like an apathetic Terminator driven solely by a primal instinct for destruction, his red irises swept over his opponents as if they were mere pieces of meat.

Suddenly, he opened his mouth and a peculiar sound escaped. It was an indescribable sound. A sound that should not have come out of the mouth of a living being. A sound reminiscent of the eruption of a volcano, an earthquake, and the destructive force of a supernova.

When this sound escaped from his mouth, the glowing veins under his skin lit up as if someone had just thrown burning alcohol into a fire. The hyenas and the T-Rex, who were in a state of beastly rage, suddenly sobered up and stopped fighting.

By tacit agreement, the pack and the dinosaur escaped in two different directions, but it was too late.

A Jake, completely unconscious, pounced on them like a hellhound who had come down to deliver his judgment, and the monsters ruling over the jungle soon learned of the advent of a new apex predator on the island at their expense.