The Oracle Paths

The three rivers of ever-changing liquid alloy silently stabilized and a full suit of plate armor covered his body like that of a transformer, making him look like a Hell knight. The two remaining rivers formed two long flexible blades connected to his back, their curved ends pointing at their enemies like a scorpion's tail.

The deadly aura surrounding Jake disappeared, but that was the moment the two flexible blades chose to attack. Keelut, who was already seething with hatred, had barely taken a step in Jake's direction when one of the long, sharp blades of liquid alloy skewered him high in the air at supersonic speed. The explosiveness of the metal appendage was so great that it looked like a sniper shot.

Unable to resist, the liquid alloy's tail stretched to infinity and twisted on itself to puncture him a hundred times in a split second. The metal blade was both solid and fluid, rendering the Inuit's reflexive countermeasures ineffective.

Every time he tried to grab the blade to extricate himself, it was like putting his hands in a bucket of water. The liquid alloy would trickle down his hands and then naturally return to its original shape like a memory metal.

Simultaneously, the second tail of liquid alloy shot towards Tootega at an even faster speed, arriving almost at the same time on the scarred woman. But, unlike Keelut, she was still in her right mind.

With a snort, her body disintegrated into snow particles and another icy breeze blew the heap of flakes into the nearest air duct. Far from being discouraged, the river of liquid alloy stretched inexorably and seeped into the duct after her, still with the same dizzying speed.

Tootega frowned as she saw that the enemy blade was not letting go, but her movements did not reveal any nervousness. The upper part of her body solidified as she found an exit vent and with a burst of speed, her lower part burned away releasing a long trail of comet-like ice and snow powder.

The tip of the long liquid alloy blade chasing her suddenly changed direction as if these ice and snow particles were decoys and instead of continuing its pursuit, the metal tail stopped dead in its tracks to actively impale these flakes to create a long skewer of snow.

Almost instantly, those flakes melted and Tootega paled visibly as this happened.

'What a vicious attack... Fortunately, I was prepared for this.' The Inuit woman dusted the snow off her fur garments and with a flick of her scepter, she cleared the path before her and escaped.

As for Keelut, the cursecaster was still alive, but something very disturbing was happening to him. The blade of liquid alloy that had penetrated his body now had the appearance of a thick pipe and periodically a portion of it would enlarge and then shrink as if the pipe were sucking something in.

Neither the Inuit's appearance nor his vital signs were affected and he was still growling loudly, but the signals from his Oracle Device were fading fast. At this rate, the liquid alloy in his bracelet might be completely stolen.

Even during their Second Ordeal, when the risk of being dismembered by Zhorions existed, completely stealing an Oracle Device was entirely impossible. A small portion of the liquid alloy that made up these bracelets flowed through the veins of its host and infiltrated every cell, including the nervous system and brain, to allow communication and synergy with the Oracle AIs.

And indeed, when the last drop of liquid alloy was about to be extracted from him, Keelut's soul disappeared, leaving behind an intact, but completely brain dead corpse.

Jake, whose mental state was unknown, apathetically retracted his two liquid alloy blades into his own body, then materialized his Wormak machete with a cold, but clearly lucid expression.

' As expected.'

Moments earlier when the wave of Corrupted Fluid had engulfed him, he had thought it was over but had not for all that given up the fight. Bringing out the Ancient Designer Xion Zolvhur's Soul Stone, he had braced himself to absorb its contents for the first time in order to bolster his mental strength for better or for worse.

Regrettably, he had blacked out too soon and the Inuits' surprise attack had prevented him from executing his plans. Caught off guard, his consciousness had waned after he had saved his comrades.

Except that what awaited him after that was not a black out, but a new awakening. He still felt like himself, but was altogether different.

He wanted to kill, slaughter, torture for the sake of it. To exterminate, to plunder and ravage to become stronger, or to rape, humiliate, and break the minds of his future victims out of pure sadism. His morality no longer seemed to have any sort of filter, if not completely reversed, but it felt perfectly normal to him, as if it should have always been so.

But what made this new state all the more exhilarating was the total absence of doubt. Despite his intelligence, Jake had a lot of day-to-day reservations, concerns and worries about the most trivial matters.

It was less obvious since his stats had greatly improved and his mind had dramatically toughened up, but there was a reason Jake was once an elite procrastinator. Deep down, he was still a perfectionist, constantly pressuring himself for results, which caused him to shy away from or put off many important things until it became a hindrance to his own personal fulfillment.

Such an ingrained personality trait would not disappear in a few months. At best, it was masked or mitigated by his newfound confidence and abilities. Because old tasks that were once impossible for him were now as simple as breathing, it was normal for Jake to do them without hesitation.

The problem would arise again when he was faced with a dilemma that his current powers could not easily solve. Even then, he took it upon himself not to fall back into his old ways, but deep down he was constantly stressed and tense.

His inability to be receptive to the advances of women around him, or simply to rest, was essentially due to his lack of certainty. He had once believed that the bracelet was the solution, but the disillusionment had been cruel.

The Corrupt Jake had no such uncertainties. Whatever gruesome deeds he was planning to perpetrate, whatever dastardly schemes were going through his mind, whatever decisions he had to make, whatever move he had to execute, he had no doubts. Everything was crystal clear in his head.

When the mind was free of all parasitic thoughts, it would then become possible for it to operate at its highest level. Skills and techniques that he had not thought of nor had time to attempt came naturally to him, and the result was a drastic increase in his fighting prowess.

It was unfortunate for Keelut and Tootega to have foolishly stayed behind, but the sacrifice of the former allowed Jake to realize something.

"I want to kill them badly, but it's not like I can't refrain..." Jake muttered as he struggled to stop the arm holding his machete.

Keelut would have appreciated such leniency a few seconds earlier, but alas, it was too late.

"But I don't want to." Jake concluded a moment later as he hurled his sword to his left.

Before it left his hand, the blade turned bright white, and as scorching as the surface of the sun, then the projectile shot like a meteor into the metal wall to his left, silently disappearing while leaving a trail of molten metal in its wake. A few seconds later, a heartbreaking shriek of pain resounded somewhere in that same direction.

A sadistic smile lit up Jake's indifferent face. Xi's urgent cries were ringing in his head, but he turned a deaf ear.

"Oh shut up. I'll just stretch my legs." He decreed sinisterly as he reached for the wall where his machete had disappeared.

A swish was heard and his blood-covered machete sprang from the said wall a few seconds later. At the same time, Xi's irksome whining fell silent, showing that he had closed his mind to hers.

"Who should I kill now?" Jake chuckled evilly, "That scarred woman was wearing a scepter that looks familiar..."

The depiction of the right arm tattoo of his Fluid Ghost's murderer immediately came back to his mind.

"Old Ghost, was it this woman?"

" ... "

The deceased Fluid Wielder was far from stupid. He had taken refuge inside the Space Storage to avoid the Corruption, but Xi had already warned him that Jake wasn't himself anymore. If he really took the risk of appearing before Jake, his own doom was more than certain.

"Hehe, you think I'll kill you?" Jake rolled his eyes in contempt. "What's the fun in killing a ghost that's already dead? I do have an itch to torture you, but I might be able to keep it in check if you give me another target, if you know what I mean..."

The Fluid Ghost shuddered in terror and stammered hastily,

"I don't know if it was her, but her scepter is indeed identical to the tattoo I saw."

" All right, my choice is a no-brainer in this case. Let's hunt this woman down."Jake licked his lips and his armored figure sank into the steel floor.

The two remaining rivers of liquid alloy condensed to form two long wings on his back and flapped once mightily, rocketing his body at breakneck speed into the sea of steel.

*****

Not too far away, across the wall pierced by Jake's machete, a certain Peter Brady bearing a repulsive resemblance to a blueberry lizard man was a sight to behold. With teary and bloodshot eyes, he gazed at the huge cauterized hole in his chest with a deep sense of injustice.

"What the heck man?!"