The Oracle Paths

Jake reacted immediately by sending out a blast of heat to vaporize the compact liquid flowing around him and grabbed his comrade by the scruff of his neck to keep him from sinking.

When he found after a moment that neither of them were sinking beyond mid-thigh, he let go and let the dark liquid encase his legs again.

This was not good news, though, because it was taking a lot of effort to move through the thick, heavy mixture. It was as if they were wading through liquid lead.

"What the hell is this water?" Will cursed at the side.

Jake didn't answer, but he was just as confused. In addition to the dark, opaque liquid, there was also something heavy about the atmosphere. There was a sort of corrupting, evil miasma in the air that aroused irrational primal urges in them.

Despite their limited experience, Jake and Will considered themselves tough-minded people, yet their minds were plagued by anxiety whose symptoms bordered dangerously on panic attacks.

Their hair bristled with fear and their hearts pounded at the slightest sound, which was none other than their footsteps in the water. Their eyes were also playing tricks on them and their brain was making them see sinister shapes in the miasma that they were unable to interpret.

In addition to the growing panic, these miasmas had something dangerous in them that had already started to attack their exposed tissues. Where the miasma had touched their bodies, the skin had darkened and begun to decay as if it were aging at an accelerated rate or a poison was rotting their flesh.

If Jake was feeling increasingly painful tingling after a few seconds, then it went without saying that Will was enduring such torture that he would soon pass out if this punishment went on for a few more seconds.

Then Cekt clapped his hands and the intangible shield that protected them was doubled with a sacred and benevolent aura that immediately dispersed the surrounding miasma and the accompanying symptoms.

"Be careful. Despite the darkness, this floor is not a natural environment and is not suitable for nocturnal species, but for those supernatural creatures that are inherently evil or have an affinity for related elements like the Dark or Death Element. The Myrtharian Bloodline will not give you any advantage here. A normal light spell would be of no use against this type of energy."

Jake didn't need that warning. This brief experience had already made him realize that he didn't belong here. As much as surviving the Fifth Floor might have been possible if he had taken plenty of precautions and avoided getting into a fight, this Sixth Floor was likely to get him killed before he could even meet anyone or anything.

The blackness in this place was different from a simple absence of light. The miasma and opaque smoke billowing around them was unbreathable and charged with a tainted energy that their bodies and minds were unable to harness. If they stayed here too long, Jake was convinced that they would either go insane or become intoxicated with uncertain, but undoubtedly lethal consequences.

After doing a quick test by inhaling the dark smoke and directing it to his stomach, Jake nonetheless received confirmation that his digestive system was not completely helpless. Able to dissolve most metals and even a Soul Stone with enough time, these miasmas were no exception.

The only problem was that the digestive process was relatively long and he would quickly feel bloated. Unless he drastically improved his stomach's performance or became able to tolerate these miasmas, staying here for the long haul was simply out of question.

Noting that Jake and Will had regained their equanimity, the old Aetherist still felt it necessary to fill in their ignorance for their own good.

"Just because my spell protects us from this miasma doesn't mean we're safe." Cekt explained dispassionately. "This adventure is a good thing to expand your horizons. A Dungeon Digestor doesn't create its floors randomly. Each floor has its own ecosystem and it exists only to accelerate and optimize the growth of the variants it has decided to implant there.

"The abilities of these Digestors are based on those of the Evolvers that served as a reference, and under the right circumstances, the Dungeon will take the time to create dozens, if not hundreds, of structured and original floors. To ensure that its existence is tolerated and that it has time to grow, the Dungeon Digestor will make sure that it creates monsters that are neither too strong nor too weak by offering enticing rewards so that Evolvers who venture in will not be frightened and will instead be encouraged and determined to return.

"To do this, the difficulty must be reasonable, as must the power-scaling of the Digestors that adventurers encounter. Because this Dungeon Digestor is too young and has been given no choice, it has been forced to abandon this more permanent and safe method and concentrate on ensuring its own survival. The moment one of the Evolvers failed to follow the meticulously laid out plan by attempting to raid the Nexus, the Dungeon became hostile.

"Each of these floors is therefore no longer a way to challenge and motivate the Evolvers, but to train its troops. Because of its immaturity and lack of imagination, this Digestor has focused on a few simple, but proven methods. It is not for nothing that these Digestors bear a striking resemblance to some of you. Be aware that in a well-established Dungeon Digestor, the monsters inside are not supposed to look like the Evolvers that enter. What happened here is the worst possible scenario. There are also teleporters of sorts in the form of small white crystalline cubes that you can use to move between floors visited and even return to floor 0 to recover. But most importantly, you are free to leave whenever you want."

Jake and Will were taken aback, but when they thought back over the course of events they concluded that the little alien was indeed right. In other words, from the moment Crygo had used his speech to recruit them and convince them to get the Nexus, the Dungeon Digestor's "benevolence" toward them had disappeared.

"Fuck!" Will was infuriated. "Does this mean that if it weren't for the fucking whale, we could have quietly killed those Digestors and taken our time and even gotten the hell out of here?"

Jake briefly echoed his friend's thoughts, but changed his mind when he remembered how the Digestor horde had brought them here.

"The Digestors forced us into this Dungeon, so I doubt they would have let us out freely." Jake shrugged. "Besides, Crygo wasn't the only one with bad intentions. I'm sure Nelekai and those other high-rank Evolvers had the same goal."

"Ahem, right... Even the White Drake was there for that."

Cekt smiled as he listened to the two men discuss, but eventually cleared his throat to recapture their attention and continue his explanation.

"To get back to the structure of these floors here is my theory. First of all, the labyrinth on the first level was used to better understand and observe you. It also saved time to prepare and complete the layout of the following floors. The Second Floor served to keep the small fry busy, while the Third also had no other purpose than to reduce your numbers and slow you down with the blizzard.

"If I'm not mistaken, the Dungeon got serious from the Fourth Floor and choosing your Bloodline as a foundation was a big hit. The Floor Boss was more than helpful in eliminating and blocking intruders, but his performance was not perfect. A few mice managed to fool the cat.

"The Fifth Floor was also intended by its ocean environment to weed out all the unfit Evolvers. Fifty kilometers deep is more than enough to stop a high-ranked Evolver if it doesn't have proper equipment or technique. In creating this floor and the monsters that are supposed to live there, the Dungeon Digestor obviously knew that some Evolvers or beasts would be in their element here, but he was smart to notice that the sole inherently aquatic species present was Crygo. The other lizards and sea beasts we came across were poorly optimized hybrids based on other creatures like the White Drake. In its original plan, I think it was planning to stop everyone at this stage except for the high-rank whale.

"So that brings us to this Sixth Floor where darkness and evil reigns supreme. The water is too slimy and toxic for a whale like Krygo to swim in properly, while the air is simply poisonous and reeks of death. The environment itself is enough to overcome a lone whale, no matter how tough it is, and the ocean above makes sure that the Evolvers and creatures that inspired this place are unable to make their way here.

"But therein lies the problem. This floor still exists to promote the development of a bloodline, which means that there was at least one Evolver among you all whose powers would benefit greatly from the miasma of this place. Based on the information gleaned here and there, there is only one that vaguely fits: the Necromancer. But the atmosphere and the Digestors I detect here... are nothing like him.

"The monsters I detect here are Demons."