The Oracle Paths

Jake had always been suspicious, but intuitively he had fairly overestimated the Oracle's accomplishments, believing him to be truly capable of duplicating the blood and bloodline of other people. The concept of drawing blood at the source was by far the most implausible and a possibility he hardly dared to explore.

It did, however, give a much clearer understanding of the notion of "special rewards. Because they were that special.

They were outside the realm of normal rewards and had to meet specific conditions. Now Jake wondered if he would have gotten those special rewards if Lucia and Gerulf had refused to donate blood.

The princess had described a kind of hypnosis. Perhaps it was not resistable. If the Digestors hadn't invaded their planet, maybe something would have been done afterwards to erase their memories or something along those lines?

There were so many possibilities.

In reality, Jake wasn't wrong. The Oracle was more than capable of duplicating and even creating blood samples or bloodlines. Under certain circumstances, the Oracle was willing to make concessions to guarantee the rewards of its Players.

Except that the cost and effort required was not something a young Evolver could grasp. Those huge discounts were a rookie's privilege.

If Jake tried to buy a pure Myrmidian blood sample in the Oracle Store right now, he wouldn't find any in stock like he had when he checked out immediately after his First Ordeal. This was a problem that had stumped both Tim and Kyle when they had tried to improve their current bloodlines.

If Jake wanted to get it anyway, relying on the Oracle's sheer creative abilities, his entire fortune might well be at stake. It was an investment that few lone Evolvers were capable of affording.

There was a reason why a well-off Rank 3 Aetherist like Cekt would go to new players' factions to get his hands on discounted bloodlines. Grade 7 and 8 Bloodlines were not worth investing such a fortune.

It was better to collect them directly from local sellers when the chance arose. It didn't give them much choice in bloodlines, but at least the prices were affordable.

Interestingly, this was one of the few instances where the Oracle Store was actually generous. If a bloodline was of a high grade and unprecedented rarity for which there was no market, the Oracle Store was more than willing to repurchase the sample at an astronomical price. If this bloodline had never been discovered since the beginning of the Mirror Universe, it could reach unimaginable numbers.

Of course, this was all very distant and vague to Jake. Before he stumbled upon a bloodline never seen in the Mirror Universe, he would need much more than 1000 Luck Aether points.

"So my powers come directly from you. Your blood runs through my veins." Jake sighed, somewhat moved. "Should I call you big brother and little sister then?"

It was a joke of course. A bloodline transfer was not just a blood transfer. However, while a bloodline transplant was different from a standard organ transplant, his chromosomes and Aetheric Code had been modified based on that of his two friends.

Some overly generalizing loudmouths might claim that they were cousins, but only the useful part of their bloodline had been passed on. If one were to be quite frank, their genetic resemblance was just ethnic.

It was like saying they were Asian, Caucasian or African. Even though ultimately all of humanity probably had an original common ancestor, that was no reason to call anyone your cousin.

Basically, the risk of inbreeding was non-existent.

"How about me being the big sister and you being the little brother?" Lucia also joked, mischievously outbidding. "What do you think, big brother Gerulf?"

When asked for his opinion, the person concerned, who was dozing on his feet, restrained a yawn, then grunted,

"I don't care. You can call me Mommy if you want.

"Not fun." Lucia pouted, while Jake rolled his eyes with an awkward smile.

"Continue." Jake gestored Lucia to resume her story.

"Oh, ah yes, where was I... The voice. After I gave my blood, they rewarded me with a bracelet like the one you were wearing on your wrist."

Jake materialized the bracelet hidden under his skin and confirmed,

"An Oracle Device?"

"Yes, that's right." Lucia nodded as she pointed her index fingers briskly at him.

The rest was as they had briefly described it during their reunion, but with more crisp details and some surprising facts.

In addition to these Oracle Devices, Lucia and Gerulf had also been briefed on the threat they were facing, the voice asking them to protect their world as best they could while waiting for reinforcements.

What Lucia and Gerulf were hoping for as reinforcements were competent warriors. What they got instead was a forceful assimilation after the aggressive cleanup of a squad of Oracle Guardians nearly two years after Jake's disappearance.

Mercifully, the Myrmid empire had not collapsed in a day. Brain-Eaters were not regular Digestors, but variants considered a calamity even in their own category.

Once dislodged from their victim's brain, killing them was a breeze, but saving a victim parasitized by one was next to impossible. The Third Ordeal had given him a taste of the threat they posed and it was a calamitous plague.

The great strength of these Digestors was that by devouring the brain of their victim, they obtained their memories and in some ways their personality. Although their primordial instincts were not rewritten, this gave them a confounding ability to blend in.

Neither the Myrmidians, nor the Throsgenians, nor any of the natives of their primeval world had a way to correctly detect who was being controlled by the enemy. Brain-Eaters rarely blew their cover unless there was a compelling reason.

In other words, the massacres that followed were essentially wars, revolts, and insurrections that broke out all over the place at the same time. If the Digestors were pulling the strings behind these events, they were not fully responsible.

There had been many tensions between nations long before, and the sprawling, aging empire had been rotting from within for centuries. Once the pillars of its power and authority were destroyed, this chain of disasters was bound to happen.

Lucia and Gerulf had struggled for several months with a handful of survivors, facing betrayals and backstabbing from the parasitized citizens they thought they had saved. Nevertheless, for each Brain-Eater killed, they would collect some Aether and those precious experience points needed to promote their Oracle Rank.

It was enough to reach the Rank 3 of Private First Class to unlock the scan function. 110 100 experience points was enough to reach this level of authority. Even the most insignificant Rank 0 Digestors gave up between 100 and 500 xp points when they died. After several months of bloodshed and betrayal, Lucia and Gerulf had finally obtained the essential tool to identify their targets.

From that point on, protecting the survivors became an achievable dream, but only if they stayed far away from the original Brain Eater residing in Myrmid's brain.

Their coalition of survivors, made up of citizens, slaves and warriors from all nations, grew rapidly, but the slaughter never stopped in those two years and in fact only got worse.

Brain Eaters were Digestors like any other and as such grew and grew stronger just by passing the time and eating their fill. These parasites had taken hundreds of years to slowly develop and their influence on this planet had far, far exceeded that of the natives.

Whether it was humans, plants, animals or insects, there was not a single life form that escaped their control. If at the beginning Lucia and Gerulf were only fighting their own kind, their fierce resistance soon turned into a full blown fight against the whole planet.

Two years in such a position was a long time. There may have been millions, even billions of them at the beginning, but by the time they arrived on B842 there were only a few thousand.

The only two reasons why they had resisted so long were first that the really dangerous Brain Eaters had never really tried to wipe them out, and second that Lucia and Gerulf were not the only ones to have obtained an Oracle Device. A lucky few had also been granted the privilege.

Their technology was primitive, but whether they were Myrmidians, Kintharians, Throsgenians, Eltarians, or Beskyrians, they all had a real talent for war. Citizens with diluted bloodlines were like normal humans, but the slightly purer ones were not helpless against these monsters and could even evolve quickly thanks to the pressure they put on them.

Even before unlocking the Oracle Scan, Lucia had depended on the Beskyrians, from whom Tim's Bloodline originated, to eliminate the parasitized individuals without error. Just by relying on their incredible luck, these self-sufficient warriors could take out the right targets most of the time. Their king could literally hurl an axe into the sky with his eyes closed and guarantee that it would cut through a Brain Eater and its host as it fell.

A few months earlier, their world had begun to be assimilated just like Earth not so long ago, and the constant fighting had become less intense as the Digestors became less aggressive, as if they could foresee the imminent coming of their executioner.

Then the Oracle Guardians showed up and the world was purged of these monsters. At least, they had not seen them after that. No one had witnessed this battle, all they could say for sure was that the Brain Eaters were gone after they passed.

"So, let me get this straight..." Jake repeated with a heavy heart, but not trying to hide his excitement. "If I understand correctly, you have several thousand loyal subordinates scattered across B842 right now? And these are the elite of the elite of the various folks on your planet?"

"Right." Lucia smiled meekly.

"So what are we waiting for to find them!"