The Oracle Paths

Jake, who was dodging dozens of projectiles at a time, suddenly experienced a sense of danger like he had never felt in his entire life. A cold shiver ran down his spine and his hair stood on end.

Before he received his Soul Class, his Intelligence, and therefore his reaction time, were already 273 times that of a normal human. His Agility also exceeded 500 points and as such he was blessed with incredible reflexes as well as a dexterity and precision in his every move that was hard to imagine for the average person.

Despite these seemingly exceptional numbers, if Jake had been sniped like that by Ruby with his old stats, the outcome would have been far less favorable. His chances of survival would have relied primarily on his luck and his freakish regeneration abilities.

Unfortunately for Ruby, she met him too late. With his new Rune Engraver class, Jake's reaction time was now 2184 times that of a normal human. That supercharged ball of negative energy moving at 10,000 m/s?

To Jake, this terrifying ball was only traveling at 4.57m/s. His Perception was even more absurd and although Ruby had taken every precaution to conceal her position and isolate the noise, he spotted the bullet as soon as he felt threatened.

Subconsciously, he had already begun to twist his body in a certain direction, probably under his Luck's influence, and his eyes locked directly on the icy projectile coming for his life.

His pupils narrowed and a seething gleam of unbridled wrath pulsed inside.

'So, this time you don't want to just rob me, but kill me completely' He snorted inwardly, shaking with anger.

Jake hadn't forgotten about his Second Ordeal ending. After saving her life at the behest of an Ordeal Mission, Ruby had then taken advantage of his vulnerability to strip him, hesitating for a long time to murder him before giving up for some unknown reason.

Now he knew that it wasn't all her fault and that she was probably half Digestor like Nylreg, Sigmar's son. That Fluid Grandmaster had turned into a true sociopath despite his father's best efforts, and Ruby looked set to follow in his footsteps.

Because she had finally spared him, and paid dearly for her greed (the final door leading to Xion was booby-trapped and the Soul Stones useless), to the point of ironically winning his Second Ordeal, he had kept his grudge in check.

But now? By trying to kill him at this moment, she had just crossed the line.

'Everyone who tries to kill me! I'll kill them all!'

A murderous pressure erupted wildly from his body, his killing intent completely unleashed. The adventurers who had not fled far enough were momentarily petrified while the veterans calmly retreated, deciding to withdraw from the battlefield for the moment. Even the griffin-riding knights-mages regained some altitude.

And yet, despite the flaring of his fighting aura, the negative energy bullet relentlessly pressed on toward his heart. Although Jake could keep track of the bullet with his eyes, his body was unfortunately not aligned with his brainpower.

His physical strength, which was once his second highest stats, now lagged behind his mental stats. With 960 strength, Jake could theoretically sprint at two or three kilometers per second, but only in a vacuum and only with a normal human's mass.

This was not reality. On Earth as on Quanoth, air resistance increased with the square of his speed, fatally hampering his acceleration, and breaking the sound barrier without any Aether control and a 3.5 ton body was his limit.

With the help of his Telekinesis, the only external Bloodline ability he could still use in this anti-Aether zone, he could boost his strength by a factor of 24, and that was assuming his body could withstand such stress. As nice as that number may sound, once air resistance was taken into account, it was just enough to get close to 1500m/s.

Nevertheless, taking into account the distance and meticulously controlling each of his muscles, it was still possible for him to narrowly avoid the projectile. And that's what he did.

He tried to slow the bullet down with his telekinesis, but soon realized that his spiritual energy was out of control once it left his body. He could barely control the space around him within a meter or two with strenuous efforts of concentration. Damn anti-spell magic!

As the energy ball drew dangerously close to his heart, he began to tense his muscles and actively mobilize his telekinesis to force himself to move faster and faster. His joints cracked, his tendons ripped, and his entire skeleton creaked ominously, but he gritted his teeth and forced himself to persevere. Damned for damned, he also activated Bloodline Ignition, which was a Soul Glyph, thus further cementing his non-human identity.

His speed picked up another 600m/s, peaking at 2100m/s, and his strained skin began to form micro-droplets of blood on his surface. To counter this damage, Jake activated his Silver Stone Skin ability and his Soul Glyph Extreme Diver in response, which granted him some resistance to the abyssal pressures.

With his 5200 Constitution and 4030 Vitality, Jake's body held up and his body eventually began to move at a satisfactory speed. Time seemed endless as he sped up his thoughts like this, but his confidence in his odds of dodging the deadly projectile only grew. A victorious smile even spread across his face.

Despite the length of this series of actions, the process had taken only a handful of milliseconds, and for Ruby and the others, the BANG had not even reached their ears before the bullet had already hit its target.

Jake, his legs rooted to the ground, but his torso contorted to the extreme, could finally feel the projectile's horror clearly as it entered his spiritual domain of about two meters in radius.

The bullet abruptly adjusted its trajectory, following a slight curve to the right. That is, precisely the direction he had been tilting his torso. On top of that, an icy cold capable of freezing even his Spirit Body began to burn the surface of his flesh and he felt his mind fogging up like a stalled engine.

In this small spiritual field, Jake could use his Telekinesis, and he decided to kill two birds with one stone as he endeavored to slow down the bullet with a Telekinetic counterforce. Although he felt his mind go numb, he materialized Xion's Soul Stone in his left hand and absorbed a Soul Energy strand to restore his mental acuity.

At first, the projectile decelerated sharply, even giving him hope that he could completely stop the energy ball's momentum, but Jake also noticed that the compressed bullet of negative energy had suddenly started to flash strobing.

'Oh shit...'

Jake glanced grimly at Ruby, and even though he couldn't see her he could almost visualize the sadistic, haughty smirk on her face. She'd got him good.

She had anticipated from the start that he might have the ability to dodge or intercept the projectile. Consequently, she had chosen a homing ammunition. Even then, she had considered that he might be able to neutralize the attack before it reached him despite the anti-magic area, and planned a countermeasure.

'You really think I can't do anything to kill you?' A frantic glint shone in Jake's enraged eyes. She had finally provoked him completely.

When Jake forgot fair play and his stinginess, this was his most dangerous form. After a year of training, the Purgatory had finally recognized him as its true owner. Since it was originally forged from a Fluid Grandmaster Core, it could easily merge with his Aether Soul Core after the Oracle System revamp.

His Aether Soul Core was hidden under his glabella between his two eyebrows, and the Purgatory was hidden inside. Suddenly, the skin above his nose cracked and a vertical crack divided his skin in two, revealing a completely opaque black stone. A spectral white light similar to that of his Aether Core swirled inside.

'Purgatory Dream: Activation. Defensive Mode.'

A microsecond earlier, the negative energy ball was about to explode, ripping all heat from the atoms within fifty meters. The next microsecond, the entire Lodunvals was teleported into a hellish world.

The buildings, the adventurers, the citizens were still there, but geysers of lava had replaced the water in the fountains and monstrous volcanoes had risen from the earth, completely rewriting the formerly flat topography of the city.

This time, Jake had not immersed his mind in the separate Purgatory Dream dimension, but brought it into the real world by deploying it at its maximum range of 10k radius.

Inside, no one could hide, no one could run, and no one could resist. Inside, Jake was like a god. He wasn't exactly omnipotent, but to stop a vulgar energy ball and an arrogant bitch? That was more than enough.

The innocent citizens were moved to a secure area by the Purgatory's AI, but Ruby and the other adventurers and knights-mages who had attacked him were trapped inside with him. Panicked and terrified screams rang out, and Ruby broke out in a cold sweat.

'What the heck is this fucking place?!'

Ruby's icy projectile? Before it even exploded, it was engulfed by hundreds of tons of plasma heated to tens of thousands of degrees Celsius.

So much ionized gas in one place was dangerous even for Jake, but summoning a protective capsule made of an alloy designed for spaceship hulls was extremely simple in the Purgatory.

There was only one condition to meet: Be willing to splurge your money.

And to win, Jake was willing to do anything.