The Oracle Paths

Jake didn't answer immediately, checking on his companions first. He breathed a sigh of relief when he realized that none of them had been killed. However, he was also surprised to find that they had all been defeated by a single attacker.

A freakish woman, looking more like a scarlet humanoid flower than a human, stood in the center of the bunker, blood-red vines sprouting from her body and suspending his bound comrades in the air. What was jarring to him was that even Azeus' electric shocks seemed to have no effect on this thing.

Trea had been disarmed, her bow lying dozens of feet below her, Fo had used up all her Talismans and lost her Staff, while Tim and Skorgeld had also been stripped of their battleaxes. Lord Phenix was also tied up, having lost a bunch of feathers in a matter of seconds.

The defeat had been as swift as it was brutal.

Crunch, with his huge, rubbery body, was the only one who appeared indifferent to the vines binding him, but he couldn't move either. His indignant meows could do nothing.

Jake's pupils narrowed as he saw that Tim had begun to mobilize his Myrtharian Bloodline. He had obtained a sample of Blood Essence from Jake before the Ordeal and his hybrid Bloodline had already reached level 2. The heat and radiation he generated was nothing to someone like Jake, but the startling thing was that these vines were also unaffected.

Lord Phenix too was generating flames of searing heat, but nothing worked. These vines seemed indestructible.

A few seconds later, Lord Phenix, Tim and Azeus stopped struggling and passed out like the others, which made Jake's hair stand on end. Seeing thousands of blood red flower petals drifting towards him, he felt an acute sense of danger and activated his Oracle Shield right away.

Inside his Oracle Shield, his vision blurred slightly and he experienced a ghastly nausea that almost caused him to vomit. If his Constitution and Vitality were not so high he would have lost consciousness too.

'Poison...' He concluded, looking at the flower woman.

[They're on the same level as the Nullifyer.] Xi warned him with a slight anguish in her voice. Their defeat against the Nullifyer was a trauma that their minds had not yet recovered from.

Safe in his Oracle Shield, Jake then focused his attention on the second individual, the man he had just confronted.

At first glance he was a handsome bearded middle-aged man about 7 meters tall. But when one looked at him a little more carefully, one noticed that his skin was glowing in a supernatural way, rainbow sheen on its surface giving the illusion that it was covered with scales.

This was what a normal human could see. When Jake looked at this man he saw a very different world. His "scales" were not scales. They were microscopic mini-cubes arranged in such a precise manner that it was almost impossible to figure out that this man had no genetic connection to humans.

But what really caught Jake's interest was that these microscopic cubes had a familiar appearance. If one ignored their size, their color and polished jewel-like structure filled with a faint pulsing light was the same as the Oracle Cubes on B842.

At the end of his third Ordeal, he had met an Oracle Guardian using the Cube magic of the Ancient Designer Aas. At the time he hadn't made the connection, but now as with the Zhorion race descending directly from Xion Zholvur, he came to realize that the other Ancient Designers also had their own descendants.

"Didn't you hear my question?" The cube man's face darkened and a flow of baleful orange energy enveloped his body and his sword. "Prysm, kill them."

"Wait!" Jake shouted as he held up his hands. "We had nothing to do with what just happened here. We just got here and it was already like that."

Prysm laughed coldly,

"And why should we believe you?" She scoffed sarcastically as she tightened the constriction of her vines.

His companions, especially Fo and Trea, the weakest physically of the group, immediately started screaming as their bones broke by the dozen. Tim and Azeus were okay but they didn't seem to appreciate this free osteopathic session.

"We're only here to look for someone. She wasn't even here when we arrived!" Jake replied, suppressing his anger. "As for what attacked you, we found that when we got here."

Casually and more rudely than he would have wanted, he tossed a handful of Schwazen feathers at the feet of Prysm and the other man. Recognizing these feathers, but above all perceiving their extraordinary hardness, they lost their attitude.

Prysm loosened the grip of her vines and his comrades could finally breathe properly, but they did not regain consciousness. The man gazed at the feathers for a moment, then back at Jake and asked,

"Who were you trying to free?"

"Ruby Hale, a Digestor Trojan that Lost Divinities recently gave you." Jake answered honestly.

If this Mirror Vanguard guy wanted to investigate them it would be a piece of cake. Sooner or later his Oracle Shield would overheat or he would run out of Aether and he was sure he couldn't outrun or defeat this Player without leaving the planet.

The two individuals' killing intent that had almost disappeared erupted forth much stronger and more oppressive than before and Jake knew that his answer had provoked them.

"Any friend of the Digestors is our enemy." The bearded man replied theatrically, aiming his sword at him.

The cube man's entire body rippled, and the surface of his skin turned a ruby red color. Using his Myrtharian Sight, Jake noticed that all the microscopic cubes in his body had taken on the appearance of a Red Cube.

A halo of blood red energy enveloped the Player's body and Jake had a bad feeling. The kind where his Oracle Shield wouldn't last very long.

"Wait!" He shouted again as he scrambled to think through the situation. "We're not Digestors, we just want revenge on Lost Divinities. Ruby is a Digestor, but we were able to stabilize her condition. Lost Divinities ambushed her to restore the Digestor's dominance over her, which allowed them to predict our movements with their Oracle Paths again. We just want to save her, stabilize her if possible and then get our revenge."

Listening to Jake and his friends' crazy plan, the bearded man gaped at him. As for Prysm, she burst out laughing.

"Pffff! Did you hear that, Vexa? They want to use a Digestor as a jammer to get back at Lost Divinities, hahahahaha!"

"Are you serious?" The cube man asked solemnly.

"I don't joke about this kind of thing." Jake replied firmly.

The man looked at him thoughtfully for a short while and then retracted his sword and said warmly,

"In that case, maybe we can work together. Our interests converge. My subordinates have been killed and you will replace them temporarily. You are a little weak, but if you are still alive, it means that you have passed the Oracle test coordinated by Lost Divinities, Anti-Life, Demiurge and my faction. There must be something we can do with you."

Jake didn't like the guy's disappointed tone, which sounded like he was reluctantly accepting second-hand products for lack of choice. His answer, however, confirmed to him that the attack from these super factions was not a gratuitous act of malice and they had followed certain rules in carrying out this large-scale Player massacre.

"My name is Vexacion Square, but you can call me Vexa." The man finally introduced himself, perhaps remembering the basic rules of etiquette.

"Prysm. Just Prysm." The cynical flower woman replied laconically.

"Jake Wilderth." He replied flatly as he warily turned off his Oracle Shield. "Can I have those feathers back?"

Vexa was taken aback by his question but nodded absentmindedly.

"These feathers are good material but they are slightly Corrupted." Prysm cautioned him as she detected the presence of many metals in the Myrtharian's body.

Jake didn't know this and immediately turned gloomy.

'Damn it, now I have to watch what I eat too...'

Seeing his discomfited expression, the flower woman giggled again, heartily this time, and released his companions. The substance she was releasing into the air to keep them asleep dissipated and they regained consciousness within seconds.

"What happened?" Tim grumbled as he rubbed his eyes sleepily.

"We were spared." Jake answered crisply.

He then told them what they had missed and the deal they had made, or rather the deal Vexa had forced upon him. Azeus showed no disappointment, but Tim and the Beskyrians were dejected, convinced that Jake had caved in to save them.

"It wasn't your fault." Jake insisted at the end to console them. "Even alone the situation would have been the same."

Whether they believed him or not was irrelevant, but after that they stopped being depressed and accepted their new role as conscripts for Mirror Vanguard. After they had talked among themselves, Vexa walked towards them with a grim look on his face.