The Oracle Paths

Once all these Aether Cores were gathered in front of him, Jake immediately began to modify them, adding additional Aether Symbols to channel the Aether contained in their accretion discs to serve higher purposes. He added a Spirit Link to each of them so he could control them remotely.

The reason he couldn't do the same with the Aether Cores trapped inside the star was because his Spirit Energy couldn't survive the hellish temperature and pressure conditions of the core. But in space, sending a simple signal over long distances was not that complicated.

Drawing all of these Aether Runes took him over an hour, even with his newfound Aetherist skills and his ability to instantly duplicate runes and symbols he already knew.

"These Aether Symbols..." Hade mused as he thoughtfully stroked his chin. "Some kind of convergence spell?"

Jake shrugged and continued to carve mysteriously. When he finished tracing the last rune, he exhaled heavily and became focused.

"Now things are going to get tricky." Jake muttered with some trepidation. "I'm going to need an asteroid big and nutritious enough to help me with what's coming next."

"Let me handle it." Hade and Asfrid nodded as they boarded the small spaceship again.

Once inside, the ship activated its long-range scanner and a few seconds later made a warp jump.

During this time, with Xi's help, Jake made some incredibly complex calculations. Once he had completed the calculations, he had no choice but to wait for his two companions to return.

About 20 minutes later, the ship jumped out of hyperspace in front of him. A few more meters and it would have crashed into him.

"So? Did you find a suitable asteroid?" Jake asked not too hopefully.

Asfrid and Hade exchanged a still incredulous look and answered in unison,

"Against all odds, yes. We found the perfect asteroid but it's pretty far from here."

"How many kilometers are we talking about?" Jake inquired curiously.

"126 billions." Hade blurted out laconically. "But don't worry, with the ship we'll be there in a few minutes."

Their leader let out a relieved sigh upon hearing this.

"Okay, let's move."

The trio boarded the ship and made their way to the asteroid chosen by Asfrid and Hade but only after storing several tons of solid hydrogen in the Faction Vault. At their destination, Jake understood why they were so surprised.

If such an asteroid had been discovered on Quanoth, the value of its deposits would have been estimated in the thousands of trillions of gold coins. It was literally a mile-long block of precious and magical metals, the black rock that made it up being a superior form of black diamond that could only be created in an environment with very high temperature and pressure conditions.

"I'm impressed." Jake confessed in awe. "That should do the job, thank you."

Checking the results of his and Xi's calculations, the Myrtharian then sprang into motion, flying up and down like a bee on amphetamines to place each of his Aether Cores in a specific location.

At Grade 4 and 5, the absorption power of these Aether Cores was sufficient to siphon off the surrounding Aether for hundreds of meters, even kilometers, and although the Aether sucked in was quickly replenished, these Aether Cores would find themselves in competition, unable to reach their full potential.

While two Grade 5 Aether Cores could produce an accretion disk tens of meters in diameter with an Aether density of between 100,000 and almost 1M, when placed side by side, the Aether density would not double.

Jake intended to remedy this problem. A few minutes later, he finished positioning his Aether Cores at locations far enough apart that their accretion disks would not touch.

In front of his two bewildered companions, he then floated to the center of this formation. He was right now in the center of a field of several hundred Aether Cores and Aether Sun Cores, each of which was located several dozen kilometers away from him.

At first glance it looked safe, but Hade and Asfrid were not. They began to get a vague idea of what he was planning to do and it was a very bad idea.

"Are you sure about that?" The Fluid Grandmaster worried. "The accretion disk could kill you."

"Let's begin." Jake said resolutely.

"At your own risk..." Hade and Asfrid winced as they took their distance.

With a thought, the Myrtharian activated the Aether Symbols he had just etched on all those Aether Cores and Aether Sun Cores via their Spirit Link, and over 350 rays of light converged on him at the speed of light. There was a flash of white that was as short-lived as it was dazzling, but no sound.

Hade and Asfrid opened their eyes and saw the lone figure of their friend rapidly disintegrating from his lower abdomen. The accretion disk of his Aether Core had begun to overflow.

Indeed, all the light beams were the Aether continuously produced by all those Aether Cores. They were so condensed and focused that their Aether density was in the tens of millions. Anything in their path would be irreparably and instantly disintegrated.

Their target? His Aether Core and Reiga Core. If his calculations and aiming angle had been off by a mere millionth of a degree, Jake and his soul would have been riddled with holes if not completely obliterated.

Right now, whether it was his Aether Core or Reiga Core, which was mid-Grade 3 and early Grade 3 respectively, they couldn't gobble up and convert that much Aether in that short a time, even though the process was artificially accelerated thousands of times. The Aether they could not swallow quickly pooled around the two Cores, with the local Aether density quickly climbing to over several million.

These two Cores positioned at his dantian were microscopic, their primary accretion disk not extending beyond a centimeter in radius. But when this excess Aether grew far beyond acceptable limits, both disks began to expand outward with decreasing density from the center, and Jake's insides disintegrated as a result.

Ignoring the excruciating pain reminding him that he had a rapidly growing hole in his stomach, Jake steeled his mind and then activated the other modified Aether Cores and Aether Sun Cores. Less focused beams of light that had nothing to do with Aether rained down on his body and Spirit Body.

Beams of radiation and heat reaching millions of degrees, lightning bolts as wide as a truck, a magnetic field of such power that it could lift entire hills of steel washed over his body and Soul and every part of his being began to frantically soak up all this nourishing energy.

Under the influence of this unusual heat the metals making up the asteroid he was standing on melted on the spot, forming a pool of magma and liquid metal. Jake reflexively activated his telekinesis to avoid sinking into the ground and steering clear of the Aether Cores' rays.

The molten metal and rock plasma joined the other beams of heat, radiation, magnetism and lightning and were drunkenly sucked into his body. Double Bloodline Ignition was triggered, as was the embryonic True Will that had allowed him to quickly adapt to whatever abuse he brought upon himself for training purposes.

His Accelerated Healing ability skyrocketed to unprecedented levels, and while the expansion of the two accretion disks was not stopped, his cells stopped disintegrating as quickly, surviving for half a second instead of the previous thousandth of a second.

As for the ones that were not yet affected, they strengthened quickly, but like his Aether and Reiga Cores they reached their saturation point very soon as well. After that, Jake began to burn like a candle at both ends.

On the one hand, he was suffering burns, electrocution and other disturbing symptoms, like his body transmuting into a metal golem due to the overflow of metal and rocks; and on the other hand, an insane amount of Aether was disintegrating him from within.

Of all his internal organs, only the upper third of his lungs remained, while his legs were about to separate from his torso. His Spirit Body had also taken heavy damage, but the effect he was looking for finally appeared.

[Aether density: 800,000 points.]

Besides the disintegrated parts of his body in the center of the accretion disk, his periphery was not nearly as lethal. 800,000 points was the current Aether density endured by his living cells, while those in the process of disintegration faced several million.

For the first time in his life, Jake again experienced the near omnipotence he had experienced at the end of his Second Ordeal as he stepped into this ocean of emerald light. It was in this miraculous environment that he had managed to digest a Silver Soul Stone.

"Hade, hydrogen." Jake grunted as he sputtered a spray of blood that immediately disintegrated.

His friend reacted swiftly, hurling the huge solid hydrogen wafer at him like a supersonic Frisbee. Long before it reached its target, it was vaporized and Jake inhaled it with a deep breath. His stomach was gone, but it didn't matter.

Because he could feel it. The hydrogen had already been digested and assimilated.