The Oracle Paths

Now that Jake was back to normal, they boarded the ship and made a quick hyperspace jump back to the dying sun. When they left the ship a short time later, they didn't find it right away.

Where there was supposed to be a blinding ball of light, there was only darkness. It was just as they had suspected, but it unnerved them more than they were willing to admit. It was an overwhelming sight.

The death of a star.

When a star died, it was supposed to explode or collapse under its own weight, but much more rarely did it simply snuff itself out. This was a fate usually reserved for smaller stars.

"Jake, do your thing." Hade sighed.

"Sure."

The Myrtharian flew to the cooled sun, and touched down like a meteor on a hilly plain of solid hydrogen. It was a dark gray desert, bare and frozen. But this time, Jake didn't feel the cold.

Unlike his previous visit, where the contact of his boots against the hydrogen had immediately triggered a freezing process, nothing happened this time. Nothing visible, anyway.

Jake sensed a negative energy that went against all common sense and should not exist seeping through the soles of his feet and the solid hydrogen he was standing on started to melt. It was exactly the same scenario as when he first came, but the cause was completely different.

Before, he had emitted heat to resist the cold. This time, it absorbed the star's cold, which naturally heated the hydrogen on its surface.

This kind of ability was very similar to those of Throsgenians like Ruby or Rogen.

'Do I have the abilities of a Throsgenian now too?' He asked himself with a baffled look.

He glanced at his Oracle Status, his Bloodline this time, and quickly found what had changed.

[Heat, Cold and Radiation tolerance lvl4: The body temperature is no longer fixed at 37°C and can withstand a much higher and lower internal temperature without shutting down.]

[Heat, Cold and Radiation Control lvl4: . It becomes possible to thermally and energetically excite AND cool down any object, including one's own body. At lvl4, you can now perform advanced heat, cold and radiation manipulation. The finesse of control and perception doubles at every level.]

Paradoxically, the description of these two Bloodline abilities had not changed, but their scope of action was now much wider. In fact, it was not that far to be called Energy Control and Tolerance.

Jake tried to figure out how this could have happened and deduced that in order to assimilate this solid hydrogen into his Myrtharian Bloodline he had to digest it completely before it melted. In other words, when it was at a temperature below -262°C.

"So it was the trick to get the Cold Control ability.' He couldn't help but laugh.

It was so straightforward and so complicated at the same time. If he hadn't created these abnormal conditions, Jake would only have been able to attempt such a feat in three or four Ordeals assuming his Body Stats and Bloodline level didn't improve by then.

He had just saved a considerable amount of time, probably on the order of several years.

And now he was even more confident that he could overpower Ruby. The Throsgenian part of her Bloodline was now powerless against him. The outcome of all this would depend on how much Ruby had grown over the past few months.

It was her Digestor half that was in charge and her presence in the Schwazen capital boded ill. Shaking off his worries, Jake focused on the frozen crust of hydrogen beneath him and made another attempt to use his Earth Manipulation ability.

The result compared to his first attempt was as different as fire and water. Combined with his Heat and Cold Control, the hydrogen ground parted in two, receding to the sides like a fluid, and Jake shot forward into the breach.

With only the vacuum to slow him down, Jake picked up speed exponentially until he surpassed 100km/second, which was more than ten times his maximum speed in terrestrial atmosphere. The pressure steadily increased, accelerating his fall toward the core.

After about two hours, Jake felt he was close to his limit, but there was still no sign of his Aether Cores. The pressure around him had reached such an astronomical value that one square centimeter of hydrogen now weighed several thousand tons. His Earth Control was having trouble getting it to obey.

Just as he was about to change his strategy by forcing his way through with massive nuclear explosions, the resistance that was holding him back disappeared.

The hydrogen in his path also vanished and he unexpectedly landed in a sphere of void.

"What the f-"

He had underestimated the danger of so many Aether Cores and Aether Sun Cores in one place.

[Aether density: 0.001]

What Jake saw just now was almost as terrifying as a black hole. In the center of this sphere of emptiness and darkness, stood a lone white Aether dot, stunningly mesmerizing. But space was warping around it for thousands of kilometers, shaping a blinding spiral of Aether.

All of the Aether in this sphere had been siphoned off by this lone Aether Core of unknown Grade and as the local Aether density fell, the surrounding matter had become too fragile and unstable to continue to exist in this form.

Jake mulled it over, trying to piece together the sequence of events that could have led to such a catastrophe. At the same time, he also had to fight the pull that was trying to drain the Aether from his body with all of his willpower.

He soon came up with an unbelievable answer, but the only plausible one.

Each Aether Core and Aether Sun Cores had at first drawn in Aether, ambient heat and radiation, and negligible amounts of matter on their own. This status quo had persisted until these Aether Cores reached Grade 6.

The Aether density around these Aether Cores had then slowly begun to fall, but this was a draining process requiring several days and limited to a few kilometers in radius. Definitely not enough to create this calamity.

That was until a Grade 7 Aether Core or maybe even a Grade 8 was born. Jake could already imagine how it happened.

An initial Grade 7 Aether Core had formed and one or more lower Grade Aether Cores had been affected by its Aetheric pull. Just as when one black hole swallows another, they had first swirled together slowly, then this gyratory dance had accelerated exponentially until they finally merged.

After that, things must have gotten out of hand in a matter of minutes. This new Aether Core had swallowed up some others and its Grade had increased again. The local Aether density dropped even faster and the star's matter became more unstable, breaking down more easily into energy and Aether, which was the primary food of choice for these Aether and Aether Sun Cores.

Since there was only one Aether Core left and not an Aether Sun Core, Jake could easily guess who had won the contest of who eats the fastest.

'Okay, so now I've lost all my Aether Sun Cores and Aether Cores except... this thing.' He grinned bitterly. 'How am I supposed to get it back?'

[No matter how high the rank of this Aether Core is, you are still its creator. If you get close enough, you should be able to call it back into your space storage.] Xi suggested uncertainly.

Jake's face twitched as he heeded her idea.

'Is my space storage even capable of housing this?' he quipped in a skeptical voice.

[Don't underestimate the usefulness of liquid alloy. The space dimension it conjures is much denser than this Ordeal World. However... You have to get close to it first.]

With that, Jake put on a gloomy face. It was easier said than done.

The Aetheric pull was not a big deal. His mind could stop it, and he could even let himself be dragged to his Aether Core. The real problem began when he entered the accretion disk area.

But before that, he had to deal with another difficulty, the space of low Aether density. At the smallest movement, he could feel space distorting and he had no desire to know what would happen if he accidentally entered some kind of spatial rift.

In the end, Jake couldn't bring himself to give up this ultimate Aether Core. After all, he had destroyed the future of a whole star to produce it. Gritting his teeth, he braced himself for the worst, but as he was about to jump in he suddenly had an idea upon seeing the space distort around him.

'If space is so fragile, teleporting should be much easier!' His face lit up with this realization.

He focused his attention on the far edge of the accretion disk thousands of kilometers ahead of him and looking death straight in the eyes he teleported.

[Aether density: 1.1M points]

He was right on the edge, but fortunately, the disk only extended for a few kilometers. At this distance, Jake could do it. He focused on the Spirit Link he had left on his Aether Core and by goodness, it was still there!

With a simple thought, that Aether singularity disappeared and the darkness and silence returned. But just before stowing it away, Jake had time to read the scan result.

[Grade 10 Aether Core.]