The Oracle Paths



BOOOOM!

Jake, who had been relentlessly boring through walls of Voidsteel for over a quarter of an hour with gratifying success, abruptly halted his path of destruction, his gaze narrowing.

"Why do I have such a foreboding feeling?" he muttered, tension etched across his features. "I feel as though I'm on the verge of losing something invaluable."

A pang of helplessness echoed within him as he took stock of the deserted steel corridor where he stood. The imposing but restrained presence of the Dungeon Digestor had long since receded, leaving him to the unnerving illusion of solitude. Even the Sinewshades had ceased their pestering.

"Have I unwittingly fallen into the enemy's ploy after all?" Jake questioned his course of action, despite the trail of thousands of punctured walls behind him standing testament to his achievements.

If one were to line up all the perforated walls and peek through the last opening, they would see an abyss, the tunnel in Jake's wake stretching for over a thousand kilometers.

[It's not as though you had better alternatives,] Xi consoled him calmly. [If you deploy a mass destruction technique capable of significantly damaging a Dungeon Digestor, you won't escape unscathed. Moreover, even though the Digestors have seized control, it remains a Magnetic Resonator belonging to the Oracle, or possibly Oros. If it's compromised, can you afford the fallout? Beyond that, you're already giving your all. You might not have noticed, but as we get closer to the core, the Voidsteel becomes increasingly difficult to penetrate. The content of Horizon Hardstone has risen significantly compared to the walls closer to the surface. Such hardness is akin to the barrier isolating the Conversion Chamber from the rest of the funnel when it's deactivated. This is a good sign. It indicates we're nearing our objective.]

Reassured by his AI's logical arguments, Jake regained his composure.

"You're right. The fact that this Dungeon Digestor isn't even attempting to resist anymore proves it's admitted defeat. It fears me," he conceded calmly, his brow furrowing immediately after. "Unfortunately, that's precisely what concerns me. Dungeon Digestors are not supposed to be such pushovers.

"We should hurry."

[Hmmm.]

Jake extended his palms before him and the air suddenly warped, folding in upon itself like a crumpled piece of paper. When the distortion reached a sufficient threshold, the space locally collapsed, and a long, slender black spatial rift tore through reality.

"Spatial Blade," Jake thought grimly.

After experimenting with various methods, he had concluded that his Space Manipulation, combined with his Cosmic Force, was by far the most efficient way to assail a material as tough as Voidsteel.

Despite all his training and high intelligence, Jake wasn't yet adept with this element, the physical laws pertaining to space-time being notoriously difficult to fully comprehend. Surface understanding, purely theoretical, posed no challenge, but grasping the fabric of space-time itself continued to elude him.

As proud as he was, he had to concede that his Extrasensory Perception was still lacking. Had he not unlocked the Space Manipulation ability thanks to his bloodline, he might not have been able to dabble with it for a long time, except by using pre-set Space Spells like his Teleport Skill.

For the same reason, Jake could only employ these Spatial Blades in this rudimentary manner, clumsily projecting them in the desired direction. If he attempted to combine it with a sword or close-combat technique, it was likely he, not his target, would end up obliterated.

Thank heavens, his fledgling mastery of Space was adequate enough to meet his objective. The conjured Spatial Blade quickly drifted away from him in utter silence and without causing any ripples in its wake.

When it met the Voidsteel wall, enhanced with Horizon Hardstone, the structure shattered as though someone had smashed a mirror's screen under the warping effect. As for the section of the wall that directly interfaced with the Spatial Blade, it vanished without a sound, as if it had never existed.

The Dungeon Digestor's diffuse consciousness, who maintained a cautious distance from him, wisely refrained from approaching the dark blade too closely. Its Digestor instinct, which was nothing more than pure common sense in this case, was warning it that touching this entity with its Spirit Body would not bode well.

A sleek ovular gap that mimicked the contours of the Spatial Blade promptly appeared before Jake, piercing a dozen more walls separated by several hundred meters each before closing due to energy exhaustion.

Presently, his Space Manipulation only allowed him to influence space within a few meters. Once launched, the Spatial Blades he created were no longer under his control. Neither did he know how to supply them with the required energy over long distances to sustain their activity.

As before, Jake dived headfirst into the created abyss. Stomping the ground, his figure blurred only to reappear several kilometers away at the exit of the last torn wall.

Upon landing, he swept his surroundings with his mental sense, as was his custom. However, instead of being the sole living presence as he had expected, he tensed when he sensed a familiar yet somewhat different presence nearing him.

The scent of tainted blood instantly assaulted his nostrils. As Jake cautiously turned towards the intruder, a human figure, horribly disfigured, entered his line of sight.

The man had neither hair nor skin, as if he had been flayed alive. His bloody flesh was fully exposed, and simply imagining what he must feel when it made contact with the air, Jake surmised he was enduring agonizing pain.

Though this grotesque appearance was entirely unfamiliar, a chill descended upon Jake's heart as he recognized the newcomer's armor.

"Ulfar."

The recognizable slit orange eyes of the King of Beskyr, haggard and disoriented, rested their gaze upon Jake at the sound of his voice. Recognizing his handsome, comforting silhouette, a look of relief softened the agonizing features of his friend, at his wit's end.

"Thank Beskyr, my luck hasn't abandoned me yet," Ulfar murmured, collapsing to his knees before him.

The next second, his eyes rolled back into his head, showing their whites, and without any warning, the man began screaming in agony, squirming in pain like a seizing epileptic.

Simultaneously, Jake's ears picked up a bizarre, high-pitched sound, vaguely reminiscent of an ultrasonic whistle. He then noticed that Ulfar wasn't alone—numerous Aetheric signatures, densely packed together, were quickly closing in on their position.

Unfazed, Jake snorted and released his own spiritual pressure. The moment his psychic shockwave, tinged with his Destruction True Will and killing intent, washed over them, the monsters shrieked and hastily retreated, confirming his theory that whoever was behind this wasn't ready to tangle with him yet.

"Saving the best for last, eh?" Jake spat in contempt as he watched a horde of Sinewshades, more numerous and stronger than any he had slaughtered until now, vanish down the corridor from which Ulfar had arrived.

Observing them from afar, his eyes dangerously narrowed when he spotted among the Sinewshades a creature crowned with a sinfully familiar blonde mane. His heart skipped a beat at the horrifying possibility, his formerly composed face becoming aghast.

The creature still had some intact armor pieces on her, cruelly crushing his faint hope that it wasn't her.

"Lucia," Jake called out, feeling for the first time an immense emptiness in his chest as though someone had just ripped out his heart.

"AAAAARRRRRGGHH!"

Ulfar's ear-piercing scream at his feet snapped him out of his daze, and he promptly refocused on his critically wounded friend.

'I don't know if Lucia can still be saved, but it's not too late for Ulfar,' Jake smacked his cheeks twice with both hands to regain his composure and promptly scanned the writhing man with his mental sense.

"Ugh?" Jake was taken aback by the result.

It was a miracle that Ulfar hadn't already turned into a monster. The virus was omnipresent in his body, but inexplicably it struggled to infiltrate his DNA. Each time it was on the brink of success, something caused it to miss its target, making it lose its way in the interstitial tissue between his cells.

When the virus did manage to integrate itself into his DNA, it was then Ulfar's coding enzymes themselves that faltered, refusing to transcribe the virus's DNA. Without the host's enzymes' help, the virus couldn't reproduce and was harmless.

From this brief observation, Jake understood how Ulfar had resisted the virus's propagation until now.

Yet again, his luck was nothing short of scandalous.