The Oracle Paths

Iaoth was a tall, austere woman, standing around 2 meters, with a slender and graceful silhouette accentuated by an ankle-length black dress slit at the side to reveal her smooth, fair thighs. She was the only enemy Player so far whose cold attractiveness had appealed to both Hephais and Jake. She was also the only one, alongside Sokal, whose anatomy was humanoid enough to be classified as human.

Despite the young woman's undeniable charm, amplified by her deep green, sensual lips and long eyelashes accentuated by flawless mascara, she was, in the end, about as human as Jake himself. The first striking detail was her slightly fluorescent dark green hair, which seemed to float around her head in a swirling spiral. Like Jake, the whites of her eyes were pitch-black, resembling a void, giving them something in common, albeit not something that connected them to their humanity. Her glowing, dark emerald irises with vortex-like pupils were also quite similar to his galactic eyes.

However, what was most unique about her was the faintly spiraling distortion of space around her, as if she were the center of crumpled paper. This detail was only perceptible to Jake, who had an affinity with space-time. The fact that she could passively affect the space around her, even so subtly, at such an early stage of the Ordeal, spoke volumes about her immense power.

This woman was trouble.

"Hephais, I'm taking over," Jake warned the assassin in a serious tone.

The Egaean, who was ready to continue fighting a bit longer to force them to reveal some of their trump cards, froze at the solemnity in his voice.

"Is she that strong?" he asked, visibly concerned.

"I'm afraid so," Jake confirmed grimly before ordering, "Keep taking out their Players and saving ours. I'll handle this group. If you run into other Myrtharian Nerds, let them know where we are."

"Understood."

He never entertained the thought that Jake might want him gone as a protective measure, let alone sacrifice himself. If his boss claimed he was enough, then he was.

As a result, without any further delay, Hephais jumped into the nearest shadow and faded away without a trace. The three Rank 16 enemy Players obviously noticed his escape attempt, and before he'd even made it ten meters into his shadow, he felt an irresistible tug from behind that stopped him dead in his tracks.

Having literally grabbed his shadow with her bare hand, capturing it in a mini-vortex in the palm of her hand, Iaoth, who had crossed the hundreds of meters separating them in a blink, declared flatly,

"No one leaves unless I say so."

In response, Hephais sneered and, flipping her off without turning around, replied in a condescending and slightly sympathetic tone,

"But he did."

The already levitating hair of the young woman bristled suddenly with a bad premonition, and instinctively she released the shadow holding the assassin prisoner as quickly as she could and leapt back.

It served her well, for where her elbow had been just a split second earlier, a black spatial tear about a meter long and a few centimeters wide cracked the air, instantly sucking in her own tiny vortex and everything else within several meters' radius.

She thought the surprise attack was over, but the spatial tear, which had been gradually closing, suddenly contracted to almost form an imperceptible singularity before violently expanding again at a speed surpassing that of lightning.

No sound of explosion or shockwave accompanied this dark expansion, but Iaoth's once calm glowing green eyes widened to the brim. Her already pale face also became ghostly as it was covered in beads of sweat. It wasn't just the inexplicable space-time assault amplified with a massive amount of Soul Power, but also the horrifying spiritual pressure crashing down on her and threatening to crush her soul.

Even more alarming, beyond space, she could also feel time dilating around her separately from the expanding spatial tear. With the temporal snare sinisterly closing in on her, she could feel the world around her accelerating exponentially beyond the trap. Time flow outside remained unchanged, and she was sure her reflexes had not slowed down. Consequently, she could only be under a Time-Slowing Spell, an element still eluding her despite her affinity for space-time.

Shaken to the core, her heart skipped a beat. Faced with mortal danger like never before, her survival instincts kicked in, pushing her responsiveness far beyond what she thought she was capable of, breaking her own limits. With a hand swipe that drained most of her energy, she powerfully opened a wormhole just wide enough to slip through and dove in, not forgetting to yell as she went,

"The mission is canceled, everyone get the fuck out!"

None of her allies, judging by their confused, scrunched-up faces, grasped the implications of this order, but she knew! At that moment, her shadow guide didn't react! It answered all the questions they had about Doomhorn's reports and the dissonant performance of Hephais, who was surely strong but not enough to explain such discrepancies.

"YOU'RE GOING NOWHERE!" Jake's voice suddenly shook their minds like a clap of thunder, a dizzying vertigo hitting them as if they'd been thrown into a billion-G centrifuge.

The twelve clones of Quilo imploded on the spot at the sound of his voice, while the original started spitting blood from every pore and orifice of his body.

"You're gonna pay for this, you piece of-" The Morphian screamed before being irrevocably silenced when Jake's supersonic right hand pulverized his head with a single punch.

Then, everyone finally heard the resounding sonic boom marking Jake's arrival into the fray. The tree he'd used as a springboard had been completely blasted into wooden dust, just like the entire surrounding hectare of forest.

At the same time, far away in a fortified camp in the Lustra Plains, a handsome androgynous alien vaguely resembling the just-killed Morphian but with an aura hundreds of times more imposing, abruptly opened his eyes, pure hatred burning within.

"I didn't even get to see his face..." The real Quilo lamented darkly to himself before falling back asleep while conjuring a new mercury slug. One of his expensive, enhanced clones had just been killed and needed to be replaced.

Despite the threatening killing intent radiating from him, the Morphian quickly gathered himself, realizing that even with his main body he probably stood no chance. Faced with the grim reality of this fact, he grumbled gloomily,

"I hope at least Iaoth and Lord Ooom make it out."

He didn't mention his other allies because he knew Iaoth well enough to understand that an enemy forcing her into frantic retreat was likely unbeatable. Though she was only Rank 16, that was a deceptive statistic. Shadrex, the leader of the faction she co-led, considered her his equal.

Back at the Lumyst River, after executing Quilo and sending Iaoth packing, Jake didn't stop there. He teleported in a single step to the copper-skinned humanoid alien.

Despite just witnessing the death of his comrade, Sokal burst out in elated laughter. His red and gold armor became covered in flames, radiating with a brilliance akin to the sun. Even the solar tattoo on his forehead shone so brightly it seemed to turn night into day. His golden eyes ablaze with fighting spirit, he cackled like a madman and roared with arms wide open, as if inviting,

"HAHAHAHA! This is what I wanted! A real man-to-man fight to the death! BRING IT O—"

Just like his teammate a split second earlier, Jake's fist effortlessly tore through Sokal's shield of heat, light, and radiation, smashing his skull from front to back.

CRACK!

Sokal's head didn't completely shatter upon the first impact like his Morphian friend's. Instead, his body was blasted horizontally at a dizzying speed, exceeding ten kilometers per second in the blink of an eye. The number of rivers, trees, and mountains the alien collided with and flew through before sheer force slowed him down made him regret surviving at all.

Needless to say, when the copper-skinned warrior regained consciousness, he promptly picked up his teeth and bolted without a word. His thirst for battle had never been satisfied so quickly. Perhaps it was quenched for good.

Flexing and unflexing his fingers, an dissatisfied frown settled at the same time on Jake's face.

"Tsk. Too weak. Count yourself lucky today."