The Oracle Paths

Jake instinctively lifted his hand to deliver a huge telekinetic thrust to push the newcomer back and use him as a springboard, but he was horror-stricken to find that this invisible force had no effect other than to ruffle his tattered cloak and dispel the dark energy haze shrouding him. As his hood fell back, he saw Nylreg's entire face for the first time.

He was greatly taken aback by Nylreg's uncanny resemblance to his father. Rather than his son, he looked like his twin and statistically that was next to impossible. Jake noted the presence of a sixth finger on each of his hands, but didn't dwell on it too much.

"You have something that belongs to me." Hade's clone declared lamely as he stretched his hand out in front of him.

Jake felt a sharp pull from the Space Storage in his wristband and he summoned all his mental fortitude to resist it, but the pulling doubled, then doubled again in response and he soon began to bleed from his nose and eyes. However, he did not give in and as Nylreg exerted himself, his own stubbornness refused to yield.

A splitting headache wracked his skull and his vision became blurred. Unable to keep flying, he tumbled and plummeted to the ground, a few meters from the force field insulating them from space.

On all fours Jake began to shake like an epileptic and soon was bleeding from his seven facial orifices. Wyatt watched the scene trembling almost as much as he did and it was plain to see that he had experienced such torment in the past and Jake's punishment was rekindling that trauma.

Boris didn't have his qualms and his huge fist came down like a huge boulder upon Nylreg who was suspended in the air. Nylreg was as insignificant as a fly next to that fist, but Sigmar's son didn't give it a second glance, and with a flick of his index finger the giant arm exploded. The lightning, the flames and the gravity prior to the blow only served to shake his cloak before continuing their course to bombard the wall a few hundred meters away.

It was Sarah, though, who behaved the most despicably. While Jake was sprawled on the ground, she lunged at him swiftly with her sword and slashed with all her might at his nape. The bloodlust seething from her weapon and Sarah herself was extremely thick and a shrill sound resounded as the blade clashed with the liquid alloy armor protecting his neck.

Despite his predicament, Jake was still aware of his immediate surroundings and his Aether and liquid alloy had been appropriately mobilized in response. Even his Silver Stone Skin Skill, which he had been using only to harden his skin, thickened distinctly at the point of impact, forming a natural steel plate around his nape.

In the end, despite the sheer brutality of the blow, the blade did not manage to cut off his head. Where Wyatt had effortlessly sliced him in half, Sarah's stroke, at his most vulnerable moment, only managed to sink into the liquid alloy armor before being entirely stopped by the thick plate of Silver Stone Skin on his neck.

The impact itself, however, forced Jake's head down and his forehead slammed into the ground, denting the metal beneath him. This should have left him even more dizzy, but paradoxically it was this dastardly attack and the extra pain that gave Jake the momentum and anger he lacked to retaliate.

Glaring savagely at Sarah, the Apex Predator Glyph and the murderous pressure burning inside his eyes transfixed her in place, bristling every hair on her body and covering her skin with a sheen of cold sweat. Her craziness instantly left her and a horrorstruck expression, mixed with guilt and shame, crept across her face once more.

"It's too late to regret." Jake said slowly between coughs of blood.

With a palm swipe, he shattered her sternum and her body arched in the air as she was catapulted into the sidereal void, gawking at him indignantly. Before she was out of reach, he changed his mind and grabbed her sword arm, breaking her fingers straight off with a sharp twist, thereby forcing her to drop the sword. Then he kicked her again, for good this time.

Unknowingly, Jake had just done her a huge favor. Her last-second dismay and guilt had granted her a reprieve.

With his telekinesis he followed suit with Carmin, but remembered afterwards that she didn't have his Myrtharian Body. Still, he reassured himself that as a Blood Human, she should be able to survive for a while in outer space.

In any case, they had no choice. After another scan, he cast a guarded look in the direction of the reactors and realized that their time was running out.

The reactor containment vessel had completely melted, signifying the Fluid Artifact's destruction. Without the electromagnetic force confining the "sun" inside, it was slowly beginning to inflate. When this disappeared in its entirety, the sun would rapidly expand, bombarding the ship with neutrons that would lead to a nuclear chain reaction ending in a cataclysmic explosion.

' About 90 seconds...' Jake made a mental note before picking up Sarah's Myrmidian Sword.

This blade had been forged with about 25% pure Myrmidian blood and could be considered semi-living. Benefiting from the Self-Aether Encoding passive, the weapon would grow stronger by spilling the blood of its enemies and was normally attuned to whoever held it.

For non Myrmidians, it allowed the wielder to use a fraction of their power, while for Myrmidians their Bloodline Skills were somewhat magnified.

"Not bad. I'm borrowing this weapon for a few minutes, Sarah... You won't mind, will you? Of course not..." He nodded snidely as he shot a wrathful look at Nylreg overhead who was still trying to wrestle the Purgatory from him by squashing his will.

As he held the weapon, Jake immediately felt the immense Bloodlust Aura contained by the blade, but felt sorry for the choices Sarah had made. This weapon was not bad, but its strength far surpassed Sarah's fighting prowess.

To be quite frank, this weapon was more suited for an Evolver like him. Still, it wasn't his sword, but it made him eager to forge his own. He had seen the limitation of his equipment during this Ordeal.

' Boris, I have a deal for you.' Jake telepathically contacted the tattooed giant without breaking eyecontact with Nylreg. Dividing his attention under these conditions was extremely risky. 'You want the Purgatory I have, but I'm sure you've already figured out that Nylreg won't let anyone live. Let's kill this motherfucker first!'

He then told him his plan and the tattooed giant who seemed to have lost consciousness after crashing to the ground and losing his arm quietly raised his head and nodded. His fighting intent became crystal clear again and his right arm, which had been destroyed for the second time in a row, regenerated yet again and his height shrank to a mere 15 meters.

Lying on his back, the huge human got up unassisted with a loud flip.

"Together!" Boris roared.

His giant body suddenly deflated like a balloon and his right arm swelled in an inordinate manner, seeming to accumulate all the power of the Gorilla tattoo empowering his Gigantism. The purple lightning, flames and water covering his body also converged on his huge fist. This ultimate technique was outrageously slow to prepare, seeming to take at least a full minute for Boris' arm to reach its full power.

Jake didn't hold back either, and readily activated Bloodline Ignition well beyond its limits. His muscles nearly doubled in size and his barely audible heart, which had been beating at only one or two beats per minute, suddenly sped up to almost 500 times that rate and each beat was like a pounding drum. A hellish heat soon transformed him into a human sun, and a plasma vapor composed of his own blood soon oozed out of his pores.

"Oh?" Nylreg raised an intrigued eyebrow, but showed no sign of being frightened by Boris and Jake's transformation.

Wyatt stood by with the same torn expression on his face. His desire to kill Jake had given way to a deep inner turmoil. His indecision also conveyed a glimmer of hope that he had previously denied himself.

' Can they defeat him?' The Vampire Progenitor stared at Jake and Boris alternately before shaking his head. 'They can't. After all, I lost. It's not enough to threaten me, let alone Nylreg.'

But at that very moment Jake shifted into high gear and he swallowed his pessimistic words. Mouth agape, Wyatt saw him summon and activate the Purgatory that Nylreg so desired, transforming the ruined hangar into a mini volcano while his Aether Sun Core also appeared a few meters behind him, dispensing its scorching rays on this telluric world.

As he was hit by these rays, the blonde Vampire suddenly convulsed with an otherworldly pain. It was as if his very soul was burning. His skin instantly melted like wax on contact with fire and he soon looked like a gruesome zombie covered in blisters and third degree burns. His Vampire Progenitor Constitution and Vitality could do nothing against that.

The ring on his right ring finger with the crest of a griffin began to glow dangerously, then with a final sizzle that only Wyatt heard, it disintegrated. The Vampire's heart ached as he watched his precious ring disappear.

His pain instantly grew a hundredfold and he uttered his first squeal of pain, and it was only slightly more graceful than that of a pig at the slaughterhouse. After that, a red lightning bolt streaked past the hangar, and then decisively sped off into outer space. Wyatt was gone.

But it wasn't over yet.

Since Jake had never feared Wyatt, whom he knew to be the Kryptonite, all the measures he was setting up were only designed to target one and only one enemy: Nylreg.

Still lacking confidence, he also stripped off his liquid alloy armor, which he stored in his Space Storage. It was as if a normal 100kg human suddenly weighed only one or two kg. At this point, Jake almost had the illusion that he could fly away just by breathing out the air of his lungs. And he did.

Slowly, he began to float through the air with his silver hair flapping around from an invisible wind in the most flashy and deliberate way possible. The amount of light radiating from his body continued to soar, until no one could stare directly at him without frying their retinas, and all the while he watched Nylreg's reaction, but not once did Nylreg show any semblance of surprise or nervousness.

But yet again, Jake hadn't finished his preparations. After a brief hesitation, he still brought out the special box containing Xion Zolvhur's Soul Stone. It was his most valuable treasure, but one whose potential and risks he did not fully understand. A regular Red Soul Stone of the same size back then was already enough to make him go berserk and exhaust all his strength in just a few minutes.

With extreme slowness and delicacy, Jake gently proceeded to open the lid and just the hint of radiance that escaped gave him the distinct impression that his blood was about to start boiling.

"Are you done?" Nylreg interrupted them impatiently as he saw the act that Jake and Boris were playing on him.

Jake was still in the process of opening the chest for the past 20 seconds, while Boris was barely halfway through his energy transfer. His aura of lightning, water and flame was being transferred to his giant arm in small increments and the transfer was seemingly slowing down as he got closer to completion. If Nylreg still didn't understand at this point that they were trying to buy time, he would have lived all these years for nothing.

Caught red-handed, Jake closed the box, put away his Purgatory and Aether Sun Core while Boris's arm went back to normal size in a flash, his elemental auras nowhere in sight. Then, the two of them smiled.

"We're done, but are you ?"

Nylreg's eyes remained confused for a split second, then they widened in abhorrence.

BOOOOM!