The Oracle Paths

Laudar showed his mettle at that moment, for when he saw that his claymore had missed its target, he did not complain nor did he flinch. He nodded to Actalaus and with an unspoken agreement, the two partners turned around and separated.

Laudar dashed at Ruby with lightning speed, his claymore dragging on the ground behind him, spraying out sparks. As for his black pegasus, it went into a murderous or rather destructive rampage and began to trample to oblivion all the adventurers lying on the ground, whether they were already dead or just passed out.

Elduin and Bhammod shuddered in horror as they witnessed the carnage, but apart from hiding behind their bit of fence there was not much they could do. As long as these walls existed they would be stuck here with these three psychopaths.

"If I survive this mess, I swear I'll stop drinking." The dwarf whispered as he glanced tearfully at his latest empty pint.

"And me to stop snubbing the people around me." The elf snickered in a sullen voice.

"Hahaha... So we're well and truly screwed." Bhammod suddenly laughed out loud before suddenly choking on his saliva as he saw a gigantic black mass galloping ferociously towards them. "CRAP! That bastard horse is coming towards us! Run!"

CLANG!

At that moment, a deafening crash reached them and while fleeing the two adventurers were able to see from the corner of their eyes the young woman they hated with all their heart being blasted into the air, then violently smashing into the dome-shaped steel ceiling.

Laudar was clutching his claymore with both hands, his posture identical to that of a batter after a successful home run. He frowned with displeasure when he saw that she had not been instantly blown to bits. Just before impact, she had summoned a thick, round, military-grade shield and it had taken the brunt of the damage in her stead.

Embedded in the ceiling, leaving an indentation only a few inches deep, Ruby discarded her now unusable shield, revealing a pulverized arm. The bones inside had been crushed and several open fractures had made the whole thing hideously bloody.

A normal human would have been condemned to severe damage even if her arm was treated in time, but Ruby simply pressed the bones protruding out of her skin back into place, then using her innate limb transformation ability, which she owed to her Digestor half, she restored her arm to its original appearance.

Her face hollowed out slightly as she performed this magic trick, but a bluish halo suddenly exuded forth from her body and the temperature of the air and any object within tens of meters skyrocketed as their "coldness" converged on Ruby.

This icy energy, absurd as it may be, immediately restored her color and second after second she began to recover her strength. Laudar hadn't missed anything, but the burning field around Ruby had taken him by surprise.

No sooner had he stepped into that lethal zone than his leg began to sizzle like a steak on a barbecue. It wasn't just the contact with the hot air, but the atoms in his entire leg heating up without his consent. The blood in his leg began to boil, his muscles rapidly transitioned from solid to liquid to gas, causing inconceivable damage.

When the Baron pulled his leg out of the scorching no-man's land, his leg looked like a hideous, charred mess, as if someone had pulled the pin out of a grenade and thrown it into his boot.

"RRRRAAAAAAAH!" Even a warrior as hardened as Laudar could not bear such pain.

His Soul and Spirit Body were consumed by this mixture of pain and fury and when he raised his claymore above his head this time, a hundred times larger mirage of his blade formed above him, his killing intent so overwhelming that a faint of heart would have perished instantly.

The oxygen molecules that brushed against this mirage broke apart on contact, as if minced by an infinitely sharp energy. Even Ruby's burning domain disintegrated as it touched this impalpable energy.

In a wuxia novel, this energy might have been called Sword Qi, but in the Mirror Universe it was simply a physical manifestation of his willpower. No two were alike. His emotions, his Soul Class, his high Spirit Body Level and his own will had given birth to this unfathomable energy that no physical laws could clearly explain.

This was Laudar's True Will. The Baron existed only to kill and most of his crimes had been perpetrated with this claymore.

"DIE!" He shrieked as he brought his blade down with all his might.

Ruby, who had just about recovered from the previous strike, erected multiple walls of ice this time, using her Aether Core to the extreme, but how could these rickety walls condensed from the heated air around them withstand such a devastating force.

The ice walls shattered like thin glass being run over by a steamroller. Ruby tried to manipulate the surrounding metal, cooled lava, and even the Guild's crumbling ruins with telekinesis to build more defenses, but she found that nothing worked. In the Purgatory Dream, Jake controlled absolutely everything.

Finally infuriated and desperate, she scanned the area with her mental sense for someone to trade places with and ecstatically detected the two surviving adventurers, only to be quickly disappointed.

Bhammod and Elduin already had their backs to the wall with nowhere else to run and Actalaus had already reared up, ready to slam his hooves down with all his weight to stomp them to pieces. If she decided to teleport and switch places with them, she'd be trampled to death in a heartbeat.

"Jake, I'll remember this!" She huffed as she imagined the smirk that bastard must have been wearing at that moment.

When that bastard finally made up his mind to exact revenge, he didn't do things by halves!

'As spiteful as I am and he's not even a Digestor.' She chuckled bitterly before gripping her black medallion again and infusing it with billions of Aether points.

'This time it's going to cost me all my Aether.' She sighed with a lump in her throat.

Since her Oracle Device had overloaded, not even 0.6 seconds had passed and yet she was already out of breath and at the end of her rope. That was the problem with fights between high-level opponents. Their stamina may have been exceptional, but the sheer intensity of the exchanges was such that only a few seconds were enough to exhaust them. With a respite of a few seconds, they could quickly recover their strength, but only if their enemies gave them the opportunity...

The gigantic claymore was nearly upon her already and the air pressure produced by the sword had already squeezed her skin to the point of forming tiny beads of silver blood on its surface. As soon as she revealed her medallion, the speed of the huge blade instantly tripled.

How could a veteran warrior like Laudar, who had almost lost his life because of this medallion, underestimate her again. He had intentionally held back his strength to make her hesitate, and it was only when the medallion showed up again that he decided to strike with all his might.

This medallion was an overpowered Aether Artifact, but the world was fair and its activation conditions were relatively strict. On top of that, unlike Jake, Ruby hadn't yet managed to get herself accepted by the Artifact. She had to activate it manually every time she wanted to use it, as if she was asking for permission before using it.

Faced with this unexpected burst of speed, Ruby turned pale and hastily put her medallion away before summoning her Advanced Aether Artifact Sniper to use as a shield. It was the sturdiest object in her possession besides the medallion itself, but the medallion was not adequate against such a large attack.

'Myrgenian Trance! Telekinesis! Diaphanous State! Dream Ignition!'

She activated three Bloodline Skills and a Soul Glyph consecutively in a split second to boost her defensive abilities. Her body became translucent, as if light was streaming through it, and an invisible energy spread around her even faster than the claymore until it reached Laudar, who suddenly nodded off before abruptly reopening his bloodshot eyes and snarling contemptuously.

"A sleeping spell against a Rank-S adventurer? You're daydreaming!" The Baron spat out disparagingly as he continued his attack. His claymore had barely slowed for a microsecond before picking up speed again.

In a flash, the claymore crossed the rest of the distance and Ruby reflexively closed her eyes, accepting her fate. She still had a card to play, but even if she survived, she would be left with severe injuries.

She waited resolutely for the fateful impact, but it never came. A few seconds later, when she opened her eyes again, she was wrapped in a steel cocoon, her senses completely cut off from the outside world.

The metal enveloping her began to wiggle and in shock, she was propelled by the metal with each contraction before emerging again into an alleyway of Lodunvals half a minute later. Not far from her, Elduin and Bhammod were crouched on the ground with an equally incredulous expression.

Suddenly, a shadow flew over them, blocking out the sunlight, and looking up they recognized a giant handsome man streaked with veins of lava from whom an impressive heroic aura radiated. The three survivors recognized him at once, but their reaction was very different from each other.

"Uh, thanks, sir." Bhammod thanked him with a watery look as he uncorked a bottle of beer out of nowhere.

"Didn't you say you'd stop drinking if you survived?" Elduin nudged him quietly in a whisper. To Jake, he added, "Anyway, thanks for the help, but I don't like you for it. My friends are dead because of you two."

It was said. As for Ruby, she spat blood as soon as she recognized her savior. How could she not realize that he had been around all along, watching them struggle without moving a finger until the last moment.

"You... Bastard, I swear I'm going to kill you as soon as I get better." She made a series of insubstantial threats and while Jake was being insulted he suddenly started to laugh, which shut her up.

[Side Mission n°2 accomplished. Perfect Rating.]

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Ruby suddenly got a bad feeling.