The Oracle Paths

Feeling something bounce against his back, Jake then heard the thud of the blade hitting the grass, and he gave the young woman a scoffing, murderous scowl.

"How does it feel to be at the mercy of someone you were trying to kill just minutes earlier?" Jake didn't hesitate to stir the pot to make her seethe even more.

Ruby tried to keep a straight face, but she was grinding her teeth so hard that it sounded like the shrill screeching of an iron bar being twisted. Her hate-filled amethyst eye also pulsed with a bright silver luster.

A new throwing knife appeared in her hand and her muscles contracted so hard that they almost doubled in size. All the while, Ruby had retained her true appearance and the silvery chitin covering her skin took on increasingly sharp and needle-like shapes. Her hostility was almost palpable and she seemed possessed by it.

When she threw her knife this time, Jake used his telekinesis to block the attack. The knife was easily stopped, but a slight gust of air caused by the projectile's sudden deceleration still hit his face. If he had not defended himself, he would have been injured. Still, it was far from enough to kill him.

Unless her Digestor part strengthened drastically, he had nothing more to fear from the young woman.

With foolproof equanimity, Jake picked up the two knives from the grass with exaggerated detachment, then gave her a falsely pitying look as he stood up.

"It would seem that your Digestor part is not fully subject to the Slave Contract." Jake commented offhandedly, confirming his suspicions. "I can't believe that a girl as sweet and sunny as you could degenerate to this point. Have you already given up? Or has the you standing in front of me always been the real you?"

Ruby, who wore a feral expression, was deeply unsettled by his words. The evil silver glint in her amethyst eye dimmed markedly, and a more familiar, anguished expression crept across her face.

"Even if I explained it to you, you wouldn't understand." She blamed coldly. "Assume that the Ruby before you is the real Ruby. It's easier that way. Don't give me any chance to kill you or you'll pay for it with your life. And that goes for all of you." She added as she brushed her eyes over the other group members.

"Sure." Jake said as he ogled her lewdly from head to toe. "But if you want your threats to be taken seriously, start by getting dressed first."

The young woman froze as she received this jibe, and finally noticed the insistent leering of Trash, Elduin and Bhammod. Her cheeks turned slightly pink before returning to their usual sickly pallor. Then, she snorted in scorn, and though she continued to sport a proud, icy facade, she hurried back to her human appearance and put on a pair of pants, a blouse, and a pair of boots that matched the bland colors of the dimly lit clearing around them.

"It seems you can still feel some shame." Jake teased her mirthlessly. "Although I must admit, I don't understand why you don't wear armor like everyone else. Wasn't the previous incident enough for you?"

"My armor is no match for my chitin." She retorted laconically.

"Fair point." Jake nodded.

After a year of training in the Purgatory, Jake could easily craft inferior Aether Artifacts from the materials around him, but he couldn't adjust their measurements easily. For this reason, he had several sets of identical armor in various sizes in his space storage.

These armors had no special abilities, but they boosted his attributes by about 1%, were shape memory and could withstand very high temperatures. The next step was to forge one with his blood to give them evolutionary potential and abilities aligned with his Bloodline. It was still a huge challenge for him, but some Myrmidians like Lucia were innately capable of it.

Jake and his new companions then spent most of the afternoon covering the last few dozen kilometers separating them from Laudarkvik on foot. They could have gone much faster (with the exception of Trash and Jeanie, everyone had superhuman physical abilities), but they deliberately took their time.

Bhammod claimed not to know much about this city, but he had a lot to say about this infamous place. Whether it was Jake or Ruby, they did not want to repeat the experience of Lodunvals.

Jake hadn't really made a mistake, other than underestimating the Lodunvals adventurers when he exposed Jeanie's presence, but Ruby was hanging onto his every word for... understandable reasons. She listened to the dwarf's words with the firm intention of never repeating such a day.

Bolstered by her success in charming a group of talented adventurers, she had irrationally provoked a potential enemy unaware of her presence, only to be given the beating of her life by both that enemy and another city native, ending up the slave of the former. One could hardly do worse as a morning.

She, who was once one of the elites of the government's Prodigies program, could hardly recognize herself in the mirror. She really had acted like an idiot...

'I hate my personality.' She lampooned as she glanced wistfully toward Jake. 'He must hate me too now.'

Of course he hated her. Jake couldn't read her mind, but anyone who tried to kill him was his mortal enemy. Now that she was his slave, the only thing that had changed was that he was now in a dominant position. And he had every intention of putting this advantageous situation to good use.

During the afternoon walk, Jake and his group passed through several villages. These were inhabited by ordinary human farmers, and for a moment they doubted the disastrous rumors about this region. If Bhammod had not briefed them on the way, they might have fallen for it.

First of all, the walls surrounding each village were not meant to protect the citizens, but to keep them from leaving.

"It doesn't look all that bad here..." Trash remarked as he received the wink of a girl his age sashaying over to him suggestively.

Ten seconds later, he had lost his dagger unknowingly. Neither Jake nor the others deigned to warn him. Seeing his downcast countenance a few minutes later, Jake apathetically blurted out,

"That'll teach you not to heed advice. There are no innocents here."

On the surface, the villages were prosperous, clean and teeming with people, but if one really paid attention one could see a certain underlying gloom and anxiety flickering in the eyes of each of these countrymen. People did not shake hands, did not hug nor kiss each other. They were also all armed and their weapons were not chosen at random.

In addition to an ordinary steel dagger or sword, they all had a silver weapon. Most of them reeked of garlic, wolfsbane or other herbs reputed to be effective against monsters, while a purse stuffed with salt was fastened to the belt of each of them, including the children. Some of them had smeared and rubbed themselves with several of these substances, making them stink from dozens of meters away.

These normal people did not realize it, but invisible miasmas enveloped them when they were not outright ghosts with unclear intentions. The ones who had coated themselves with salt seemed to attract less of it than the others, but they still had two or three around them.

In a dark alley, Jake saw a young man being dragged into the darkness by a red-eyed woman half his size, and after a scream of terror, sucking sounds echoed through the alley. For a brief second he considered saving him, but after a few sips the vampire closed the wound with her saliva and snapped her fingers to end the hypnosis.

The young villager woke up disoriented and lost, but the vampire was already gone and he foolishly went about his business. The group heard him grumbling in a low voice as he passed them by,

"Damn it! I got screwed again. That's the third time this week."

Examining him fleetingly, Jake actually counted six scar points corresponding to three different pairs of canines. From this initial observation, he and the others studied the other villagers crossing their path one by one and discovered that most of them had similar scars on their necks or elsewhere.

And those were the relatively luckier villagers. Many of the less fortunate were missing an arm or a leg, while others had their faces and eye sockets hollowed out as if all their vitality had been wrung out.

The more fortunate citizens had their own bodyguards and tended to be less affected than the others, but most still had several permanent sequelae, such as a badly healed bite or a missing finger.

Overall, the most common aftereffect was that all these humans looked older than their age. Jake couldn't have guessed that at first glance, but the scan couldn't lie. The peasants who looked about 50 to him were rarely older than 35.

The guards patrolling these villages were no more serene than the citizens they were supposed to be defending, and Jake was surprised that they never intervened despite the incidents and crimes that went on all day long.

But when a couple of villagers tried to flee their village on horseback, a whole squadron of forty horsemen was immediately sent after them.

'Bhammod was right. These humans are cattle.' Jake sighed as he witnessed this time a cannibal man being arrested for eating his sister.

The prisoner pleaded his innocence to the guards, his face streaming with tears, but a shaggy, muscular man with yellow eyes took over from the jailers a few minutes later and took him to another room for questioning. No sound came out, but the next moment the same man arrested the prisoner's mother, who immediately turned into a hideous hairy beast and tried to run away on all fours.