The Oracle Paths

[How do you plan to train this time?] Xi sounded him out in all seriousness. [You've been training hard all year, and your physical attributes are already unusually high for a Fourth Ordeal Player. You have no shortage of skills either. Between your Bloodline abilities, your numerous Soul Glyphs and your new Soul Class you also have great versatility. Your Spirit Body is not weak either and you have already awakened your True Will.

[If I had to point out one weak point, it would be that none of your many abilities are really outstanding. The might you develop with it is only the result of your excellent intelligence and perception, but on Quanoth you are not the only genius with excellent stats. Your Grade 9 Bloodline would have made you an almost unmatched Player in any other Ordeal, but on Quanoth that puts you in the top tier at best.

[If you had years to train, because some of the Players are even more talented than you, and with even better Bloodlines, you still wouldn't be guaranteed to surpass them. Even if it were possible, those years spent training instead of completing your Ordeal Missions, would end up impacting your overall rating heavily. Especially since you don't have several years, but at best a few weeks or months.]

"And I'm well aware of all that." Jake replied calmly. "Last night's battles made me realize that the hard way."

[Oh? So what are you going to do?] She asked in a slightly surprised voice, with a hint of anticipation.

Jake closed his eyes, thoughtfully running his fingers over the smooth skin where the Runes that had allowed him to defeat the Alpha Were-Eagle had been incised. Then opening them wide again, he grinned,

"You made me choose this Soul Class for a reason, right? Every Ordeal has a theme and the one in Quanoth is the Soul. As you just said, my Body Stats are already extremely high compared to the extreme majority of natives and participants. I would even go so far as to say that no human native of this planet has physical attributes superior to mine if they were deprived of their Soul Class. It is their Spirit Body and the amplifying coefficient of their Soul Class that makes the difference.

" In this situation, my objective is clear. In the short term, if I want to progress quickly, I must leave the training of my body aside and concentrate on my Spirit Body. The Words of Power of my Rune Engraver Soul Class are rather simple to use and control, but the strain of willpower and mental energy is proportional to the greatness of the wish. After defeating the Alpha Were-Eagle, I was on the verge of fainting and barely able to fight. All the more reason to train my Spirit Body and my will. Aside from doing some experimentation, I wouldn't be able to increase my fighting power quickly.

" In this case, I have only two levers left to quickly improve." Jake concluded aloud. "The first is to use these Runes to forge and improve my Aether Artifacts. By significantly upgrading my equipment, I can instantly become much stronger. The second lever is to use my increased understanding of Runes to develop my Aetherist skills. This is something I've always wanted to do, but even with my growing cognitive abilities, the results have been slow to come. I didn't expect to achieve any tangible results until several years later, but that all changed with this Soul Class.

"If I increase my Spirit Body level, my Intelligence and Perception will increase, further accelerating the speed at which I master and understand new Aether Runes and Symbols. It's like killing two birds with one stone."

[So, you're going the mage road.] Xi remarked with no surprise this time.

" No, I am still a warrior." I'm still a warrior. Jake retorted sharply. "What good is it to me to know all these Words of Power and Aether Spells if I run out of mental power and Aether? Only if I can survive any attack at any time will I consider myself to have achieved my goal. For this I need a strong, indestructible and tireless body."

[But you said just before that your body would not be the focus of your training this time?]

"And that's the truth. I will use these Runes to become permanently stronger."

Xi remained silent for a moment, but with their minds linked she gradually understood what he intended to do.

[It won't be easy, but if you succeed, your power will put you on par with the most powerful natives of Quanoth.] She eventually agreed in a low tone. [Just one last warning. No matter how brilliant and daunting your plan may be, it's still Quanoth. If you can think of something like that, other players will find their own shortcut to power as well.]

"I know. But doing nothing would be even worse." Jake shrugged matter-of-factly. "Who knows? If my intelligence increases enough, maybe an epiphany will dawn on me and other options will open up."

Jake then went above the magma chamber, to the room he had prepared, then casting an apprehensive glance at the lava lake below him, he muttered with a dismal face,

" It' s time for the first step." Turning to Jeanie, who was still engrossed in an exciting discussion with her new artificial friend, he asked her to stay here and not to come near him.

Closing his eyes, his body suddenly collapsed on the ground like a disjointed puppet. His Spirit Body did not accompany his body in its fall, remaining stoically upright in the same posture. His unresponsive body showed no change except that his breathing had stopped, yet his exposed spirit body was immediately tugged by an unpleasant burning sensation.

His body was safe due to the high temperature of the cellar and its high constitution. It would probably take several months or years before his body began to decompose. But if he didn't return to his body, it would remain in the same place, utterly useless and unable to train or accomplish anything.

Jake could not accept this. To get stronger and train his Aetherist skills, he obviously needed his body.

'Here we go.' Jake sighed as he felt his spirit heat up achingly at such a mild temperature. Fortunately, his Myrtharian Soul gave him some tolerance to heat and radiation, making his mind less vulnerable than average to these kinds of energies. He had undergone such training in the past for a short time, and he knew what he was dealing with.

'This is not enough.' His Spirit Body gritted its teeth and hovering down to his passed out body he pulled out Xion's Soul Stone which he had previously taken out of his Space Storage. In this state, he had limited energy and physical strength amounting to only 1 or 2% of his true strength, but it was more than enough to handle small objects.

The only difficulty was that he had to focus intensely to condense his spirit and affect the material world. Otherwise, he was no different than a cloud of smoke, unable to grasp anything.

With the Soul Stone in hand, he then connected his mind to his Space Storage and as against the Alpha Were-Eagle, he stretched his mental sense to the max to set the Aether Sun Core as high as possible.

The temperature and radiation of the cave soared and an overwhelming pain assailed every part of his Spirit Body, as if his very soul had been set on fire. Jeanie had not lied when she said she was safe as a Nature Spirit and she continued to converse with her Oracle AI without noticing.

Struggling to ignore the pain, Jake flew laboriously toward his Aether Sun Core, like Icarus flying toward the sun, and his Spirit Body began to melt dangerously, the pain so bad he almost wanted to die to make it stop.

[Stay with me Jake, I know you can do it] Xi encouraged him non-stop, resuming her role as a coach.

Jake forcibly suppressed his pain in an unbelievable exertion of willpower, then split a strand of mental power and began to draw voraciously on the abundant energy stored within his Soul Stone. His Spirit Body, which had been shrinking at an alarming rate, immediately stabilized and even rebounded.

Ruthless with himself, Jake used this renewed vigor to fly higher, until even the Soul Stone could not stop him from burning up. Then he came down a little, until he found the previous equilibrium point.

The rest was only torment, despair and excruciating suffering. With his soul literally on fire, swept by dreadful radiations and scorching heat, it was impossible to express any coherent thought. The seconds turned into hours and the minutes into days, making the ordeal seem even more interminable.

To keep him going, Xi never stopped talking to him, and always had a joke or story to tell to keep his mind occupied. She needed to speak a lot at first, but after a few days it became less and less necessary.

Four days later, Jake flew closer to his Aether Sun Core on his own initiative, until the mental torture began again. Xi kept his mind busy again, babbling about everything and anything, but she soon realized that she didn't need to talk to him as much. He had already acclimated to this level of pain.

Three weeks later, Jake had moved several meters closer to his Aether Sun Core, but for the first time Xi didn't need to distract him. His Spirit Body had become several times denser, and although he was still in pain, he was now able to ignore the pain and think normally.

And being able to think meant that he could now move on to step two of his training plan: Rune study.