The Oracle Paths

Maeve immediately felt the difference and stopped complaining. Without a word, she sat cross-legged and closed her eyes to focus on the pure energy strand just waiting to be digested.

Jake stepped out of the tent and stared blankly at the black sky above him. On top of a brawling ice giant and lava giant, his faction now had not one, but two Demonesses.

The next few days promised to be no picnic...

BOOOM!

As if to taunt him, a deafening shockwave shook the earth and as he turned his gaze to the east, Jake saw hundreds of uprooted trees streak across the sky like a giant firework.

"Fuck! What's going on now?!" He complained drowsily.

Helping Maeve purify the miasma in her body seemed easy, but it took all his mental strength. On the surface, Words of Power seemed omnipotent, and they were, but only within the confines of his True Will and Spiritual Energy.

Every time he used this Soul Class Spell, he depleted his Soul in more ways than one. Having lent his Soul Stone to Asfrid and the other Eltarians he had no more quick fixes to recover.

'I guess I'll have to resume my Spirit Body training.' He sighed as he flew towards the shockwave's epicenter.

On the way he crossed paths with Lucia, Asfrid, Enya, but also Drastan heading in the same direction to take a look around.

"You met Maeve I can tell... What did you think of her?" Enya asked gloomily.

The two sisters were familiar with Kyle and had wanted to take his sister under their wing, but the contact had been difficult. Recently, they had found the young woman increasingly taciturn and asocial, and they had concluded that she did not enjoy their company.

"Until Kyle is rescued I won't be able to fully address her issues." Jake replied flippantly. "But it should get better already."

No one could completely solve her problems unless they erased her traumatic memories. The abuse she had suffered at the hands of Bhuzkok was known only to him, Will, Fumdalf and Svara. And Kyle of course.

Fumdalf was the Nawai Spirit Mage who became pals with Will after he betrayed Bhuzkok. For obvious reasons he avoided hanging around her. The last time they had run into each other Maeve had tried to kill him. Fortunately, he was a post Fourth-Ordeal Player and he wasn't on Quanoth with them.

In reality, it was more of a tragedy for them. A Spirit Mage would have saved them a lot of losses against Shamash.

"I must apologize for Maeve's behavior." Drastan said out of the blue.

Jake and the others were taken aback by his guilty face. The Troll Hunter never gave them the impression that he was the kind of person to screw up.

"Hmm, what did you do?" Enya inquired worriedly.

The dark warrior chuckled bitterly at her question.

"Not much to be honest. While we were talking, I just mentioned that in order to defeat the Versing Trolls from my home planet, I became one myself. Sometimes you have to treat evil with evil. I didn't think Maeve would take my advice literally..."

"And how did you expect her to interpret it, dummy?!" Asfrid slapped him gently on the back of the head.

With an awkward look, the Hunter scratched his head and explained,

"I wanted to make her realize that not all demons are necessarily her enemies. This Hecate surely deserves to die, but her hatred should not be extended to their entire species."

"And you couldn't tell her directly?!" Enya yelled at him with an infuriated scowl.

" ... "

Trying to pacify the tensions, Jake grunted,

"Anyway, it could have been worse. She seems okay for now but we'll have to keep an eye on her. She seems to hate men so Enya, Asfrid and Lucia I'll leave you to deal with it. I hear she gets along well with Kewanee, so tell her to be extra vigilant and report any suspicious behavior immediately."

With that, they reached the epicenter of the explosion and an unexpected scene of conflict appeared before them. It looked like the standoff of a Western gun duel.

The first party consisted of fifteen huge, familiar-looking felines plus a huge bird.

The white lion at their head was four stories tall at the withers and was as long as a diplodocus with its tail. The tiger on his right was only slightly less massive, but his thick fur was wrapped in a dense halo of black lightning making him invulnerable.

It was obviously Mufasa and Shere Khan. In the band of felines, he also recognized his cat Crunch, as well as the pompous Lord Phenix.

His cat had also changed. His flattened head still looked as goofy as ever, but his long black fur gave the impression that he was even bulkier than Mufasa. His tail had also become freakishly long like a marsupilami's and he kept it curled up like a spring.

A huge turkey with plumage varying between golden yellow and vermilion red was perched on his head, its wings spread as if it wanted to cover Quanoth with its shadow. Each harmless beat of its wings raised terrifying gusts of flame, which a torrential rain continuously extinguished.

Lord Phenix, aka the orange turkey, had finally realized his dream. He had become a true phoenix, although he still had the soft, fleshy growth on his head characteristic of turkeys. It took away some of his charisma, but compared to before it was praiseworthy.

Behind these felines, thousands of equally imposing beasts stoically awaited their orders.

Among them was a mammoth the size of a building, a diamond-skinned rhinoceros five times longer and thicker than a tank, several birds of prey with the wingspan of an airliner, and a cobra long enough to circle a skyscraper several times.

It was the Giant Mammoth that continuously produced the torrential rain with its trunk to extinguish Lord Phenix's bursts of flame. The beast seemed to possess an inexhaustible reservoir of water, its skin attracting the humidity of the air from kilometers away like a super-powerful magnet.

The opposition was composed of only two individuals who seemed tiny in comparison: Lysander and Kenway. The two Alpha Werelions were glaring at the felines with arrogance and anger. Especially Lysander, he was fuming.

"What?! You refuse to submit to your Alpha?!" Lysander roared with rage as he transformed into a Werelion.

From a tall human, his body swelled to a humanoid lion of over twelve meters in height. Accompanying his younger brother, Kenway also transformed into a Werelion over twenty meters tall.

The two brothers simultaneously activated their Soul Class Skill Daemonification and their size doubled again, an overwhelming spiritual pressure falling on the enemy beast army.

Most of the animals subconsciously prostrated themselves, but the behemoths in the front line remained unmoved. Instead, Mufasa, Shere Khan and the other twelve felines stepped forward and let out a terrifying roar,

"ROOOOOAARRRRRR!"

The sound wave of their roar overlapped, forming a supercharged blast that clashed against the fists of Kenway and Lysander. A shockwave dozens of times more powerful than the previous one resulted from the collision and Jake couldn't help but exclaim,

"We need a zoo..."