The Oracle Paths

At the same time as Crunch spoke, while thrashing hard in an attempt to get his broad shoulders through, the nearby wall buckled inwards, the bump resembling a hooked beak...

Hade teleported in panic in front of the "bump" and hit the wall with a fierce palm strike. The wall returned to its original shape and a squeak of pain echoed from the other side. Immediately afterwards, bumps began to distort the wall as if it were being jackhammered by a woodpecker.

"Wait for me here." The Fluid Grandmaster growled at Jake as he rolled up his sleeves. With a front kick second only to his friend's, he knocked the black cat's head out of the door and stomped off in an angry mood.

BANG, BAM, BANG!

"Damn it! How dare you ruin my beautiful plumage!" A shrill voice with a "turkey accent" began to squeak snottily from outside the workshop.

"You should have thought of that before you rammed my workshop with your goddamn beak!" Hade barked on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

BAM! BANG! BIM!

Jake, who had stayed inside, blinked stupidly, listening to the commotion with a bag of popcorn, erm, Adamantium marbles in his hand. How relaxing it was to not be the one losing his shit. He couldn't imagine what the two weirdos had done to get the old Fluid Grandmaster in such a state...

He didn't want to know.

The insults and cocky protests of the orange turkey dragged on for a few more minutes, always followed by a proper beating from Hade. At one point, Jake thought he heard some pained yowling during their tussle.

Soon, silence returned and an inarticulate groan croaked out,

"Pleaff stofp... I'm fworry..."

"I didn't hear you. What did you say?" Hade kept strangling him with a neck lock.

"I'm FWORRY!"

BANG!

"I'm sure you are!" His tormentor lashed out with a final kick that shook the camp.

Jake, who had stayed inside, put away his pack of treats when he saw Hade return, who was elegantly wiping his blood-covered hands with a white handkerchief.

"Cough, sorry for this embarrassing conduct. They've destroyed my workshop six times since they arrived and they steal the Fluid Artifacts I make when my back is turned. Oh, not to mention your cat Crunch, who loves to claw at Immyr's scales. That's part of the reason my dragon volunteered to escort Craig out of camp..." The young man apologized with a contrived smile. "I got a little carried away."

"No, no, I completely understand." Jake chuckled as he patted him on the shoulder. "Anyway, I better go check on my cat.

As he exited the portable fortress, he found red and orange feathers as well as tufts of black hair everywhere plus numerous impact craters. Lord Phenix was still lying on his back, his talons pointing skyward and flailing pitifully. Crunch had curled up in a ball on top of a nearby hill and obviously a terrific blow had sent him flying there.

Seeing his master approaching, Crunch timidly poked his head out of his furry bulges and after making sure the other lunatic wasn't there he immediately regained his smug countenance.

"Master, I was looking for you!"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You already told me that. Tell me what you have to say."

Jake obviously knew why the cat was looking for him, but upon looking at his arrogant face he couldn't bring himself to congratulate him so easily. Crunch's wiggling ears flattened in disappointment as he received his master's rather cold reception.

Clearing his throat, or rather vomiting a hairball, Crunch reached into his fur with his pink pads and pulled out a peculiar object resembling a 20-sided translucent die. A grid of multicolored light ran across the surface and inside the object, producing psychedelic patterns several hundred times a minute that never recurred.

"What's that?" Jake inquired, his curiosity overriding his desire to belittle his cat's overinflated pride.

"The Codex of Aurae, meow." Crunch revealed smugly. "Me and Lord Phenix were hunting Players for their liquid alloy and Aether like you ordered us to and we had a blast. But for the last one, the Oracle Path led us to a recently excavated underground cavern and we finally found signs of our target's passage. Since we were too big, we had to widen the entrance, but we ended up in old ruins lined with traps. Luckily for us, most of them had been set off by our target. We ended up finding our target AND the treasure room. Our target was a much tougher Manticore than we thought and if Lord Phenix hadn't bitten his balls from behind, ahem I mean distracted his attention, I wouldn't have been able to deliver the fatal blow... We found the Codex of Aurae on his corpse. With the treasure room empty when we arrived it was probably the Artifact that these ruins guarded."

Jake cringed as he imagined the scene and he couldn't help but feel sorry for that poor Manticore, even though he was the one who gave them the order to hunt down and dismember Players from other factions for their liquid alloy. Dying like this in front of these two bastards, the Manticore must have felt a deep sense of injustice and anger.

At that moment, he began to wonder if by giving this order he was not creating for himself a considerable number of enemies. But he would not change his decision. This was the only way to achieve his ambitions.

Jake took the Aurae Codex from his cat's paw and immediately ran an Oracle Scan on it.

[Gold Aether Artifact: Codex of Aurae. An artifact created by Aurae, the System Designer himself. Whoever holds it can synchronize the Artifact with the World, Domain or private Dimension of their choice and thus gain the power to change the rules and laws that govern that World within the limits of the Codex of Aurae. The item also works with Artifacts with their own dimensions, but also Domains resulting from Aether Spells or other similar individual faculties. The Codex of Aurae can only be synchronized with one World or Domain at a time and the larger the space you are trying to synchronize and the higher its Aether Density the longer it takes.

Planet currently synchronized 1/1: Quanoth]

Jake's eyes widened as he read the last line. This coincidence was far too incredible to be true, right? He immersed his consciousness in the Codex and immediately understood how it worked.

"Truly worthy of a Gold Aether Artifact." Jake sighed with emotion.

He was so euphoric that he didn't realize his cat had snuggled up to him and that he was mindlessly petting its head. It was only when he was disturbed by the cat's thunderous purring that he became aware of what he was doing.

But even as he realized it he couldn't help but exclaim with a big smile,

"Good job Crunch."

"Hey I contributed too!" Lord Phenix's whiny voice chirped from down the hill.

The former turkey had finally finished growing back all his feathers and was flying heavily towards them, flapping his wings in a clumsy fashion.

"Thanks to you too, Lord Phenix." Jake praised him in high spirits as well. He could let the turkey believe he was a phoenix for a day.

With this artifact he was even more confident that he could accomplish his plan and exact his revenge. In fact, he could even start now.

While checking the Codex features he soon realized that changing the settings of Quanoth was not free. Each change cost a lot of Aether. However, the payoff was worth the investment.

He could at any time undo the Digitalization of natives and Players, remove the Aether limiter that affected all Players and natives except for those rare Aetherists like himself, but also change the spawn rate of all sorts of creatures.

Having hardly explored the Wilderness, he had never considered the question, but Quanoth being less than a thousand years old, it was impossible to populate such a planet in such a short time. The divine hand of Aurae had necessarily intervened and he now knew that this Codex could reproduce its abilities identically but on a smaller scale.

He could also replace the Mana prevalent on Quanoth with Aether or any other energy of his choice if he wanted to and a genius idea began to form in his mind. What if he replaced all the Mana and Aether on the planet with Reiga?

Wouldn't that disable almost all the natives and players on the continent? The Mana Superstorm would become a Reiga Superstorm and from that moment on all dreams were allowed.

"We have another little problem, boss." Lord Phenix said suddenly, remembering the stele they had found in those ruins.

"What is it?" Jake asked unsuspectingly.

"Apparently this isn't the only artifact Aurae left on this planet..."

"Fuck!"