The Oracle Paths

In an unrecognizable training chamber, a Myrtharian stood alone in the midst of the chaos. The temperature inside the room had exceeded one million degrees and the radiation was such that anything exposed to it for more than a second would become radioactive for thousands of years, tainting anything that came near it.

Lightning bolts larger than a man's thigh constantly bombarded the solitary figure standing in the center of this hot hell, while the man himself had become the heart of a cyclone of Adamantium and other magical metals that had long since turned to plasma due to the apocalyptic weather conditions.

But what was even stranger than the fact that Jake stood indifferently inside this hellish world was that there was no light, no sound. For experimental purposes, Jake himself had sealed off all his senses with various Aether Spells except for pain.

He didn't want to forget the scorching agony that accompanied the ignition of his Soul. It was a sure sign that he was making progress.

Besides Jake, a conspicuous black steel boulder stoically braved the elemental storm a few hundred meters away from him. It was a reputedly indestructible material found only in the innermost cores of the densest neutron stars of the ancient Systems: Star Black Iron.

It was a mineral that was countless times harder than Oranium, let alone Adamantium. To obtain it in reality was virtually impossible, even for the Evolvers of those old Systems, but for training purposes Mirror Vanguard's Purple Hell could conjure up an illusion of it as it did with Gumdolite.

At that moment, in that dark hell, Jake lifted his hand blindly in front of him and squeezed the air. An invisible aura imbued with an unbreakable will swept through time and space and in perfect coordination with his grabbing motion, deep indentations shaped like his fingers, but a hundred times larger, deformed the Star Black Iron boulder. Where these indentations were located, the rock reddened and vibrated under the effect of some fantastic fundamental forces.

The lack of grinding, the pitch blackness, and the utter silence made it seem as if he had just clamped down on a piece of soft clay, but in reality he had almost crushed one of the hardest ores in the Mirror Universe.

After that first attempt, Jake gripped the void several times, but the flame of will blazing in his pupils dimmed as a result until he no longer had the strength to stand and even forgot what he was doing here.

The fail-safe he had set activated and the Aether Spells sealing his senses cleared. Jake took a long breath and opened every pore of both his physical and spiritual bodies, then let lightning, heat and radiation seep into him, threatening to blow him up.

At the same time, he made use of this excess energy and began to excrete alarming amounts of metals and magic rocks with his Gold Stone Skin, which he immediately reabsorbed into his skin. The cycle repeated itself at an increasing rate, until moments later Jake's mind was back to full strength. It seemed even more powerful than before.

Jake closed his eyes to assess the changes in him, then with ruthlessness to himself sealed his senses again and renewed the experiment.

'I shall not be satisfied until I can crush all that stands in my way. Lost Divinities, Schwazens or Digestors, it won't be the same next time.'

*****

In a room filled with screens broadcasting live what was happening in the different training rooms, Vexa and Prysm were in each other's arms, watching the different screens earnestly.

"Do you think we made a mistake giving those Myrtharian Nerds access to our Purple Hell?" The flower woman jested as she nibbled on her beloved's ear.

The cube man scowled instead of relaxing as he received her teasing.

"No. But I'm surprised. I'm afraid Lost Divinities kicked a hornet's nest this time. It would be great if they were outdoing themselves like this to defeat the Digestors and those Corrupted Schwazens, but they are for the most part humans. These lesser creatures don't think that far ahead. They may have acquired great power and all sorts of bloodlines, but I don't think they have such a sense of selflessness."

"Then why help them?" Prysm asked curiously, even though she had a pretty good inkling of the answer. "You used all your quotas and salary for the last three months to fund their training. Even for a disciple of Aas like you that seems quite lavish."

Vexa didn't answer immediately, first staring intently at the screen displaying Jake motionless in that grabbing position, then uttered,

"Potential. I thought Jake was promising, but I was wrong. They all are. Azeus, Tim, Crunch, Lord Phenix, Lucia, Gerulf, Rogen and the few other Myrtharian Nerds who have joined us in the last few weeks are all stellar talents. But he... He's a slumbering monster and I think Ael and all of his recent setbacks have managed to stir him up a little bit."

" This... I never thought I would ever hear those words come out of your mouth when talking about a human from a lower Seed World." The flower woman gasped as she looked back at Jake's screen, "Of all the True Wills of Habits I didn't think he''d pick one so plain. But aren't his improvements a little too terrifying?"

"They are..." Vexa sighed pensively. "No matter how motivated he is, his Bloodline and current stats are not enough to explain his strides. I have asked one of our higher-ups in System ZZ831 to investigate his origins and the exact details of his previous Ordeals."

At that moment the control room door opened itself and a greenish humanoid alien with a long independent tail ending in a scorpion stinger entered the room unannounced.

"His last name is Wilderth, right? Ring any bells?" Radur crashed into the couple's discussion, sitting shamelessly in the chair formerly occupied by Prysm before she lovingly plopped herself down in Vexa's lap.

"Please spare us your jokes. It's not funny at all." Vexa snarled coldly. "I considered this possibility from the beginning, but it's just a last name. A mere coincidence. The other members of his family are all very talented compared to the humans of the Earth they come from, but not so talented as to defy reason. On the other hand, if Jake had even one drop of Wilderth blood running through his veins we wouldn't be busting our brains over this Schwazen threat. Instead, we'd be thinking about how to negotiate with him so he'd spare us."

Radur chuckled sinisterly as he saw his friend's extreme reaction.

"You seem pretty sure of yourself, but what do we know about the Wilderths? Do we even know who his parents are?"

Vexa's face twitched.

"They've been missing since the day thousands of rifts appeared on their planet... No luck for them, a Digestor invasion..." The cube man growled with a hint of pity in his voice. "But he has a paternal grandfather still alive, a Sixth Ordeal Evolver."

"Hmm?" Radur found it hard to remain unmoved. "That's... not bad I guess. Six Ordeals in such a short time is ballsy, but the fact that he's still alive offsets much of the downside. I guess he's taking all these risks to protect his family. How noble."

"At least it's more noble than these navel-gazing super factions who refuse to put their personal interests aside in the face of a common threat likely to kill us all." Prysm harrumphed as she averted her gaze from the brash alien.

"Speaking of those factions. What happened to the Primal Longhorn you were charged with destroying? You've been suspiciously evasive on the subject since you showed up." Vexa suddenly switched topics.

Radur's laid-back demeanor fell apart, giving way to a dismal mood.

"We lost. Anti-Life got their hands on the Antimatter bug."

"Are you messing with us?!" Prysm exclaimed in horror, her petals bristling as if she had goosebumps.

"I wish I could say I was, but I'm not." The alien sighed, slumping into his leather chair." While our forces were scattered across Quanoth, facing all sorts of planetary threats, Anti-Life made a deal with Lost Divinities through Vhoskaud. As you know, Anti-Life and Replicators have always been good friends..."

"Ael..." Vexa muttered glumly. "That'll be one more variable in this Ordeal ending. I have a nagging feeling that Mirror Vanguard won't win the final battle this time..."

"Yeah... The Nullifier is one of the only Players in this Ordeal who does not fear the destructive potential of the Primal Longhorn." Radur smiled wrily. "Knowing his character, I'm sure he secretly wants Anti-Life to blow up the Antimatter bug before they have time to clone it. That way, he won't have to worry about who to sacrifice among his subordinates. Of the 10,000 spots aboard the Celestial City, we would be down to a few hundred after such a huge cataclysm... The Ordeal would end instantly."