The Oracle Paths

The freakish drop-shaped turquoise alien suddenly began to vibrate and an invisible force field stretched out, pulsing like a beating heart. It and the black hole woman were enveloped by the protective force field giving the impression that they were trapped in a soap bubble.

If someone looked at them from the other side of the force field, they would have caught a glimpse of two tiny, distorted figures as if they were kilometers away. No sound escaped, and the outer air molecules coming into contact with the force field would reappear on the other side without showing any sign of discontinuity in their movements.

"You may begin, Neri." Psykow beckoned her with its shrill dolphin voice.

After entering the code, the black hole woman unscrewed the lid and plunged her hand inside. She pulled it out a moment later with an insect about two centimeters long on her fingertip. The bug looked like an ordinary cockroach and crawled along her hand in a harmless manner.

Someone who didn't know what it was would have thought it was just another insect, but in reality if anyone other than this female Player tried to touch this insect directly a cataclysmic explosion would immediately follow.

"How cute..." She murmured with a touch of tenderness. Since her face was an ocean of darkness it was difficult to estimate what she was really thinking.

"Neri. The mission." Psychow reminded her numbly.

"Right... I like you little bug, but alas your life expectancy is far too short. Adios..."

With a thought, the insect was teleported by an Oracle Skill into the very center of the Celestial City. As it came into contact with the air, the detonation was immediate and an apocalyptic explosion engulfed the city and far beyond, generating a ball of white light brighter than the sun.

The superheated air collapsed on itself, and a fragile Space Rift tore through the atmosphere for dozens of meters. It closed right away, but was immediately followed by a massive plasma blast at several million degrees.

From the epicenter of the explosion, the shockwave spread in the blink of an eye in all directions, colliding with the black cloud curtain less than three seconds later. No one could hide, and everyone without exception was hit by the blast.

The two Anti-Life Players waited patiently for the fallout from the anti-matter explosion to end, then when things calmed down Psykow deactivated the protective force field.

"Wonderful." He praised placidly.

All of the Players and natives killing each other on the surface had been wiped out. The Celestial City and its surroundings were shrouded in dead silence, all infrastructure and landforms having been completely flattened by the blast.

It was only several minutes later that a few survivors emerged from their hiding places. A Drur warrior sprang from the ground under which he had been buried and spat a stream of purple blood onto the ground. His skin was charred and his battle suit had completely melted. If not for his insane Constitution, the energy shield covering his body and the sacrifice of his units, he would have perished like the others.

An extremely dense fog of water vapor cleared to the southeast of Celestial City, and a colossal Sea Serpent more than 500 meters long nestled within it uncoiled its body and its large, hidden triangular head rose timidly. Thousands of blue-green scales littered the ground, most of them vaporized. At a glance, one could tell that this frightfully dense fog was once a titanic wall of ice.

A Leviathan resembling a huge mosasaur floating in the sky suddenly fell out of the black clouds covered with wounds caused by severe electrocution. To survive the anti-matter explosion it had gained too much altitude. It had chosen the lesser evil.

Inside the Celestial City, several Players and natives also emerged from their hiding places with varying degrees of injury. Mages had used their Forbidden Spells, some taking refuge in special dimensions or using arcane magics to redirect the power of the blast or negate the damage they had sustained.

A three-meter tall man in gleaming plate armor worthy of the heroes of legend planted his heavy sword on the ground and leaned on it to catch his breath. Incredible as it may seem, he was out of breath and covered in sweat, but he had withstood the blast without suffering any apparent injury.

"Whoever did this, I must thank you." The warrior grunted as he coughed up a bloody mucus forgetting that he was still wearing his helmet.

With that blast, the hard fight ahead of him had come to an early end.

Like this native, the Players inside the Celestial City fared better than the survivors hit by the blast outside. Although they were closer to the epicenter, they had one major advantage: their surroundings.

Despite the sheer force of the blast, Celestial City was perfectly intact. By taking cover inside or behind these buildings, the danger had been partially negated, but that didn't mean that anyone could exploit this advantage.

Those able to stay in the Celestial City for so long were the World Bosses of this planet, whether they were Players or natives. The warrior who took the blast head-on with his blade alone was practically a legend on Quanoth.

According to rumors, Galadin was the only SS-Rank Adventurer on the continent, and he constantly wandered from one end of Quanoth to the other without ever revealing his tracks. If it weren't for the inevitable end of the world, he would never have made it to the heart of the Shatug Empire.

Oblivious to the carnage they had just caused, Psykow and Neri exchanged a solemn glance in the direction of Vhoskaud, who had also survived, and the android nodded again. There was still no trace of Lost Divinities and Mirror Vanguard, so they had to do it again.

With excitement that was hard to contain, the black hole woman entered the container code again and plunged her hand inside. This time she pulled out a much larger and fatter insect than before. This one had the dimensions of a Hercules beetle and weighed at least 150 grams.

Seeing the weight of the insect, Psykow's thirteen eyes widened slightly and it urgently erected a double force field around itself. Oblivious to its agitation, Neri smiled and said goodbye to her new friend before teleporting it to the same place as the previous one.

BOOOOM!

This time, the two Anti-Life Players did not wait for the fallout of the explosion to subside before observing the results. For this was not a single explosion, but a series of endless detonations that lasted for dozens of minutes in a row.

Confident, Psykow deployed his mental sense throughout the atomized area and cautiously searched for a trace of its enemies.

"Found one."

As it had hoped, the explosion was far too terrifying this time to be silently weathered. Not to mention the fact that the curtain was rapidly closing and the area had shrunk quite a bit in the last two minutes. Hiding was becoming increasingly difficult.

When the blast hit the outskirts of the Celestial City, a huge Yellow Cube, 100 meters wide, appeared out of nowhere and took the superheated shock wave head-on. After the blast passed, the cube flickered dimly and then shut down, revealing a single man covered in sweat.

"Vexa. We finally flushed out our first big fish." Psykow said apathetically in its dolphin-like voice.

"But why is he alone? Where are his other companions?" Neri pouted.

"Mirror Vanguard has a Gold Replica Artifact called Purple Hell. It's a special dimension they use for training, but I wouldn't be surprised if he used it to keep his subordinates safe."

"But if he does that, the Players from his faction won't be considered part of the 10,000 winners. A Player must be physically present to claim a spot on the Celestial City." Neri pointed with mild disbelief.

"Isn't that the same strategy we follow?" Psykow chuckled. "As long as their presence isn't needed, there's no point in deploying our own troops. It would unnecessarily put their lives in danger."

At that moment, the alien's central eye blazed fiercely and it laughed grimly,

"But now that we've found our first target, we can focus on it. If Lost Divinities lets Mirror Vanguard get wiped out without reacting, then that means I've greatly overestimated them. Or underestimated, heh."

*****

Dozens of kilometers below the Celestial City, Jake and the other Myrtharian Nerds breathed a sigh of relief when the shaking ended. This time they had really thought they were not going to make it. If not for the artifacts Jake and Hade had crafted a few days earlier, most of them would probably have perished.

"I can't believe those explosions made all our Oracle Shields go into overdrive." Lucia sighed in disbelief. It was just mind-boggling.

Only Jake's Oracle Shield and those of a few Kintharians like Gerulfs had held up, but that was because they were not afraid of heat or radiation.