The Oracle Paths

Jake immediately threw up his guard, sensing an approaching attack. The Mana Storm suddenly condensed into a huge claw that slammed into him. He dodged with a backward somersault, but the mass of Mana he was swimming in gathered into vines and bound his arms and legs, suspending him in the air.

Jeanie's conjured Water Spirit Shield began to glitter and sparkle brightly as she tried to purify all that Mana as quickly as possible, but meanwhile Jake was effectively immobilized.

Contracting all his muscles as hard as he could to wriggle free, his biceps swelled, large blackish veins crawling across his skin. His legs in particular were already beginning to lose feeling under the influence of the Mana Storm poisoning them from within.

Sadly, the harder he tried to free himself, the more the Mana Storm kept coalescing on him, strengthening his bonds and straining Jeanie's barrier. With their wits about them, both Jake and Xi instantly predicted how this would play out and how long it would take.

"No! I will not allow myself to be trapped alive like this!" Jake snarled.

On impulse, a burst of black lightning streaked out from his body, poking holes in the Water Spirit Shield. The black lightning he had learned from devouring the dark clouds preceding the Mana Storm did not dissipate as quickly as the ordinary lightning he had tested earlier.

The condensed Mana binding him and suspending him in the air didn't give way to the black lightning, but the tremendous influx of destructive energy did momentarily destabilize the space in that area. Jake's eyes widened and he suddenly glimpsed a solution.

Grabbing the air in front of him, he condensed his True Will and gripped the whole space around himself. Aside from nearly imploding by mistake, he managed to mimic the insulating properties of Psykow's psychic shield with moderate success.

This one feat consumed 75% of his Spirit Body's energy, most of which immediately vaporized upon contact with the Mana Storm. His previously optimal mental condition deteriorated sharply and he found himself in dire straits once again.

As he kept clenching his fist to maintain the Grabbing Spell, he wiggled it to move the bubble in which he had insulated himself towards Ruby's presumed direction. A spinning vacuum sphere burst through the air like a shooting star and slammed into its rapidly mutating target like a meteor.

SHRRIIII!

Digestor Ruby, who had been standing prostrate on all fours, her wings outstretched and her mouth wide open to siphon off the Mana Storm, plowed hard into the ground, spitting out a spray of silvery blood that managed to freeze the Mana unfortunate enough to come into contact with it.

Having almost exhausted his True Will, Jake used what was left to draw Words of Power on his body with his telekinesis, more precisely on his digestive organs. Runes like "Perfect Digestion," "Instant Assimilation," " Making Mine Own the Strength of My Food," and other such periphrases expressing the same notion were stacked on top of each other, sapping what little Soul Power and Spirit Power he had left.

[Don't forget the Codexes in your possession.] Xi reminded him to make sure they had their best shot.

Jake equipped the five fused Codexes in his left hand and attempted to control the Mana Storm's behavior with them. The result was disappointing, because if there was a difference, it wasn't enough to affect the game.

'At least we tried.' He sighed bitterly.

The Grabbing Spell dissipated and the bubble melted away. Jake's consciousness also blurred and his ability to think quickly deteriorated. However, he had no intention of removing the Runes from his body.

'Now it's just a bet between who will collapse first between my mind and my body." Jake lampooned as he let his fighting instincts take over.

His last coherent thought faded and he went into reflex mode, even allowing Xi to take control of his body if necessary. It was the kind of unspoken cooperation that only he and his Oracle AI could achieve.

Digestor Ruby glared at him, but received his fist in the face. Instead of dodging his second fist, she opened her mouth and tried to gobble it up. Jake pulled back at the last moment and brought his elbow down on her skull, smashing her head into the ground.

Xi, who was in charge, noticed that every time Ruby was stunned, the Mana Storm around them returned to its original formless state. Jake, who had begun to claw at her, closed his fists again and focused exclusively on her face, nailing her head deep into the ground.

SHRRIIII!

Ruby's tail snapped up behind Jake, who was beating her pretty face like a maniac, straddling her chest. It reared back and its sting took Jake's neck as its target.

His sense of danger alerted him at the last moment and tilting his head to the right he narrowly dodged the deadly attack. In one motion, he sliced Ruby's tail with his claws, but only managed to chip away at her chitin. Having failed, he dropped his Codexes and, with his free left hand, grabbed her tail before it could retract.

Disregarding Ruby's face, he stomped on the fearsome appendage to lock it in place, then pulled hard on it with both arms. Ruby's venomous tail was violently torn off, releasing sprays of silver blood.

Jake seemed to have the upper hand physically, but only Xi knew how critical the situation was. To gain that slight advantage, she had been manipulating his Aether flows and other physical amplification abilities like Bloodline Ignition, Aether Conversion, and her Myrtharian Warrior Trance with utmost precision.

If it was true that Jake was able to deliver enough strength to rip her tail off, it was because he was attacking intelligently by focusing on the enemy's weak joints while focusing most of his Strength Aether into the limbs needed for the actual attack.

Because the Mana Storm was still rampaging through Jake's body, Xi knew that even relying on the Liquid Alloy network she would soon no longer be able to manually activate his abilities nor tap into his Aether and Reiga Core at the risk of damaging the Oracle Device itself.

SHRRIIIIII!

Jake swung his head back to dodge a clawed beheading, then pummeled her with his punches again. With surgical efficiency, he dislocated each of the creature's joints, occasionally releasing it to avoid the jutting quills of its chitin.

The only hitch was that although Jake was no longer thinking, Xi could see that Ruby was not fully focused on their fight. Despite the constant pounding, her mouth and pores were wide open and they couldn't stop all that mana from flowing into her body. But most importantly, it didn't take a genius to notice that none of their blows were doing any significant and lasting damage to her.

The tail that had been torn off earlier had long since grown back, and the chitin that cracked at the beginning with each of his punches wasn't even cracking anymore. Xi could foresee their resounding defeat.

As if to sound the final death knell, Jake lost control of his legs a few seconds later. The poison that was the Mana Storm had finally got the better of his lower half. Like a djinn popping out of a lamp, his legs scattered in Mana smoke and his torso lost its balance, tipping forward.

Perhaps because the pain had restored some semblance of sanity to the Digestor, she did not miss this opportunity sent by the providence. Before Jake could regain his balance, Ruby's supersonic claw tore a huge hole between his eyes, blasting the top third of his skull and much of his brain.

[Jake!]

"Jake!"

Jeanie and Xi shouted his name at the same time. With no central nervous system and his spiritual energy depleted, Jake stopped moving and was slapped away by the monster's tail.

If it had been before, the Digestor would have focused on her mutation again, but the beating Jake had just inflicted on her had awakened her instinct for self preservation. The creature opened its mouth and began to produce strange echolocations. Less than a second later, three high-pitched shrieks echoed back from three different locations.

Shrrii, shrriii, shrriii!

Jake crashed a kilometer away into an unfriendly sea of Mana, not knowing where he was. Absurd as it was, Xi had saved him by enabling his Purgatory. Before it was irreversibly damaged, she used the reprieve to summon several Aether Sun Cores and Healing Aether Cores that Jake had recently created from his Space Storage.

The favorable environment of the Purgatory had only lasted half a second, but it was more than enough to regenerate Jake's brain, though not his mental faculties, let alone rid him of his pain.

As the Mana Storm took over his body, the pain had returned and Jake was now unresponsive. Xi also felt her control over his body weaken.

[Jake, hang in there! Do not leave me to face this alone!]

At that moment, the Mana Storm compressed around them, growing new vines even denser and thicker than the previous ones. Jake was instantly pinned down.

Just as Xi thought the situation couldn't get any worse, three winged humanoid figures emerged from the Mana Storm. She recognized them at a glance.

[The Schwazen Virtues!]