The Oracle Paths

As Jake and the other 577 winners were repatriated to the Red Cube, thousands of other Divine Academies and Celestial City were suddenly cleared of their student populations, some becoming dreary ghost schools.

The natives and Evolvers who had chosen or been granted permanent residency in their respective Divine Academies panicked slightly, while those who had been through the process several times before reacted calmly, their eyes crinkling slightly.

"It's quiet again." Grigori sighed as he looked up at the ceiling of his office room.

His piercing gaze was not focused on that ceiling, but looked beyond it, boring through multiple layers of walls, and clouds to establish eye contact with a colossal black steel face with six fiery suns burning in symmetrical rows of three.

At that moment, the enormous hand of Aurae covered the Celestial City and its Divine Academy, masking the stars of the cosmos and throwing it into darkness like a black curtain that had just been drawn to mark the end of the show.

The space around Grigori and the few permanent students seemed to distort, first compressing, then stretching infinitely. The process of spatial distortion had hardly begun when it ended in silence. The darkness receded and Grigori caught a fleeting glimpse of Aurae's huge steel hand veiled in energy, pulling away before disappearing completely.

Aurae was gone. Grigori deployed his mental senses with the stoicism of someone used to this scene. A new Quanoth planet, almost identical to the one he had scanned a year earlier, appeared in his mind.

"One, two, three, four... and ten..." The childlike alien and Divine Academy principal counted out loud in a monotone voice, his face lifeless from boredom.

As he uttered the last number, his pupils suddenly constricted. A "new" Aurae appeared in the space above him and its two hands grabbed without touching it, one hand above, one hand below, this new intact planet in the manner of a basketball. A mass of black clouds oozed out from its fingers and then began to spread out from its poles.

"Here we go again..." Grigori sighed. A new Fourth-Ordeal and a new planetary apocalypse was about to begin.

Unprompted, Grigori gave a mental command to the Celestial City, which was primarily a spaceship, and started the landing procedure in the center of another Shatug Empire slightly different from the last one.

A moment later, millions of Players appeared simultaneously all over the planet, with a few lucky ones opening their eyes directly at the doors of his Divine Academy.

Grigori sighed again and poured himself a cup of his favorite spiritual tea. He was about to take a sip of his steaming beverage when his half-open eyes suddenly widened, his pupils dilating in terror.

An earthquake of inconceivable force shook the Divine Academy, spilling his precious tea all over his desk. Grigori would usually be extremely distressed if this happened, but this time he didn't even notice. His attention was already elsewhere.

The next second, a dreadful spiritual pressure descended upon the Celestial City and the Divine Academy under his authority and the hitherto relaxed alien burst forth with a sharp aura of overwhelming power.

In a millionth of a second, the childish and lazy principal condensed all sorts of high-level Aether Spells, activating all the defensive formations and measures of his Divine Academy. An artifact resembling a miniature version of the Divine Academy materialized in his hands and began to glow brighter than a star.

A torrent of energy and Aether of a density that even Jake's Grade 10 Energy Core couldn't match radiated from the small alien and his Artifact, merging with the Celestial City's defenses.

"AAAAAAAH!"

With a shout from Grigori, a blast of energy released from his body stabilized the energy shields that were about to give way under the weight of this immense pressure. The alien took the opportunity to scan his surroundings with his mental senses, but when he received the feedback from the latter, all fighting spirit deserted his soul, his face congealing in a mixed expression of acceptance and despair.

Resolute, he gritted his teeth and tried to contact someone via his Oracle Device. He was connected immediately and Aurae's hologram appeared above his overturned desk.

"What's going on Grigori? If it's not urgent, let's talk later." The Ancient Designer grunted in a robotic voice a tad annoyed.

Normally, the alien would have adopted a servile attitude, wallowing in lame excuses, but not this time. Seeing the livid and upset face of his subordinate, Aurae realized that something was wrong and his mood darkened.

"What's going on?" It asked a second time, this time in a solemn voice in which a trace of regret and dull anger lurked.

It already had an inkling of the answer. Was it going to lose another of its loyal subordinates today?

"Another of your Avatars has given in to the Corruption." Grigori reported with a clenched jaw, "It's already too late for me. The space is already sealed."

"Impossible. I just left. I would know if any of my avatars had fallen under the control of the enemy." Aurae refuted this vehemently. "Unless..."

The Ancient Designer's supposedly inexpressive robotic face twitched imperceptibly, and an otherworldly killing intent shot through space to his hologram.

"Hold on. I'm coming right u-"

BOOOOOOOOOM!

Around Quanoth, the two colossal arms of the "corrupted copy" of Aurae that still held the planet like a balloon suddenly contracted, swelling and tripling in size in the blink of an eye.

The two palms at the origin of this enormous spiritual pressure, until then separated by several hundreds of thousands of kilometers, then moved closer to each other at the speed of light, slamming against each other and generating a dark-as-night shockwave of unparalleled power.

The new planet Quanoth, the Celestial City, the Divine Academy, and all living beings living peacefully on their surfaces were atomized body and soul into a fine mush of particles. Their existences had been erased from the Mirror Universe with a simple "clap."

In the midst of the silence following the passage of this apocalyptic shockwave, Aurae's corrupted avatar, the only survivor within several light years, began to move again. Its appearance fluctuated and the two lightning suns forming its two upper eyes split, increasing the total number of eyes from six to eight in two vertical rows of four. The color of its light globes changed from a mysterious purple to a silver-white filled with malevolence.

This android was not Aurae, but looked like the second statue carved above the fountain erected not far from the Stele that Jake had stolen. The one that Aurae seemed to be fighting.

Apathetic, its eight eyes scanned the rare debris of the pulverized solar system. Soon, a tiny life signal was picked up by its senses. This tiny life force was as frail and unstable as the flame of a candle tossed by the winds of a thousand hurricanes. It could be snuffed out at any moment.

At that moment, space cracked somewhere over the right shoulder of the huge android and a humanoid figure emerged, floating in the void with even less presence than a specter.

As soon as this figure emerged from the spatial rift, his mental sense scanned the sidereal void and detected the tiny life force.

"Hmm? A survivor." His timbreless voice was audible even in the void, his words reverberating in the cosmos. "It would seem that you are getting old, Syntharae."

As he said this, the veil of black energy blurring his appearance dissipated and a man as perfect as a Greek god statue revealed his beauty to the world. Alas, there was no audience.

However, anyone who believed this individual to be human would be making a grave mistake. His irises were golden, emitting a soft light, his skin was pale, almost translucent, and the blood running through his veins was like molten gold.

As soon as he revealed his appearance, four golden wings 100 meters long spread behind his back as if he had an irrepressible urge to stretch.

"Hmmph. It was just a casual clap." The android named Syntharae snorted in response. It spoke extremely slowly, taking several seconds to speak each word. "Verxes, open your eyes wide. This survivor may be a mess right now, but his Aetheric fluctuations are as vast and unchanging as the tide of the oceans. We've caught a big fish."

This handsome man was the mighty Digestor Seraphim who slaughtered a squad of Oracle Guardians and snatched Nylreg at the end of Jake's third Ordeal! This was too big to be a coincidence.

Verxes glanced at the "survivor" and Grigori's bloodless, broken body appeared clearly in his line of sight. The alien's body drifted amidst the fragments of his Artifact, the frozen time around him keeping his body in an imperishable state.

"My bad. A Rank 4 Oracle Overseer, that's unexpected. That would explain a lot." The Digestor offered an apologetic grin, revealing a set of pearly whites that could cause a maiden's pulse to skip. Alas, such affable demeanor held no sway over the unfeeling android.

Soon after, however, his smile dropped and disappointment clouded his face.

"Unfortunately, it's not the one that devoured my Blood Essence and the spiritual imprint I left on it. We must have missed it by a few seconds. Weird, I was sure I had calculated the timing correctly... Fuck!"

As he spoke his last words, his expression underwent another dramatic change, his eyes widening like Grigori's a moment earlier.

"... She's coming!"

Without hesitation, Verxes rushed into the still-open space rift, and Syntharae apathetically entered after him after miniaturizing its enormous body to a size smaller than a speck of dust.

Just after their departure, the silent darkness of the shattered solar system turned white and the rare debris and stellar dust that survived Syntharae's attack was obliterated a second time.

Except that this time, space-time itself had collapsed.