The Oracle Paths

946 An Ominous Night

If it had been the Jake before his fourth Ordeal, he would not have been able to erect enough dwellings to house half a million faction members in a single night. At best, he might have purchased half a million tents, which still would have needed to be set up.

Now, Jake was an entirely different breed. Most importantly, he had an entire faction behind him. If he couldn't enjoy a peaceful day, then neither could the other faction members.

Without any remorse, with just a few words, he had mobilized the entirety of the Myrtharian Nerds ready for battle. 238 Eltarians, 1345 Myrmidians, 416 Throsgenians, and 574 Kintharians had formed 42 homogeneous squads of 61 members each, guided by a pureblood Beskyrian to exploit their outrageous luck, then had been dispatched to B842. Each of them teleported randomly to a different Oracle Shelter.

Their task: Fill the Faction Vault with anything they found on B842 that seemed to have a semblance of value to beautify a territory and make it habitable: ore, plants, trees, wild animals, freshwater, seawater. If by chance they found something precious they couldn't identify, they were also authorized to contact him.

Having already been tested in the past, Jake would handle emptying the Faction Vault on his side, leaving the million freshly purchased Oracle Constructors to build whatever he wanted.

When requesting a specific construction listed in the Oracle Store's subcategory dedicated to Floating Islands, the Oracle System, as usual, applied a shameful extra charge. Especially when it involved advanced technologies.

To avoid this, it was possible to educate the Oracle Constructors by building the expected building type right in front of them as a demonstration. Another solution was to buy all the patents, manuals, and blueprints of existing technology, architecture, and construction techniques to lift their limitations.

With neither patience nor interest in constructing civil infrastructure, Jake had, of course, chosen the second solution. Namely, to officially purchase all available patents, manuals, techniques, and blueprints, so as to forcibly elevate his desolate Floating Island to the modern era and even beyond, leaping directly to the age of advanced space exploration and colonization.

It had cost him another quintillion, but it could have cost him much more if he hadn't spent the entire past year amassing all sorts of knowledge like a machine. By compiling all his knowledge into a uniform file that the Oracle Constructors had downloaded, Xi had easily compensated for the shortcomings of their previous databases.

However, when Jake or Xi realized that a technology was missing or that a specific architectural style caught their eye, they wouldn't hesitate to buy it on the spot, not even looking at how much it cost them. After all, the 300 trillion Aether points he produced every second were just waiting to be spent, and the knowledge preceding the modern era rarely exceeded a few hundred billion points.

As for that last detail, Jake didn't hesitate to use it to motivate his troops. Giving a mission to all the veteran Players of his faction just after the end of their Fourth Ordeal could only lead to resistance and protests.

The Kintharians and Throsgenians, in particular, notoriously lazy, had obviously complained, but the competitive spirit of the Myrmidians and the professionalism of the Eltarians had eventually convinced them to get moving.

Of course, to titillate the competitive nature of the Myrmidians and motivate these two legendarily lazy races, Jake didn't hesitate to dip into his wallet. A quadrillion Aether points for each member of the most efficient squad and a trillion for all other participants.

The eyes of the other faction members had practically popped out of their sockets upon hearing the magnitude of the reward. Yet, once they confirmed its authenticity, all reluctance and complaints had vanished from their minds, leaving only an effervescent excitement.

If Jake had revealed that this bountiful prize didn't even amount to two minutes of his passive Aether points production, who knows if they wouldn't have coughed blood from envy after shedding every tear in their body? He wisely kept this detail to himself.

So, if it was his subordinates and the Oracle Constructors who did all the work, why was Jake in such a foul mood? Because something in his supposedly straightforward and simple mission had gone awry.

At first, everything had gone as expected. The 42 squads had teleported in unison to B842, eager to get to work. Even Gerulf and Rogen had forsaken their naps for a chance to prove themselves superior to their rival.

In the end, only Will and his dragons remained on their island along with the new recruits and the Aristocats. The former to welcome new members and brief them on everything they needed to know about the Myrtharian Nerds, and the latter because their sole purpose was to protect him and maintain order.

Their imposing presence was of great help in commanding the obedience and attention of the 500,000 new members. Renowned figures like Haynt, Aisling, Syn, and Melion were not always enough. Especially when some were less obedient and harbored their own ambitions like Grimwald Dracul or Xaverie Zangruth. If Aisling wasn't their daughter, things could have escalated when they met for the first time.

Speaking of Grimwald Dracul, Jake had almost forgotten about him since the recapture of Laudarkvik. That was because the Clan Dracul leader had refused to fight to the bitter end with them upon learning of the Portable Fortresses alternative.

Jake could only speculate as to why Grimwald chose to withdraw from battle rather than fight alongside his daughter and ex-wife. He didn't seem like a coward. According to Aisling, it was the best decision for the survival of the Dracul clan. He was a man who put duty before emotions.

Given what happened every time he saw his exwife, Jake had serious doubts... If Aisling hadn't assured him that, unlike Xaverie, her father was a righteous and honorable man, Jake would have refused to accept him into his faction.

Anyway. Back to the mission he had assigned to the other members, things went awry almost immediately after their departure when the fastest ones attempted to use the Faction Vault.

For a long time, Jake had kept the Faction Vault active 24/7 at the trivial cost of 100,000 Aether points per hour. It had been that way for over a year. There had never been any additional charge.

Until yesterday.

As soon as the Faction Vault had begun to fill up, Jake immediately tried to empty it on his end. That's when things took a weird turn. A ludicrous sum of 10 billion Aether points was demanded to retrieve its contents.

If this had happened before his Ordeal, he would have suffered an aneurysm reading the message. But despite his confusion, he had paid the fee, thinking it was a one-time surcharge.

He couldn't have been more wrong. When the Faction Vault had filled up again, another exorbitant, albeit different amount, was demanded. After that, each time a squad filled the Faction Vault and he tried to empty it, an astronomical sum would be requested, each time different.

Within mere minutes, Jake realized that the amount demanded varied based on which squad filled the Faction Vault at any given moment.

Through deduction, he soon grasped that the sole differentiating factor was the distance separating them from him.

Shocked, he tried to abort the mission by notifying them of the situation through the Faction Chat, but that's when things took an even stranger turn. To send his message to each faction member, a monstrous sum of several quintillions was also demanded.

Ultimately, when the Myrtharian Nerds returned rejuvenated from their mission on B842, three of the ten sextillion Aether points he had placed in the Faction Aether Storage that very morning had vanished forever from his fortune, leaving Jake traumatized and bewildered. Truly heartrending.

If the imposed tax had been constant, Jake could have come to terms with it. However, the problem was that it had slowly increased throughout the night. Nothing alarming, but at this stage, one didn't need to be highly placed or exceptionally shrewd to realize something was amiss.

His comrades on the mission had also noticed the anomaly when they tried to communicate via the Faction Chat. Judging by the sinister expression on Ulfar and his squad's faces upon their return from the planet, they too suspected something was off.

The tide was about to turn.

Stifling a sigh, Jake nevertheless congratulated his subordinates, distributing the promised rewards to the participating faction members with twitching lips as he met the smug and cocky gaze of the King of Beskyr.

Unsurprisingly, Ulfarl s squad, including his conquests from the Divine Academy, Nyx and Eris, had won the small competition hands down. No one could compete against a Luck Monarch, a Fate Bender, and a Providence Controller working as a team...

"Don't tell me you're going to back out now," Ulfar mercilessly teased as he saw Jake's twitching facial muscles.

It was on this deliberately provocative note that the distribution of rewards came to an end. Shortly after, Xi informed him it was time to meet Oros.