The Oracle Paths

Jake's demeanor shifted to a serious tone and he strode determinedly towards the barrier blocking his path. Saros merely shook his head at this, sighing with resignation.

"Forget it, that won't work. This barrier was designed to halt the kind of Digestors that even we, Oracle Guardians, struggle to defeat. Without disabling the barrier from the inside, it's impassable. The Resonator's full energy supports its operation and the last thing we want is to destroy it. Trust me, you can't afford the repair costs..."

Jake wavered momentarily at the warrior's warning, but then, his countenance hardened and he reached out to touch the force field with a scowl.

"I don't want to destroy it, I just want to pass through," he justified aloud, without much conviction in his own words.

The moment his palms pressed against the barrier, a counterforce far greater than his push against the force field began repelling him. Rigel had borne the brunt of this earlier, and a fool would be the one to underestimate such retaliation.

Jake snorted, finding that no matter how hard he pushed, his hands could not move a smidgen, let alone pierce through. Saros shook his head again, anticipating Jake's capitulation any moment now, after realizing the futility of his attempts. But he underestimated Jake.

He might not be a Myrtharian anymore, but the pride and arrogance he had built during that time remained. This obstacle only stoked his combative spirit.

His muscles tensed sharply, inflating to thrice their size and becoming as hard as titanium to the touch. Slightly bending his knees to secure his footing, he began to push against the ground with great force and the latter, which had until then demonstrated its incredible resistance, started to cave in.

Scrrrrrrrrrrrrrrccch!!!

Saros, who had been watching the spectacle with crossed arms, stiffened in surprise as the barrier began to sizzle with a piercing, high-pitched noise that was utterly unbearable. Jake had kicked it up a notch.

His cells suddenly began to spew an unceasing torrent of Red and Yellow Aether, swiftly forming a veritable ocean of energy within his own body. Like a fountain in the open air, the Aether expelled by his cells was immediately reabsorbed by them, or under Jake's influence moved towards the recruited muscles.

Both his physical strength and toughness had already quadrupled, and with his current high Aether stats far exceeding that of other Evolvers of his level, this feat was no longer as easy to achieve.

It was because even the flesh of the most ordinary Earthling could bear an Aether density of about 1000 to 10,000 points without dying. Under the effect of his Grade 10 Energy body tempering, his Aether stats were already the maximum his body could tolerate.

Exceeding this physiological limit was a real uphill battle and placed a relative cap on the Evolvers, to a certain extent determining the heights they could aspire to reach.

This intrinsic limit was not the same for all species, but species originating from worlds with high Aether densities were naturally privileged, the life forms developing there having had millions, billions of years of evolution to adapt.

Pure Aether could temper cells and matter in general, with the latter passively absorbing a fraction of ambient Aether to fortify its internal cohesion. Yet, it was a tortuously slow process, measured in decades and increasingly time and Aether-demanding when the density surpassed a certain threshold.

This was why the Eighth Ordeal was considered a second considerable hurdle after the Fifth Ordeal. The main concern was no longer mortality rate but merely entering such an Ordeal World without immediately perishing, crushed by the ambient Aether.

Jake knew this all too well, having spent a whole year reflecting on this problem. After undergoing various excruciating tests, he came to the conclusion that his only path forward was to push himself to the brink. Neither his intellect nor technology could aid him in this task.

And that, he knew how to do well! Fortunately, he had the perfect bloodline and stubborn mindset for such self-inflicted torment.

Cosmic D Starfeyrves - a species renowned for its remarkable adaptability!

The flow of Aether circulating through his muscles quickly intensified, and soon Saros had no choice but to squint against such a concentration of Aether.

A blindingly golden-crimson aura radiated from Jake's body, and the Oracle Guardian could see his skin and flesh slowly peeling away as they disintegrated. Simultaneously, the damaged cells were working at full throttle to repair their DNA, produce new proteins, and divide to form new cells.

Often, before they could completely disintegrate, the expelled cells that had escaped the Aether storm and finished regenerating were telekinetically reabsorbed by Jake to resume their initial function. This continuous cycle of destruction, regeneration, and replacement allowed Jake to further amplify his physical strength and defense. At some point, even Saros started to perspire.

Uncrossing his arms, the Oracle Guardian rubbed his eyes incredulously to ensure he was not hallucinating.

'Am I dreaming, or are his hands starting to deform the barrier?!' Saros exclaimed dumbfoundedly in his head. This defied all sense!

BOOOOM!

It wasn't over yet. When Jake's physical strength seemed to reach its limit, an intangible radiance bathed in a dark blue halo and threaded with black lightning began to emanate from Jake's skin, forming a second skin harder than any armor.

His Cosmic Force, the evolved form of his telekinesis. This unfathomable force was protecting him while applying an astounding pushing force against his back and muscles to boost their performance even more!

The propulsion exerted by his feet against the ground and this advanced telekinetic force finally deformed the steel floor for good, forming an inverted spherical dome several meters in diameter and continuing to expand.

Sizzzzzzzzzle!

Despite his impressive display of power, Jake's journey was far from over. Although he managed to deform the barrier and slightly push it back, the truth was that it showed no signs of yielding.

On the contrary! The more he exerted himself, the fiercer the counterforce generated by the barrier to prevent him from continuing. The generated forces had long since surpassed what would atomize any other disciple of Cekt who stood in his place.

The only ones with a chance of making it were Epsilom and Lyra because of their ethereal nature, but even Lyrza's survival was a question mark as they didn't know if the barrier could also attack light.

Jake's face hardened, a glint of savagery flashing in his pupils, and suddenly, the halo of Cosmic Force enveloping him brightened even more, his two hands appearing as two blinding lasers.

"BREAK!"

BOOOOM!

In the end, it was Jake's body that got blasted tens of kilometers away, a spray of silver-blue blood brighter than a sapphire twinkling in his wake. Saros was shocked, but deep down, he felt a sense of relief. If a Fourth-Ordeal Evolver could achieve what he, an Oracle Guardian, could not by brute force, his entire life would be called into question.

BANG!

His relief at preserving his fragile ego had barely begun when a blurry luminous comet faster than lightning zoomed before his eyes to crash into the barrier with a violence unparalleled by the previous impact.

Tiny ripples quickly rolled across the surface of the force field from the epicenter, and this time, squinting attentively, Saros saw it!

The game-changing difference between Jake and him.

BOOOOM!

Jake was blasted again, but this time, the Oracle Guardian knew he had a good chance of success. And indeed, when Jake charged for the third time without allowing himself a microsecond of respite, the anticipated thunderous explosion did not occur.

Instead, he passed directly through the barrier, it harmlessly molding around his form as if he had just dived into a pool. The resistance was still there, but no worse than if he'd tried to get through a wall of mud.

"Done." Jake sinisterly smiled as he nonchalantly cracked his neck bones.

The secret behind his forceful passage wasn't so complicated. He had simply adapted. He had taken his time with his first attempt, but that was only to let his cells adapt to this counterforce. Once he had instinctively understood how this barrier used his own strength against him, he appropriated the technique and returned it in kind.

On the second impact, the counterforce produced by the barrier was absorbed by his cells and temporarily stored in a solid form of kinetic energy. On his next charge, he simply released it simultaneously with his own strength, but that didn't suffice. The barrier retaliated once more, and his cells, having adapted better to the stress, stored even more kinetic energy for the third charge.

The third attempt was the charm. In addition to having enough power this time to try a forceful passage, his skin had also unknowingly developed a kind of barrier dynamics to glide smoothly through.

Now, even if Jake wanted to pass through it again, he probably wouldn't even need a quarter of his strength to succeed.

That was the terror of his Cosmic D Starfeyrves Bloodline.