The Oracle Paths

"Is such power really allowed in a Fourth Ordeal?" Tim couldn't help but ask the flower woman with a voice trembling with palpable distress. "Do the Oracle and Aurae really allow such disruptive, unfair forces to exist? How are we normal Players supposed to survive in the midst of all these monsters?"

Perhaps because she was aware that he was still a child, Prysm's cold face softened and one of the flowers on her shoulder gown bloomed, releasing a puff of invisible pollen. The teenager breathed in some of it unknowingly, and his face, which had been racked with anxiety and apprehension, instantly relaxed.

The other Myrtharian Nerds may have been more cool-headed, but deep inside what they were feeling wasn't that different from Tim, Jake included. Breathing in the pollen, their worries vanished for a while.

In fact, even Prysm breathed in some of her own pollen to soothe her nerves like an addict. If Peter, may he rest in peace, had been there he would have been delighted.

"Everyone has a different starting point, but our ending point is not predetermined." The flower woman finally stated when she felt them more receptive. "You were just ordinary humans and pets at your first Ordeal, don't forget that. If you had the powers you have today at your first Ordeal, how would your future change? This is the situation for many of us. Lost Divinities, Anti-Life, Replicators and Mirror Vanguards, all of our officers and leaders are such individuals.

"Do not compare yourself to them. You have nothing to be ashamed of..."

That should have made them feel better, but Jake and the others felt even more bitter after her encouraging words. A better starting point, didn't guarantee a more meteoric rise or else Gerulf, Lucia and the other natives from their First Ordeal would have far surpassed Jake today.

If Jake had possessed the power he had today and returned to his First Ordeal, he knew now that his Main Mission would have been ridiculously demanding with many conditions and constraints to meet. Perhaps he would have been asked to get Kinthar's approbation, develop his reputation to the same level as those deified legendary Heroes among the people, or help and test participants like himself at the time to overcome their hardships like when the Nullifyer had come to confront him. There were so many possibilities.

After successfully completing his Main Mission, he would only have received the minimum 100 rating points. How would he then match or even surpass the score of his current self? The missions would probably have reached a nearly insurmountable level.

What Prysm didn't tell them was that a higher initial power meant lower Ordeal Ratings. At least during the first few Ordeals. Because at high levels, it was much harder to create the opportunities that could drastically change your destiny.

Where was someone like the Nullifyer supposed to meet a native in his first Ordeal as life-changing as Gerulf and Lucia had been for Jake in a world with an Aether density of 8? Even if this person existed, it would be an endless struggle to track them down and meet them, because they were not confined to the rules that natives and Players followed.

Silence fell and soon they remembered the prisoners they had just freed. Most of them were missing one or more limbs, and two of them had only their heads and a portion of their trunks left.

These injuries were certainly horrendous, but it shouldn't have been such a big deal for elite players like them with insane Constitution and Vitality. But the thing was, they weren't healing.

Not everyone had a Bloodline that could regenerate their limbs like Jake. In this context, even an infinite Vitality would only allow instant healing and nothing more.

Yet, in the case of these prisoners, even the healing was not going well. The amputated limbs were still bloody, partially clotted and some prisoners were still bleeding, their Vitality compensating for their uninterrupted blood flow.

"Let's stabilize the injured first." Prysm clapped her hands loudly to rouse Jake and the others from their numbness, but from the twitching of her eyebrows she wasn't handling her emotions as well as she pretended.

The Myrtharian Nerds exchanged glances with each other and then obliged unquestioningly.

"Okay..."

Jake took the hand of one of the more severely wounded prisoners and transferred his Vitality to him, but his brow furrowed when he saw that it made almost no difference. The trickle of blood from his four stumps went on, dripping down in the same metronome.

The other Myrtharian Nerds were not getting any better results so they combined their Vitality on one wounded man and finally there was a slight difference. After three or four minutes, the unconscious Player finally stopped bleeding, but his clotting rate was still slightly below that of a normal human.

"Something is interfering with their natural regeneration, meow." Crunch commented satirically as he stroked his chin with his paw pads.

Lord Phenix reciprocated with a peck in the ribs.

"No kidding you dumb cat! Did you think we wouldn't notice?" The turkey chirped in scorn.

While the two troublemakers bickered, Jake glanced over at Prysm and saw that she had already completely healed two injured people. Their limbs hadn't grown back, but they had no longer any apparent wounds.

To heal them, she had nicked her own hand and a sap-like substance had begun to ooze out of it. As soon as the viscous, amber-colored liquid came into contact with a wound, the wound would heal in a jiffy. Seeing the difference between them and Mirror Vanguard, Jake became depressed again.

With his competitive spirit stirred once more, he tried to remember how his master, Cekt, had healed this Oracle Guardian named Citro. He was not present at the time, but Cekt had sent him several video clips to expand his horizons, or perhaps just to brag.

He was clear about it. From the green light fueling all his Healing Spells, Cekt used an upgraded version of Vitality Aether.

Jake could only achieve Grade 1 Encodings on the fly at the moment, but there was no need for him to do so. With his Aether Conversion Spell he could convert the Aether gathered around his Aether Core into the Aether stat of his choice.

Upon this realization, he summoned one of the thousands of Grade 5 Aether Cores in his arsenal that he had created and used Aether Conversion on them to convert their Aether stream into Vitality Aether, alas only Grade 3 Vitality Aether. This was the highest level of Aether stats compression currently allowed by his bloodline.

Grade 5 Aether Cores had an Aether density above 100,000, but more Aether Cores in the same area did not mean a higher Aether density. Just one of them was powerful enough to siphon Aether from kilometers away, and summoning more would not expand that absorption area by much.

In the few inches of space surrounding the Aether Core itself, that Aether density reached into the hundreds of millions, but absolutely nothing could survive there. At least, not on Quanoth, with the possible exception of Aurae. This was the main reason why Jake could not place such an Aether Core within him, besides the fact that he would have to withstand the environment of a star's core for several hours to improve the one he already had.

On the other hand, their accretion disk was larger, raising the local Aether density to 100,000 over several dozen meters of radius. Prysm looked at him for the first time with astonishment when she saw that he had such an Aether Core in his possession. If she had known he was storing thousands of them in his Space Storage, her reaction would have been very interesting.

Jake wove a rudimentary Healing Spell with nothing but Vitality Aether for the first time and the result was impressive. The wounded man's amputated limb stopped bleeding, quickly forming a crust on its surface. A few minutes later, the crust flaked off and a smooth new skin appeared underneath.

This healing speed was still slower than that allowed by Prysm's sap, but it was still night and day compared to his earlier primitive method.

Lord Phenix wanted to test his Phenix Fire on the wounded to incinerate them and allow them to "rise from the ashes", but Crunch and the other Myrtharian Nerds barely managed to dissuade him. By the time they persuaded him, the turkey was almost completely featherless and was leering at them, especially Crunch, with a look of resentment over his betrayal.

A few dozen minutes later, all the injured were stabilized and they could finally take a breather.

"Now we just have to wait for one of our Healers to arrive or for Vexa to return to fully heal them." Prysm heaved a deep, exhausted sigh, the mention of Vexa reawakening her worries about the cube man.

Time passed, and day gave way to night, then back to day. Jake and the others spoke little, each meditating or training in silence, trying to figure out what they could do to become strong faster and stop feeling so useless and helpless.

As time passed, the flower woman became more and more anxious, pacing nervously from one end of the bunker to the other, nibbling her nails, erm... petals. Just when even Jake and the others were beginning to believe that Vexa was done for and wasn't coming back, a flash of yellow light blinded them and when their vision accommodated again, they recognized the cube man.

His body had turned black, and the microscopic cubes that made him up were crumbling to the naked eye, a thick, corrosive aura enveloping him as if he were a radioactive pile. As soon as he appeared in the bunker, he fainted before their eyes and collapsed to the ground.

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