The Oracle Paths

Chapter 1081 Night Stroll

As night fell, in the basement of an unassuming building.

"... What's your take on this Cho Min Ho? Strong or weak?" Meribelle asked Giso at their rendezvous, after he'd abruptly reached out less than an hour since their last meeting.

She currently had the scroll portraying Jake's sketch before her, leaving her deep in thought. Her initial impression was that Jake was an utterly unfathomable force of nature, but in retrospect, nothing said there weren't other foreigners just as daunting as him.

Getting cocky was not uncommon on Twyluxia. Countless warriors who thought themselves invincible met their ends after making too many enemies – history was littered with such tales.

"Hard to say... At least half of the identified foreigners seem loyal to him," Giso answered after some thought. "But speculation has it, Grandmaster Lorentz tested him personally. Without his backing, convincing those proud Great Generals, who bow to no one, would've been impossible."

"Lorentz..." Meribelle frowned upon hearing the only living Grandmaster Soulmancer of the Duskwight Lands being mentioned.

Unlike Lifemancers, the lifespan of Soulmancers rarely exceeded a few centuries. To level the playing field, their souls endured longer, maintaining their sanity long after their bodies decayed. Sometimes, their attachment to the latter even led them to possess it in their ghostly state.

These deceased Soulmancers, still tethered to their physical shells, were a hybrid kind of specter called Dreaded Lich. In the hierarchy of wandering souls, they stood a tier below the Abyssal Revenants like Bones or Chillmire but could leverage their vast experience and knowledge to make up for it.

The catch, and there always was one, was that the spectral energy saturating the air of the Duskwight Lands was far from harmless. Even though immensely diluted compared to the Lumyst River's potency, it eroded wandering souls' minds, subjecting them to a gradual internal restructuring akin to a spirit enchantment. The supposed temporary destruction, leading either to final obliteration or rebirth, became a perpetual process.

The thing is, a soul isn't a body. When it was injured, it was the memories and personality inside that inevitably suffered. Since the healing post-successful enchantment never took place, these Dreaded Lichs would gradually descend into madness, eventually succumbing to a botched spirit enchantment or restoring their corrupted souls.

The latter was, sadly, almost unheard of. Very few artifacts or bloodlines, like Jake's, allowed their bearers to passively regenerate their souls. Most of the time, it was limited to their Spirit Body.

As a result, even though there theoretically might be Grandmasters far more fearsome than Lorentz behind their Order of Soulmancers, they could only rely on him. And to put it mildly, his temperament was... troublesome.

Still...

"If Lorentz says he's strong, he must be," Meribelle acknowledged aloud, weighing the pros and cons. "He's about the only one who can talk to our king as an equal—or at least that was the impression I got from their last meeting."

"Speaking of our king..." Giso grimaced bitterly. "What's his take on this? If he hadn't been so pathetically counter-ambushed, we wouldn't be resorting to this farce!"

Meribelle's face flushed with anger upon hearing her comrade brazenly slander their king. Glaring icily at her hooded friend with her gray-blue eyes, she growled tersely, "Never talk about our king like that again."

"You mean i—"

"Shut the hell up, you idiot!" Meribelle snapped, slapping both hands over his mouth to stop him from talking further. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Hmmphhh!" Giso responded, struggling to remove her hand so he could breathe. Once he managed, he cautiously inquired again, "So. You still haven't answered me? I know you can communicate with 'his highness' in real-time."

"He..." Despite her fiery outburst, the young woman briefly hesitated. "He advised me to tail Jake and Hephais tonight before making any decisions. He uttered we'd get our answer."

"Seriously?" Giso would be lying if he uttered he wasn't taken aback by her response.

At the very same moment, Meribelle's face tensed up as she received a sudden mental message, muttering in a sharp tone,

"Speak of the devil... Guess who just told me Jake and Hephais have left the camp. I'm going to follow them. You can come along if you promise not to blow our cover."

"Hey! Of the two of us, I'm the one with the expertise in tailing people," Giso protested, throwing her a scandalized look. "So, the warning goes both ways."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever," Meribelle brushed him off as if he were talking to a brick wall. Rubbing her locket with both hands, a fluffy black cloud materialized from it.

Enchanting a small cloud like this to awaken its spirituality hadn't been a piece of cake, but now she couldn't do without it. Without further ado, she gracefully hopped onto it and shot her colleague an impatient eyebrow raise.

"Whenever you're ready to get on..."

"Haha..." Giso chuckled awkwardly, then climbed up behind her onto the cloud before mumbling under his breath in a sulky tone, "Just admit that without me, you'd never be able to follow them without getting caught."

His black cloak wasn't just for soundproofing or creating darkness; it could also erase their presence, making them invisible.

Turns out, he'd hit the nail on the head with his last comment. Meribelle did need him, but she held her tongue and didn't say a word.

To be frank, she wasn't sure it would be enough even with her friend's cloak. <nulli>Well, if we get caught, so be it.

Flying high in the sky to blend in with the darkness of the night, the pair reappeared shortly after above the indistinct silhouettes of Jake and Hephais, speeding northward.

"T-they're fast!" Giso exclaimed involuntarily, nearly losing sight of them in less than half a second as soon as they finished scaling the chasm that the fortified camp had been carved into.

The moment Jake and Hephais set foot on the surface, they broke into a frenzied dash so blistering they vanished into an indistinguishable blur from the surrounding darkness—like two black shooting stars crossing a moonless sky.

Meribelle was equally stunned, short of breath, but after a brief moment of dumbfounded bewilderment, she stammered, "Th-they're heading north."

Both reluctant to openly admit they'd already lost sight of the two targets they were supposed to be tailing, they exchanged a complicated look while racking their brains, then suddenly exclaimed in unison,

"The Lumyst River!"

Yes, that had to be it! Saved from embarrassment, Meribelle ordered her cloud to zoom toward the nearest river fork based on the previous direction Jake and Hephais had taken off in.

Covering the 60 or 70 kilometers took them a few minutes, but when they arrived, they were immediately relieved to find the two men standing side by side on the riverbank, stoically contemplating the vast expanse of shimmering water drifting in ethereal silence.

"Psst... what are they doing?" Giso whispered in a low voice.

"I-I'm not sure," Meribelle hesitated. She had a feeling but refused to consider it. If she was right, they were completely insane!

*****

Hundreds of meters below, Hephais looked up without moving his head and grumbled,

"They're so damn noisy."

"You're preaching to the choir," Jake retorted, continuing to stare at the water's surface with deep concentration.

He was still pondering how he would extract the water, or whether he should just dive in to perform the next spiritual enchantment on his soul. There were multiple ways to go about it, but none were completely risk-free to his health. If the danger was null, then the cost in materials or time was what could potentially screw him over.

A minute ticked by without either man coming to a decision, until...