The Oracle Paths

The Water Spirit Shield that Jeanie had been sustaining was abruptly extinguished, and the Mana Storm that was being kept outside of it rushed in, burying Jake inside. His body collapsed on the spot, merging with the Mana Storm.

"No! My food!" The Virtue who had nearly gotten the Aether Soul Core howled in rage and darted to where he had been standing a split second earlier and tried to grab a handful of chaotic Mana to no avail. The mass of Mana was as elusive as gas.

"Is he dead?" The quietest angelic creature of the three suddenly asked, a dreadful pang of foreboding chilling his blood for the first time in his life. His appetite seemed to be history.

"Who cares?" The third Virtue snorted. "Our meal is gone. And so is my next evolution. I should just digest what I alr-"

The Mana Storm suddenly condensed around its body, huge spikes of Mana shooting through it as if it had been thrown into an iron maiden. A huge hand composed of millions of separate Mana coalesced just above and slammed into the monster with the sheer destructive power of a 100 kiloton nuclear warhead.

The other two Virtues petrified like two mice in front of a cat, but not because their companion had just been flattened. Above this hand, a wrist, a forearm, a shoulder, and then a gigantic body materialized in the sky, gluttonously siphoning off astronomical quantities of Mana, without distinction of origin or quality.

As the chaotic Mana titan finished taking shape, four enormous translucent, blue-electric wings reminiscent of the fairy wings of a dragonfly or a butterfly unfolded behind its back: Fairy wings. Jeanie's Wings.

The bluish halo that had previously covered Jake's body resurfaced, but this time the light was so blinding and the spell so powerful that the Mana Storm was being cleansed before their eyes at a dizzying speed as if an old, dusty carpet had been washed clean with high pressure water.

An orb of crystalline light thousands of times brighter resumed its place between the titan's eyes, then scattered again, this time for good. His Aether Soul Core would not return.

The giant hand that had smashed one Virtue slowly rose up again, then with the same inhuman speed fell on the other two Virtues, crushing all their bones and organs but also their Spirit Bodies. As the Mana Storm around them was siphoned off by the colossal entity, a phenomenon occurred that Jake had not paid attention to for a long time.

Several supremely pure Aether and Soul filaments appeared above the two corpses. There was white, red, orange, yellow... but also black. It seems that his Oracle Device had not automatically activated its Aether Compression functionality to absorb and purify this Aether. His Aether and Soul Tribute bloodline ability had not been triggered either!

The first angelic creature to be attacked, who was unexpectedly still alive after the casual slap of this Mana giant, stared traumatized at the bloody pulp and strands of Aether and souls remaining from its two brethren and swallowed loudly.

"How did the situation get so out of hand so quickly?

The corrupted Schwazen then concentrated all his energy in his eyes in an attempt to peer into the chaotic darkness of the Mana Storm making up this terrifying entity. Peeling off layer after layer of Mana as if it were an onion with utmost concentration, the fiendish creature's face dropped as his eyes fell upon another body inside the titan.

A body identical to Jake's, but subtly different was gradually rebuilding itself. The regeneration speed was not incredible for elite Schwazens like them, and even Jake's was comparable. That wasn't what had agitated the monster.

Around this body that was now nothing more than a stomach and a long small intestine suspended in the air, there were dozens, hundreds of Grade 4, 5 and 6 Aether Sun Cores and Aether Cores burning away. Whether it was the conflicting energies of the Mana Storm or the Aether contained in these Cores, it was being sucked in with the voracious appetite of a black hole.

Such energy was continuously sucked into this stomach every second, but then why was this new body regenerating so slowly? Just thinking about it, the arrogant Virtue who had never known fear felt the overwhelming urge to run away from here, so much so that it was almost painful.

Ignoring its mysteriously unhealing wounds, the impaled angelic creature condensed a ring of sharp black light around its throat, and decisively sliced its head off. The head rolled to the ground, continuing to bleed, and the Virtue shrieked in frustration. It couldn't even flee.

Seconds and minutes passed, but Digestor Ruby did not appear. She, too, had chosen to focus on her own evolution, sensing that this was her only chance for survival. If she tried to run now, her instincts were screaming at her that she would never outrun this thing. She, a Rank 10 noble Digestor had become the prey.

*****

An indeterminate amount of time later, but no more than ten minutes, Jake painfully regained consciousness. He felt strange. Weirdly good, but different. The first thing that struck him was the mental silence, and then the silence itself.

His heart was not beating, he was not breathing and his blood was not circulating in his veins. He didn't feel the need.

After enjoying this moment of fullness, his intellect suddenly returned and the feeling of peace was suddenly replaced by a devastating rush of panic and anxiety. He realized what this could mean and mentally yelled,

'Xi, where are you?!'

"I'm here, don't shout." Xi's voice echoed in a faint, unnatural voice in his head. "But... you might notice that our situation is a tad... different."

Jake didn't react immediately. He had just realized where this incredibly relaxing sense of silence came from. It wasn't Xi's silence, but something else much more burdensome.

"Where's my bracelet?" He wondered with confusion.

Not only could he no longer detect his Oracle Device, but the liquid alloy forming an intricate network of microscopic circuits in his body was also nowhere in sight. There was no trace of it.

The Aether Soul Core under his glabella was also gone. His Soul, Spirit Body and physical body were strangely intertwined, forming a curious resonance that made it almost impossible to separate them. It looked like Digitization, but it was completely different.

If he really had to say what it reminded him of... The image of a Digestor flashed immediately in his mind.

'Right. It feels like a Digestor.' He realized with a serene calm that even he was having trouble understanding.

Jake finally opened his eyes. The Celestial City appeared in his field of vision, the Mana Storm not within sight. The city and its indestructible buildings were intact, true to their reputation.

Squinting, his galactic eyes, clear as moonlight and filled with an ocean of darkness, shone and he faintly perceived the presence of the Mana Storm 1200 kilometers away.

He was alone.

His naked body stood about two meters tall and was ridiculously good-looking and proportioned. His messy ink-black hair fluttered ghostly in a non-existent breeze. His flawless skin was devilishly diaphanous and glistening, but if someone studied him under a microscope they could have made out tiny scales of silvery chitin assembled in tight formation.

To this already flattering and inhuman physique four translucent fairy wings of many shades of blue were attached to his back, as well as a steady halo of bluish light radiating continuously from his entire body. His wings were not "cute" at all. Their sharp, streamlined shape made them both majestic and intimidating. They were natural weapons.

With a single thought, he deployed his mental sense, but a psychic wave identical to an Oracle Scan swept through space over a thousand kilometers in radius before colliding with the Mana Storm. This wave should have dissipated on contact, but strangely enough it sped up, growing in intensity after colliding with the Mana.

The psychic wave spread rapidly at the speed of light over several million kilometers, mapping the entire solar system and it was only in a certain direction where it collided with a gigantic and impenetrable spiritual barrier that it finally dispersed.

Aurae.

Their eyes met and a dead silence settled.

"What happened here while I was unconscious?" Jake muttered with growing bewilderment as he gazed at the desolate scene around him.

When Jake asked himself the question, he finally noticed his claws covered in dried silver blood and a flood of memories suddenly surged in his mind.

His body convulsed on the floor, shock quickly decomposing his face as he discovered the incredible truth.