The Oracle Paths

"Essence Snatch."

On the surface, nothing happened, but an impressive bulge violently rounded the kraken's muscular sac where its stomach was. The half-dissolved forms, made unrecognizable by their tumors, slammed against the inner walls of the monster, deforming them from the inside under the effect of the inconceivable attracting force striving to pull them out.

When it seemed about to fail, Crunch and Lord Phoenix crossed the skin holding them prisoner as if they were ghosts, literally passing through. A tired but satisfied smile curved Jake's lips, his mission in the bag.

Relaxed but still vigilant, he prepared to catch the two ragged troublemakers, guiding them to him with his telekinesis, but at that very moment, his mind was struck by an inexplicable backlash, breaking his concentration and causing him to lose contact with the released aura.

"RROOOAAARRR"

Jake staggered, the deafening roar hitting him like a shockwave, forcing him to step back. His face twisted in a rare mix of disbelief and confusion, he struggled to shake off his daze, his eyes now burning with a predatory and vindictive hatred, a stark contrast to his earlier expression.

Because, somehow, at the last moment, the Titan had managed to rouse itself. To Jake's great annoyance, he could sense an impenetrable veil of energy, undetectable to ordinary senses, now shrouding the kraken's body and mind. Its dense and unfathomable nature seemed capable of stopping anything in its tracks, like an ocean halting bullets.

"Lumyst..." Jake growled grimly.

As soon as this mysterious aura had enveloped the cephalopod, the cat and bird, on the verge of escape, had immediately been whipped towards its maw by one of its tentacles, then swallowed again like a pair of peanuts, a loud gulp echoing through the air.

"WHO… DARES… MESS… WITH… ME?" boomed a voice as deep as an earthquake and as untamed as the oceans, bursting with indescribable fury. It was the first time anything had inflicted such a wound on it.

Usually, no physical injury, not even the most debilitating, plagued the monster for long, but this time it could feel that recovery wouldn't be so easy. The convalescence would be excruciatingly long, fueling its wrath.

But now that the kraken deigned to speak, it was Jake's turn to keep silent. Disregarding the Titanic Beast's display of anger, he coldly wiped the lightning-blue blood trailing from his nose with the back of his right hand, his visage regaining its usual vigor. In the brief lull between the monster's roar that interrupted his dual Morphic Grasp and the moment he wiped away the blood, he had already regenerated the bulk of the lost Soul Power.

"Ah... So you can speak, fucker," Jake finally remarked, livid with anger, a creepy grin revealing his sharp, crystalline canines.

The Titan known as River's Bane must have sensed that the mere speck before it was not to be underestimated. It didn't immediately counterattack, taking the time to cautiously size up the vermin daring to disrupt its peace—a miscalculation Jake swiftly made it regret.

Soul Crush and Soul Snatch, rendered ineffective by the Lumyst halo coating the aquatic behemoth's skin, Jake decisively resorted to a bigger gun. Having probed the solid aura several times with his mental sense, he'd concluded that Spirit and Soul Power alone would be too feeble to penetrate it.

The Titan's mind might have been laughably weak compared to the robustness of its colossal body, but reaching it was another matter. The Lumyst that the kraken had just deployed around itself was evidently enough to achieve this feat.

But was Jake the type to be deterred by such? Hell no... In fact, he struck back even more fiercely! This time, he gave the enemy no quarter and struck to kill, aware his formidable foe was now on guard.

With a scornful, twisted look directed at the deep abyss-like eyes set atop the cephalopod's head, he clenched his fists with thunderous force and thought with a death sentence tone in his mind,

"Morphic Grasp, First Form, Singularity."

It was the bona fide Morphic Grasp based on the True Will of Crushing, from which all other forms were derived. This attack had never failed before. Not against the Nullifier, not against the Voidshifter Digestor when he was much weaker than he was today.

Jake could already envision the kraken's head being compressed to a subatomic pulp, then shredded and sucked into a spatial rift after space itself had collapsed. It had always been so.

"ROOOOOOARRRRRR!"

When nothing happened after a second, except for the monster's enraged bellowing escalating exponentially, Jake, for the first time, lost his cool, his cold anger giving way to genuine confusion... and resignation.

'Now, it sucks...' Jake's heart sank as the scenario he dreaded unfolded.

[Did you see what just happened at least?] Xi checked in with a voice shaded with unprecedented seriousness.

'I did,' Jake responded grimly.

He had previously identified that the energy composing the shield aura around the Titan was Lumyst, the source of power he'd recently unlocked and was able to cultivate through his Lumyst Breath ability. He just didn't know what made it different from other Light Warriors and Lifemancers he'd encountered.

That was now clear! It was Water Lumyst, perhaps combined with some kind of two-bit Bruce Lee philosophy like 'Be formless, shapeless, like water.'

Usually, such concepts were the domain of Soul Classes, True Will, and Soul Power, but that didn't mean such powers didn't exist in reality. The major advantage of True Will was that it was only limited by one's imagination and personal experience. No need for a specific bloodline to awaken a specific True Will.

Moreover, this Titan, as evidenced by its giant size and phenomenal lifeforce, was extremely ancient. Even if its mind lagged behind its body, it wouldn't surprise Jake at all if this kraken had awakened its own Soul Class without the aid of an Aurae Stele.

"I really don't like where this fight is going," Jake growled in a low voice, frustration etched on his face, a glance at the beast's stomach telling him that the two knuckleheads had finally lost consciousness, the corrosion having begun to attack their vital organs.

[No time to dilly-dally! FULL POWER!] Xi commanded, pushing out a war cry that was uncharacteristic of her. [KILL IT! NOW!]

Jake's blood boiled when he heard her firm voice filled with killing intent reverberate in his skull. It was as if he'd been waiting for a long time just to receive the green light to finally let loose.

"... Oh, and fuck caution!" Jake cast his common sense into the abyss and unleashed the suppressed urges of violence, hunger, and murder that had been smoldering deep within him.

BOOOOM!

Bloodline Ignition!

Chitinous Scales!

Cosmic Sight!

Lucid Aetherdreamer!

These were the only bloodline and soul-class abilities he could muster under the constraints imposed by Twyluxia, but they were more than enough to morph him into a devilish calamity. The giant squid known as River's Bane felt it first.

THUD!

Jake, having only bothered to slip into unremarkable black trousers upon emerging from the water, surged in size in an instant, his thunderous heartbeat resonating outward in a twenty-meter radius. The Titan, poised at a safe distance, remained unharmed but felt its Lumyst Aura quiver dangerously. Even sheltered within, it could faintly hear the human's heart beating.

In the blink of an eye, Jake loomed over twenty-five meters tall, his weight exceeding thousands of tons. His impeccably sculpted muscular body was riddled with lesions, his face ghastly pale from the repercussion of Twyluxia after drawing so much biomass from his Inner Space.

It was akin to diving naked into boiling water—tolerable if you dipped in for just a second, but lethal if you stayed any longer. Right now, Jake was spitting in the face of Twyluxia's rules, shattering the balance established between the natives and the Players.

He had to pay a price. And had his Lumyst Aura not been on the cusp of emerging from its embryonic phase, that price would have been even steeper!

But none of that mattered! With his stats, anything that didn't kill him in one blow wasn't worth mentioning. Especially when his goal was to precisely reclaim biomass that could serve as replacement cells.

His wounds healed, his Spirit and Soul regained their otherworldly luster, and a giant, no longer merely human, reappeared, soaring high in the sky, his wings unfurled in boreal blue, momentarily eclipsing the moonlight.

In the wake of his transformation, Jake stood defiant against the nocturnal backdrop, his presence an oxymoron of otherworldly allure and intimidating wickedness. His skin, now a tapestry of minute chitinous scales sparkling with a blend of absorbed metals, radiated an alien glow against the night canvas. The scales, black as oblivion, traced across his alabaster flesh like tiny serpents, seemingly absorbing the light around him, bestowing upon him an aura of menacing elegance.

His wings, expansive and unfurling like those of a banished fairy, throbbed with veins of electric blue, stark against the deep, abyssal black of his newfound shell. Despite their grandeur, they bore an eerie charm, as though forged from the night itself, interlaced with cosmic lightning.

Jake's eyes, once dimly lit, now bore the vastness of galaxies, swirling with stars and nebulas. Their radiant silver-blue cut through the darkness, emanating a energy that was undeniably not of this world.

When River's Bane met his gaze, it saw the universe, but also the chilling emptiness of a predator from an origin far more ancient than its own. For the first time in its long existence since it was nothing but a tiny newborn squid, the giant squid felt a shiver of fear.

Only now did the giant squid begin to realize that it might have provoked an entity that should never have been disturbed.