The Oracle Paths

After identifying his new Soul Class, it was time for Jake to delve into the implications that came with it. Several skills from his previous Rune Aetherist Soul Class had disappeared, and he needed to determine how Aetherdream Inceptor would affect his combat ability and personality.

"How do you feel?" Xi asked cautiously, her voice filled with concern.

Jake furrowed his brow, but after focusing on his true feelings and perceptions for a moment, he still felt the same. Even the Dream Aether he was supposed to be able to perceive as a Lucid Aetherdreamer was undetectable.

Unless Aether and Dream Aether were the same thing? He had once heard that the full name of Aether was actually Dream Aether. If that was the case, then his new and previous Soul Classes had more in common than one might initially think.

However, his affinity for Aether was not the only skill that had disappeared.

"Xi, show me a code, a text, or scripture in an unknown alien civilization's language that I can decipher," Jake requested.

"Right away," Xi complied, projecting a mental image of an ancient stone tablet covered in mysterious circular hieroglyphs from an unknown civilization.

Jake's pupils dilated, a silver glow illuminating his black eyes, but a fraction of a second later, he shook his head.

"I can crack this text, but it's only because of my high intelligence," Jake lamented bitterly. "It has nothing to do with my previous Deciphering/Coding skill."

"You may no longer possess that skill when it comes to ordinary languages, but your new Soul Class has even more mysterious abilities," Xi consoled him. "I have a feeling that if you really try, even a completely unknown language without any objective clues or weaknesses won't resist you for long."

As she spoke, she was referring specifically to his ability to bend reality to his will, as well as to tap into the Dream Aether currents to amplify his physical and mental abilities and see through any illusions.

With their minds linked, Jake didn't need to hear her reasoning to understand what she meant. Indeed, all he had to do was to test his new abilities.

Soul Class abilities were ingrained in his soul. They were even more instinctive than breathing or the urge to eat or drink. Merely knowing of their existence was enough for Jake to attempt to use them successfully. Even in ignorance, he would sooner or later accidentally use his new powers, much like a baby's first cry at birth.

Lucid Aetherdreamer touched on his Aether affinity and a very special state of lucidity that allowed him to see the world as it truly was. Following this simple logic, Jake simply focused on what he saw in front of him, assuming that this vision was incorrect, truncated, or outright false.

As soon as Jake decided to see beyond the surface, to dig deeper and perceive the underlying reality, his vision subtly changed. At first glance, everything seemed identical, but from his extrasensory perception, many things had radically changed to the point that he blinked dumbstruck several times before getting used to this new reality.

To make a simple analogy, he felt like a blind insect that had just regained its sight only to discover that it was, in fact, entangled in a gigantic spider's web.

There were indeed all kinds of Aether and Mana currents that most Evolvers could currently perceive with the Aether Vision of their bracelet or other innate abilities such as his previous Myrtharian Sight.

However, under the influence of Lucid Aetherdreamer, it was as if this surface veil had been torn to reveal another even more dazzling veil just below it. This tableau was much more disturbing because in this mode of vision, there was no longer just Aether or rather Dream Aether.

If someone had asked him an hour earlier whether his body was real or an illusion, Jake would have assuredly answered that it was real. But now? He felt like nothing more than a very dense mass of vapor.

It was the kind of existential crisis that was hard to explain to an ordinary human, but if one had to give an explanation, the best analogy was between matter and energy. At a microscopic level, both were the same thing in a different form.

Even without going that far, the same kind of similarity existed at the molecular scale. The proportion and type of atoms in a pig were roughly the same as those in a human body. Graphite and diamond had exactly the same atomic composition.

But there was a difference between knowing it and "living" it. Jake had now stepped into the other side.

As shocking as this vision was, the surprise did not end there. In this almost clairvoyant state of lucidity, Jake could discern many other things. For example, every movement, every thought he had caused ripples in the Aether fabric that composed all things.

Billions of Aether runes and symbols would emerge and disappear continuously, flowing in these currents to who knows where. More shocking still, there were many levels of entanglement.

Until now, Jake had always believed that the ultimate Aetherist would be the one who could perceive and draw the smallest Aether runes, the cryptic Grade 15 or beyond Aether Code that even the Ancient Designers could not fathom. Now, he realized that in addition to the infinitely small, another universe lay hidden in the infinitely large.

All around him, he could see runes within runes, an Aether Code within another. This infinite cycle repeated itself endlessly, and changes in a single micro rune caused disturbances in the entire chain of macro runes and symbols in which it was embedded.

Jake tried to trace these entanglements of Aether Runes, but eventually gave up, realizing that the Celestial City was enveloped by a giant, extremely complex Aether Symbol, itself just a tiny fraction of an Aether Rune thousands of times larger, which he could not even perceive in its entirety.

At that moment, he had an epiphany and finally understood why Aetherdream Inceptor was a Soul Class made for him. Aetherdream Inception was precisely the awesome ability to peer into the endless intricacies of the world around him.

If he pushed the reasoning to the extreme, maybe the Mirror Universe was just the product of a vast rune, a mere mass of Dream Aether that believed itself to be different from the rest. Since every movement and thought manifested in Aether Runes and Aether Symbols, triggering a massive butterfly effect that spread throughout all the Dream Aether, Jake could already conclude that in a sense they were all made of data.

The Aetherdream. This was the term used to describe the deeper reality in which they existed without realizing it. With his fertile imagination, countless wild theories, if not downright nightmarish, began to bud in his mind, and he had to take a deep breath to calm his fizzing brain.

If he wasn't careful, Jake could actually go mad. Suddenly feeling mentally exhausted, he turned off the Lucid Dreamer mode. Regaining normal vision brought him an immense feeling of relief, to the point of almost doubting what he had just experienced.

What was real, what was fake? These two realities seemed equally tangible, but Jake now knew that what he was looking at was only a very superficial facade.

Still… During those brief seconds when Jake had been able to experience the Aetherdream, or at least what he believed to be the Aetherdream, his sharpened senses had noticed something.

Even though his intelligence and perception were far from sufficient to accurately distinguish all these Dream Aether Runes of different sizes, he was sensitive enough to perceive most of the micro-current disturbances and, to some extent, sort them out.

His Oracle Device and his soul, for example, were connected by two different invisible filaments to something far away from him, and all the Players present in the Divine Academy were also connected to that same thing.

On instinct, Jake had immediately identified them as the Oracle System and the method used by the Oracle to bring them back to the Red Cube when they were killed or disqualified during their Ordeal. If their existence could be reduced to a mass of Dream Aether and Runes, it could explain a lot.

Similarly, Jake realized at that moment how the Oracle System could transmit data from one end of the universe to the other in real-time without suffering any latency. Like him, the Oracle used the Aetherdream, this infinitely complex web of Aether connecting all things and of which all things were a part.

At that moment, Jake was suddenly inspired and switched back to Lucid Dreamer mode. Seeing himself as a simple mass of Dream Aether, he dispersed his data into one of the currents nearby and wished to reappear far away from here.

With a mere blink of an eye, his body had solidified somewhere in the cosmos. Using his bracelet to determine his location, Jake found himself lost amidst an asteroid belt roughly 18 billion kilometers away from the Celestial City.

Switching back to Lucid Aetherdreamer mode, he focused on his desired destination. With a snap of his fingers, Jake was back in his building.

He had just completed his first trip through the Aetherdream.