The Oracle Paths

Chapter 1243: The Day Anthace Bled

“He’s… gone,” Chloe commented, dumbfounded, watching him vanish into the distance.

Aisling didn’t react, but the disappointment on her beautiful face was impossible to miss. It had been four years. His absence had carried heavy consequences for her and her people, and when he finally reappeared he had barely taken the time to greet them, as if he hardly recognized them.

Patting the shoulder plate of her armor with his short arm in a clinking rattle of metal, the dwarf Bhammod tried to console her.

“Keep your cool. You can see the situation’s critical everywhere. The fact he even took the time to save us is already something.”

An anxious clearing of a throat ruined the bearded warrior’s attempt at comfort, earning him a crooked grimace.

“What?! Elduin, you think this is the time for theatrics? Our Ais is feeling down here.”

Instead of answering, the elf simply pointed toward the foot of the mountain.

The moment their eyes followed the Dawn Knight’s gesture, their relaxed attitudes crumbled instantly—Aisling included.

All around them, as far as the cracked, ashen soil of the Duskwight Lands stretched, a new wave of spawn was already clawing its way out of the ground. Pulverized roots gave way to fresh shoots and swelling buds as if nothing had happened.

Horrified, the Players watched in despair as another behemoth—just as colossal as the previous arachnoid—slowly emerged from the earth, one massive limb at a time. The dust cloud it stirred billowed for kilometers, hiding the coming tide of enemies behind a shifting curtain of debris.

“This is bad,” Kevin and Vincent said grimly as they suddenly appeared atop Aisling’s fortress, making the group jump.

“There’s no way to tell how many of those monsters and resurrected Anthace can mobilize. At this rate, give it a few dozen minutes at most and every base and city on the continent will fall—maybe except the two capitals and the central battlefield. No wonder Jake didn’t stop.”

The dhampir demoness wanted to protest, but instead she drew a slow breath, knowing they were right. Considering the gap in power and Oracle Rank between them and Jake, they could only imagine what kind of objective he had to complete to validate his Ordeal.

Sadly, the demon’s little sister managed to dampen their spirits even further with her next remark.

“A few dozen minutes? More like one or two…” she muttered to herself darkly.

Just as the group of survivors thought they might have no choice but to activate their Space Link and teleport to Dusken to regroup with the other Myrtharians, a new streak of light suddenly tore across the sky from east to west.

At the sight of the celestial spectacle, the dwarf and the elf exchanged a strange look.

“Ahem… Is it just me, or does that shooting star look familiar?” Bhammod commented uncertainly.

Meanwhile, the others’ expressions had already frozen in shock.

After the new streak of light passed overhead, a powerful gust scattered the dust cloud hiding the monsters—revealing the new horde of creatures and resurrected… or rather what was left of them.

The second wave of enemies, supposedly even larger than the previous one, had also been exterminated in a completely anticlimactic fashion.

The stunned silence lingered for a few seconds, broken only by the faint whistle of wind.

Then Vincent coughed.

“Cough… Tell me if I’m crazy, but didn’t Jake leave heading northwest?”

His companions were stuck on the same inconsistency. This “Jake”—because it could only be Jake—had clearly come from the east. It made no sense, especially since he had just departed moments ago.

Chloe suddenly brightened, her face lighting up with a spark of realization as she tapped her fist against her palm. With a proud, confident grin she declared,

“Jake is so fast he had time to circle the whole planet!”

Kevin, Vincent, and Aisling opened their mouths to correct her… then closed them again awkwardly.

Damn it. Knowing their leader, that wasn’t completely impossible.

Thankfully their Oracle AIs still possessed a shred of rational thinking, and one of them suggested,

[Perhaps he had to teleport east urgently with the Space Link to save another group and was simply returning the same way.]

The Players accepted that explanation almost with relief. The other possibilities were simply too absurd.

Jake couldn’t actually clone himself… right?

Right?!

Unfortunately, when a third wave of spawn erupted from the bowels of Twyluxia—larger than the last—only to be wiped out moments later by a third streak of light, they were forced to accept the obvious.

Trying to understand Jake’s abilities was a waste of time.

Many natives and Players from both sides across the continent were experiencing the same emotional rollercoaster—swinging between gratitude, astonishment, doubt, and sheer bewilderment.

Reports and testimonies exchanged between members of various factions all described the same impossible miracle:

A streak of light would tear across the sky like a white-hot blade cutting through the firmament, and the enemies that had seemed invincible moments earlier would collapse—obliterated down to the last particle.

The number of lives saved by this inexplicable phenomenon was impossible to calculate.

Many natives had already begun praying, praising what they believed to be a god.

As for the “god” in question, the Jake who had saved Aisling and her group the first time hadn’t changed course at all.

Without deviating from his trajectory, he had even accelerated toward Melkree. Her distress signal had sounded urgent.

Announcing his arrival with overwhelming presence, a prodigious quantity of Aether, Lumyst, and Spirit Power rapidly gathered in his eyes, their galactic glow intensifying dramatically.

The whites of his eyes turned black, while his irises filled with a cosmic depth—as if an entire universe were being born within them.

Soon after, a massive blinding blue-black beam erupted from his pupils, so chaotic that it produced a stroboscopic effect for anyone foolish enough to stare at it. Space warped and roared as the hyper-compressed energy tore through it, while everything around it faded into a dull monochrome gray for the unfortunate souls caught in its path.

VRRRRRMMMM!

Then space itself descended into pure chaos, the distance separating the beam from its target seeming to collapse infinitely.

Melkree, Albert, and Azeus felt the impact more than they saw it.

Or rather, what they saw next made cold sweat break out across their skin.

The malicious plant aura surrounding Anthace’s avatar—slowly approaching them moments earlier—vanished instantly.

In its place appeared a perfectly clean hole the size of a coin in the middle of its forehead.

This was the first time Jake had unleashed the full power of his Cosmic Eyes since the beginning of the Ordeal.

He had always kept them tempered until now. Yet that organ was among the most resilient parts of his body, constantly evolving to handle and channel ever greater quantities of energy.

For instantaneous long-range killing, it was by far his most lethal technique.

Anthace’s Dryad form clearly hadn’t been prepared for an assault of such sophistication. Even with its skull pierced through, the avatar’s expression didn’t change at first. Its face remained frozen behind the same emotionless mask.

Perhaps it hadn’t even registered that it had been attacked.

Or perhaps, since this wasn’t its true body, the destruction of that brain simply didn’t matter.

The avatar didn’t even bother turning around. Its hand continued moving toward Melkree’s throat while she and her companions remained completely unable to lift even a finger.

Its movements were slow but deliberate.

Jake’s surprise attack seemed to have had no effect.

Until it did.

The Titan Tree’s humanoid form suddenly froze.

Then it began to convulse.

Its blank face twisted into a hideous grimace of agony, and an indescribable scream tore across the world with unbearable intensity. A violent explosion of spiritual energy followed, ripping through the eardrums of every living being across the continent.

The cry of agony erupted from every root and every bud. No place was spared. Players, natives, wild beasts, sentient artifacts, wandering souls, spawn, even the resurrected—

All of them were struck by the sonic wave. Pain tore through their minds, shredding their brains and dropping nearly all of them to the ground.

Even hardened monsters like Gerulf and Rogen clamped their hands over their ears with pained growls, desperate for the horrific wail to end.

Many natives and Players began bleeding from their ears, suffering violent concussions. As for the last surviving civilians and ordinary creatures still alive…

They simply collapsed where they stood.

Their brains imploded instantly.

At least they hadn’t had time to suffer.

Because the scream was echoing through every root in the continent-spanning network, the sound waves quickly began colliding with each other like shockwaves. These violent reverberations amplified one another, turning the entire phenomenon into a chaotic maelstrom of resonance.

This time the consequences were physical.

An earthquake of unprecedented magnitude shook Twyluxia, cracking open what remained of its continental membrane. The few infrastructures and structures still standing collapsed like a chain of falling dominoes.

Even the fortress Aisling and the others had fought so desperately to defend broke apart and crashed down the mountainside along with the cliff into which it had been carved.

Nothing could contain the paroxysm of suffering the Titan Tree was now experiencing.

For the first time in its immeasurably long existence—

Anthace had truly shed its own blood.