The Oracle Paths

He'd barely set off toward his next destination when he accidentally risked a glance over his shoulder. The moment he saw with his own eyes the ridiculous trail of blood pooling in his wake, the remaining color drained from his face.

'Goddammit, I can't keep going like this! No way I'm gonna drop dead from anemia after everything I've been through! That'd be a real slap in the face...'

Superhuman vitality or not, Jake couldn't keep bleeding like this or he'd end up kicking the bucket for real.

'And why the hell am I still bleeding so much?! My wounds should've closed up ages ago...' he grumbled internally, feeling somewhat helpless deep down.

He would've loved to summon Claire for some answers, but they'd already assigned her another task before visiting Cho Min Ho. Her role in tomorrow's battle was absolutely crucial, and the necessary preparations couldn't be ignored.

Just thinking about the price he'd agreed to pay to ensure their success gave Jake the chills, but it was the most foolproof plan he could devise. Without Claire, he would've never dared to consider such an idea—not executed so flawlessly, anyway.

[Claire warned us that the Lumyst forming the atmosphere around the membrane was different from that on the continent,] Xi consoled him patiently. [You knew you'd take a hit coming here.]

Jake snorted. 'I know. Doesn't make me any happier about it.'

The only silver lining was that he wasn't likely to get lost in the vast cosmos searching for his next two targets of the night. Two massive sentient celestial bodies like a Sun and a Moon weren't exactly easy to miss. The Moon Spirit might have a chance at hiding, but for the Sun Spirit, concealing its position was damn near impossible.

[It's night on Twyluxia right now, so the Sun Spirit can only be below us...] Xi reminded him, sounding focused.

Jake nodded seriously and began to circle Klayr's corpse, keeping an orbit just wide enough to avoid getting trapped in the atmosphere again. The Lumyst clumped around the membrane enveloping Twyluxia's continent was manageable, but the rest of the world-plane was the domain of the Chitin Blade Spirit. He had no idea of its real capabilities, let alone how much it could mess with the environment.

They could've started by searching for the Moon Spirit, likely closer since it was night, but they had their reasons for going after the Sun Spirit first. If there was one type of celestial body Jake didn't fear, it was stars. The fact that he was eligible for a slew of Soul Classes with arrogant titles like Star Conqueror or Sun God was a pretty telling hint.

After a few minutes of erratic flight punctuated by multiple long-range spatial jumps using his Aetherdream Traveler ability, the blazing star he'd been so desperately seeking—while bleeding like a stuck pig—finally came into view. His minor wounds had finally stopped bleeding after all this time, but instead of feeling relieved, his face had never looked so grim.

[At least you managed to cultivate some Lumyst, I guess... The Aether, like the Lumyst, is particularly pure h-here... Shit.] Xi commented with forced enthusiasm before her voice caught in her throat.

The deafening silence in place of Jake's usual sarcastic grunts only amplified her sense of horror. He hadn't taken his eyes off his destination—or rather, what lay beyond it.

"W-What the... fuck is that?!" Jake stammered, his voice betraying a primordial fear he hadn't felt in ages. A visceral terror knotted his guts, freezing him in place.

He had indeed reached his destination, but the Sun Spirit was now just a dying glimmer against the abyssal immensity devouring the space behind it. A cosmic entity of pure darkness, so vast it seemed to swallow the sky itself. It was only then that Jake realized the total absence of stars on the other side of Klayr.

This world-plane, despite its peculiar origins and detachment from a Mirror Universe, shouldn't have drifted into such an absolute void.

Jake first thought of a supermassive black hole, but had he ever seen a black hole with... tentacles stretching across the cosmos, like the claws of a creature trying to devour everything?

In fact, calling them tentacles or claws didn't do the monstrosity justice. The appearance of this colossal aberration resembled nothing the human mind could conceive or describe. The cosmic horror seemed distant, but because it was so horrifically enormous, it felt like it was already upon him.

The Sun Spirit, with whom Jake was prepared to negotiate fiercely to convince it to join his cause, seemed indifferent to the approaching nightmare, like an ordinary star. Yet, without really knowing why, he was almost certain the sun was "hurrying" along its orbit, as if anxious for the night to end so it could resume its duties on the other side.

The long filament of darkness escaping from the supermassive black hole, pointing in its direction like a compass needle, had absolutely nothing to do with it. Not at all...

Jake then looked up above his head and finally saw what the broken chitin blade lodged in the back of Klayr's skull—the one that had killed him—looked like. Its dimensions seemed ordinary at the scale of the corpse it was embedded in, but he wasn't fooled. The Digestor it had belonged to in life wasn't an adversary he could dream of facing, even if he overestimated his own strength a thousandfold.

However, more than the size and sinister appearance of the blade, it was sensing the devouring darkness it emitted, and the stunted tentacle also pointing toward the Sun Spirit, that finally made Jake grasp the meaning of the terror paralyzing him.

[The Blade Spirit has called a World Eater for reinforcements,] Xi declared grimly, confirming the Soulmancer King's most pessimistic theory.

Digestors were capable of individualism, but each caste was also confined to its role and instincts. Notably, the hierarchy between World Eaters and Digestors of different ranks was unbreakable.

This broken chitin blade might have awakened its spirituality, but in the end, it was just an insignificant fragment of the power of its deceased owner—a Digestor barely qualifying as a World Eater. Just as the Mirror Universes had the Oracle System or the Mirror World to communicate, the World Eaters had their own methods.

It didn't take more for Jake to understand that the deaths of Klayr and his sworn enemy couldn't be hidden from either camp. Another, even more massive World Eater had been lured, not to mention the Players from the two Mirror Universes to which they belonged.

'In that case...' Jake began scanning his surroundings more intently with his Cosmic Eye, simultaneously diving his senses into the Aetherdream in search of any fluctuation he might've missed, and suddenly his eyes widened.

Abruptly turning his head away from the World Eater, Jake fixed his gaze on the cosmos that seemed to contain nothing but stardust, as if trying to bore a hole through it. A moment later, his consciousness managed to glimpse past the illusion.

Behind the veil of ordinary stardust, there was indeed... something else. Something massive.

Mirror Universes... But unlike the World Eater, the two multiversal behemoths were forced to hide their tracks. That spoke volumes about who feared whom between the World Eater and them.

Of course, once the crushing feeling of insignificance passed, Jake regained his composure, emerging stronger from the mind-bending experience.

'In the end, these entities are too different from us mortal creatures,' he concluded with a calm that surprised even himself. 'Whether these worlds we inhabit are sentient or not, we're more insignificant than bacteria in their eyes. That said, it's also to our advantage.'

Jake had finally pulled himself together. The World Eater seemed close, but in reality, it would take hundreds of years for its filament to connect to the broken chitin blade serving as an antenna. As for its body, if this thing was comparable in mass to a Mirror Universe, the distance between them was just unimaginable.

That meant the Players from the two Mirror Universes didn't have to worry—though on a more cosmological timescale, the threat was indeed looming.

This also called into question his perception of the Oracles. For the longest time, he'd thought of them as highly advanced AIs, but now he wasn't so sure. If they weren't AI but manifestations of an advanced consciousness, then their position might not be so enviable.

At his scale, the World Eater and the two Mirror Universes might as well have been standing still, but who knew what the Oracle perceived from its lofty position? No doubt, sometimes ignorance truly was bliss...

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