The Oracle Paths

Jake never had a chance to return the favor. At a speed virtually impossible to track with the naked eye, the mutant twenty-five meters away drew his bow at him, pulled the string tight and released it with a swoosh-like sound.

There were no arrows notched. Truth be told, Ulfar carried a bow, but no quiver.

An inexplicable sense of danger ran up his spine and without thinking, he ducked as fast as he could. His head had barely bent down a few inches when his sense of danger suddenly increased tenfold. Quickly shifting his eyes to what he thought was the arrow, he saw nothing but Ulfar's bow aimed in the direction he was dodging.

"Shit!"

A telekinetic barrier appeared in front of Jake's face, violently intercepting his dodge. His face slammed violently into the force field and he used the counterforce to catapult himself in the opposite direction. Throughout the action, Ulfar remained in the same stance, his fingers slightly bent after firing his invisible arrow.

Jake left a small crater in the arena as he landed and used his telekinesis again to steady himself. A rivulet of blood trickled down his nose, but he chose to ignore it to keep his focus on his opponent. Half a second later, his nosebleed stopped on its own.

"Good. Sharp Instincts." The king of Beskyr congratulated him with not a single shred of mockery. "I don't know if you're just lucky or well trained, but you did well to dodge that arrow. Let's see, if it was a lucky shot or not."

Ulfar stretched the bowstring again, but this time the fingers and arm pulling the string began to vibrate at high frequency. Bursts of invisible arrows were fired at a rate surpassing that of a modern machine gun.

This time, Jake didn't foolishly try to dodge. He thrust his right palm forward and the rocky floor of the arena liquefied to form a great wave several meters high surging toward the Beskyrian. A telekinetic force field then caught up with the wave from behind to further reinforce it.

Yet the sense of danger did not diminish. Even after he gave up his attack, and solidified the wave into a solid stone wall, he still had chills. Second after second, Jake felt the imminence of his defeat approaching as he remained hesitant in the same position.

'No! I must dodge!'

His eyes shot wide open and he flicked away from his position after wisely choosing to teleport. Whatever those invisible projectiles were, he was sure his rock wall and telekinetic barrier were useless in stopping them.

With perfect timing, he resurfaced from behind Ulfar's back with his Bone Crushing Snoworm's Fang in his grip just millimeters short of the enemy's throat. His throat... Not his nape. The bow was aiming at his chest as if he had been waiting for it all along.

'What the fuck-'

"Too late." Ulfar smirked with a falsely apologetic look.

With a cold sweat, Jake abandoned any thought of conserving his energy and teleported away again, but when he reappeared a dozen meters away, a pang of foreboding a thousand times more distinct than the previous ones struck his mind.

Ulfar was still pointing his bow at his old location, clearly not having anticipated his action, but Jake knew in his bones and guts that one of those arrows had found its target.

"Damn it!"

Sweating profusely, he calmly examined his body but detected no injury.

[Your Aether Status.] Xi coughed with concern.

Fearing the worst, Jake skimmed through it and found a "tiny" anomaly.

[Luck Aether: -1000 (Reverse Fate Curse.)]

His 1000 points of luck had turned into 1000 points of bad luck!

With the Aether density set at 65, he was normally over 15 times luckier than a normal human. He had just become fifteen times more unlucky instead.

Jake remembered Ostrexora's unfortunate end, but he wasn't like that resentful fucking ghost. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

Without qualms, he plunged his brand new Furnace Gauntlets into the ground up to his elbows and released the two Heat Spells he'd been charging inside for the past few days in one go.

These were not wimpy spells restricted by his Aether Core, but full blown disaster spells patiently charged by storing an astronomical amount of heat energy with the help of his Aether Sun Core.

Within a split second, the arena floor melted and then vaporized, changing from magma to pure plasma. There was no way Ulfar could survive this. Even Jake was mentally prepared to roast alive.

Clap, clap, clap!

Wrapped in blinding white plasma, Ulfar calmly put away his bow while gazing at it with pity. Whether it was his armor or his skin, the searing heat had no effect on him.

"Good thing I remembered to drink this Firelich Decoction. Heat Invulnerability sure is a good thing." Ulfar commented nonchalantly as if he were talking about the weather. "More seriously. Did you really think I wouldn't have planned anything against your powers when I've been fighting along with Kintharians for the past two years? You disappoint me."

Jake remained silent, his fighting spirit intact, but inwardly he was cogitating wildly in search of a solution.

'He knows practically everything about my abilities, but I don't know much about him. If he has completed 3 Ordeals in three days, with his incredible luck, his winnings must not be less than mine.'

[But with his character, Ulfar doesn't have the profile of a reckless daredevil either.] Xi reminded him gravely. [His luck is a comfortable cocoon that makes everything possible, but it is also his prison. I doubt he has the courage to do anything when luck alone is not enough. An Ordeal is always difficult. His luck may give him a head start and ease, but he will pay for it with a more punishing Ordeal Rating and more dangerous missions.]

'That Ulfar doesn't look like the fearful type to me.' Jake shook his head with a wry smile. Tim's first Ordeal was kinda like the agoge of the ancient Spartans. If Beskyrians were cowards, why would they uphold such traditions?'

[Don't lose your focus!] Xi rebuked him sternly. [Don't let a slip of your mind bring your downfall.]

As this milisecond-long telepathic exchange proceeded, Jake remained resolutely centered on the sensations in his body, his mind, and his surroundings. This was not normal mindfulness, but an inhuman level of concentration channeling all his Soul Energy, making his mind as stable and unyielding as a Spirit Turtle.

In this state, Jake couldn't do much, but he noticed that the glowing ionized gas seemed to avoid Ulfar despite its chaotic nature of spontaneously trying to occupy all available space.

If the King of Beskyr were completely invulnerable to heat, he would have attacked him by now. Instead, Ulfar kept staring at him arrogantly as if he was waiting for something. He had stowed away his bow long ago and equipped his unadorned sword once stabbed into the ground.

Jake obviously tried to engage from a distance, whether with his Wind Bullets or with real projectiles such as steel needles, throwing knives and even a warhead, but the explosives did not explode, while most of the projectiles missed their target. Those that did manage to hit the bull's-eye were dodged or blocked effortlessly by his opponent.

Jake briefly considered hurling an unstoppable projectile, like a mini asteroid, but in addition to damaging his island, it might kill him. With his bad luck, it could also backfire.

He had already realized that without going all out, winning would be nearly impossible. On the other hand, Ulfar had become passive after shooting him with his arrow.

When a minute passed without any significant developments, Ulfar frowned. The plasma had begun to cool and the light was not as blinding as before. However, because of a decoction he had presumably ingested, the brightness had no effect on him. He wasn't even blinking.

"You are more enduring than I thought. It would seem that bad luck alone is not enough to elicit victory." Ulfar sighed as he clutched the hilt of his sword tightly. "Unfortunately, I can't afford to wait. These decoctions have a limited duration of effect and I have already reached the limit of intoxication my luck can handle."

"Are you using your luck to resist the poison?" Jake took advantage of his inclination to chat to scrape together some information. Any tidbit of information was good to take if it could get him the win.

"Luck is just a matter of perspective. During a thunderstorm, a tree only has a definite probability of being struck by lightning, but for those who understand the science of clouds, everything is absolutely predictable. The tree will be struck by lightning, or it won't. The first thing a Beskyrian learns is to perceive the world in terms of probabilities, whether that logic is right or wrong."

A flash of understanding smote Jake's face as he listened to this explanation. Even on Earth, there were dozens, hundreds of studies every year defining a given eventuality or risk by a probability. This was true for global warming, health risks, or the risk of a piece of toast falling on the wrong side.

He remembered an interesting medical study on supercentenarians, which concluded that the risk of dying within the next year stabilized at 50% after age 108. This was obviously based on statistics resulting from the follow-up of a small sample of supercentenarians, but if the results were taken literally it could be interpreted as follows:

Immortality was just a matter of luck.