The Oracle Paths

No matter how diligently Jake was preparing for the upcoming battle, splitting a strand of his consciousness to keep an eye on his faction's server wasn't that hard. Receiving all these enthusiastic responses, his reclusive soul was greatly taken aback and he came to the realization that he was in fact less alone than he thought. Just as the other members relied on him, he could also rely on them.

In making this request, with his distrustful and individualistic nature, he had expected a few dozen positive responses, at best a few hundred, but not much more. Seeing that practically every Myrtharian Nerd was about to join him, he could only be delighted and sincerely grateful.

Even the few negative replies were justified by their situation and geographical position and whether these Players were honest or not their excuses seemed genuine.

While at first he didn't expect much, as he watched one Player after another respond, he found himself becoming more demanding, his attention focusing more on those who didn't respond. When at dusk he noticed that all but one person had responded, his good mood instantly soured.

'Will, with everything that's been going on lately I'd forgotten that I wanted to have a serious talk with you, but it seems I wasn't imagining things.' Jake concluded grimly to himself.

To avoid misjudging him, Jake still gave him the benefit of the doubt, but deep down he was starting to feel dissatisfied with his attitude. Will was only the Vice-Leader, but he acted as if he owned the faction, using Jake as a deterrent presence he was not accountable to.

Although Jake originally tacitly approved of his methods, he had made it clear from the start that all important decisions and reports had to go through him or at least be relayed back. While he normally wouldn't have held it against Will for not responding, the fact that he was the only one who didn't give a reply only highlighted the faults in his conduct that Jake already blamed him for.

'I hope he has a good excuse...' Jake muttered before refocusing on the task at hand.

Currently, his current condition was a bit complicated and he didn't know how to tackle the issue. After returning to his previous hideout with Aisling and Jeanie, the first thing he had wanted to do was obviously heal his wounds.

On the surface, his body had long since regenerated and he had no visible injuries. Due to the fact that he had been nearly disintegrated and had lost astronomical amounts of blood, his biomass had clearly decreased and his bloodline had somewhat regressed in some aspects.

Only in some aspects and that was the problem. If Jake didn't feel so weak and sluggish compared to his optimal state, he would have been inclined to say that he was on the verge of a breakthrough. It was a gut feeling that came from deep inside him and he could feel viscerally that his bloodline was suffering from an inexplicable blockage preventing him from evolving.

The sensation was unnerving, almost painful, as if his body was overflowing with energy but had no idea what to do with it. After having suffered the blast of Ozo's explosion, he had taken a lot of damage but he had also voraciously devoured as much heat and radiation as he could.

In order to rebuild itself after each explosion, all Bubble Aliens would imprint each particle of their being with a spirit mark containing a trace of their consciousness that was a bit special, having a will of its own but still connected to the main Bubble Alien.

Taking the concept even further, the Bubble Aliens could even merge with each other to form a super entity, their consciousnesses merging to form one unified mind. That was why Ozo had reacted so badly when Jake had forcibly absorbed some of the blast energy.

In addition to digesting a copious dose of radiation and heat, Jake had also ingested a significant amount of spiritual energy. This unintentional feat plus the other battle achievements under his belt had allowed him to rack up 3 Spirit Body levels in a matter of minutes, allowing his Spirit Body to reach level 37.

This may not seem like much compared to the natives, but with each subsequent Spirit Body level being harder to attain than the one before, his Soul had actually strengthened by over 50%. If he hadn't spent so much mental power he would have felt the difference right away.

It was partly for this reason that his threat and fighting prowess had only increased during the battle, arousing Deimos' suspicions. The other reason was obviously his Aether and Soul Tribute skill. In just those few minutes of battle, his Aether stats had uniformly increased by about 10%.

All in all, Jake had definitely gotten stronger even though he had lost a significant amount of his biomass and Bloodline Aether. So why was he feeling so bursting with energy and convinced that his Bloodline was about to advance to the next level?

He couldn't explain it to himself. But with each passing minute, his body was growing more and more uncomfortable. At first he didn't worry too much about it, blaming it on fatigue and injuries from the fight. Except that almost six hours had elapsed since this clash of titans and Jake should have long since recovered.

"Is it because my Aether Sun Core isn't giving me enough energy?" Jake wondered doubtfully as he conjured it in the palm of his hand.

The once dazzling sun was now barely glowing, a faint red light radiating from its dim surface. This degree of heat and radiation was so insignificant to Jake that it almost seemed cold.

Seeing the state of his Aether Sun Core, Jake stowed it away with a sigh,

'This battle of egos has really cost me dearly. Distracting them for so long and they still failed to save Carmin and the others. At least they freed Aisling. I didn't do that for nothing...'

It was a meager consolation, but that was the plan they had agreed upon. Wyatt and Grimwald could have created a diversion instead, but those were seasoned Players in front of them, not fools. They knew how to counter Vampires, and one radioactive blast from Ozo would have surely annihilated them in a heartbeat.

Jake was neither invincible nor omnipotent, but unlike them he had no weaknesses. He was the only viable choice.

All of a sudden, a sharp pain swept through his body, his muscles twitching so much that he nearly convulsed on the floor. After the seizure, Jake was drenched in sweat and as he caught his breath, he mentally communicated with his Oracle AI with obvious anxiety on his face,

"Xi, do you have any idea what's happening to me? My Bloodline looks both stronger and weaker than before. My biomass has decreased and so have my body stats, but that doesn't explain this increasing pain. What's happening to me?"

Xi's hologram appeared in front of him and at each of her appearances Jake could not help but marvel, his mind blanking out of all thoughts. For a moment, he stared at the mesmerizing beauty with a dumbstruck look on his face, before another bout of pain brought him back to reality.

"Jake, are you okay?!" The young woman freaked out as she saw him collapse again, her red and black eyes riddled with worry.

As quickly as she could, she searched through the Oracle System archives she had access to find the cause of his predicament, but Jake's bloodline was a new hybrid bloodline, so documentation on the matter was extremely limited. To make things worse, everything about System A16 was classified and that included data about the Myrmidians, Kintharians, Eltarians and Beskyrians that made up his bloodline.

After skimming through thousands of documents, Xi finally found a clue when she investigated a species with similar abilities and growth processes to the Kintharians.

"I think I've got something." She said excitedly as Jake panted like a dog after his third seizure.

He groaned painfully in response.

"Tell me everything. Quick!" Jake urged her as he felt a fourth seizure brewing even worse than the previous ones.

Aware that the situation was urgent she downloaded the information straight into his mind and Jake closed his eyes to digest the flood of data. After reading it all, he laughed darkly, completely ignoring the painful convulsions of the fourth seizure. When it was over, he complained tiredly,

"The answer was so simple, but I had to come close to death to figure out what I was doing wrong."

Xi smiled wrily, apologizing over and over for not identifying the problem earlier. As her hologram faded, her soft voice echoed in his mind,

[Your hunch was right. Your Bloodline has both progressed and regressed. Your Myrtharian Bloodline has four attributes, Heat, Radiation, Earth and Metal. You have accumulated far too much Heat and Radiation over the past fifteen months and these two attributes have long since reached the threshold required for the next level. Conversely, your Earth and Metal attributes are behind. Although you did not forget to bury yourself in the ground during your training last year, and thus your biomass increased accordingly as you absorbed these nutrients, this was not the case during the last three months as you were training your Soul at the same time.

[Lastly, as when your Myrtarian bloodline evolved into a Silver Myrtharian bloodline after assimilating the Silver Soul Alloy, we should have realized that it had a strong potential to evolve based on the type of soil and metal ingested. We made the mistake of treating these materials as fuel like heat and light, when in fact you do need them to evolve.

[If my hypothesis is correct, your Grade 9 bloodline that is supposed to plateau at level 4 may actually have the potential to reach Grade 10 or even higher.]