The Oracle Paths

"Surrender. You know you can't win against us," Nigel taunted, laying out his final ultimatum. "You're in checkmate, and you know it."

Hade's gaze darted left and right, keeping a wary eye on his many foes. Yet, despite his desperate situation, his eyes betrayed no sign of surrender. The previously congenial demeanor of the Gorgonite faded, seeing that the human wasn't ready to accept his offer.

"Do it," Nigel commanded, his voice resonating as deeply as an earthquake.

The Gorgonite squeezed the silvery, sponge-like sea urchin in his grasp, and the same shrill, harrowing sound that Hade had heard earlier echoed once more in the corridor. Hearing this sound, Epsilom and Drakon, who had been standing still with vacant eyes, jerked erratically as if struck by an electric shock.

This scene held a sense of déjà vu for Hade, and as he watched their grey eyes roll in their sockets independently before locking onto him, his heart froze in his chest.

'I can't let them attack first,' he realized, drawing his black lightsaber.

Epsilom controlled the surrounding Aether, but Hade was not entirely powerless as he had escaped the first time. He wouldn't make the same mistake as their first encounter either. Instead of attacking Epsilom in a futile attempt to disrupt the Anti-Aether domain, he decisively charged at Drakon.

Nigel smirked, seeing his new strategy. He understood why the human made this choice, but it was a foolish one nonetheless.

'I was worried he might escape again, but it seems I fretted needlessly.'

In Nigel's mind, the outcome of the battle was already decided. However, his jewel-like hexagonal eyes nearly bulged from their sockets when a point-blank Force Push, inspired by Asfrid, sent Drakon crashing into the opposite wall like a bullet.

Hade gave Nigel the finger without turning back. Before Drakon could extract himself from the wall, the Fluid Grandmaster dashed past him, swiftly turning left without asking for permission.

"Sigh... How futile... Catch him," Nigel dismissed scornfully, squeezing the silver urchin in his hand.

The shrill sound was emitted in rapid bursts, and the two zombified disciples of Cekt obediently set off in pursuit of the veteran. Hade, having heard the Gorgonite and recognizing his condescension, knew he wasn't out of danger yet.

'How on earth am I supposed to find Jake if my Oracle Paths don't work?' the Fluid Grandmaster cursed when a sudden coughing fit cut his breath in half.

Just as he began to distance himself from his pursuers, paralyzing pain radiating throughout his nervous system forced him to halt. His trembling legs gave way for a few brief milliseconds—an equivalent of signing his death warrant against such foes.

His vision had barely stabilized when he noticed a puddle of tainted blood at his feet, his once red blood ominously turning grey. Before he could be alarmed by the rapid deterioration of his symptoms, he spotted the shadow of Drakon's barbed, scaled red tail looming over him.

Without a moment to think, he instinctively dodged with a roll to the side, blindly swinging his lightsaber overhead, hoping to hit something.

VRRRRMM!

A shower of sparks and a faint burnt scent filled the air when his black light blade met the predator's tail, but alas, Hade didn't hear the pain-filled roar he was hoping for.

The tail that had just smashed into the ground at his former position whipped through the air horizontally, its speed shifting from 0 to multiples of the speed of sound after traveling only a few millimeters.

"Shit!" Hade barely parried with his lightsaber, but the force of the blow slammed him into the wall behind him.

At the same moment, a sense of imminent deadly danger gripped him and he jerked his head forward without thinking to dodge a white beam concentrated from Epsilom's outstretched index finger. Hade cursed his rotten luck for having to face such a formidable pair.

One was already too many.

Swoosh!

The third blow from Drakon was already coming, this time in the form of a diagonal claw swipe that, if it found its mark, would sever his torso from right shoulder to left hip. Knowing his lightsaber wouldn't be enough, he tried another Force Push, but his heart sank when nothing happened.

Hade didn't need to ponder long to realize that Epsilom had already corrected the flaw in his previous Anti-Aether domain. Now, even spiritual energy was prohibited.

At least, that which wasn't truly under his control. Even cornered thus, he didn't surrender and opened the gates of the only source of energy that no power could snatch from him: Soul Power.

In other words, True Will.

"True Will of Stability," Hade declared mentally, his bloodshot eyes igniting, emitting a mesmerizing radiance.

This was the ultimate move he had developed to counter the otherwise unstoppable divine powers of Felphi. He hadn't expected to resort to it again so soon under these circumstances. He doubted it would work against Epsilom's magic, but somehow it did the trick.

What is part of me, cannot be changed against my will. That was roughly how Hade defined this True Will Move.

Contrary to what Felphi believed, it wasn't an Anti-Disruption specifically designed to counter her, but an unyielding will to remain unaffected regardless of the hostile forces.

Something he hadn't foreseen occurred as soon as he mobilized his Soul Power through his True Will.

First, his injuries stopped worsening and his symptoms stabilized. The progression of the virus also halted, but with his mental sense, he could tell it was just a temporary truce. It was as if someone had hit pause in a video game.

The virus was still there. It was merely a temporary ceasefire. Had he known, he would have used this move right from the start before letting his condition deteriorate this far.

'If I had known my True Will had such a wide range of applications, I wouldn't have rationed it so much,' Hade thought grimly, vowing to scrutinize his new move in-depth if he survived this hell.

The other effect, however, one he did anticipate from his True Will of Stability, was that he regained control of his Spirit Energy within about a meter radius of his body. Beyond that, the Soul Power permeating his Spirit Body became too diffuse to resist Epsilom's superior control.

As soon as he regained some semblance of control over his energy, Hade activated a psychic shield in the nick of time, just in time to stop the plasma breath that Drakon spat at him from his gaping maw at point-blank range.

Undeterred, Hade stepped forward and, wrapping his black lightsaber in a dense repulsive force field compressing all the Sharpening Aether he could channel, he slashed down from top to bottom, slicing the white plasma jet in half, followed by the torso of the Draconian.

A spray of broken and half-melted scales shot into the air like shrapnel, but Hade calmly deflected them with his telekinesis and saber.

He should have been satisfied to finally deliver a lethal blow, but the heavy sensation in his numb arm spoiled his triumphant look. His lightsaber had only penetrated a few millimeters into the dragon's flesh.

Casting a glance at the wound he'd just inflicted on his adversary, the remaining sliver of hope he'd harbored to survive evaporated completely. Drakon had already healed.

"Fuc—"

Hade didn't even have time to lament before the Draconian's tail coiled at a lightning speed around his neck, and in the next instant his head was brutally smashed against the ground, shattering into pieces against the Voidsteel floor.

The valiant but brief resistance he had managed to put up relying on his True Will of Stability was ruined with one tail strike from Drakon, the devastating head blow disrupting his concentration.

This was the difference between a true Oracle Knight, even zombified, and him, a Fourth Ordeal finalist who perished before he could claim the highest rewards the victors were entitled to.

His Spirit Body level and Soul Strength, which were his greatest advantages, were rendered useless due to his physical condition.

With his brain scattered into tiny pieces in his field of vision, Hade lay paralyzed on the ground. Because of the virus, he couldn't risk regeneration, and it was now turning against him.

Feeling that he was on the brink of falling into a deep coma, the Fluid Grandmaster resorted to the only option left: He abandoned his mortal coil.

Shrouding his Spirit Body with his mental sense, an ethereal, invisible Hade exploded out of his infected carcass and shot above Drakon's head, hoping to slip through the net.

He had staked everything on this last-ditch escape, suppressing his spiritual fluctuations to the minimum, hoping that these two zombified disciples were no longer capable of properly using their mental sense.

Shooting past the Draconian without any reaction from him, Hade's figurative heart throbbed with excitement. His hypothesis was correct! These zombies were but a shadow of their former selves.

Just as he was about to truly shake them off for good, Hade distantly heard the piercing sound ring out again behind him. Almost simultaneously, the creature responsible for his injuries during the initial ambush appeared before him.

The Fluid Grandmaster had no time to think, let alone fear. On the contrary, facing his inevitable end, a resigned smile graced his face, the image of his son Nylreg floating before his eyes as his consciousness plunged into eternal oblivion.