The Oracle Paths

Chapter 1237: The Cost of Staying

Before facing that final Judgment Day, they first had to survive long enough to see it arrive. If the Kintharians and the Throsgenians—sitting at the very top percentile of Players in this Ordeal—were being pushed to their absolute limits, then for everyone else it could only be hell on earth.

Jake had ordered the remaining Myrtharian Nerds to focus on defending Dusken.

Grouping up was a lifesaver thanks to United We Stand, but the capital of the Duskwight Lands was also one of Anthace’s and the Blade Spirit’s two primary targets. Gerulf and his kin were doing a damn good job intercepting threats, but they could only cover so much ground.

Creatures saturated with dark, corrosive Lumyst were erupting everywhere. For every thousand the handful of Kintharians blocked or wiped out, tens of millions were breaking through somewhere else on the continent at that very same moment.

Every tribe, every city, every military camp, every fortress and citadel across Twyluxia had long since been set ablaze. The terrified screams and drawn-out death cries of civilians and noncombatants had already begun to fade—proof that most of them had met their end.

Every town, village, and patch of land where life once thrived had turned into a grotesque stage. Half-devoured children’s heads lay beside those of the parents and neighbors who had tried to defend them to their last breath.

Sometimes it was worse.

This apocalypse laid bare the ugliest depths humanity could sink to. To survive, some were willing to shatter their own grandmother’s legs to buy a few seconds of distraction. Others threw their children—or their spouse—straight into the monsters’ jaws. Pets were abandoned without a shred of empathy, some still chained in place, never given a chance to run.

But karma showed no mercy either.

The kind of people capable of sinking that low were rarely the ones who had cultivated the strength or courage needed to endure a purge like this. That stolen second of respite almost always led to a slower, more horrific death. In the end, all they had left was blind panic—and a flicker of guilt before the dark swallowed them whole.

In Jake’s Mirror Universe, major factions like the Myrtharian Nerds or the King’s Idol Alliance could still mount organized resistance thanks to strong individual power and tight coordination. But for average-rank independent Players, their situation wasn’t much better than that of untrained natives. All they could do was run toward the nearest citadel or military camp, praying that other lone Players had the same idea.

In truth, even that plan had already started to crumble. A citadel like Grimstone Keep served as the final defensive line for rear-line garrisons—but most of its powerhouses were gone. Its troops were made up largely of fresh recruits and wounded soldiers still recovering.

Several Myrtharian Nerds had ended up in exactly that situation. Arryn and Siraye, for instance, lay pale and wax-faced on hospital beds that were little more than sweat-soaked mattresses stained with substances better left unidentified. For Rank 9 Players, it was already a miracle they hadn’t been forced out of the Ordeal.

The two bold, striking young women had held their own on the battlefield—well enough to complete their Main Mission and knock out a couple of Side Quests. Of course, those missions had nothing to do with Jake’s scale of insanity.

For Arryn—the brunette who dressed like a tomb raider in revealing short shorts—exploring between frontline rotations had led her to uncover a well-hidden ruin housing the forgotten tomb of an unnamed Soulmancer.

The enchanted artifact she found there—a large nut-shaped device—turned out to be a collapsible single-person spacecraft. It could expand or shrink to fit inside her Space Storage, and the primary alloy composing it was indestructible.

At least, indestructible to her.

Siraye, her companion—once a sheltered noble girl who had struggled with her weight—didn’t share Arryn’s thirst for adventure. Her Side Quest had been to test as many dishes as possible and advance Duskwight gastronomy, while optimizing frontline supply chains. It sounded boring. But in this Ordeal, she’d thought she’d finally found her calling.

Neither woman had wanted to leave the Ordeal—until both were gravely injured in succession during a massive clash involving millions of troops from both sides.

Their Main Mission had been simple on paper: survive at least one week on the frontline and eliminate a Light Warrior equivalent to a Pulsar—a squad leader overseeing five to ten recruits in the Lustra Plains army. A real challenge for low-rank Players already struggling with local gravity, but achievable with persistence and the right approach.

Paradoxically, that task had been easy—largely thanks to their Permanent Passive Faction Skill: Cosmic D Starfeyrves Body Lv.12, which multiplied their physical and mental stats while granting broad elemental resistances and affinities. It was a unique advantage exclusive to the Myrtharian Nerds—and entirely owed to their leader.

That was why, even after being wounded, they’d chosen to stay and squeeze out a better Ordeal Rating.

Now they were about to pay the price.

”Fuck. If we hadn’t gotten caught in a fight between a General and a Radiant Lord, we’d already be healed,” Arryn groaned, rolling off her bed and scrambling underneath it to avoid a black, hairy monstrosity trying to gut her.

The creature looked like someone had grafted a dripping octopus onto the body of a mutant wolf. Wrapped in a haze of Black Lumyst that blurred its outline and corroded everything it touched, the underground spawn seemed even more vile than its appearance suggested.

Grimacing from the high-density Light Lumyst still lingering in her wounds, Arryn was alive only because of her stockpile of Digestor blood and her boosted stats. Two more days and the Cosmic D Starfeyrves Body passive would have adapted to the hostile energy and purged it from her system.

Instead, she was facing death with less than ten percent of her usual capacity. Siraye was in no better shape—her legs nearly severed, she couldn’t even flee her bed. At this rate, they’d both be monster chow in seconds.

The tentacled beast was about to suck Siraye into its maw and swallow her whole—

—when a Black man built like a world-class heavyweight boxer strolled into the room, blasting what was left of the door off its hinges.

His height and frame rivaled the burliest Underworld Barbarians, but with blood-soaked plate armor and an unlit cigar clenched between his teeth, he looked even more terrifying.

The spawn instinctively turned toward him, tentacles writhing as it unleashed a shriek sharp enough to rupture eardrums. Arryn seized the moment, dragging Siraye off the bed, earning a pained groan as her broken legs slammed against the floor.

A heartbeat later, they looked up at their savior—

—and froze.

His arm was buried up to the shoulder inside the monster’s throat.

The creature’s esophagus and neck held—used to swallowing large prey whole—but the rest of its body wasn’t built to handle an insertion backed by that kind of power. Its stomach couldn’t absorb the impact.

It exploded.

The blast tore through the creature’s lower body, leaving nothing but a mangled, blood-slick head and neck wrapped around the man’s arm like a grotesque second skin.

”Drastan!”

The two women cried out in relief as they recognized the Player, completely ignoring the gore around them. The troll hunter was, as always, living up to his reputation.

*****

In another fortress, Secione and her two sons, along with Kelly Graham—the rebellious-looking young Canadian—and twelve-year-old Khal Lockert were in a similar situation. They were trapped in a dead-end alley, surrounded by Anthace buds on the verge of blooming.

At Rank 8, they didn’t stand a chance—even factoring in how quickly they’d progressed since the start of the Ordeal.

At best, working together, they might rival a Radiant Conclave Vitalist.

Just as they thought they were about to die, a young woman of ethereal beauty descended before them, long night-black hair cascading over her shoulders. The pendant around her neck seemed to swallow the light, radiating an aura nearly as sinister as the buds surrounding them.

With a detached flick of her hand, she ignited them in midnight-blue flames.

The fire incinerated the buds in an instant, then spread to the roots they had sprouted from, racing outward with explosive speed far beyond the citadel walls. Like Gerulf’s magma, the roots recoiled with hissing shrieks, retreating from Grimstone Keep as if scorched by something they instinctively feared.

This was the undisputed power of a Rank 16 Player.

”M-Maeve?!” Kelly identified Kyle’s little sister almost immediately. ”What are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be in Dusken, defending the capital with the other elites?”

Her nearly translucent pallor revealed a network of black veins pulsing beneath her skin. Her beauty had turned purely demonic. Her aura radiated cold vengeance. And her expression—hard, glacial—left no room for doubt. Since her trauma and her brother’s capture, she had sworn that no one else would suffer the same fate if she could prevent it.

”Here, it’s General Maeve,” she corrected flatly. Then, after a brief pause, she added, ”I do what I want. I don’t answer to that bastard Jake. Four years without a word. Four years without saving Kyle. And he thinks he gets to give me orders?”

”But if Dusken falls, we lose the Ordeal—and half of everything we own,” Kelly reminded her hesitantly, still deeply intimidated by the emotional iceberg standing in front of her.

Maeve shot her a lifeless look and drew a scythe forged of luminous gray-green steel. The energy radiating from the weapon was so dense it was obvious—this was a terrifying artifact.

With a single casual horizontal swing, she silently eradicated every monster within a ten-kilometer radius. Creatures separated from her by hundreds of buildings were cleanly severed.

The most disorienting part?

Not a single structure in the citadel was damaged.

Even Jake might not have been capable of that kind of surgical devastation with a simple weapon strike. Killing them, sure. But sparing infrastructure and civilians with that level of precision? He had never trained his weapon mastery around that kind of control.

For him, the focus had always been simple: develop the most devastating move possible. Because only overwhelming power let you survive something far stronger than yourself.

”This bastion is under my rule,” Maeve declared, tone closed to argument. ”I have no reason to abandon it. If the others fail and Dusken falls, this citadel becomes our fallback point. The rest of the continent can burn.”

Her eyes hardened.

”But not the territory under my protection.”

Miraculous rescues like the ones performed by Drastan and Maeve remained rare exceptions. For every lucky Player pulled back from the brink of death, thousands more were butchered in agony—terror and regret for not leaving the Ordeal sooner their final companions.

And then there was the luckiest one of all.

Lily Wilderth.

Not only did she have an overprotective father who lived solely to keep her safe—

She also had a super boyfriend. One who might as well have been luck incarnate.

Tim.