The Oracle Paths

Damn it! Damnitdamnitdamnit!" Elduin fumed out of rage and despair, tears of hatred and helplessness running down his face.

Bhammod's face was also unsightly, but he drowned his sorrow in the steel walls that prevented them from breaking out of this prison. From the moment his former comrades had followed the order of this non-human woman, he had already come to terms with the fact that they would not return alive.

Seized with an irrational vengeful zeal, the Dawn Elf suddenly aimed a shortbow he hardly ever used at the young woman, but when he saw the impaled corpse of his captain hanging in the air, he let out a heart-rending cry and gave up his revenge. Apart from dying himself, he would make the deaths of his former companions even more futile.

"Bhammod, can you handle it?" He asked listlessly in a half-hearted attempt to shake off his sadness.

The dwarf known for his shamelessness and equanimity blushed slightly as he received the expectant query from his elf friend. He hadn't made any progress at all! This wall was an enigma and he had a hunch that a thousand years of contemplating this rampart would not be enough to unlock its secrets.

He didn't want to disappoint his friend who was very close to losing it, but he had to tell him the truth.

"I can't do it. We're stuck until this Guilty guy ends the spell that created them."

" Jeez... we're screwed." Elduin mourned, looking at his two scimitars briefly before finally throwing them to the ground.

He had given up.

BANG!

While the elf had decided to wait resolutely for his demise, Ruby finally had to face the vengeful wrath of Actalaus. It had finally noticed its partner's convulsions of pain and with a galloping stride and a flapping of its wings, it parobolically crossed the air to crash into Ruby with the crushing force of a meteor.

Ruby, whose scythe arm was still embedded in the captain's torso, barely had time to morph her left arm into a silver shield and swing the adventurer's corpse away with a jerk of her right arm.

Just before impact, the freed right arm formed a thin, but very long pointed stick comparable to a high jump pole, but even longer. In terms of posture, her arm was raised in the air like a child's finger in school, but her hand had split to form this bi-directional spear piercing both the sky and the earth.

The angle was perfect. With the earth as an anchor and a perfect perpendicular placement of this spear to the giant pegasus, Ruby needed almost no physical strength to hold the spear in position.

These defensive measures were executed extraordinarily quickly, and Actalaus, crashing into Ruby, didn't know anything was wrong until he was impaled as well. The spear had pierced his chest, just below the throat, and as he threw himself down on it the penetrating force of the silver weapon was almost equal to his own kinetic energy.

The collision was brutal and a debilitating pain took his breath away. The carnivorous horse whinnied in pain, but quickly fell silent as his crushed windpipe prevented him from breathing properly. He staggered back several steps, snorting, before collapsing to the ground.

"She killed him?!" Elduin and Bhammod couldn't believe their eyes.

No, it was far too good to be true. The extra spear Ruby had created by shifting her arm was certainly sturdy and razor-sharp, its angulation flawless with the ground as support, but the winged beast's bones won out in terms of toughness.

Once the pegasus' windpipe was crushed, the tip of the spear broke against its cervical spine and the young woman was still stomped on by the two hooves of the titanic horse. The shield took the brunt of the blow, even seeming to disperse and reflect a good portion of its pent-up energy, but the resulting seismic wave still formed a crater several meters deep around her.

Neither the dwarf nor the elf noticed the energy shield forming a protective sphere around her, but when they spotted Ruby again, the first thing they noticed was that she was still unharmed. Not even the dust and sand could tarnish the freakish perfection of her immaculate face.

She was untouchable.

" My gosh... I really shouldn't have gotten up this morning." Elduin grumbled cheerlessly. This day would go down in the annals of the worst days of his existence. And coming from an elf who was almost a hundred years old, it was no small thing.

On the surface, this victory belonged to Ruby, but Actalaus' suicidal rampage had forced her to stow away her medallion. Laudar awoke just in time to witness the demise of his beloved pegasus.

"Actalaus! Goddamn it, cunt, I swear I'll make you pay for this!" The Baron poured all his hatred and repressed aggressiveness upon the young woman in a series of saucy insults that would make the most depraved rednecks blush.

His face and his gestures conveyed an unspeakable fury, but his body sent a completely different message. He was thin, dripping with sweat, girdled as if he hadn't slept in days, as well as shaking and seized by uncontrollable spasms as if he was no longer in control of his nervous system. It wasn't easy to tell from the outside, but there was not a single drop of Mana left in his body.

When Ruby had taken out her medallion, Laudar had seen and experienced something so strange and unpleasant that he didn't have the words to describe the sensation.

It was as if his entire existence was a pencil sketch on a sheet of paper and at that moment someone had tried to use an eraser to wipe it all out. His consciousness had become blurred and he felt himself sinking into an eternal coma. At the same time, a fear unlike the worst phobia had gushed forth from deep within him, providing him with the shot of determination he needed to cling to life.

Laudar had only resisted for a few seconds, but he had experienced the nightmarish sensation of drowning for ages. Like a swimmer who swallowed water, but had to keep swimming at all costs to reach the shore.

Ruby frowned when she saw that the Baron had recovered so quickly. She expected him to survive. After all, she hadn't gotten to the end of the process, but he should have at least been comatose or amnesiac. Or in any case, so weak that he would have posed no danger to her.

Instead, Laudar may have been out of Mana, but the spiritual pressure beaming out of him had nearly doubled. What he had just been through had tempered his Soul and Willpower like never before. It was almost a blessing in disguise. He had gained 2 levels, reaching level 73 and he had just acquired the Soul Skill: I Am Real.

The only Rank-S Adventurer in Lodunvals suddenly burst out laughing as he felt the changes in him. Simultaneously, his suppressed fury was completely unleashed, doubling with each chuckle, until it peaked as his face reverted to an icy, apathetic mask.

"Now please die." The Baron stated coldly.

CLANG!

A ball of light about four meters in diameter crashed hard against the illusory rampart after being struck by a cataclysmic claymore swing. Ruby had barely survived by activating her Oracle Shield.

Embedded in the wall, she hurriedly looked for a way to defeat or get rid of this annoying opponent, but her thinking was immediately interrupted by another deafening stroke.

BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! ...

After that, Laudar became the incarnation of the god of war himself. Dozens, hundreds of sword strikes per second rained down on Ruby's Oracle Shield and gradually the indestructible ball of energy sank into the steel wall, slowly breaking through layer after layer.

Elduin and Bhammod watched this display of raw violence with an almost numb attitude. Each impact on this energy shell was capable of obliterating a castle, but strangely the young woman inside was still unharmed. This defensive spell was beyond their comprehension and it opened their eyes to the infinite mysteries of the universe.

"Huhuuhu!"

An angry neigh startled the two companions and they promptly hid behind a piece of what was left of the Guild fence. Actalaus had returned.

The giant black pegasus stood up heavily, its ribcage swelling and deflating normally again with a bellows-like sound. Not only did he have tremendous strength, but its vitality was just as terrifying.

The next second, the huge beast joined its partner in beating Ruby. Inside her protective cocoon of energy, the young woman stoically withstood the deadly impacts, but the seconds turned into minutes and a hint of panic began to rise in her heart.

'If I don't do something in 4 hours and 16 minutes I'll run out of Aether.' She calculated anxiously.

A glance at Laudar and his pegasus immersed in a destructive frenzy dashed any hope that they would grow tired and give up on their own. These two brutes would continue to strike her Oracle Shield until she died. Even if they took a break, they would not let her out of their sight and would start pummeling her again within minutes.

Ruby retrieved her black medallion with a pained grimace. She had several ways to win this battle, but each would cost her a staggering amount of Aether. The Ordeal had only just begun. If she actually chose to do this, her special artifacts would not give her any advantage for the rest of the Ordeal.

On the other hand, Laudar and Actalaus were now on guard... they would no longer be so easily tricked.

"Crap! What should I do!" Ruby roared in dilemma.

When an hour passed and Laudar and Actalaus still showed no signs of fatigue, she reluctantly decided to activate her black medallion. As she was about to activate it, Jake in the distance, who had been hiding at the edge of town to continue monitoring the situation through his Purgatory suddenly received a notification from his Oracle Device.

[Side Mission n°2: Don't let Ruby Hale die.]

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