The Oracle Paths

The first skirmishes involving Players from both factions soon erupted. Even though over six million joined the fray, their impact barely caused a ripple.

Lily, among many others, quickly grasped the insignificance of their presence in a war of this sheer scale. Merely surviving demanded every ounce of grit they possessed.

Stripped of their magic, mental senses, artifacts, and all abilities that once rendered them extraordinary, these Players now relied mostly on their basic strength—often inferior to the natives—their wit, and their trusty Oracle Devices to make a mark on the battlefield. They felt like minnows in an expansive sea, and no matter their individual heroic deeds, they had about as much impact as a pebble cast into a vast lake.

On the first day alone, hundreds of thousands of Rank 8 Players perished on the frontlines—ironically, none by the hand of an opposing Player. To survive, Lily, Khal Lockert, Secyone, and all the other average Myrtharian Nerds, struggling even to sprint in this crushing gravity, had to rely heavily on their squadmates to get through day one.

Every moment was fraught with tension, with death lurking around every corner, much like the ever-present shadow of the Grim Reaper. The barbarians in their squads couldn't fathom why their comrades had suddenly become so weak and tight-lipped. Even though their insults came in an alien tongue, their disdain was unmistakably clear.

Warfare on this scale was uncharted territory, a new kind of nightmare for these Players newly graduated from their tutorials. Those once fearless learned their lessons, sometimes at the ultimate price.

Of course, there were those who not only survived their first day but also distinguished themselves, achieving their initial wartime feats. Some, through sheer luck, managed to take down an enemy officer, while others, trusting in the foresight of their Oracle Paths, turned the tides in battles that seemed irrevocably lost.

But when the sun dipped below the horizon and the horns and drums signaled the retreat, marking the end of the Players' first genuine day of battle, every single one of them heaved a sigh of relief, just glad it was over. They had never come face-to-face with death so intensely in such a short span. The exhaustion was as much physical as it was emotional.

Those who had endured the baptism by fire of their second Ordeal and found the courage to engage in this Fifth could not easily be traumatized or discouraged. Still, by the end of that initial clash, many emerged pale-faced, their eyes echoing with despair. Others displayed grim, foreboding expressions, cold clarity convincing them they'd never make it out of this conflict alive.

Yet, as the night drew on, many regained their composure after some rest and a hearty meal. They mingled with their wartime companions, seeking to learn the language and gather intel.

That's when many of them learned from native soldiers, conscripted before them, that today's battle wasn't even considered a real battle by their higher-ups. The battle they thought was of titanic scale and brutally lethal, cutting down hundreds of thousands hourly, was merely the Duskwight Lands and Lustra Plains armies drilling their new recruits, seasoning them before the real war began.

Indeed, the native conscripts forming the troop waves into which they had been embedded under false identities were mainly peasants, wanderers, outlaws, and occasionally low-ranking warriors or militiamen with no battle accolades. Many had never held a lance or sword before being forcibly drafted.

Save for a few officers and generals overseeing the regiments and issuing commands, no seasoned soldiers from either side had yet seen combat. When the Players discovered this, their bottled-up despair overflowed, and their hearts plummeted.

Sadly, the world remained indifferent to their emotional torment. At the crack of dawn and to the blare of horns, the relentless drill skirmishes resumed, thrusting them back into the inferno. Regardless of their spirits—be it high, eager, or downcast—they were all bound to rejoin the fray, whether they liked it or not.

The days that followed melded into an never-ending nightmare from which there was no awakening, with the death toll ever on the rise. The situation only worsened as higher-ranked Players started pouring into this behemoth conflict.

Rank 9 Players, Rank 10s, Rank 11s... With each fresh wave of Players and conscripts, the battles grew only more harrowing. From Rank 10 onward, not a single Player perished upon arrival, and the natives of both factions had no reliable means to root them out.

Not that they wanted to. The performance of these foreigners was truly decent.

Besides being fewer in number, the conscription waves they found themselves in were far denser, even boasting genuine career soldiers within their ranks.

These vast armies of conscripts darkened the earth with their swarming ranks, moving in such mass that their march toward the battlefields, situated at the frontier between the Duskwight Lands and Lustra Plains, resembled a locust swarm in full migration.

Hence, the Rank 8 Players, who'd earlier learned that the war hadn't truly begun, soon found out that the conscription waves up to this point were merely the vanguard. The impending waves would be even larger.

The final wave, alleged to be the most immense, would harbor the core forces of each faction where the headquarters would be located. This meant a heavy presence of Spirit Enchanters and Soulmancers, as well as elite troops so battle-hardened that each warrior could cut down a thousand regular soldiers singlehandedly without breaking a sweat.

As for the subsequent waves, when higher-ranked Players began to join the fray, the war became exponentially more intricate and lethal. Their superb skills made any suspicions about their origins irrelevant.

At this juncture, hundreds of billions upon billions from both sides were engaged on the battlefield. Identifying an enemy or ally as a Player had become utterly secondary. Surviving day by day, longing for the horns and drums to signal the much-craved retreat, was all that mattered.

Players began to grasp the vastness of the world they'd landed in and the type of cosmic-scaled, deadly conflict they'd unknowingly joined.

"So pointless." Such were the thoughts that often haunted Players from both sides, every time they brushed with death or ended up in the infirmary.

Among the Rank 9s were Myrtharian Nerds like Arryn or Siraye, two young female adventurers from a medieval realm. They had shown decent prowess before encountering Jake during their third Ordeal, though never achieved anything truly extraordinary. After joining his faction, their performance improved, but like the vast majority, they met their end on Quanoth.

Fortunately, their collective performance as a faction and their tendency to support one another led to far greater achievements than if they had remained factionless. This greatly offset the penalties arising from their demise for many members.

36 hours later, when it was the turn of the Rank 10 Players, two other Myrtharian Nerds drew the attention of surrounding barbarians due to their youthful appearances: Chloe Drakul and Khal Lockert.

The former was the overly pampered and shielded younger sister of Aisling, while the latter was an orphan adopted and treated as a younger brother by Canadian-born Kelly Graham. As Kelly had appeared earlier among the Rank 8 Players, it was clear that Khal was no longer the one needing protection.

In the subsequent wave of Players, which included slightly over 100,000 Rank 11 Command Sergeant Majors, Myrtharian Nerds of fitting stature joined the escalating conflict:

The dwarf Battleaxe Warlord, Bhammod, who despite his short stature, stood firmly on the ground, his stout legs deeply rooted like an age-old tree.

His adventure-mate, the dashing elf Dawn Great Knight, Elduin, also an A-Tier Adventurer from Lodunvals on Quanoth. Even stripped of his Holy Light and dressed in rags, he radiated a dazzling aura the Underworld Barbarians around him detested.

The elderly pair of bloodthirsty goblins with questionable humor and unsettling libidos, Xort and Niss. These two goblins had mutated several times, their former goofy and grotesque gnome appearances a distant memory. Still, the barbarians in their company were taken aback by their unusually pale green skin and unusually long pointy ears, traits not entirely erased even by the Cosmic D Starfeyrves Body Passive.

Also amidst them were remarkable figures like Kewanee, the Native American woman from the Potowatomi clan that Jake met during his third Ordeal, and Melkree, the dryad at the heart of his Floating Island.

Upon her arrival, Kewanee instantly startled the nearby barbarians, including a witnessing Soulmancer. Multiple Totem Spirits of various giant chickens and golden eagles manifested around her, shielding her like bodyguards. It was an ability even the constraints of Twyluxia couldn't suppress, as these spirits were considered wandering souls, just like the countless others teeming in this plane-world.

As for Melkree... Well... The moment she opened her eyes in this new world, her body reverted to a shrub, her feet turning into roots that burrowed into the ground. The Spirit Enchanter drawn by the uproar let out an ecstatic cry after briefly inspecting her and instantly ordered everyone to keep their distance.

Thus, Melkree went on doing what she did best: chilling out.