The Oracle Paths

As the approaching plasma blast threatened to scorch his retina, Jake's pupils failed to constrict. Rather than surrender to panic, his mental sense enveloped Siri and Ulfar without their consent. Their spirit strength was too feeble to resist his influence, so he promptly teleported them into his Inner Space Dimension.

This was the place where he kept all his reserves of biomass. It was a realm that could support life without draining vitality.

"Apologies, mates, but you'll thank me later." His telepathic apology faded into the darkness, leaving them with tons of unexplained biomass.

"What the h-" Ulfar began to protest, but Jake's consciousness had already withdrawn.

It was then that a sharp, unbearable pain radiated through Ulfar's left arm, wrenching an agonized groan from him. He realized that in being moved to this unknown place, he had lost an arm in the process.

The result of a spatial distortion. But what were the odds of such an accident happening when Jake had perfect control of his abilities?

Practically zero...

"Aaaaaarrrgh! Damn my rotten luck!"

As Ulfar cursed his fate with all his might, oblivious to his fellow captive Siri, who was watching his spectacle with a fed-up face, Jake had already forgotten about them. His attention was wholly consumed by possibly the most perilous situation of his brief existence.

The plasma blast was now only a few centimeters away, moving at several tens of kilometers per second.

At that instant, Jake's instincts outpaced even his reflexes and reason. His dormant cells surged into hyperactivity well before the reason. His dormant cells surged into hyperactivity well before the heat blast arrived, responding to the intense electromagnetic radiations.

In a millionth of a second, his skin vitrified, transforming into perfect crystal prisms to refract the light in all directions. The surrounding Voidsteel walls were immediately bathed in the redirected rays, and the embedded Aether Arrays activated automatically to dissipate the threat.

But that was only the beginning, and a millionth of a second later, the plasma blast finally hit Jake. He reflexively raised his hands in front of him, his body already enveloped in an exquisite armor of black chitin scales based on Voidsteel. A thick halo of Cosmic Force radiated from his body, forming a protective vacuum sphere around him.

BANG!

The plasma tsunami crashed against his defensive force field, propelling him and the shielded Jake against the Voidsteel wall behind at a speed surpassing dozens of times the speed of sound.

From Jake's perspective, it was as if he was a spaceship abruptly entering hyperspace, except he was being violently thrown backward. Cocooned within his Cosmic Force halo and chitin armor, he felt nothing.

However, he heard the Voidsteel wall squeal as it distorted to form a deep crater behind him as he crashed into it, something he couldn't achieve with brute force alone.

"Ouch..." Jake winced, having heard his neck crack under the impact. Thankfully, nothing was broken.

Yet, he didn't rejoice, having anticipated surviving the collision with the initial superheated plasma wave. If he didn't have a precise understanding of his physical and mental prowess with his cognitive faculties, all his intelligence points would have been a waste.

With his current Force, Agility, and Constitution, Jake could achieve running speeds of several hundred kilometers per second on Earth without breaking a sweat. This wasn't about reaching such velocity in outer space but in Earth's atmosphere, where friction forces would increase exponentially with his speed.

At such a speed, the air was like an indestructible wall, and Jake could still smash through it.

Even though the Aether density here was amplified, reinforcing the physical laws, this plasma storm was too sluggish to cause him any harm. Not after he'd established all his defensive measures.

The danger was elsewhere.

"It's getting hot," Jake's facial muscles gave a telltale twitch as his halo of Cosmic Force destabilized, the corridor funneling an ever-increasing torrent of chaotic plasma into their confined space.

Despite his protective force field, designed to completely arrest the external plasma storm, Jake found the light increasingly blinding to the point of squinting his eyes. An absolutely unfavorable sign.

Observing his halo of Cosmic Force begin to flicker and crackle, then blink erratically, Jake grimaced. His protective force wouldn't last much longer.

'I still have some time, but I need a more permanent solution.' Jake grimly calculated in his head, taking into account the rising plasma temperature in the room.

Temperature increase meant more molecular agitation and radiation. This agitation was nothing more than kinetic energy, and his heat resistance unfortunately didn't extend as effectively to his Cosmic Force. If it exceeded a certain limit, space would collapse.

Moreover, his Cosmic Force was mind-controlled, and even if he could command it from a distance through a strand of spiritual energy without risking harm, maintaining his telekinesis would become increasingly challenging as the chaotic forces surged.

It was easy to forget, but the Spirit Body and Soul were by default far more vulnerable to energy sources like electricity, radiation, or heat. Anything could destabilize them, especially at lower levels. This was why the existence of the soul, as defined by the Oracle System, was deemed impossible on earth.

However, Jake's Spirit Body and Soul were exceptions compared to most other Evolvers, with the Cosmic Attribute and his adaptive abilities even transferring to them.

From this, Jake estimated he could endure for another minute or two, granting him enough time to devise a solution.

Which was why, shortly after, Jake's eyes almost bulged from their sockets when, without any forewarning, the plasma wall slammed against his face with a temperature, radiance, and velocity that far outstripped his predictions... by several minutes!

The temporal inconsistencies in Siri's recording, where Ulfar and Lucia were mysteriously bested, sprang to his mind, but it was already too late. The wall of white light swallowed him, searing his retinas, and then everything went dark as his body embedded in the Voidsteel wall was flattened like a pancake.

Despite his daze and pain, Jake didn't lose consciousness. A powerful surge of life force welled up from the depths of his cells to repair the damage. The biomass stockpiled in his inner Space Dimension was automatically siphoned off, replacing his blood, flesh, and bones that were too damaged to recover in time.

Without any conscious intent, his sufficiently intact cells also began to voraciously absorb the chaotic energy of the plasma storm, nearly imploding before abruptly emitting it as chilled energy.

The key power of his Cosmic D Starfeyrves Bloodline finally came into play.

A pale blue halo of sheer cold emanated from his being, freezing the plasma storm that was melting his tissues with unrivaled ferocity.

A pale blue halo of sheer cold emanated from his being, freezing the plasma storm that was melting his tissues with unrivaled ferocity.

Whether it was the Grade 10 Energy of his body, mind, or soul, all were operating at full capacity, drawing astronomical quantities of pure Aether from some unknown source, sustaining this terrifying Ice Spell.

The pain receded, becoming manageable, and Jake opened his eyes, the silver-black vortexes within instinctively retaliating with a beam of destructive darkness, obliterating the frozen plasma in front of him over several tens of meters, wiping it from existence.

Still a bit dazed, Jake extricated himself from the Voidsteel crater with a grimace of pain while his chitinous armor regenerated visibly.

His appearance and aura had changed, emitting a frosty chill capable of freezing even a star.

It was the pinnacle that his Heat-Cold Manipulation could reach: converting one into the other, and vice versa. Jake didn't claim to have reached such a level, but his bloodline had achieved this feat by itself.

His Adaptation Power demonstrated once again how unfathomably potent it could be.

Discovering the frozen plasma tsunami around him, Jake was the first to be flabbergasted, his mouth agape in disbelief. However, his vigilance quickly returned upon noticing the frozen plasma already beginning to glow and evaporate, indicating the plasma storm on the other side was still escalating.

Now, Jake knew what he had to do and swiftly waved his hand to summon a Spatial Blade into the severely damaged Voidsteel wall behind him, making his escape.

But once again, barely had the thought surfaced, the view before his eyes shifted, replaced by a plasma blast to his face hotter than the last. Before he could even register the pain, Jake immediately realized he was victim to another temporal distortion messing with his senses. As he was once more flattened, then reduced to a bubbling paste against the Voidsteel surface, he roared furiously,

"Whoever did this, you're DEAD, motherfucker!"