The Oracle Paths

"You're absolutely right. You need to survive first." A deep, chilling voice, rich with an intimidating masculinity, echoed from behind him, its guttural undertones enough to make those who heard it shiver in fear.

Sybarun subconsciously nodded at this affirmation, freezing when he realized the voice was not his own. A gust of wind, followed by a shockwave, rushed over him from behind, tousling his fur and unseating him from his steed.

Shaking like a leaf, the minotaur pushed himself up on all fours, nearly fainting at the sight of the pool of silver blood in which he wallowed. An eye, still tethered by its optic nerve, from the now-deceased Sinewshade bobbed mockingly in his field of vision, eliciting a high-pitched squeak of terror from him.

A wave of cold fear drenched the Vrusug as he comprehended the horrifying implication of the situation. When he trembled his way into turning around, his heart nearly stopped as he came face-to-face with his two terrifying pursuers – one tall with four arms, the other a tad smaller than himself.

What remained of his Sinewshade escort was a thin mush of flesh and bloody guts.

The apparel of these dreaded adversaries was spotless, as if the gore from the massacre they had perpetrated had nothing to do with them. The sinister grin adorning the human's face stripped Sybarun of any hope of escape, and he prostrated himself before the man, weeping openly.

"J-Jake, it's not what you think. Rigel forced me. I-I had no choice." Sybarun wailed in desperation, clutching Jake's boot and rubbing his snotty face against it, hoping to incite some form of pity.

Wrong move. Seeing the Vrusug, responsible for Lucia's condition, desecrate his boots with bodily fluids, Jake saw red. A vein pulsed on his forehead in rage, and he brutally kicked the minotaur's jaw, propelling the creature's head from zero to over ten kilometers per second in an instant.

SPLASH!

Needless to say, neither Sybarun's skull nor his spine were prepared for such a shock. His head exploded on contact with Jake's boot, and the rest of the minotaur's body turned to pulp, flattened and swept away by the resulting shockwave, along with the remnants of his brain.

What was left wasn't much to speak of. The first thing Jake noted when he shattered the skull with a single kick was its hollowness.

Whooosh!

Out of the blood-soaked mush that exploded from the minotaur's skull, two things emerged. A spectral figure resembling Sybarun and a small humanoid creature barely a few inches long covered with minute tentacle-like protrusions, reminiscent of a sea anemone.

"Brain-Eater!" Saros spat out in hatred, recognizing this nightmarish creature.

"Don't let it escape!"

To the Mirror Universe, this variant of Digestor was one of the most horrendous threats, surpassing even Digestor Viruses.

"That was never my intention." Jake smirked coldly, catching the fleeing parasite and the spectral body it inhabited in a single stride.

The Brain-Eater, desperately trying to escape, shrieked in terror when Jake nonchalantly pinched its tiny head, no larger than a small marble, between his thumb and index finger.

At that moment, the parasite's spirit seemed to shatter comically, the Digestor crying and begging Jake to spare it with a variety of excuses.

"I swear, I will never eat another Evolver again! Look, Syrbarun still has some Soul Power left. I never intended to devour him completely!"

"LIAR!" Saros roared, glaring coldly at the ugly insect. "Don't listen to him, Jake.

That's just how Brain-Eaters operate. They devour their host's brain, spirit, and soul, inheriting their memories and sometimes even their personality. Its nearly-human cowardice is a result of having almost entirely consumed Syrbarun's soul, while being indirectly influenced by his hormones and neurotransmitters. As soon as it's done consuming its host, it will find a new prey to parasite, and its personality will change accordingly."

A surge of murderous intent emanated from Jake when he confirmed that Syrbarun was probably irreparable after his soul was almost entirely consumed.

If the brain were destroyed, the soul was the only eternal repository of memories, and Sybarun had already lost more than half. As for the brain, it was the Brain-Eaters' first choice to consume, hence their infamous nickname...

Seeing Jake's hardened expression and the oppressive killing intent converging on him, the trembling Brain-Eater panicked and screamed,

"W-wait! It's true I've devoured Sybarun's memories, but not his Soul Essence. I can restore his memory if you save his spirit in time."

Jake's soul pressure receded slightly, allowing the tiny Digestor a breath of respite. Turning to the Oracle Guardian, he asked with a puzzled frown,

"Soul Essence? What is that?"

The four-armed alien furrowed his brow thoughtfully, then declared, "My knowledge on the matter is limited as well. From what I understand, the Soul Essence is the core of an individual's soul, that which makes them unique, different from anyone else. Memories, aura, personality - these can be fabricated.

But not the Soul Essence. It is distinct from the True Will, although the two are intertwined. A Brain-Eater must first whittle away at that last mental barrier to access that invaluable Soul Essence. If forced to define it, I would liken the Soul Essence to a barcode, an indelible portion of your Soul Code around which everything else is arranged."

Seeing Jake's confusion only deepening, the Oracle Guardian scratched his head in annoyance before a spark of inspiration ignited in his eyes.

"Let's try a different analogy. In certain worlds, they believe in the concept of reincarnation. When individuals die, and even when their souls are crushed, their past-life memories and personality are wiped clean, but their souls do not truly perish. They enter the cycle of their next reincarnation, reborn with little to no recollection of their previous lives. Soul Essence is what survives these cycles of rebirth."

Jake frowned, the concept making slightly more sense, but it remained an abstract and distant concept for him. However, thanks to the added insight from the Aetherdream, he felt he was edging closer to the truth.

'Information doesn't disappear in the Aetherdream, even when it's destroyed in the physical world,' he summarized in his mind, attempting to arrange his scattered knowledge. 'The realm of the Aether is layered, from the superficial to the complex, from appearance to truth. That implies that even on Earth, the Soul Essence of humans who die without awakening their Proto-Soul due to low Aether density doesn't truly vanish, since ultimately even matter and electricity are made of Aether. Their information is simply lost in the Aetherdream, eventually decaying and disintegrating, returning to the Aether after a lengthy period. Everything hinges on the level of Aether compression making up the Soul Code runes and this fabled Soul Essence."

Still, even with this reasoning, it implied that true death was still a possibility.

Keeping a digital photo of someone after their death was indeed a way to preserve evidence of their existence, but it didn't change the fact that they were no longer. The same applied to lost data drifting in the Aetherdream. If they were irretrievable, then one could consider it a true death.

Moreover, his optimism held only if the deceased's Soul Essence was preserved intact in the Aetherdream. In reality, each Aether Rune would eventually disintegrate, scattering to the far corners of the universe. Even if such a Soul Essence, with its memories, could be reassembled, could we still claim that it was the same person?

Not at all. According to Jake, it would be akin to creating a perfect clone identical in both physical and spiritual essence.

If one day Jake woke up with his last memory being that of his death, he would accept this new life as his own. However, he would know deep within him that his former self had perished, and he was merely the successor carrying on the legacy.

"You're saying he still possesses his Soul Essence?" Jake finally verified. "And his True Will?"

"I haven't touched those yet. All the memories I have to impersonate him are from his brain," the Brain-Eater hastened to confess.

Jake and Saros exchanged a meaningful, heavy-laden glance before the Oracle Guardian growled in disapproval, summoning a strange glass cage that blocked all mental probes.

"Congratulations, you've just bought yourself a few extra hours of life," Jake complimented the Brain-Eater with a wicked grin, tossing him with disgust into the cage like a foul, worn-out sock. "How long you survive beyond that depends on your performance henceforth."