The Oracle Paths

SPLASH!

A bucket of water later, the fainting boy jolted awake from his nightmare, only to come face to face with the exact entity his nightmare was about. He almost passed out again.

"Aaaaaargh! Don't kill me!"

Hearing it squeal horrendously like a pig at the slaughterhouse, Jake was momentarily tempted to grant the exact opposite of his wish. Wincing as he plugged his ears, he snarled menacingly through his teeth, the growl emanating from his throat somewhere between a roar and the purr of a car.

He wasn't even aware of how utterly creepy his actions were.

And not surprisingly, the boy immediately fell silent as if he had just swallowed a fly. His breaths were so shallow, on the other hand, that Jake was genuinely worried that he might pass out from hypoxia again.

"Breath." Jake ordered coldly as he scowled at him. The good news was that the teenager understood Oraclean. It explained why he hadn't gotten a language kit this time.

"AHHH!" The boy, realizing he was suffocating, took a noisy breath.

His lungs revived, he didn't dare stop breathing in and out for fear that the monster haunting his nightmares would no longer be satisfied and decide to kill him for good.

"Relax." Jake rolled his eyes, tossing him a chocolate bar from his Space Storage to calm him down. "Eat."

The boy in chain mail jumped as if he had just yelled at him, but quickly put the treat in his mouth without removing the plastic wrapper. A retching made him cough back the saliva-soaked wrapper, but his terror got the better of him and he forced himself to chew the plastic as best he could.

"Damn it! Don't tell me I've stumbled upon a complete moron. I should have saved someone else..." Jake snarled aloud with a twitchy face.

"Do-don't kill me!" The boy panicked again as he heard him mumble under his breath as if he didn't exist.

Jake glanced at him disparagingly and sneered,

"In that case, start acting normal and stop trying to eat the wrapper. When you eat a banana, do you eat the skin with it? When you eat at home, do you also eat your plate and cutlery?"

The kid froze suddenly. Realizing his stupidity, he took the crushed bar in its plastic wrapping out of his mouth and examined more closely what he was stupidly trying to swallow. Exasperated, Jake absentmindedly waved his hand to remove the wrapper with his telekinesis and tossed the chocolate mush inside tens of meters away for the bugs and birds to enjoy.

He pulled out a second chocolate bar, which he tossed once again to the boy.

"This time, eat it properly."

This time, the teenager didn't hesitate and tore the wrapper off himself with his teeth before biting into the chocolate bar. His eyes suddenly widened as the delicious taste and texture exploded on his taste buds. As if a switch had been flipped, he began to frantically devour the rest of the snack, leaving only the wrapper behind a short while later.

As he finished his snack, the kid wasn't so scared anymore and his hungry, hopeful eyes looked at him with a "Is there any more?" attitude.

Jake, having reached his goal, chuckled as he dangled a third chocolate bar in front of the boy. The brat's eyes remained transfixed on the food, obsessively tracking its swaying movements.

He wasn't proud of exploiting a freaked-out kid's hunger to achieve his ends, but it was an effective plan and it was better than torture and persecution.

"If you answer my questions, you can eat as much as you want." Jake factually announced his deal.

Contrary to what he imagined, the child didn't even pretend to hesitate and nodded his head vehemently.

"Good. First of all, what's your name?" Jake asked.

"Trash."

"Excuse me?" Jake nearly choked on his own spit.

"Trash Runt. First name is Trash, last name is Runt." The kid declared loudly, even a little proud.

Jake was speechless.

"Who gave you that name?" He was curious.

"Uncle Oaf."

"And who is this Uncle Oaf?"

"The leader of our mercenary gang." The child answered honestly, before he began to sob inconsolably.

Jake did not ask where this uncle was. The entire gang of mercenaries were either rotting in the nearby field or were already in the stomachs of the monsters that had caused their deaths. This uncle Oaf with a dubious sense of names lay most likely among them.

"So, where are we?" Once the child had quieted down, Jake finally asked the burning question.

The awkwardly named Trash momentarily forgot his sadness at receiving such an absurd question. He wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but at least he knew where they were. Even without the other mercenaries, he could find his way back.

Noticing the peculiar glint in the kid's eye lingering on him, Jake flaunted his thick skin and barked,

"Just answer the question."

A question-and-answer game with the same questioner and the same answerer then ensued between a giant and a child. After a short, but concise interrogation, Jake finally made sense of his situation.

"So, I'm really in a shithole... The Oracle has screwed me over again..." Jake let out a dismal sigh, remarkably unmoved by the revelations.

Trash Runt lived up to his name. He was an incompetent and moronic orphan. In his defense, it wasn't his fault. The rest of his mercenary gang was cut from the same cloth and what they all had in common was their unparalleled level of illiteracy. With the exception of the late Uncle Oaf as their leader who could read, all of these mercenaries were illiterate.

Consequently, if Trash knew where they were, he didn't know much more. He knew about the Divine Academy's descent and the impending end of the world like everyone else, but he only viewed the short-term consequences, namely the endless onslaught of monsters on his city and the news of wars being waged everywhere.

According to the teenager's limited knowledge, they were at the southernmost tip of a huge continent, in the Icarden Province, itself part of a vast human empire, the Empire of Ret'Asi. Beyond was an endless ocean that no sailor had ever crossed completely. This ocean was separated from civilization by the vast forest in which they were currently talking, which also flanked most of their borders.

This planet was simply gigantic and Trash only knew the few hundred kilometers where his gang used to operate. He had only visited a small part of the Icarden Province, which according to his claims was about as big as Eurasia.

This Icarden Province was in fact a loose federation of free and independent cities divided between many local overlords and tyrants. Among them were nobles, former heroes, fallen kings and queens, but also famous criminals who had fled the empire.

The unique feature of Icarden and the empire it was vassal to, Ret'Asi, was that it was a territory mostly populated by human-looking races. Humans, elves, fairies, dwarves, hobbits, all the clichés of fantasy could be found there, but with a much wider morphological variability.

Despite this surface tolerance, racism and discrimination were strongly present and an inhuman giant like Jake was not welcome everywhere, except in Icarden Province, which in the end was perhaps not just bad luck.

"Am I that terrifying?" Jake took offense when the kid looked down after mentioning the problem with his appearance.

[You should take a good look at yourself in the mirror] Xi giggled in his head.

"Hmm..."

Surprisingly, he found one in his Space Storage. Jake could be quite the narcissist from time to time when he wasn't training. It was the very reason he often complained about his growth spurts.

His face broke down as he saw his reflection in the mirror. After a year of training without a break, his height was now the least of his worries.

How to put it... Nature had reclaimed its rights.

His bloodline was more pumped up than ever and with no one to be concerned about over the past year, Jake had made no effort to curb it. Because of his recent Digitization merging his body and mind, his Myrtharian attributes had completely taken over.

In addition to his towering height, his lean, defined muscles shimmered like bronze, while his lava veins, now a golden orange, constantly showed through his skin. His galactic eyes were like two vortexes of white and golden light giving him a transcendental presence. His translucent fangs were more pronounced and his claws were longer than ever. During the year, he had made no effort to groom himself and his silver mane and beard with golden streaks fell freely to his waist.

Yep, he was definitely a monster.

Aware of the problem, the boy's and the other monsters' fright no longer seemed so unreasonable. Focusing, he lowered his body temperature and retracted his aura until he looked human again, or mostly so.

He was still four meters tall and still looked like a giant hobo. A handsome hobo, yes, but a hobo nonetheless. It did, however, fit in wonderfully with his identity as a Vagabond.

Trash was shocked to see him revert to a near-human appearance, but the surprise didn't end there. Jake then activated his new skill Fake Miniaturization.

[Fake Miniaturization lvl1: Allows you to compress matter up to 50% of its original size by exerting an even force on each particle of the object. The pressure is no longer directly felt, although damage may occur, and is therefore compatible with use on living beings. Cost : 5B Aether points.]

Unlike True Miniaturization, where matter was converted to Aether and thus his physical abilities were diminished, here he retained his abilities, but at the cost of extremely harsh constraints on his body.

His body was quickly compressed to a size of about 1m90. Now he would have no problem passing for human. Seeing his reflection in the mirror this time, Jake almost burst into tears from the overwhelming emotion.

'Girls, get ready to wet your panties! the handsome me is finally back!'

As he made this shameless statement, Jake thought he heard a scornful snort somewhere in his mind.