The Oracle Paths

?Inside the tent, Jake was already hard at work. His Cosmic Chitin Scale ability, being considered a bloodline power, was also restricted by the Aetheric laws of Twyluxia. Given time, he would be able to produce as much metal as he wanted with some effort, but he refused to take such a risk in case his enemies were waiting for him to reveal a weakness.

Fortunately, his beginnings in Lumyst cultivation had opened up a wide range of new options. A few hours was little time for experimentation, but with his intellect, it was enough for preliminary inferences. Relatively speaking, a hasty deduction on his part was like completing a decade-long thesis for an Earth scientist, so he could absolutely trust it.

The first rule he had deduced about Lumyst: It was better to have a core specific to each type of Lumyst than to have a single type of Lumyst incorporating all his attributes. The latter resulted in a potent cocktail that provided maximum power but was too hard to control.

Jake had created them nonetheless. The hybrid Cosmic Life Lumyst Core, including his Space, Life, Energy, and Time Elements, had been instinctively created the previous night during his fight against River's Bane. It was also in his heart next to the main Life Lumyst Core.

The Cosmic Spirit Lumyst Core had been created more recently, in case he had to confront an Abyssal Revenant or a particularly tricky ghost. He had tried to unify these two energies to form the ultimate Lumyst Core, but that had ended in resounding failure, though he hadn't tried for long. Only the channel spontaneously formed by his Lumyst Breath seemed capable of cohabiting these two energies, although this ended in mutual transmutation.

In the hours that followed, Jake had neglected these two dangerous Lumyst Cores, focusing instead on two others that would be much more useful to him: the Metal and Water Cores. Four, if their Spirit Lumyst equivalents were included.

The meridian network naturally formed by Lumyst Breath was composed of millions of nodes, but some locations were more interesting than others for establishing Lumyst Cores, with a greater flow of Lumyst.

For this purpose, Jake had chosen his lungs to host Metal Lumyst, and his kidneys for Water Lumyst, drawing inspiration from the Theory of the Five Elements in Chinese medicine, for what it was worth. He placed no value on such archaic, unscientific theories, but at the moment he had found it as good an idea as any.

He had chosen to leave the left side to Life Lumyst and the right to Spirit Lumyst for the sake of symmetry, though nothing obligated him to. He had done well, as a channel like the one connecting his main Life and Lumyst Cores had quickly linked the four new mirror nuclei, restoring a similar synergy.

After a few hours of attentive nurturing, these four Lumyst Cores already shone like two small stars that only he could see in the organ serving as their vessel. Jake estimated their cultivation at the mid-Corebearer realm of the Light Warriors, the fifth stage of cultivation for the ordinary natives of this world, but the first recognized for genuine Life and Soulmancers.

Just based on their skyrocketing power accumulation, Jake knew he would need only a few more days to reach the Radiant Lord stage. After that, there would only be the Saint realm where the members of the Radiant Conclave resided, and the Celestial realm that only Valandar and the Soulmancer King claimed to have reached.

Of course, the stages of cultivation recognized in the Duskwight Lands had different names, but in essence, it was almost the same thing except that it was the Spirit Body that experienced this transcendence.

Returning to the task at hand, the second rule about Lumyst he had isolated was that without intentional control, elemental Lumyst was highly unstable and tended to easily revert to a material state. The opposite was possible too, but much less common.

Water Lumyst would become water, while Metal Lumyst would produce metal. The main difference, however, was that neither this water nor this metal was ordinary.

They were Lumyst Metal and... Lumyst Water. Right! You read that correctly. This Lumyst Water could theoretically be used for enchantments, albeit with some precautions.

Confident in what he was doing, Jake first sweated a good dose of Metal Lumyst. Enough, in fact, to terrify the rest of his squad.

Ceythie and the other veteran commanders outside even momentarily believed it was an attack, to the point of raising the alarm before realizing it came from 'the one they were supposed to be loyal soldiers to'. A false alarm was announced, and a wide security perimeter encircled their tent to keep the curious at bay.

Inside the tent, Jake had already given the necessary mental impulse for this transmutation, and his Black Metal Lumyst had already begun to precipitate into a majestic nugget of darkness swallowing all light. It was also the first time for Jake that he was putting this rule into practice, and he wasn't too sure what kind of metal he was going to produce.

Instinctively, referring to the first rule, it was possible that Metal Lumyst wasn't specific enough and that the resulting metal would prove unusable. Conversely, it was also possible that the metal produced would have all the best properties of the metals he had consumed so far, as long as they weren't too contradictory.

When Jake estimated he had enough metal to equip everyone, he stopped releasing his Black Lumyst and inspected his work.

[Black Lumyst Steel (+14): An extremely strong hybrid black alloy. A supraconductor of Lumyst, it is endowed with the Attributes of self-repair, self-sharpening, and self-cultivation, thanks to its incorporated Graces Child of Lumyst, Life Lumyst Breath, and Breath of Living Elements.]

'Holy fuck!' Jake almost dropped the black ore upon reading the scan report. He felt the insidious, unsettling sensation of holding an enriched uranium ingot on the verge of exploding.

He had just elucidated a third rule: Lumyst enchantment was contagious. Everything directly engendered from a certain quality of Lumyst also possessed this property.

But after brief introspection, Jake shook his head, invalidating this hypothesis. If that were the case, the +35 Snitch Rings they all wore would have likely annihilated their souls on first contact. The spiritual energy of these rings was indeed insufficient to subject them to such an advanced baptism, but they would have felt something.

In that case, the most plausible was that it was unique to him, or that Ledger had forged them in some other way. Both hypotheses held up, especially given that he was still a neophyte in Lumyst matters.

'Breath of Living Element' must be what breathes life into this metal, but the properties of my bloodline must also influence the process. If this metal is inspired by my Chitin Scales, then it can be considered part of me, which would explain the +14 enchantment that goes with it.

Jake hadn't even started properly studying the new alloy when the ore in his hands began to glow before starting to siphon the ambient Metal Lumyst that hadn't completely precipitated. With his Cosmic Sight, he clearly saw the same meridian network that was in him forming inside the nugget, a nascent embryonic core condensing at its center.

"It's really alive... And cultivating," Jake exhaled with emotion, ignoring the astonished blinks of his audience.

"I got a similar result with Shadow Lumyst," Hephais commented, summoning a cloud of black smoke with a wave of his hand.

Not having had time to visit the Lustra Plains, it was Shadow Spirit Lumyst, but it didn't prevent it from condensing into a sort of shapeless dark mass endowed with its own spiritual meridian network. This thing didn't have its own appearance or consciousness yet, but it was clearly a Spirit Body.

"That explains all those wandering souls," Jake realized after scanning the entity born from Hephais' Shadow Lumyst.

And indeed, Jake soon confirmed that this sentience-lacking ghost did not possess the Breath of Awakening Grace, although it was enchanted at +12. He first thought that Hephais had awakened another Grace than him, but the Egaean immediately assured him otherwise.

The strange nature of his Black Lumyst thus came from him.

As long as it doesn't try to automatically enchant everyone and everything that touches it, it should be fine, Jake figured, though with serious doubts.

What reassured him somewhat was that after acquiring the Breath of Awakening and Breath of Living Elements Graces, he hadn't started enchanting everything he touched either. There must still be some limitations, like a strong intent to enchant by the user.