Jake's facial muscles twitched at the news. Knowing that he had gone through so much pain was enough to make anyone feel disheartened. But it was the Moon Spirit's next comnt that really got him, reminding him once again how limited their understanding of the world outside was, confined to the macrocosm revolving around Klayr's corpse.
"By the way, if you have all those things, why don't you just bomb the Blade Spirit directly?" she asked, her skepticism barely concealed.
"Precisely because, like I said, they aren't weapons of mass destruction," Jake explained again, with a hint of exasperation. "They're Aether Cores, the equivalent of your Lumyst Cores. Aether has no mass, no asurable energy, and no natural interaction with the material world. Yet it exists in everything, including the taphysical, and is the origin of all things. Including your Lumyst and your celestial bodies, which are entirely made up of it if you zood down to the root of it all. If you remove all the Aether from an object, even the empty void of space where 'nothing' is supposed to be, it collapses and ceases to exist in an 'absolute' manner. Concepts like space, ti, luck, and even more abstract notions like destiny or the soul aren't exempt from this principle.
"As for the Aether Cores I have, the ones that give you that strong sense of danger are Grade 9 and 10. A Grade 10 Aether Core without attributes could, on its own, siphon all the Aether in a radius of a million kiloters in just a few hours, and I know what I'm talking about. If I threw one of those Aether Cores at either of you with no possibility to escape, it would indeed be your death warrant.
"That's not the case for Twyluxia or the Blade Spirit. Klayr, the corpse you orbited, had at least the power of an Ancient Designer when it was alive. Lumyst is its invention, and its cells naturally convert ambient Aether into Lumyst, otherwise, with your cultivation, this resource would've been exhausted long ago. My body can match the energy production of an Aether Core between Grade 10 and 11 every second, and I am still far from being able to match the Lumyst production of a corpse dead for thousands of years. Moreover, the Blade Spirit's broken chitin belonged to a World Eater, an entity that devours all the Aether in its path to fuel its own endless evolution. Do I need to explain more, or is it clear now?"
"Your Aether Cores would just be food for Blade," the Moon Spirit concluded with a worried nod.
"Yeah, pretty much."
Jake held back from ntioning another, less admirable reason: his Ordeal Rating. If spamming Grade 10 Aether Cores to solve all their problems was possible, it would probably only earn him a diocre evaluation.
Pay-to-win wasn't a strategy encouraged in these Ordeals. Each Player risked their life precisely because the difficulty was supposed to be tailored to each of them, and the rewards were proportional to their efforts, not the depth of their pockets or those of their sponsors.
That didn't an he wouldn't use his resources if necessary—after all, he hadn't bought them but condensed them himself—but it had to be for sothing grand, sothing that far exceeded what the Oracle System would expect from an anomaly like him.
Besides, the presence of such an enemy still had a true purpose: forcing the Players of both Mirror Universes to divert so of their forces and attention to a common foe. If he used his resources now to eliminate their ultimate enemy, the Oracle Hacker and all the corrupted Players from the opposing faction would have free rein, making him lose his advantage as a rogue factor.
"If you have no more questions, let's head in," Jake finally said.
With a thought, he deployed his Purgatory World around them, the black space surrounding them replaced by the tangible illusion of a smooth, dark land, and a dod sky made of the exact sa material. He had chosen to conjure Horizon Hardstone everywhere to ensure it would hold.
"... It's ugly," Ray comnted.
"Not inviting at all," Moon added in the sa critical tone.
"..." Jake held back an acidic remark.
If they only knew how much Aether it cost him to maintain even a gloomy illusion like this, they would've surely been a bit more tactful. Not his fault he needed to confine them like this.
"When you're ready, I'll teleport you and the Purgatory World into my Inner Space," he warned them one last ti.
The two Spirits exchanged a nod, then dropped their ntal defenses, allowing Jake access to the space around them. The next mont, the phantasmal image of the Purgatory World vanished with the two Spirits, the dead, dark silence of the cosmic void almost erasing the mory of the titanic clash that had just occurred.
As Jake pondered how to justify the destruction of the moon to any potential witnesses, the Moon Spirit's voice echoed in his head,
'No need to worry. I cast an amnesia curse during our fight. Most of the spectators bathed in my moonlight will think they had a hallucination. I also sealed the combat area beforehand to prevent Blade's senses from detecting what was happening.'
Jake realized at that mont he had underestimated the lunar avatar yet again. He thought she had given it her all in their battle, but she had made sure its fallout was as minimal as possible. Your adventure continues at m v|l-e-
While descending towards Twyluxia, he discovered a striking illusion of the moon shimring faintly above him. It shone only on one side, a re image projected onto a canvas of emptiness. Like Ray and the carcass of the sun he'd left behind, Moon had also prepared for this.
Speaking of the two Spirits, his Inner Space was struggling to contain them, even with the help of the Purgatory World. It clearly wasn't ready to accommodate beings of their magnitude, and he felt a pressure in his chest that was taphorically akin to a stomach about to burst. Just two minutes ago, this space had only held his Spirit Dinsion, which housed his Fairy Spirits, and his biomass.
"By the way, don't you have a more normal na than Moon, like Ray?" Jake changed the subject to distract himself from the searing pain that hit him as he re-entered the atmosphere. The difficulty he'd had healing from his first passage was still a vivid mory...
The Moon Spirit went silent for a mont, also sensing Ray's enthusiasm to help pick another na for her. Her voice, strangely embarrassed, eventually whispered,
'Pick one for ...'
Jake didn't comnt on her discomfort, but given how poorly he'd fared with naming before, he left the task to Xi. She hadn't participated in a while, so she was more than happy to comply.
[How about Selene? It's the na of a Greek moon goddess, evoking mystery, beauty, and power. On a similar note, Amaris ans daughter of the moon in Gaelic. If we stick to deities from different cultures of your ho planet, there's Artemis, Tsukuyomi, Ix Chel, Sina, Mawu, Máni, Hina, Hecate–]
'Not Hecate!' Jake imdiately shut that down. The hatred he held for that bitch and what she did to Kyle didn't need any reminders to keep burning in his heart.
He then shared the rest of the suggestions with the Moon Spirit, who declared in an indifferent tone,
'The first one will do.'
'Selene?' Jake repeated. 'To be honest, it sounds too close to Seren, and it reminds of another bitch I can't stand...'
*****
A certain female vampire, a mber of Pureblood, drenched in blood, shivered inexplicably at the other end of the Mirror Universe. 'Who the hell is talking about behind my back?'
The image of the grand demon Jake who had ruined her ambitions during her third Ordeal briefly flashed in her mind, but this ti she hoped for his return. Since most of the Myrtharian Nerds had entered the Red Cube, their Floating Islands had been deserted, and all their enemies had seen it as a signal to launch a massive offensive.
This included the Space Digestors, but also the traitor to his faction, the self-proclaid imperator Pyrrakles. The Myrmidian tyrant must have sensed the tide turning because his offensive was utterly desperate, as if he knew that if he didn't gain ownership of Jake's island in ti, his defeat was inevitable.
To prevent this, Pureblood's leader, Wyatt, had upheld his role as an ally, committing all their forces, including those of their patriarchs, to defend Jake's island despite the many dissenters within his own camp wanting to take advantage of their internal strife. The young Vampire Progenitor had nearly failed to unify them, but the sudden attack of a gigantic horde of Space Digestors, unlike any previous assaults, had abruptly ended the debate.
For the past twenty hours, whether it was her faction or Pyrrakles', they had all been engaged in endless combat, too busy defending their own islands to care about anyone else.
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