The Oracle Paths

At about the same time, a few hundred meters away.

The escape tunnel created by Gerulf had also collapsed due to the tremors and shockwaves caused by the latest antimatter explosions. When Vexa's ultimate strike sundered the earth in two, the Myrtharian Nerds were miraculously spared, but the fallout from the impact also affected them. If the Eltarians, Asfrid and Hade had not joined forces to stabilize the tunnel and protect their comrades, there might have been more casualties.

Nevertheless, Dumbo, Mufasa, Shere Khan, Immyr, Jinlong, Crunch, the dragons and basically all the giants in the group had temporarily supported the tunnel vault by sheer muscle power to keep it from collapsing. Several of them suffered from multiple fractures, but their resilience and toughness lived up to their reputation.

Immyr and the other dragons had only cracked a few scales, Mufasa's mane had swiftly emitted a sharp wind halo that repelled and obliterated any rock that came too close to him, while Shere Khan had transformed into a blurred shadow of lightning to pulverize with his claws all the scree that threatened his comrades.

The giant mammoth, Dumbo, was even more massive than Immyr and the other dragons and was able to sleep standing up like most elephants. For this reason, if he locked his joints it was virtually impossible for him to lose his balance. He was like a gigantic rooftop resting on four huge pillars stronger than the strongest metal.

Before Asfrid, Hade and the other Eltarians intervened, he alone had stoically endured the landslide without faltering, the rocks and debris streaming and ricocheting off his thick fur without harming him. The creaking and cracking of his joints was proof, however, that supporting the weight of kilometers of stone for several seconds was no small feat, even for such a colossal behemoth.

The only two exceptions were Crunch and Lord Phenix. Both were crushed without putting up much of a fight, but the former simply deformed like a piece of chewing gum, while the latter was literally ground to a pulp, his boiling blood splattering all over the place.

When Hade finally came to their aid, removing the huge boulders crushing them, Crunch immediately returned to his normal shape with a resounding pop as if his body had just been re-inflated with helium, while the turkey's corpse burst into flames, forming a pile of ash from which an uninjured Lord Phenix crawled out coughing up flames.

"Cough, cough, just because I'm immortal doesn't mean I like dying, hmmph." Lord Phenix complained with a deceptively maudlin countenance but from his smug face he was clearly bragging.

For a second Hade was tempted to bury him under the rubble again but quelling his murderous impulse he promptly ignored him and finally relieved Dumbo of some of his burden.

Now that the psychists had taken action, it was easier for the Aristocats and the dragons to bear the weight of the collapsed tunnel, but it was not a permanent solution. Without Jake and the Kintharians to directly influence the rock's conduct, they had to support the equivalent of a huge mountain's weight with their strength alone.

Dumbo's big bones and the dragons acted as support beams, but in the meantime they could not move. In front of and behind them, the tunnel had collapsed, blocking both exits.

"What do we do now?" Lucia grunted as she cleaved a five-meter thick boulder with her gladius sword.

"Let's just follow the plan and keep moving." Kenway calmly proposed as he morphed into an imposing Werelion.

An oversized humanoid lion with hypertrophied muscles emerged between the front legs of Dumbo who was at the front of the group and with little or no warning he slammed his fist into the rock wall blocking their path.

Upon impact, a frightening shockwave rippled out in all directions, quickly followed by a terrifying seismic wave. The rocky obstacle shattered... along with everything else.

"Fucking moron! Do you want to bury us alive or what?!" Aisling yelled as she slapped the back of his head with a loud smack.

His transformation ended at once and the usually quiet and unruffled warrior reappeared scratching his head sheepishly.

"Was it really necessary to hit me?" Kenway snarled grudgingly.

"Yes." The Dhampir replied matter-of-factly.

"Can we try using my flames or other gentler methods to destroy the wall?" Enya suggested as she fanned a jet of red flames with her palms.

A spray of flame hot enough to melt any metal on this planet was emitted with such force from her hands that it formed a dazzling plasma beam. The collapsed tunnel in front of them reopened in the blink of an eye, the rock liquefying into magma, then vaporizing in plain sight.

The fire dragons protecting Will joined in, and soon a storm of flame powerful enough to melt away the toughest of Players drilled a tunnel wide enough for even Dumbo to crawl through.

Unfortunately, the downside of this method soon became apparent. They were not on the surface, but underground in an enclosed area. The heated material did not really disappear, it simply changed state. Even with the Psychists of the group helping to clear it, the heat produced had no way of being expelled.

Within a few dozen seconds the temperature inside their backup cave became intolerable and the most fragile of the group, the Eltarians, began to roast alive.

"Stop, stop, stop! If you keep this up except for Enya and the other fire breathers we're all going to die." Daniel finally exclaimed, hastily discarding his steaming armor that was producing a frying sound on contact with his skin.

The young woman and the dragons stopped firing on the spot. Seeing the state of Daniel, Asfrid and the other Eltarians a guilty expression appeared on their faces.

"Sorry, I really thought it would work." Enya apologized guiltily.

"It's okay... At least you tried." Lucia sighed. "We're the ones slowing you down."

"Everyone has their strengths." Hade stated coolly. "There's no need to beat yourself up about it. We knew that most of us were risking our lives by choosing to follow Jake to the end."

The Fluid Grandmaster was trying to cheer them up, but deep down he was pretty frustrated too. He was obviously not out of options to preserve his own life. With one strike he could open a path to the surface. If he really wanted to, he could even teleport there.

BOOOOM!

Alas, the antimatter explosions had never abated. Their telekinesis was not only to prevent the tunnel from collapsing, but also to neutralize the blasts resulting from all those detonations.

Now that they were almost under the Celestial City, the danger had been mitigated, but the fallout from those explosions was still dangerous for most of them. There was also another danger that was even more problematic for them.

Most of the Myrtharian Nerds hadn't realized it yet, but with his extraordinary extrasensory perception Hade had a totally different understanding of their situation.

To the others, they were just stuck underground with the threat of explosions in the background, but to him the danger was elsewhere and much closer than they thought.

'This rock is thick and partially blocks our mental senses.' The Fluid Grandmaster reasoned in his head, trying to remain inexpressive so as not to worry his comrades. 'It's an advantage because it keeps us undetected, but in the meantime we're blind too.'

To retrieve Will, for example, Jake had used his Earth control and perception to use it as a radar. His Oracle Rank was also superior to Will's and they were allies which made it easy to predict his arrival and plan his rescue.

Despite this constraint, Hade was able to project his mental sense a few hundred meters around him occasionally resorting to the Oracle Scan and he had spotted two separate threats.

The first was that these relentless antimatter explosions had heated and irradiated the ground ever more deeply. His allies thought they were separated from the surface by tens of kilometers of solid rock, but that was not the case at all. The rocky vault they were supporting with force fields was only a few hundred meters thick and rapidly thinning.

Above, a magma lake ten kilometers deep was waiting for the slightest breach to seep in and flood them. This same lake was also evaporating rapidly, its surface turning into plasma and merging into the atmosphere. Right now, even if the explosions stopped, returning to the surface would be lethal for most of them.

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