The Oracle Paths

Chapter 1162  It's A Really Tough Nail

The foreigner's blunt and direct remark caught the Great General off guard. Could his thoughts really be read so easily from his expression?

'Bullshit!'

The barbarian was confident in his acting skills. Even the most horrific torture wouldn't make him crack a smile if he decided to keep his cards close to his chest. It was all a bluff! But even if it wasn't, he wasn't scared.

"What misunderstanding?" Radahn responded evenly, raising an indifferent eyebrow as he strode confidently toward his seat among the other generals.

At the moment, all key military officers were seated around a large round table, covered with a sprawling map of Twyluxia, dotted with pieces and figurines marking the latest known positions of each army corps. Of course, there wasn't seating for everyone; the majority stood behind their superiors or listened silently from a distance.

The Soulmancer King, as expected of his status, was seated at the head of the table on a high-quality wooden throne that had unfortunately lost its armrests. A disgusting humanoid insect with a menacing scorpion tail kept them in check with its stinger, scanning them with reptilian coldness.

His face was so structurally different from theirs that they were absolutely incapable of guessing his emotions. Did he even feel anything?

'Nathan.' Radahn acknowledged calmly. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

He was a foreigner known as a die-hard follower of Cho Min Ho. The ruthlessness of this killing machine matched the insect-like facade of his face, and by all accounts, he was considered incorruptible.

To his left stood a massive human with sandy-beige hair, even more ridiculously muscled than the generals around the table, his facial features bearing a certain resemblance to those of his leader: Kang Jun.

This foreigner was easier to interact with. He had the skill and composure of an elite warrior, yet he was not indifferent to life's pleasures. Unlike his leader and Nathan, this Korean was cruel, greedy, and vain. If the profit was sufficient and did not cross his bottom line, namely betraying Cho Min Ho, it was possible to buy his silence, even bribe him.

Flanking the acting Soulmancer King were four seats unlike the others, reserved for the Great Generals. The other commanders and generals shared the remaining seats.

As Radahn approached his seat, only one seat away from the Korean, he had already noted internally that two other Great Generals in addition to himself were missing.

Winchu had been killed and replaced by Lord Calyx, while Ceythie had just betrayed them. The replacement had just assumed his role, but his prestige was far from matching the others. The fact that he had not been invited to this emergency meeting spoke volumes.

'Well, I wasn't invited either.' He lampooned inwardly.

Unperturbed, he ignored the gloating face of Sheanu, the Great General of the Warghost Raiders, and sat down without flinching.

As his buttocks touched the seat, one of the legs broke, betraying sabotage meant to humiliate him. Still showing no emotion, he channeled some of his Spirit Lumyst into the chair to maintain its cohesion before it collapsed.

"Sheanu, it seems that not seeing your ugly mug for a while has made you even more detestable." Radahn greeted, barely glancing his way.

The barbarian, who was playing with a dagger, his feet carelessly placed on the table, grinned horribly but refrained from responding.

Meanwhile, Cho Min Ho felt neglected. He expected a reaction from Radahn but not such insolence. At the moment, it wasn't Sheanu, but him who had sabotaged his seat to put him in his place.

"What misunderstanding?" The Korean repeated slowly, ominously tapping on the table with his fingers before his demeanor shifted dramatically.

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees in an instant, even the flies daring not to fly. Addressing an inhumanly icy stare at the rude Great General, very different from his usual composed demeanor, Cho Min Ho continued,

"It seems that by being civil with you, unlike a certain other fake Soulmancer King, you have come to underestimate me. Misunderstanding? I wasn't asking you; I was merely stating a fact. See, you Underworld Barbarians pride yourselves on being soul experts, but that's only if you compare yourselves to those degenerates, the Light Warriors."

The Spirit Power that the Player had been suppressing within him since the beginning of the Ordeal suddenly exploded from his body, the resulting spiritual pressure causing half the generals at the table to bleed from their noses and eyes. The worst part was that they weren't even the targets of the foreigner's wrath.

However, seeing that even Radahn was struggling to breathe normally under the pressure, the expressions of the generals around the table changed. A Great General had Spirit Lumyst Cultivation equivalent to a Saint of the Radiant Conclave. Even targeted directly, a mere foreigner shouldn't have been able to trouble him so much.

It was well known that the reputation of the Vorzhul Legion leader was the stuff of legends. Some rumors even said he was as strong as the Soulmancer King himself. He was the only man the latter treated as an equal rather than a subordinate.

And yet, this foreigner acting as a fake Soulmancer King had managed to put him in distress. It was an immeasurable feat.

In truth, even if it had been Jake himself under this pressure, he would have been sincerely disconcerted. The display of Spirit Power was significantly more than he had anticipated from him. The fact that Ceythie possessed spiritual strength approaching 10% of his own had already greatly impressed him. Sure, he was nerfed, but so was Cho Min Ho.

"Do you understand now?" Cho Min Ho sneered, leaning back haughtily in his armless chair. "Your soulmancy is trivial in my eyes. Your spirits might be strong, including compared to most other Players, but I am not just any Player. I'm an Oracle Knight, a Rank 17 Colonel. You may not understand what that means, but in simple terms that even primitive gorillas like you might understand, you are insignificant. Even constrained by the Aetheric laws of Twyluxia, I can easily kill you. As for reading your thoughts while you're unable to control your Aetheric signature, that's child's play."

The Korean had thrown out a lot of words they had never heard before, and the barbarians present were utterly confused. Regardless, they didn't need to understand the words to grasp that the acting Soulmancer King they had taken for a pushover wasn't as toothless as they thought.

Radahn, who was the direct target of this spiritual pressure, also found himself compelled to reassess his position. Cho Min Ho or Jake? The choice was no longer as simple.

The decision would be easy if Jake was incomparably stronger than the Korean, but if their strengths were similar, it would be the Dusken Throne that would suffer. They couldn't afford the existence of two hostile Soulmancer Kings at the same time. It would only play into the hands of their enemies.

"I can see you're not yet convinced." Cho Min Ho interrupted his thoughts with a flat tone. "I know what's troubling you, and you don't need to worry. Neither Jake nor I will launch into open warfare, because that would also harm our interests. Our only common goal is to win this war, and our survival depends on it."

It was now Radahn's turn to be confused. He didn't understand the real intentions of these Players. This war wasn't just a game to them after all?

"What do you propose, then?" The Great General asked after a long silence once the Korean's spiritual aura had retracted.

"Very simple… Our ultimate goal being the victory of the Dusken Throne over the Radiant Conclave, I propose…"

*****

Long after, the command room finally emptied of its last native, the broad back of the immense Radahn seeming smaller than when he arrived. Once the problematic Great General had left, Kang Jun questioned,

"Do you think he'll follow the plan?"

"It doesn't matter." Nathan said in a raspy voice. "Even if he decides to join Jake with his Vorzhul Legion, that will only make our task easier. Sheanu's Wargod Raiders and the support of Lorentz's Soulmancers will be more than enough."

"You know what you have to do," Cho Min Ho declared darkly. "If Jake wants so badly to be in the spotlight, then I'll give him what he wants. The nail that sticks out gets hammered down."

"But that one… It's a really tough nail," Nathan reminded without tact.

The expressions of the two Koreans fell upon hearing this. But very quickly, the leader of King's Idol Alliance regained his river-like tranquility. In an even more ominous tone, he concluded,

"That's why we need to give our enemies a helping hand."