Despite their high water consumption and general exhaustion, Jake wasn't worried at all. Aslael had guaranteed the presence of an Oracle City within 200km of the snow-covered hill. These cities also contained at least one Red Cube.
If his Oracle device had given him this Path to follow, it was at least guaranteed that the Red Cube they were heading towards was closer. Since leaving the snowy hill, they had traveled more than a hundred kilometers, and therefore were at least halfway there.
Unfortunately, the Playboy group couldn't care less about these details. Having spent a sleepless night in the hope of catching them, in addition to having covered a greater distance, they also had a significant sleep debt.
This translated into a bad mood and general tension, as well as a readiness to go off at the drop of a hat. Kyle was too scared of Jake to complain, but Sarah wasn't one to mince her words and had decided to spit out all of her verve at every opportunity.
However, she quickly abandoned this losing strategy. Jake had neither the social skills nor the patience to deal with the mood swings and demands of the opposite sex. As a result, he stuck to his principles and simply put on a pair of earplugs and then stepped up the pace.
Naturally, he removed the earplugs shortly afterwards to preserve his hearing, but the message had been delivered. After that, Sarah brooded for a while, before suddenly changing her approach after watching Amy.
If bitching didn't work, she could try a more subtle approach instead. If there was one thing Sarah was confident about, it was her looks.
This proud and haughty woman was a beautiful blonde with flattering measurements. Her body was voluptuous and curvy in all the right places, and her facial features were fine and delicate. She also had beautiful almond-shaped eyes as deep blue as the ocean, and the way she nibbled her luscious lips invited depravity.
Unlike Sophie, she had a natural tan and flawless skin. Overall, her self-confidence was not unfounded. She turned men's heads, and she knew it.
If she was wearing a blouse or shirt instead of a simple top, she probably would have unbuttoned one or two buttons on her cleavage to highlight her voluminous assets. However, the walk was intensive enough to make such ambitions impossible to achieve.
The decisive moment would come at nightfall, when Jake would decide it was time to set up camp. If his plan worked as planned, she would patiently trick him into being vulnerable but tactile, understanding and passionate. It worked every time.
Even men of power were not insensitive to the charms of a woman like her. If Jake had an abnormally high IQ, Sarah compensated with an excellent emotional quotient. She always got her way and there were no moral taboos restricting her thinking.
Not this time. As the suns began their slow descent towards the horizon, the desert cyan, repetitive and silent until now, finally showed change.
It began with a raven cawing in the sky above them that startled them all. Then, other birds of various shapes and colors flew above them at full speed.
Then a few minutes later Jake noticed some weird shapes snaking through the sand salt and heading in the same direction. The same direction they were going to. The Red Cube.
This cheered Jake up, since it meant it wasn't as far away as he thought it would be. A shame not everyone shared his opinion. Most of them were worried about this gathering of animals of all kinds, and thought it was best to keep their distance.
Jake finally took the decision of slowing down so that they wouldn't be surrounded without his knowledge. The rest of the group enthusiastically welcomed this brief respite, especially the boy's mother who had been suffering from her poor physical condition all along.
During the next hour, their group came across more and more animals and alien creatures of all kinds. Birds, bugs as big as labradors, elephants, a pride of lions, a solitary tiger, chamois, and other alien creatures with much more random morphologies.
Their most notable encounter was a kind of translucent moray eel snaking and floating in the air and flickering an orange light like a gigantic firefly. The creature ignored them from beginning to end, but the fact that none of them understood the phenomenon by which it was moving made them extremely uncomfortable.
By the time the suns were almost down and the purple moons replaced them yet again, the twilight sky tinted with a mixture of red and purple, they were but one group among many.
In front of them a few hundred yards away stood an impressive sand salt dune, and Jake was convinced that the Red Cube was just behind it. With a little more effort, they would finally reach their destination.
This time the lonely lout was not the only one who was eager to find out what could attract so many people of so many different species and races. Calmly, the group ascended the dune, saving their breath in case of an unpleasant surprise. When they finally reached the top, the spectacle they witnessed astounded them on the spot, Jake included.
Hundreds of thousands of life forms huddled around a titanic red cube, covering the desert to the horizon. The Red Cube was aptly named.
More than a hundred metres high, pulsating with intense blood-coloured light to the beating rhythm of a human heartbeat, this incongruous structure stood out in the middle of the cyan desert.
It was an impressive structure composed of energy, and simply by appearance, it was impossible to determine whether this giant parallelepiped had a solid consistency or was simply a mass of energy.
Glancing cautiously but threateningly at the surrounding groups, Jake drew his machete and semi-automatic pistol before cautiously entering the crowd. The rest of his group, never having been very brave, followed in his footsteps.
Amy and Sarah in particular were right behind him, determined not to be left behind. The Playboy, for his part, remained silent, but at the way he squeezed the handle of his Colt, one could easily guess his discomfort.
Loanna, Sophie and the others were no braver, and the first male looks other than those of the men in their group did not bring them the relief they had hoped for.
Around the Red Cube, in addition to the many alien and animal factions, there was obviously a section occupied by humanoid species, including humans from Earth. Obviously, this was the direction Jake chose to go first. He may have been antisocial, but sitting between two hyenas and a kind of three-legged minotaur twice his size and covered in scales was not very appealing to him.
Far from being reassured, the situation around them could not be more hostile. There were several hundred humans around them. Half of them were wearing similar clothes, and their skin colour ranged from pale white to the black typical of Central African populations. Earthlings.
The other half did not speak any language they recognized and their morphologies and clothing styles differed markedly. In general, Jake counted at least three different species of the homo genus, including Terrians.
A first gathering of about forty people consisted of muddy-skinned humans dressed in animal skins and primitive loincloths. The males were enormous masses of walking muscles, at least eight feet tall, while the females were more slender, often topless, and generally frailer than Earth women.
The men were more or less armed with clubs, assegais and spears, made of wood, hemp yarn and stones. Some women were equipped with slings or knives made of bone or stone.
Their faces were similar to those of the earthlings except that they had slit pupils and their hair was a fluorescent light blue, just like their irises. Jake's first hypothesis was that they lived on a planet with a poorly lit environment where these attributes had a role in courting or defining their social position.
Aside from his customary mistrust, Jake would not have been bothered more than that if five of the more feeble but well-endowed females in the group were not being raped through every orifice in some sort of giant gang-bang. Contemplating men built like tanks violating in groups of three, females almost a meter shorter than them had something profoundly sickening about it.
Amy, Sarah, Loana and Sophie were aghast, but unable to take their eyes off it, while the 40-year-old mother did her best to hide this traumatic vision to her son. It was the gaze of some of these bullies that had awakened their insecurities.
The group of Earthlings were no more reassuring. Society had degenerated on Earth in recent months to the point where very few people still dared to leave their homes in the end, leaving delinquents and criminals to flourish. It was paradoxically these same criminals who often made the best use of their Oracle Devices.
The consequences were obvious. Of this group of more than a hundred people, about thirty men armed to the teeth had taken total control of the group, making life difficult for the other men under their thumb and treating the women like slaves.
In view of the echimoses, black eyes, burns and lacerations of all sorts, to join them would be a condemnation for the women of their group. The leaders were currently watching with a lustful air the orgy taking place in the previous group, the most indecent ones masturbating openly in full view of all.
The third group, the most numerous, was different. These humans were similar in size to those on Earth, but seemed to come from a world technologically midway between that of the first and second groups.
About fifty men, making up about one-third of their total number, were arranged in an orderly circle around their encampment, wearing medieval armor and chain mail. Their belts were fitted with gladiuses or long swords, and some of them carried halberds or crossbows.
Another third of the mixed group were cowardly and dressed in rags or coarsely sewn woollen or linen garments. Civilians, peasants or traders from a lower social class.
The last third was protected by another group of guards in more prestigious armour decorated with gold lines. A coat of arms representing a sort of symmetrical double crescent moon, joined by their edges, was painted on their breastplates and shields.
Among this last third, a small group of nobles, including a few splendid young women wearing long dresses and imposing tiaras embedded with precious gemstones, were gazing outraged at the barbarians indulging in their gang-banging without any sense of prudishness.