The Innkeeper

Chapter 1599: Bright lights

Instead of feeling happy about the crown of light being placed on his head, Lex felt a headache coming on. For some reason, his abundant good karma was already highly attractive to the various creatures in Abaddon, as far as he could tell.

Now, receiving a considerable amount more would obviously make him an even bigger target, which was not ideal. To top it all off, Lex was weakened, and he had yet to figure out what exactly it was.

However, the one thing that became abundantly clear was that whatever it was, it had an immensely overwhelming karma associated with it, and killing it would give him an astonishingly large amount of karma.

Yet instead of greed, Lex was filled with wariness. For that thing, whatever it was, to have so much karma that just trying to influence it blew up Lex's body, Lex was certain that it was not an Earth Immortal. In fact, he doubted that even a Heaven Immortal could have so much karma.

Yet, for some reason, both times it had shown up in front of Lex, it had the strength of an Earth Immortal. No matter what the case was, Lex was wary of it. Unfortunately, it seemed that a confrontation was unavoidable.

That meant that before the final confrontation, he needed to understand what exactly was limiting it from displaying all its power, and how could Lex defeat it successfully? So far, it seemed like he would be fine as long as he didn't try to touch its karma. Yet that was too convenient an answer, so Lex didn't entirely believe it.

Slowly, Lex withdrew his Domain, for keeping it active consumed an immense amount of energy.

Lex turned to look at Kaemon, and approached him with a single step.

"It seems we have attracted the attention of some unknown power within Abaddon. This is not a good sign."

"It's nothing we haven't faced before. Remember in my report when I mentioned encountering a vertical bridge made of grey grass? There was a school of aerial fish using it to fly up into the sky. Well, at that time, something from up above spotted us, and seemed able to break the rule of only being attracted to those on the same level. For things like this, we simply summon the Condottiere. He will take care of it."

"You can summon the Condottiere whenever you wish?" Lex asked, surprised.

"Not the real him, just a projection, and he doesn't come every time either. Sometimes, he just resolves the issue without even sending a projection. I will compile a report to him updating him on the situation, and conduct the ritual to contact him. I'll let you know what the update is."

"Thanks. I won't say no to additional help. This is not an easy job, even without the unnaturally strong and weird beings targeting us."

Kaemon eyed Lex but said nothing about his use of a Domain, and just watched Lex return to the Midnight mech. The two groups immediately resumed their march, taking advantage of the rare occurrence of no locusts swarming them to make great progress.

The flow of time, though varied within Abaddon, seemed to be going much faster than even the Midnight Inn, so that multiple days passed by without a single hour passing in Abaddon.

During that time, their progress seemed to be great. Although the Midnight mech was not directly supporting the mercenaries, who were dealing with the majority of any locusts, its mere presence meant that the pressure on the mercenaries was a lot less.

Of course, such progress in Lex's eyes was meaningless. Blindly searching for the chalice meant that they would never find it, so the entire time he kept trying to think of ways to induce the arrival of the chalice.

In fact, he even tried to send Fenrir back to the Inn, so that he could be summoned back to Lex with the equipment from John. After all, as the protector of the Inn, Fenrir was linked to the Inn, and through his bond with Lex, he was connected to him.

Teleporting the pup to and from the Inn was what made him an incredible partner for Lex. Yet when Lex tried to send Fenrir back, Abaddon would interfere with the teleportation, making it fail.

It was the first time Lex encountered something like that, though the peculiarity of Abaddon meant that he was not surprised by it.

It was then, on the tenth day since Lex's explosion, that something changed. It was not the ever changing landscape, nor was it the locusts. Instead, the change was in the red sky, which began to turn bright yellow, almost blinding everyone.

The mercenaries suddenly stopped their march, and with a solemn expression, summoned Lex.

"I think you better establish your castle here once again," Kaemon said. "We won't be moving until the sky stabilizes."

Lex, who had read a report of all of Kaemon's experiences, naturally knew what was happening. Abaddon was a place where a number of dead souls from the universe were pulled in by some unknown power.

Yet that pull was not a constant force. Instead, at intervals, when the sky turned purple, an endless number of souls were pulled into Abaddon through the sky, causing immense turmoil and danger.

During such times, it was best to absolutely stay still, lest some passing powerful being think that they were competing for the souls. That would spell their certain doom.

They had stopped a lot sooner than any of them had expected, but Lex was not one to complain. In fact, stopping was for the best, for he wanted to study the changes occurring in great detail, and through the soul plane.

In a matter of minutes, the Midnight castle was once again deployed, its defenses activated, and the mercenaries had withdrawn to its inner chambers to rest and recuperate.

Only the Midnight battalion stayed on the outer walls, alongside Z. Lex, of course, had returned to his position atop the tallest tower in the castle, from where he observed the changing sky.

As he saw the changing colors, he couldn't help but have a random thought. The deep red of the sky as it usually was almost seemed like the inside of a human throat. The deep red was like the inside of the body when a bright light was shone on the skin, revealing the blood and meat within.

The bright sky was almost like the mouth had opened, allowing the external light to enter within.