The Innkeeper

Chapter 1968: Freeze

Death by a thousand cuts was a concept made famous on earth by movies and shows that used it to demonstrate how painful and brutal death could really be - also to build up a villain so that the main character looked cooler after defeating him.

For a normal human, it was definitely a painful way to die as they bled out from the numerous cuts on their body. For an immortal, it was just painful.

Diyor had not yet realized it, but he would never be able to kill Lex. Yes, his divine energy allowed him to create a miracle and harm Lex, but that kind of damage could never kill him even if he just stood there and let the attacks fall.

Yet that’s not what Lex did. No, he resisted as if Diyor had gained a decisive advantage, keeping Diyor dedicated to attacking him. His purpose was simple, really. He was using this fight to test out his theories and expand his understanding of the universe.

When Diyor began to fear Lex, Lex felt the feedback for his Tyrant’s Mask. Even though he was not wearing the mask right now, it still benefited from any fear that Lex induced, especially if the object of that fear was himself. The feedback for his mask was when Lex realized that Arch-Heaven had not cancelled pre-existing rules that existed in the universe. They may override them, or maybe they take priority. He wasn’t sure, which is why he was running tests. One by one, he was using every single ability available to him, and seeing how the universe reacted.

If he summoned the Tyrant’s Mask and Butter Knife, he’d get the ability to use divine energy, he had gathered that much. Moreover, those two were not blocked from being summoned. But that was not enough. The thought form and soul state were still blocked, so were a majority of his other abilities.

Yet as he cycled through his powers, he realized that his Paladdin powers also weren’t affected. They were suppressed down to 11%, sure, but even that was already far better than all his other abilities.

Furthermore, his arrays and formations were suppressed, and their suppression was far more complex than his regular abilities, but that could be a good thing. For example, an array for attack might be suppressed down to 11%, but a defensive one might be suppressed far less than that.

Ultimately, since arrays drew their strength from the ambient energy, they did not count as Lex’s own ability. The complexity of the array itself, however, came from Lex so that is what determined how much suppression the array faced. But there was a very simple solution to that as well. Lex didn’t implement it immediately, though.

For hours and hours, he continued the fight, testing out the limits of Arch-Heavens suppression so that if he faced a stronger opponent, he wouldn’t be caught unprepared.

At first, Diyor did not notice anything since fights between immortals lasted far longer than this. After hours, though, when Lex became a bloody mess yet showed no signs of even weakening in the slightest, the first hint of doubt crept in. A few more hours later, that doubt turned into horror. He realized that... he was being played with.

Eventually, he couldn’t take it anymore, and turned around to run. But how could Lex let him go?

"What’s the matter, Diyor? Where are you going?" Lex asked casually as he held up a finger. For years and years, Lex hadn’t needed to draw an array using his finger. His control over spirit energy was so precise that he could draw an array without as much as flinching a single muscle.

The reason, then, that Lex drew the array manually was because he was feeling reminiscent of the good old times. Oh, and also the sight of watching the array be slowly built, knowing that the moment of its completion would herald his inevitable end would scare the living hell out of Diyor, and Lex wanted a little revenge for all the cuts he suffered. But mainly the reminiscent thing as far as anyone else was concerned.

With slow, deliberate movements, Lex drew the circle within which the array character would be formed, all the while keeping up with Diyor as he tried to run out of the mines.

"What would Sekhmet think if she saw you running like that?" Lex asked, as he began to draw the single character that would fill this array.

"Don’t you dare say her holiness’s name!" Diyor screamed, even as he kept running. "You will never escape her grasp. Your end will be miserable!"

"Don’t be so melodramatic. It’s just a name, and that too of someone exiled from her own home. What can she do to me except look on in envy as I enter and exit the Origin realm according to my will?"

Diyor grit his teeth, wanting to do nothing more than rip Lex apart. But the time for that would come. For now he needed to...

Diyor froze mid thought and mid action, as Lex’s array was completed. Outside of Arch-Heaven, Lex used his ability called Supremacy to exact his will upon others. The ability was a Lawcraft joint together with his Domination to exert his will on the universe. In Arch-Heaven, though, Lex came up with an alternative to this ability, since it was sealed.

It was arrays, but that wasn’t just it. One of the simplest concepts of arrays - one that Lex actually took an embarrassingly long time to realize - was that there was more than one way to strengthen an array.

The first method he learned was to use better, more powerful and more precise characters. The second was to use smarter and more cleverly designed arrays themselves. The last, yet simplest and most obvious, was to draw an array character using more energy.

Arrays powered themselves up with ambient energy from the universe, yes, and Lex used to think they took as much energy as needed to power the array. That is, until one day, he realized that the amount of energy was dictated by the requirement of the array, yes, but also by how much energy was used to draw the array.

This wasn’t commonly practiced or taught because this was an unorthodox method. Firstly, the level of energy control required for this was far beyond most people. Secondly, the amount of energy required was so massive that it was useless to most people once again. The very, very few people who made it passed the first two requirements were often stumped by the last requirement, which was that the more complex the array that was built using a higher concentration of energy, the less effective it was going to be.

So, Lex built an array with a single character, and made the array out of the entire sum of energy he used to have back when he was an Earth Immortal. As a result... Diyor froze where he ran, yet it was not just his body that was frozen. His thoughts, his soul, and even his trial to obtain an official position all froze alongside him.

Lex walked up to Diyor, his expression remaining nonchalant the entire time. As it happened, Diyor froze at the very exit of the mine. Even more coincidental was that James was there, waiting for Lex. So... when he saw the scene of Lex freezing Diyor’s soul using a single array, tears once again began to shed from his eyes.

He knew it. The bloodbath had begun, and now he had been caught up in it.