The Innkeeper

Chapter 1970: 0% power percentage

James sighed, and for the billionth time lamented the fact that he had ever entered Arch-Heaven to begin with. It had been an accident. He hadn’t meant to enter, nor did he know too much about Arch-Heaven back then either. But such was life.

Outside of Arch-Heaven, the Destiny Devourer race was a feared and even hated race. Since they could mess with destiny, not to mention devour it, they were both incredibly formidable in strength and grew strong at tremendous speeds. That combination made them absolutely lethal enemies.

They were the stuff of legend and nightmare. Countless races paid them tributes just to avoid having their destinies devoured. Many other races made alliances with them. Even the Sages did not mess with them casually, choosing the path of diplomacy over a show of strength.

But here, in Arch-Heaven, James was being used up as a clean up crew. There was no fear in Lex’s eyes - he had not considered James a threat in even the slightest. Otherwise he would not have given James a destiny with a promising official position.

Another thing James found terrifying was how quickly Lex understood exactly what stealing destinies could mean. That told him that Lex had a deep grasp on the concept of destiny, and knew that strengthening James could bite him in the future. Yet he did so anyway, which probably meant that either he was going to silence James, or he too had unimaginable strength.

He honestly couldn’t tell which it was, because he had seen with his own eyes how Lex had defeated someone with a higher percentage power! Now, killing someone stronger might be an ordinary feat elsewhere, but in Arch-Heaven it was not the kind of thing that happened. James had never heard of such a thing ever happening before.

Maybe somewhere far away, in some remote corner of Arch-Heaven, such things happened, but definitely not here. So then for Lex to defeat someone at a higher realm, without killing them was something entirely unimaginable.

So, without feeling even a shred of hope at his chances of escape, James obediently lined up, waiting to follow instructions. Lex nodded, and with a slash of his butter knife killed Diyor. But this was far from enough. There were many more of such followers within this mountain range, and Lex had no intentions of leaving them alone.

It really wasn’t Lex’s choice. Why would he want to go around killing people? But since his good brother, James, had seen destiny and foretold that Lex would kill a lot of people, Lex had no choice but to believe him. In that case, it was better to target his enemies rather than random people.

Yes, believe it or not, Lex was doing this out of the goodness of his pure and honest heart to protect random strangers. This totally wasn’t just a way to mess with Sekhmet’s plans from the dark.

Previously, it would have been an issue for Lex to figure out a way to kill so many people within the boundary of the white marble building. Now, though, since he had acquired a greater understanding of Arch-Heaven, he knew exactly how to resolve the issue.

There was also a lesson there. For weeks Lex had roamed Arch-Heaven trying to learn about it, but he had learned more from killing a single enemy in a single day. Now Lex wasn’t going out and saying that looting enemies was the fastest way to get what he wanted. No, reality was the one saying that! Lex was merely listening.

Lex took Diyor’s spatial ring while he watched James set upon the corpse, devouring its destiny before it faded into oblivion. The Destiny Devourer was, quite literally, devouring or eating something invisible and intangible, tearing it from the bones of Diyor’s corpse.

Of course, to the normal eye, it just looked like James was wildly biting and chewing empty air. The process was a lot more basic and barbaric than Lex expected, yet the benefit of that was the speed of the process.

"I have devoured the remnants of his destiny," James said, a mix of fear and excitement on his face. "He was a favored one of a Deity, and had a powerful destiny. It will take me a few months to digest all this."

"That’s good, that’s good," said Lex as he wrapped his hands around James’ neck once more. "Now tell me James, can you devour more destinies, or do you need to wait until you digest this one?"

James’ body trembled as he got an ominous premonition.

"I... I can devour more, but that will be incredibly wasteful of a lot of destiny, and my digestion period will increase drastically..." James said, cautiously.

"Good, good," said Lex, sounding reassured. "In that case, James, we must continue to make sacrifices. Now, ordinarily, I would never kill so many people, but as it happens that I have some enemies here. Now, as someone who is often described as a saint, I would rather forgive my enemies than seek them out to kill them. But you, my good brother, look like you haven’t devoured a good destiny in a long while. So, with a heavy heart, I will accept the duty of bringing them rest from the struggles of Arch-Heaven. All I need from you is a small, almost insignificant token to help with the process."

For some odd reason, James’ tears began to flow once more, almost as if his body knew what was coming even before he did.

"What... do you need from me?" he asked hesitantly.

"Not much. I just need you to pay 100% of your power percentage to the Pink Top Mountain to issue a penalty challenge against about a hundred people or so. Worry not, with just you and I as challengers, all of them will accept since they will treat it as a sure win situation. After that, we’ll make sure to get you some decent destinies to devour."

James knew it. He knew it. Nothing good could come of hanging out with this murderous human. The goldfish and wolf pup waiting outside the mine were probably all evil too.

Almost 2000 years of effort to raise his power percentage, sacrificed in a single day.

Although... if he could get so much destiny... it might be a small price to pay, especially since Lex would do the fighting.

Through the tears, James reluctantly obeyed Lex’s instructions. A few minutes later, all followers of Sekhmet - at least the ones that Diyor knew of - that were present in the Pink Top mountain received a challenge. They could deny it, of course, but the person issuing the challenge actually had 0% power percentage, and a single helper with 11% power percentage.

Would they be crazy enough to reject such a challenge and give up free benefits? No, they were not. Such was their thoughts that sealed their fates.