The Innkeeper

Chapter 2005: Pay-to-Play

The Butter Knife Upgrade token looked just like all the others, though it was not available in the token shop. Once Lex crushed it, he quickly received the notification he was waiting for, anticipation filling his body.

This was the very thing for which he had suffered so much in Arch-Heaven. He was hoping it was worth it!

New Notification: Butter Knife Upgrade token activated!

New Notification: New feature unlocked!

New Feature: Pay-to-play!

Pay-to-play

The energy requirement to use the Butter Knife can now be sourced externally, ranging from Mortal to Demi-Dao level! To use the Pay-to-play feature, sufficient energy needs to be provided for each use of Butter Knife, which takes a certain amount of time to process. Please note that the conversion for Demi-Dao level use can range between 1 to 10 Dao level materials, based on the energy within.

This! Finally! After so many years, he had begun to give up hope that the Inn would provide him with a way to use the full powered Butter Knife every again. Although, reading the description of Pay-to-play, Lex could slightly understand why such a thing was unlikely to happen any time soon.

According to the message from Prime Kernel, systems cannot self acquire Dao level energy or materials, and need to be provided by hosts. The previous instance may have been as a result of some Dao level energy that the system had left over from before it was damaged.

The price was immense, and it was tough to use, but with this Lex finally had a certain level of safety.

But the Butter Knife could not be considered a total safety net even now. Mary had previously told Lex that systems cannot kill Dao Lords. Let alone a Dao Lord, the Butter Knife had not even been able to kill Ra, a Demi-Dao Lord. However, it had nearly killed him with a single strike, and that was enough.

In fact, Lex suspected that the reason Ra hadn’t died was because he had hidden his Divine Fire in a very special, well protected place, allowing him to narrowly survive.

No doubt, he was somewhere in the Origin realm, trying to restart his faith and acquire new followers so that he could regain power. Lex wasn’t worried. It would take him a long time to recover enough strength to be a nuisance to him, and by then Lex would be strong enough to deal with him.

Lex summoned the Butter Knife and immediately began to channel his own energy inside, to get a gist of how much energy the Knife required to charge. The energy within Lex’s body was that of a Heaven Immortal, but in terms of quality, it was heads and shoulders above other Heaven Immortals. There was no need to mention all the various aspects his energy had, everyone knew it was beyond normal. All he needed to see was how much energy would be required to kill a Heaven Immortal.

To his surprise, though it also made sense in a way, the energy Lex provided started to fuel up the knife to kill Earth Immortals and below. Not just that, but as the energy poured out of his body endlessly, he could see that it would take days if not weeks of continuous effort to completely fill the knife before it could be used.

The reason why Lex thought that it made sense was because the Butter Knife was a weapon of absolute eradication. It always aimed to completely kill its target in one strike. Although Lex was more powerful than the average Heaven Immortal, it was not to the extent that he could one shot them.

While he was at the level he could one shot many Earth Immortals if he really wanted to and planned for it, that was only for the average Earth Immortal. There were surely countless Earth Immortals out there who were abnormal who Lex might not be able to one shot. Thus, the Butter Knife took them into account as well when it recharged.

So it seemed that charging the knife normally would not be of much use. He would need to provide energy through highly valuable resources to make it useful.

Now, getting his hands on resources of the Celestial level would be expensive, but still manageable. Getting his hands on Dao materials was the real issue. Although Lex had some ideas about how he could do that, it would likely only be a one time thing.

Something like this required thorough experimentation. He was definitely not going to start out by sacrificing the few Amber Chaos Resin he still had left on hand. The Butter Knife’s experimentation would begin with Celestial level energy, or maybe Heaven Immortal level energy so that he could get a fair estimate of what to expect when he fed it Dao level materials.

Lex wasn’t sure if trading Dao materials for an opportunity to one-shot a Demi-Dao Lord was worth it. Maybe there were numerous better things he could do with those items. For him, right now, though, this was the best use.

Lex took a few moments to plan things out. To get his hands on resources he could sacrifice to his Butter Knife, he would have to venture into the Origin realm. He could send others to do this on his behalf, but as it was, he had a few things he needed to conclude in the Origin realm himself.

"Mary, thanks for that. It was totally worth the effort," Lex said sincerely. "Did you know what would happen?"

Mary shook her head.

"Not really, but as my soul is starting to recover, I am beginning to regain some of my old instincts. I had a feeling that this would produce a good result. If you had waited for another time, the Butter Knife may have upgraded into something else. The systems work in seemingly random ways, but there’s actually a method to their randomness. Understanding that method will give you a massive edge."

Lex merely nodded, and then left the Midnight Inn. Something like this couldn’t wait even a moment. It was best if he got his answer to how Pay-to-play works before his meeting with the Governor. Much would depend on that.