The Innkeeper

Chapter 2313: Odd reward

"How interesting," said Lex as he materialised outside the necklace and looked at the silver liquid. He was more and more convinced that this place, whatever it was, was related to the Temple in some way. Otherwise, it would not have been able to so easily separate him from Pearl, or allowed him to undergo a test.

Lex dipped his finger in the silver liquid - though he was technically just a projection. Still, since when had being a projection stopped anyone from doing anything? Of course, in reality, he did far more than just dip his finger in the liquid.

He channeled his energy into it and observed how the liquid reacted, taking in all of its properties. By now, Lex had enough energy to basically use his powers normally without issue.

A big fight would be challenging, but fortunately he wasn’t in a fight. This place also had abundant energy, so it would not be a problem.

After a few hours of testing, Lex decided to call the liquid Silver Ink because it had a very unique property. Array characters were unique characters that were formed as a result of the actions of laws, and they could be used to form arrays.

Basically, array characters allowed array users to make use of laws to certain effects without directly interacting with the laws. The very important thing to keep in mind was that the relationship between them was hierarchical, since arrays depended on laws.

Well, the Silver Ink allowed array characters to be written, used and applied outside of arrays. While such things could be done without the Silver ink as well, the effect would not nearly be as impressive.

In short, the ink was valuable, but not too valuable. The issue Lex was facing was that he was supposed to use array characters to permanently alter the function of a certain law within his necklace. For a very specific instance or circumstance, it was possible since Lex could design a sufficiently complex array.

But to account for an entire law, regardless of circumstance, to work differently was not a simple or easy task. Lex would have gone and said it should be impossible, if only he knew that impossibility didn’t technically exist.

Fortunately, Lex did not have to actually limit himself to arrays. While it was the only resource given to him, he could make use of the necklace itself, not to mention all the low level resources he’d accumulated over the years.

"What law to pick?" Lex asked himself as he pondered over this challenge. He wasn’t too worried. It wasn’t like he’d be stuck here if he couldn’t pass. He’d just be giving up on the reward - whatever it was. Yet he was curious about what he’d get, so he started to ponder.

This first thing Lex focused on was his goal for the necklace. He had many, but the most fundamental to any of them would be the necklace’s ability to gather sufficiently large amounts of energy regardless of its location.

Lex thought about his goal, and the resources available to him. Fortunately, he even had access to the characters from the Book of Changes, which were perhaps the most special characters he’d ever come across. Moreover, arrays used energy from the universe to power themselves. So, if he... no, that wouldn’t work. What if...?

Nah, that was ridiculous.

Lex shot down idea after idea, plan after plan, for no matter what he thought of, he couldn’t identify a convenient law to affect, and how to affect it.

For nearly one month, Lex did nothing but sit and think. Such a long duration of planning was, for him, quite rare. To encounter a problem he couldn’t find a solution for was even rarer.

In the end, Lex came to the conclusion that something like this wasn’t a problem that could be resolved with only theory. He would need to attempt his ideas and practically determine the outcome before progressing step by step.

Thus began his journey. The law he was targeting was one that he was exceptionally familiar with - karma! He wanted to make it so that karma would not attach to the necklace as was standard. That meant that if the necklace did something - for example, give Pearl additional energy recovery and healing - then the karma between her and the necklace would not be formed.

Although it seemed simple enough, it was actually quite complicated. Karma was not simply something used to trace events. It was what allowed so many other laws to function normally - laws that depended on a sequence of events, or growth, decline, reward, punishment and so many more.

While the Masterless technique already hid Lex, reducing the karma of his necklace would help it hide better.

Yet as he attempted to turn that goal into a reality, he was faced with the reality that he wasn’t nearly adept enough in manipulating karma to achieve such a massive change permanently. Thus the goal changed. Instead of negating all karma, he decided to divert it.

Instead of the karma attaching to the necklace, as it ordinarily should, Lex decided to make it so that the karma would attach to anything within the necklace itself. For now, it was meant to be random, but he could change it later on if he needed to. This was merely a start.

Over the next four months, Lex focused on nothing else, and managed to achieve his goal using the Silver Ink, the characters from the Book of Changes, and the inherent quality of the divine ore to facilitate miracles.

The best part was that since this was made using an array and silver ink, the array would not disappear on its own, and its actions would be fueled by the universe and not the necklace’s own energy reserves.

In fact, over the course of completing this test, Lex got a few more ideas about how and where to source the energy from the necklace.

He managed to complete the test long before Pear and River, and had to admit that the test was very obviously designed with his skills and limitations in mind. What he didn’t understand was his reward!

Instead of receiving some kind of inheritance, he received an inert, iron coin.

He called it inert because he could channel no energy into it, nor could he make use of it in any obvious way. For once, he had no idea what he was dealing with. Yet instead of being annoyed, he was only intrigued.

After all, his instincts, which had been silent for too long, told him that the coin was very important, and it would reveal its use soon enough.