The Innkeeper

Chapter 2354: Memories

The black dragon handed Lex a powerful and potent tool - one that was both costly to make, and would require an immense amount of Fortune aura to use. It was not something everyone could afford. In short, he handed Lex a black umbrella that would work based not on Lex’s energy, but on his fortune aura.

Fortunately, he was not lacking in fortune aura at all!

Lex grabbed the umbrella and had to admit that its smooth finish, perfect weight and the strength of its body made the umbrella appear quite cool. When matched with his suit, it was almost a perfect replacement for a cane - not that he usually carried one of those. Now, though, he was beginning to feel like he should.

Lex lifted the umbrella over him and opened it, enveloping himself in some kind of shield powered by his own fortune aura. Lex’s understanding of fortune aura was basically negligible, so he didn’t know if this aura was replenishable, or what the adverse effects of using it were. However, whatever the costs, he would learn about them over time. This opportunity, however, could not be gained again, which is why he didn’t mind paying a certain cost for it.

Once again he returned to the cave and, carefully, crossed the edge of the umbrella into the cave to see if it was affected by the laws of Pentagal. The umbrella remained entirely unharmed, though the drain on his fortune aura increased by a small amount.

It seemed to work, but Lex was still extremely careful while entering to make sure that nothing went amiss. Exposure to the laws of Pentagal, for Lex, seemed to be lethal. Or maybe it was the depth and concentration of those laws in this case which harmed him.

Yet the umbrella worked as advertised, with the strain on his fortune aura being its only adverse effect.

Walking into the depths of the cave, Lex turned through a few different corners, walking into the depths of an unusual world. The laws of Pentagal were not so fundamentally different from his own. There were still forces of attraction and repulsion, there were still states of matter, and there was still heat.

Yet light functioned entirely differently, as it was a gas. Moreover, the more of it that was used up to ’see’ the less of it there would be left. Perhaps there were ways to replenish light in the normal law framework of Pentagal, but Lex could not see through it in a single glance. Maybe if he spent some time here studying the laws, he could learn a bit more, but that was not his goal here.

He could tell that the formations here were self repairing, and were extremely old. Even now, they were not exactly fragile, for they could continue to exist for countless more years. There was, however, a delicate balance in the artificially maintained laws, and the gap caused by his umbrella was causing such a strain on them that they might not last long.

The first half of the cave seemed just like a cave, but the second half suddenly transitioned into what Lex could only assume was some kind of laboratory. It wasn’t because he recognized equipment, but because the laws of memory worked a little strangely in Pentagal. Lex could recall the memories of this lac, especially since it was at the core of where the laws were densest.

The lab, for the most part, remembered being still. The memory had no concept of time, so there were countless memories of stillness, and then of being used by someone to conduct some kind of experiment. The someone died in the very lab for reasons unknown.

He tried to figure out why he could still sense the memories within the umbrella, and discovered that it was a result of a weird resonance between the laws of the two universes.

Lex walked to where the lab remembered that someone dying, and saw the corpse of an unusual creature that looked like a humanoid insect with terrifying mandibles on its face sticking out.

That’s not what struck Lex, though. Nor did he focus on why the corpse looked so fresh. Instead, it was the creature’s crystalline eyes that attracted his attention, for his gaze was turned towards Lex, and it was that very gaze that was exacting True damage onto him.

"An eye attack?" Lex murmured to himself, reminiscing about Evisceration, the very first eye attack he ever learned. He could use an upgraded version of it even now, and it was fairly powerful. If the attack landed on a soul, it could burn right through it. Still, it wasn’t as strong as true damage!

A True damage attack that targeted the soul... just thinking about it got Lex excited. The question was, though, how was he going to learn the secret behind this True damage gaze? More importantly, he wanted to know why it worked in the laws of both universes, even though the laws were so different? Could it be that the attack relied on one or a few laws that were the same in both universes? Was that even possible?

Lex squatted on the ground and took a closer look at the eyes. If he approached the corpse, and his umbrella brought the creature within its range of influence, the corpse might dissipate, so he needed to figure this out right here, right now.

What’s more, he could feel the ground vibrating beneath his feet. Very soon, the formations within the cave were going to break. Lex couldn’t help but miss the Innkeepers Scent Diffuser at that moment.

Reaching a strange stalemate with a corpse, there was only one thing he could do. He could simply do his best to study the laws the gaze was affecting to the best of his ability. Oh, and he could use the strange way that memory worked in Pentagal to look into the creatures memories and try to figure it out through that.

Except that he could not access the memories of the being for it was dead and gone. Only the memories that belonged to its body were available to him. That would have to suffice.