The Innkeeper

Chapter 2367: Infected

In truth, while it appeared like Lex had munched on a Primordial pringle*, he was a mere illusion. What he had done in reality was fuse the egg shell into the necklace itself. After sitting and studying the shell for a long time, Lex realized that it was, in essence, impossible to absorb the ability of the shell permanently. At the same time, he felt like he understood why the universe disliked it.

Everything that existed within the universe did so in accordance with the laws of the universe. From their makeup, to the way they behaved, to how they interacted with other laws, all of them adhered to preexisting laws of the universe. Yes, those laws could occasionally be broken, but even that was something the universe itself accounted for.

It was like a thrown exception inside a code, or the ’page not found’ page on a website. Although what a user saw was the exception, or a page saying ’page not found’, in truth that was the designed behavior to accommodate for any errors or issues. Similarly, the universe had its own ways of dealing with broken or malfunctioning laws.

This egg shell, however, did not adhere to the laws of the universe, whether it was Pentagal or his own. Instead, the shell itself had its own set of laws which it imposed upon the universe. Those laws were not just embedded within the shell, the shell itself was composed of those laws.

Many cultivators, much like Pelagor, made grand claims about going against Heaven or the will of the universe. While it was true that by cultivating, they were going against the natural design of the universe, they still did so within the actual framework of how the universe worked.

The egg shell of the Primordial Farham, however, truly and genuinely did something unique by imposing its own laws upon the universe itself! That was a level of control that exceeded even dragons and Sovereigns, both of whom could influence the universe according to their will.

In essence, it was basically impossible for Lex to replicate this feat at his level. He did not even know how to ’create’ a law of his own to begin with. Heck, just designing the laws for his fake realm was already an incredibly difficult task for him.

The reason, then, that it was a Dao level material was because it could overwrite the logic of whichever universe it was in. While Lex could not do this right now, he did his best to memorise what the laws looked like and how they operated for when he was stronger. Maybe he’d be able to replicate it in the future.

The thing he focused most on, however, wasn’t being able to replicate the shell’s ability to exert its own laws onto the universe. Instead, he wanted to find a way to copy the effect of those laws using whatever laws already existed in this universe.

This was a topic that was currently far beyond him. Ironically, the one person Lex was sure could do this was the one person he had no interest in seeing again any time soon: Regix.

Much in the way that Regix could manipulate laws to create effects similar to the Dao, turning Dao radiation into Primordial aura was likely something he could do once he saw how the egg shell did it.

Fusing the shell into the necklace could allow him to, temporarily, control that ability. Once the shell was fused, Lex could sense that he only had a few years before the effect of the shell vanished altogether.

Before that happened, he would need to use up its ability. But using it would also diminish the shell’s ability. No matter what happened, this was an ability that was not destined to last much longer in the universe.

Beyond that, fusing with the shell also gave Lex greater control over the laws within the fake realm inside the necklace.

With everything done, Lex opened his eyes and got back up. He’d been sitting in place for one whole year, and it hardly felt like it at all. Lex realized that, slowly but surely, being an immortal was beginning to mess with his perception of time. Why else would he feel like a year was a very short period of time?

Now wasn’t the time for such things. He turned around and looked past the pillars. The land still looked completely normal, yet he could feel the hostility from it even now.

"Alright, show me what you have in store for me," murmured Lex as he took a single step forward.

As soon as he entered the land of retribution, he felt it. It wasn’t an attack waiting for him, or a hidden bomb, or anything of the sort. Instead, it was a type of virus, as best as he could tell. The moment he re-entered the retribution zone, the laws around him began to churn, infecting him with the aura of Pentagal.

Unless he found some way to immediately stop and reverse the process, he would soon become a recognized lifeform of Pentagal instead of Vaelûn. What the consequences for that would be, he did not know, but he guessed it wouldn’t be good.

"This is totally unfair. Why the hell did you suddenly become creative when it’s my turn?" Lex asked, startled and annoyed by what was happening. He was prepared for many things, but this was not one of them. He had never even imagined something like this could happen.

Lex stood there for a couple of seconds, cycling through his list of abilities and skills to see if there was anything he could do about this. The issue, however, was that he didn’t even know what was causing the problem.

He looked down, through the illusion of a body he had conjured, and directly at the body of the necklace. A moment later, it became clear.

He had absorbed too many resources from the Gilded Hollow into the necklace, and he hadn’t fully refined them all yet because his goal was to absorb as many of them as possible before leaving the Hollow. Fully refining them could come later. Unfortunately, his greed had come back to bite him when he least expected it.

"Who knew greed was a bad thing?" Lex asked himself before he began to address the situation. "That’s like my greatest virtue."

The problem wasn’t his aura, it was the virus infecting him. Lex could wash his aura using Domination, and cleanse and impurities. It was the fundamental change that had to be fixed, and refining all the resources wouldn’t even stop the change - it would only keep it from getting worse.

*Yes, I stole the line Primordial pringle from one of the comments in the previous Chapter.