The Innkeeper

Chapter 2399: Watching lord of the rings 57 times

Two back to back torture cycles with the aim of breaking Lex’s spirit should have had a compounding effect, wearing his mind down to its absolute limit. In truth, Lex could not claim that he didn’t suffer. In fact, he suffered quite a lot.

The key factor contributing to Lex’s suffering was not the agonizing, never ending pain of his own soul devouring itself repeatedly. It was, instead, not knowing when it would end. The Prison of Gluttony torture cycle had not been entirely forthcoming in describing the torture cycle, like the Crucible of Karma had.

This cycle also secretly affected Lex’s perception of time, so what Lex felt like months or years was, in fact, mere hours.

The very fact that the previous torture cycle had, more or less, accurately described the torture he would endure was specifically designed so that he would believe what the Prison of Gluttony told him, thereby extending his torture greatly.

If Lex hadn’t been specifically studying the laws that made up the torture he was enduring, he would never have picked up on how his senses had been affected.

It was also at this point that Lex realized a couple of other, very critical things. The retribution had led him to believe that there was nothing he could do within these retributions except endure it.

During the previous retribution, Lex had already tried countless ways to expedite or skip the retribution, because honestly if he didn’t need to go through endless pain, he would rather not. Now, he had locked onto a certain loophole!

The retribution itself was not something he could interfere with - unfortunately - but he could most certainly affect his own perception. Could he, perhaps, make it so that he could not feel the endless suffering his own body’s starvation and self-cannibalism caused? He didn’t know but he was certainly going to try.

The second critical thing he noticed was that each time his body healed, the retribution seemed to consume an enormous amount of energy, so much so that Lex could actually sense it. It was likely that the design of the retribution took his cultivation realm into account, not anticipating that his body was of a much higher quality and that healing it was far more difficult than expected.

Thus, by merely sensing the amount of energy left, he could guess how long this particular retribution would last. Of course, in the Lawcraft that he was designing, there was no need to leave a task as unnecessary as healing the enemy.

As a result, while it felt like eternity, Lex’s body only went through three actual cycles of self-cannibalisation and restoration before the retribution was over. Lex, ultimately, was unable to change his perception during this retribution, but he’d experimented enough to know how the Hollow was blocking him from doing so. In future retributions, he should be able to do it.

By the time, two retributions were over, Lex really did feel mentally strained. He could tough it out still, and that’s exactly what he planned to do, but there was no denying that regardless of his tolerance, he was seriously affected.

The third retribution was called Patience. It filled his soul with an itch, soft at first, but it grew stronger with each passing second. The entire retribution would last about 2.5 million seconds, so not that long. It was just enough to watch the original Lord of the Rings trilogy - extended edition, naturally - 57 times, with a bit of time to spare. The issue was that the itch grew stronger at an exponential rate.

What made matters worse was that the retribution also gave him a piece of paper called Soulpaper. It was like sandpaper, except for the soul. How convenient.

Using it to scratch his body would reduce the itch - and also scrape off bits of his soul. Despite that, using Soulpaper would only fill him with relief, and give him no pain whatsoever. It was like a trade with the devil.

Lex smirked. The idea was clever. He could genuinely die in this retribution if he scratched the itch enough. Even if he didn’t, as long as he used the Soulpaper at all, he’d be weaker for subsequent retributions. To top it all off, there was still an element of testing his spirit within this retribution.

Lex closed his eyes, studied the makeup of this retribution, and did his best to kill his perception entirely.

It only sort of worked, for there came a time where the itch in his soul was so strong that it could not be denied. Still, until the very end, Lex did not even touch the Soulpaper.

When the retribution ended, though, he opened his eyes to reveal a deep wariness in them. His spirit was drained once again, for the irritation caused by the itch somehow surpassed the suffering in the previous two retributions. Lex had never felt anything like it.

The fourth retribution was called Parasite. It presented him no information about what the retribution contained whatsoever, and it ended the very moment it began. Yet Lex could feel that there was something amiss. He seemed to have been... affected by this last retribution somehow, and he carried whatever had affected him into the next retribution.

The fifth was called the Test of Erosion - a particularly sinister test. It would, slowly and excruciatingly, erode Lex’s sense of self. The process was slow so that he could feel it happening and despair. The process was entirely unstoppable.

Once his entire sense of self was erased, leaving his body and soul as empty husks, a door would appear in front of him. If he could walk out, the retribution would end, and he would move on. If it didn’t, he would live within the retribution for all of eternity.

This time, Lex almost laughed, though the light in his eyes seemed almost entirely faded. Erasing his spirit while keeping his body and soul intact? His very existence caused a paradox in the setup of the retribution. The Hollow could not do one without affecting the other condition. This was going to be the easiest retribution.

He wanted to see... he wanted to... he wanted... he...

Silence. A deep, resounding, unending silence filled the vessel that was the necklace that acted as the anchor for Lex’s soul, and thus as his body as well. Even the energy around the necklace did not stir, as if there was nothing left there to influence it.

A vague outline of a door appeared in front of the necklace, as if marking an exit. At the same time, deep within the necklace, the parasite that had remained hidden stirred. Even though the fifth retribution had already begun, in truth, the fourth one had not ended yet.