The Innkeeper

Chapter 2416: Miss me, b****? Song recommendation Back in Black

Daekol had to admit, this human had turned out to be more challenging than expected. Being challenging did not mean that Daekol would have avoided doing this had he known - it just meant that he had come to acknowledge that beating him wasn’t nearly as simple or easy as he had expected.

After the last time the body woke up, Daekol had gone all out, leaving nothing back. Now that he was through the barrier, and especially now that he was putting in so much effort to cleanse the body of its curses, he could not afford any mistakes. He did not want to encounter the very cliche predicament of putting in so much effort to purify the body, only for it to be reclaimed by its original owner.

The problem was, it was becoming increasingly clear that such a thing could actually and genuinely occur, so Daekol committed his all to ensuring that would not happen. He utilized every system reward he had been saving to increase their isolation and keep them from being discovered.

He utilized his personal Sovereign authority until it actually exhausted him, causing him to need to rest for months and months. He used every item and resource available to him through his own contact network, and everything awarded to him by the Path of Chaos.

Although many of the means he used were one-time use items, meaning he could never get them back, he did not regret it. Strengthening his foundation and increasing his chances of entering the Dao Lord realm were far more important than anything else.

Every price he paid, every resource he utilized could be earned back once his strength grew, or once his system evolved into the next level. However, if he lost the body for any reason, it was much more difficult to correct.

Then, after so much preparation, and after paying such a massive cost, he finally began purifying the body. Once that was done, Daekol wasted no time trying to get his hands on the system within the human’s soul.

The body and soul themselves were extremely difficult to control, especially once all the curses had been lifted, but that was not the biggest hurdle Daekol faced. Instead, it was the system itself.

It seemed to have gone into some kind of dormant state, and so it wasn’t responding to him or his means at all. Even his Sovereign command received no response.

When he saw that, Daekol got a foreboding feeling that something was going terribly wrong. That was not a feeling he liked at all, because he could not figure out what the source of that danger was.

It took him many more months until he got a hint of the problem. First off, the system in the human’s soul was of a higher rank than his own, which is why his own system had no authority over it. A higher rank system had some power over weaker systems, even if they couldn’t generally interfere with each other.

That made it much more difficult for him to understand what exactly was going on with the system in the human’s body. Eventually, however, he discovered a hint of a Primordial aura and immediately triggered an emergency quest!

The quest dictated that the targeted system was absorbing Primordial energy, and that he had to stop it at any cost! The quest was automatic with excellent rewards and severe punishments for failing.

While he didn’t like being forced into a quest, it did explain what was going on. The source of the danger was the Primordial energy that the system was absorbing.

Thus, instead of trying to gain control over the system, which was his original goal, he began trying to stop it from absorbing more Primordial energy. He figured that once he stabilized the situation, he could try to take control of it.

At the same time, he suspected that the Primordial energy that the system was absorbing was of the human’s last contingencies in case he ever lost control of the system in his soul. Clearly he was aware that not absorbing the system made him vulnerable to external threats, and so had prepared this as an unpleasant surprise for anyone who tried to take it from him.

It was a bold and dangerous move, and Daekol could not help but respect the human for it.

Since then, he had been working on two fronts. On one hand, he had been trying to pressurise the system and prevent it from absorbing more Primordial energy. If he knew where the energy was coming from that would have helped, but he couldn’t figure it out so he had to stop focusing on that.

On the other hand, he kept trying to take control of the system. As it turned out, his own system also couldn’t directly absorb the one in the human’s soul because it was compromised with Primordial energy which had activated some kind of automated self defense mechanism, preventing his system from absorbing the other one.

Thus, taking control of the system through the human’s own soul became the last option left to Daeko. It was a tough one, but one he intended on seeing through.

When he focused, time lost meaning, and he stopped paying attention to external things. With step by step progress, he was certain he could gain control of the system within a hundred years - a paltry amount of time.

Unfortunately for him, that was not meant to be.

Daekol suddenly frowned and looked up, confused as to why he could sense an approaching tribulation. That shouldn’t be-

Before he could complete the thought, a bolt of deep maroon lightning tore through the defensive barrier he had set up, boiling with far more power than Daekol could take undefended!

He was shocked, but that didn’t prevent him from raising a hand to erect a barrier above him. Even on short notice, he could create powerful enough barrier to-

For the second time he was taken by surprise when he felt something grab onto his arm. He looked down and saw the human, looking up at him with a massive, mad grin.

"Miss me, bitch?" Lex yelled as he kicked his stalker straight in his shocked and surprised face. Oh how long he had waited to do just that. Unfortunately, Lex did not have the time to savor the feeling of retribution for his Major tribulation had been triggered in the most aggressive way throughout the history of the entire universe.

In short, the main target for that maroon lightning bolt was his own face!