The Innkeeper

Chapter 2420: The Red Moon rises - Song Recommendation You’re going down by Sick Puppies

Although he was nowhere near completing his Dao Body, Lex knew that it wasn’t so simple to damage him anymore. The reason he’d been hurt by the tribulation was because of his necklace. The actual tribulation itself was completely negligible to him.

He had reached a level that most Celestial Immortals across the universe weren’t even qualified to hurt him. It was straight up impossible for them even if Lex just stood there and let them do whatever they wanted. Yet his stalker had immediately found a way to counter him after clashing with him just once.

Considering how far he had been able to push Lex in the first place, he expected nothing less of him now. If he had merely relied on his identity as a Sovereign to face his enemies, he would have never reached his state today. Clearly, he had other skills and abilities within his arsenal.

It was extremely rare for a Lawcraft to be made of such pure laws, for most Lawcrafts were complex and built up an entire working system of laws interacting with each other. The purple hue surrounding the stalker, however, was almost entirely made up of the law of Hollow.

"For the accomplishment of making me take this seriously, I honor you with the knowledge of who will defeat you," said the stalker as he slowly lifted his hammer and pointed it towards Lex. "I am Daekol, the Seraph of Calamity, killer of Sages, and I will grant you a worthy death."

Lex snorted.

"Tough luck buddy. I ain’t no Sage. But I am Lex, Herald of legendary asskickings, and you’re about to find out why I got that name," said Lex, his every syllable carrying an immense amount of Anchor - the very ruling law that governed the physical forces of the universe.

The Hollow and Anchor laws clashed as Lex’s words themselves carried his Dao Intentions, manifesting into an attack.

Lex moved again, not heading for Daekol but targeting laws instead. Attacking his body, for now, would be moot so long as the connection to the universe wasn’t fully severed. The laws, too, were protected by that purple hue, which is why Lex carried Anchor in his attacks, using one Ruling law to counteract another one.

Daekol, in turn, unleashed his own counter attack. A fight of this level and scale no longer took the same form as fights Lex had fought previously. The body and core of the enemy weren’t nearly as important to target as their surrounding laws, their area of control, and the level of their influence on laws themselves.

That was why, compared to lower level fights, immortal battles took so much longer. If Lex was significantly stronger than Daekol, he could ignore all these things and harm Daekol directly using brute force.

Unfortunately, that was not the case, as Lex had learned when Daekol had used that purple hue to protect himself.

The fight became much more complex and strategic than before, yet his inexperience in such types of fights did not put Lex at a disadvantage at all. He was long used to looking at everything from the perspective of a Go board, where every move had direct and indirect consequences.

Gaining and losing territory required both skill, rhythm and intellect. The strength to do all that was merely the most basic prerequisite to even fight on such a level. The problem with such a fight, however, was that it was so complex that even the slightest mistake could cause a sudden shift in the direction of the fight.

Daekol had much experience in such fights and almost immediately he was able to hone in on Lex’s temperament and strategy style. As long as he was able to resist Lex for long enough, he could turn the tables in a decisive moment. Or so he thought.

Just as he was convinced his plan would work, a shift came and Daekol’s eyes narrowed. The critical mistake - the one that was usually hours, days or even weeks in coming - he had made from the very first moment he assumed Lex was targeting him.

His bluster, his confident demeanor, his anger and arrogance - all of it had been a masquerade. From the very first moment he arrived - or probably even from long before then - Lex was not fighting against Daekol, he was setting the stage.

In the future, a system of his own creation would be able to perform the set up for him. For now, though, he needed to set the stage himself. Superimposing the fake realm was the first step. Spreading his influence, taking control of the laws, and turning the battlefield into his own personal territory was what came next.

Domains were a technique used by immortals where they take control of a region by pushing out the influence of all other laws and allowing only the laws they controlled to work. Well, Lex was taking it one step further by turning by taking control of all laws and making them obey only him. He called it his Absolute Domain.

While it appeared to Daekol that Lex had been fighting him, Lex was in truth using every law, every technique he had learned to turn this area into his own Absolute Domain. While the law of Anchor cleared all obstacles, Firmament allowed him to spread his influence to what constituted space within this portion of the Dream realm.

Every step he took, every word he spoke, every law he manipulated was all for the purpose of spreading his karma around this region. He stained this region with his sweat, colored it with his fortunes, influenced it with his will, all in a step by step manner as if everything had been planned by him long ago.

Every clash against Daekol, every struggle, every law used and failed... all of it was to distract from his true goal of establishing his Absolute Domain, all within the territory of his superimposed realm.

Daekol looked at Lex and suddenly saw through his smiling exterior, his cavalier behavior and puerile remarks, and what he saw was a terrifying, calculating calm, holding a tsunami of anger at bay.

Suddenly he remembered the one request Lex had made of him. ’Try to put up some resistance,’ he had said, lest all his preparations be wasted. The words he had originally dismissed as mere bluster now rang in his ears once more, each word laden with a chilling gravity.

Daekol suddenly found himself standing in a nightmare with a massive, with a red moon slowly rising in the sky above him, tinting all of reality in the color of blood. Some of the killing intent Lex had revealed to the Humanoid Alliance earlier finally began to leak out, and Daekol for the first time saw who... or rather what Lex had returned as after his defeat at his own hands.

"I wonder," said Lex, his voice filled with such authority that it pressed down on Daekol’s body, once again pushing him down, trying to force him to kneel. "Which do you think is superior, your Sovereign authority, or my Supremacy?"

Though it was a question, it came with its own answer. The Celestials of the Humanoid Alliance had merely seen the first stage of what Lex had planned on. This red tinted nightmare was merely the second stage. Lex would see how many stages Daekol could witness before succumbing to his Supremacy.

Daekol, meanwhile, realized that he had been fooled from the very beginning, and found himself in a troublesome situation. Yet it was when he was in the most danger when he himself was the most dangerous. The outcome of this fight was far from decided.