The Innkeeper

Chapter 2491: The Innkeeper is thorough

Luthor rubbed his chin as he considered his options. Truthfully, he did get no joy out of needlessly punished random people - despite what many thought. No, the thing he actually savored was having the enemies of the Inn tremble at the thought of crossing the Inn.

It was, alas, an unfortunate reality that to have his enemies cower at the mere thought, he would need to rightfully punish countless souls until eventually everyone learned what happened to them. Even then, he would need to be exceptional at this task to actually incite any dread at the mere thought of being captured by the Inn.

So, it was merely coincidental that to protect the Inn, and achieve his goal, he would need to go through this process. Yes, that’s why he did it, and for no other reason. The evil smile he sometimes flashed was also just a part of his persona. It was totally not real at all.

Luthor was just doing the maths on how to cycle the captured enemies so that their souls could fire up the Soul Hearth, but also have enough time to recover from their burns so that they could be burned longer, when Lex came.

Most of the people imprisoned within Luthor’s hell were workers from Mathews legions. Not all of them were captured - many were outright killed. Some were taken away by the devils, and those whose sin readings were below a certain threshold, and who had no direct karma with the attack on the Inn were allowed to leave as refugees.

"There’s been a change of plans. Mathew needs to die," said Lex, cutting right to the matter.

Luthor did not ask questions or debate the necessity of it. He’d already heard from Velma that Z had been rescued by friends of the Innkeeper and was on his way back, so he didn’t care about him either way.

"If he has to die, it’s best to kill him there," Luthor said and pointed to an execution platform. "Ever since the time sped up inside the Inn, the formation of the Hell below and Heaven above have been sped up. Now, everything we do will shape the Hell, so I’m specifically building a killing platform which will cleanse the karmic burden of executions on the executioner.

"It will also remove or reduce the effects of any causality from the execution, nurture the Hell itself. For now, those are the only effects I’m focusing on building. Once the Hell forms properly, I might be able to add more."

Lex nodded. Luthor was the expert on Hells, he wasn’t going to argue with him. Instead he walked towards the execution platform while Mathew was brought up by one of Luthor’s assistants.

"What’s the deal with Hells anyway?" Lex asked, though he didn’t expect Luthor to know any major secrets. "I don’t get why the universe has Hells, Heavens, and then an Arch-Heaven. I’ve been looking for an Arch-Hell ever since I heard of Arch-Heaven, but haven’t been able to discover anything."

Luthor understood the curiosity, for he himself was also curious about this matter.

"I can’t comment on what the true purpose is, but I can tell you that there’s definitely some purpose. I think the secret to discovering it isn’t in studying Heaven and Hell, but in Deities. You probably know that regardless of whether we’re looking at artificially created Deities, or naturally born ones, their associated mythologies always have some kind of afterlife, and some origin of life, and they’re all linked to existing Heavens and Hells. That’s the biggest hint."

Lex nodded. This was an interesting topic and he’d like to talk more about it, but later.

Mathew was brought up unconscious. He looked weak, withered, but otherwise unharmed. That did not mean Lex thought that he had an easy time - far from it.

It was a little cruel, but Lex felt no sympathy for someone like him. The universe was genuinely a better place without his interference.

There was no ceremony, no preparation required. Mathew was a Celestial Immortal who practiced Regal Embrace. That meant that no other Celestial should have been able to harm him. Lex didn’t care what he should or shouldn’t be able to do.

Naraka came out, and in one single swing Lex cut through Mathew’s body. He didn’t decapitate him - he literally disintegrated his entire being with that one swing. After all, a mere decapitation would do nothing to a Regal Embrace user.

Every single molecule that made up his being needed to be thoroughly destroyed, and Lex did it with a single sword swing.

That was the easy part. With Mathew dead, Lex held onto his karma using his Karmic Bead and locked onto the Regal Embrace. He unleashed his Sovereign realm - though its initial release was its weakest form - and surrounded himself with Domination.

Lex expected that the Regal Embrace would disappear and go back to wherever it came from. That’s apparently what happened when Lex’s own cultivation evolved.

Yet that’s not what happened. The cultivation technique easily dropped into his hands without any struggle. It was almost as if it was no longer connected to that collection it originally came from. In that case, as a prior user of the Regal Embrace, Lex was the only other thing or person in the universe connected to the technique somehow, so it went to him without issue.

Luthor looked at Lex’s surprised expression and could not help but ask something.

"What’s wrong? Was that harder than expected?" he asked, considering he felt Lex use all his techniques.

Lex shook his head.

"No, it was actually a whole lot easier than I expected. I was expecting some kind of struggle to get my hands on it."

Luthor looked at the cultivation technique in Lex’s hands and then shrugged.

"Maybe the Innkeeper blocked it from leaving. If he ordered you to kill Mathew, he probably took this into account."

Luthor nodded to himself, as if he had seen through the issue with a single glance. Then he looked at Lex with pity. The poor guy wasn’t used to getting help from the Innkeeper since he was always being trained to do things on his own, so when the help finally came, he couldn’t even understand what had happened.

Lex didn’t know how to respond to Luthor, so the only thing he could do was nod solemnly.

"The Innkeeper is quite thorough indeed. I expect nothing less from someone as great as him."

Luthor stopped paying attention to Lex, and instead turned towards his execution platform, beginning to study how it had reacted to Mathews death. Lex, meanwhile, left to go find Lotus.