The Innkeeper

It became clear, almost immediately, that the capital had suffered some kind of blast. The way that the tunnels had collapsed, the way the walls were charred, and the way that the rubble had fallen made it apparent that someone had dropped a bomb inside the hole and then had blown it up.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, this seemed like the explosion wasn't recent. There were clear signs of repairs to a few tunnels, and of Kraven moving through them. It seemed like this place had been evacuated since the time of the explosion.

But just because the place was abandoned did not mean Lex lowered his guards. He felt a subtle warning from his instincts letting him know that there was some kind of hidden danger in this place. Considering that this was the former capital of the race invading a whole realm, it would be surprising if it was just left alone.

The problem Lex was currently facing was that he had no idea where the Kraven had relocated to. There were no signs of movement outside the crater, and if they teleported away it was so long ago that there were no more signs left.

Lex was certain if he looked around he'd eventually find someone who knew something, but it was worth checking out the ruins of the capital as well.

He went deeper through the clearly repaired tunnels, entering his soul state to go directly through a few sections that had collapsed, until he eventually reached deep enough into the city where it was no longer directly destroyed from the impact.

Even so, the halls looked like they were going to collapse at any given moment. The rooms all looked too cramped to support the Kraven, so it must be…

Lex narrowed his eyes and observed the rooms more closely. From what Cornelius told him, the nobles and royals of the Kraven had smaller bodies, which would be the only ones that could fit into those rooms.

Yet this was not like how he expected royalty to live. It was too cramped, too uncomfortable, and lacked the distinct sense of luxury he had come to expect from the strong to live with. He recalled the prince's demeanor when he had seen him, and the man clearly had the arrogance and sense of superiority to match, so Lex found it hard to imagine him stuffing himself in such a tiny space.

He continued to explore the underground city, but it was tough to get much of an idea of anything from the wreckage. Lex had seen how the dwarves lived underground, and though they were short and lived underground, their cities were all large and spacious.

Each of their halls, even the smallest ones, were at the very least fourteen feet tall, which was quite a lot considering the tallest dwarf barely reached four feet. Everything they did had a sense of grandeur to it.

The Kraven instead… this couldn't even be called a proper city in Lex's opinion. It was just a very large hollow.

Then again, how could he ever expect to understand the mind of a race that stripped their own land of everything living, leaving only death and ruin in their wake.

Lex used his left eye to study the hollows and at first found nothing more than signs of destroyed formations hidden within the walls. He even searched for signs of the panic room he'd heard so much about but found nothing. It was only on his way back that he found something interesting.

It wasn't his eye that saw something, and technically speaking he didn't see anything. Instead, his tenet acted on its own for the first time, strongly attracted to something. Still being careful, Lex made his way through a series of collapsed tunnels until he ended up in a cavern instead of a hall.

As far as appearances went, it looked completely ordinary, yet his tenet was acting up, as if it was feeling a challenge.

Lex slowly spread out his spirit sense first, checking for any traps, before he sensed the world through his tenet.

That's when he sensed it. Under the facade of normalcy, the laws within this region had been utterly twisted and tainted, and it was the deformation of those laws that was irritating his tenet.

It was not that the laws had changed from behaving normally that was irritating him. Instead, his tenet felt like by leaving the laws twisted and tainted in such a way, for whatever reason, was like leaving behind their mark. Of course, Lex himself could tell that whoever had done this had probably done so for another, more materialistic reason than just leaving behind their mark. That was usually more overt.

But to his tenet, it was like a testament of their victory and, more important, supremacy. It wanted the mark gone, the laws returned to normal.

Doing so wouldn't be difficult for him. But before he did that, he wanted to see what this was all about.

His tenet reached out, not to the twisted laws, but to the facade hiding the change. This was a very high level illusion for it to affect his sense of laws rather than reality. It was specifically targeting immortals, and if his tenet hadn't reacted to it, even with his powerful eyes, he would have been fooled.

Like a shattered mirror, the facade broke under the slightest touch of his tenet, revealing the macabre reality underneath. Even the cavern, which seemed ordinary up until now, changed. In fact, the entire underground city experienced a change.

The entire ruins were stained black, and it was not from charring. Instead, Lex could tell that it was blood. The entire city had been washed in Kraven blood, and here, in this cavern, something sinister had taken place which required all that blood.

As his eyes looked at the twisted laws, he finally understood what had happened. There had been a mass blood ritual here, using the blood of countless Kraven to give birth to the abnormality in the laws. What was worse was that the longer the abnormality remained hidden, the stronger the corruption would become.

"I just promised not to get involved," Lex complained to himself as he slowly understood what was happening. The deformation seemed so unnatural because the laws of this realm were forcibly being changed to match that of another realm. There was a fragment of another realm in the heart of the change, and it was eating up the laws of the Crystal realm, slowly replacing them with others.

No wonder his tenet was offended. This was not just a mark, but one realm claiming supremacy over another.

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