The Innkeeper

Lex stood there, looking at the twisting, corrupted laws and he tried to wrap his head around what the reason for this was. There was a very straightforward one. The Ventura exam asked the students to raise the upper threshold from Earth Immortal to Heavenly Immortal. Previously, Lex thought that by killing countless immortals, they were using their corpses as fertilizer to help grow the realm.

Now, however, he got the sense that the corpses were still fertilizer, but not to grow the realm. Instead, his latest suspicion was that they were trying to replace the laws of the realm entirely, instead using the laws of a more mature realm. Perhaps this was just one step in their plan to have a larger realm devour the Crystal realm.

For a moment Lex debated what to do. Although his tenet wanted to unravel this thing, he was almost certain that the moment he did so, someone would notice.

Lex sighed one more time, but then acted according to his promise to himself. He conjured a piece of paper and wrote a small letter on it, describing the situation, as well as leaving a small formation on it that would teleport the reader to Lex's current location. Then he folded the paper to look like a paper airplane, and narrowed his eyes.

Although he was getting used to the life and abilities of an immortal, it would take time. Right now he wanted to do something, but getting it to work perfectly would be slightly tricky, mostly because of the distance from himself. He spent a few minutes calculating, and then after making sure everything was alright, threw the paper plane in the air.

It flew a small distance before teleporting away. Although the spatial coordinates for a lot of places might have changed, it was impossible for the coordinates for a place Lex was at a few hours ago to change.

Within Cornelius' palace, the paper plane teleported in, and flew directly into the face of an unsuspecting guard. He flinched, but by the time he opened his eyes, the plane was gone.

Cornelius, who noticed the spatial fluctuation, immediately pulled the letter to himself and opened it.

His casual expression suddenly became serious, and he channeled his energy into the formation on the bottom of the letter, teleporting away.

A few seconds later, he appeared standing next to Lex, who looked supremely irritated. But Cornelius, instead, turned his attention towards the massive deformity that had formed in the laws.

"What the hell is this?" he said, his expression contorting from anger.

"If I had to guess, some kind of attempt to terraform the realm into wherever those Hellions are from."

Lex was not surprised that he had, inadvertently, stumbled onto a massive secret that affected the whole realm. Isn't that what happened when he discovered that the Crystal realm was about to be destroyed as well?

No, the only difference was that last time, Lex used it to help him complete a quest. This time, he was going to help out while making sure to not get involved too heavily.

"Look, as I'm sure you remember, last time I tried to help you all out, all I got was a lot of trouble," Lex said. "I have no interest in a repeat of that incident. I called you here so that you can see this for yourself. As for whether you want to inform anyone, whether you want to take care of this on your own, or whatever else you want to do, that's on you."

Cornelius looked at Lex, then shook his head. He really cursed those two stupid deities. Last time, when the Kraven attacked, it was too sudden for Cornelius to defend the whole tavern, but the deities could have done it easily, yet they did not because they did not want to completely fall out with the Kraven, which in Cornelius' opinion was completely stupid.

Now, as a result, Lex, who had once again identified a major threat to their realm, no longer wanted to get involved. "Thanks for letting me know. I'll… I'll see what I can do about this. This is a lot more serious than anything from before. Where is this, by the way?"

"The former capital of the Kraven empire," Lex said. "I have no idea where they moved, or what happened, but this place isn't the capital anymore. Also, I have more bad news."

Cornelius was startled at the revelation, and immediately spread out his spirit sense, only to see the devastated underground city.

"What's the worse news?"

"I was being careful here, because I sensed some kind of hidden danger. But your teleportation here has already awoken whatever latent danger there was so…"

Just as Lex spoke, the ground began to rumble and from deep within the ground they felt something rising.

"Also, have you seen enough of this? Because I'm going to destroy it."

"I've seen enough," Cornelius said. "And I can take care of the trouble coming. I need something to hit anyway."

Lex nodded as Cornelius left the cavern, looking at the twisting blob of laws. Although he decided to destroy it to sate his tenet, he was going to do it smart. He was certain that there were some traps laid around the place, as well as a way to mark him. He wanted to destroy everything without leaving a mark, so the best way to do that was to take plenty of precautions.

Lex activated both his eyes, using the left one to study all the laws in his surroundings, while using his right one to create layers of protection around himself. At the same time, he even created a clone of himself in the mortal grade using a cloning technique, and used his tenet to bind the clone to himself, so it could stand in his place.

Lex did not really think he needed so many precautions, but historically speaking, he always got in trouble because of his rash actions or ignorance. Now, even if resolving the abnormality in front of him might cause issues he could tolerate, he saw no reason why he had to bear them to begin with.

In the distance, he heard the sounds of fighting, and the ground continued to rumble, so he guessed that Cornelius was already fighting. Not wanting to delay things anymore, Lex reached out with his tenet, while at the same time paying great attention to his tenet.

This was the first time it showed a reaction, so he observed everything carefully through the lens of supremacy. He could see why his tenet had been aggravated. The way he saw it, a fragment of another realm was devouring the laws of the Crystal realm while growing itself. Even as a smaller, weaker existence, it was exerting its supremacy over the Crystal realm, and although that had nothing to do with Lex himself, it almost felt as if his tenet was provoked.

After studying the abnormality thoroughly, Lex reached out to it and… boldly and directly quashed it! There was no room for subtlety in this matter, since the abnormality was an order of magnitude above things Lex should technically be dealing with.

He was messing with the laws of two realms that were locked in a battle, and he didn't want to risk finding out the repercussions if something went wrong. So, in one go, he used the utmost strength he could muster, and tugged at the mutating laws, stopping them from working so that the laws of the Crystal realm could break free.

Lex genuinely expected more resistance, but it seemed like the abnormality was quite fragile to begin with. Having said that, the moment it was resolved, Lex felt like he had been locked onto by a vicious beast. Already expecting as much, Lex wasn't concerned. He summoned his clone and forcefully replaced himself with it, turning it into the target of the aim.

Considering that the clone did not have the heavy protection Lex wound around himself, a dark red mark appeared all over his face, marking him. Just as more things were about to happen, the clone killed himself, and disappeared.

The red mark vanished, and the gathered forces were left without a target since Lex had already teleported away. After a few seconds, even the accumulated energy vanished, yet Lex did not return to check it out. He also wasn't interested in checking up with Cornelius again.

He had sworn to avoid getting involved, and that's exactly what he was out to do. Although, watching how that one realm devoured another, and how that affected his tenet gave Lex some ideas. He dared not think too deeply, lest he trigger some tribulations. Even so, it gave him some perspective about tenets.

It should have been fairly obvious, but it seemed that they weren't as straightforward as being tools with which to manipulate laws. There was more to them.

As he continued to walk across the lifeless expanse, Lex couldn't help but wonder about it. In another corner of the Crystal realm, a group of Hellions were alarmed by a sudden change.

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