The Innkeeper
chapter-1149

Lex was about to respond when suddenly all the hair on his body stood up and he felt the threat of certain death. It had been a long time since Lex felt so weak in front of a threat, but whatever it was and wherever it was coming from, Lex was not capable of facing it head on.

He saw a pair of lights, but instead of focusing on that Lex tried to escape. He tried to teleport or run or jump or do anything, but he couldn't move.

He was like a deer caught in headlights - frozen still.

But if even Lex had been able to sense the oncoming threat, then Fahad and Noor detected it long before him. Noor grabbed both him and Sim and teleported them out of the way just in time to avoid getting hit by a massive truck.

"It's targeting the rancher!" Noor yelled towards Fahad, and actually tossed Lex to the side.

"Stay out of the way and it won't target you," she told Lex through her spirit sense.

Lex crashed into a nearby wall, but finally out of the way of the headlight, Lex could once again move. He picked himself up just in time to catch a proper glimpse of the truck.

Towering in front of Fahad was no ordinary truck—it was a monstrous behemoth of twisted metal and dark malevolence. The truck's body, a grotesque exaggeration of its original form, was an amalgamation of jagged steel and gleaming chrome, reflecting a distorted version of the surrounding world.

Its headlights, glowing with an eerie yellow luminescence, pierced through the darkness like the malevolent eyes of a predator. Sharp, jagged fangs of steel jutted from its grill, giving the appearance of a monstrous maw ready to devour anything in its path. The tires, massive and spiked, crushed the ground beneath them with each slow, deliberate movement, leaving deep, claw-like gouges in the earth.

The truck's cab loomed high, its windows dark and impenetrable, suggesting a sinister intelligence watching from within. Dark smoke billowed from the exhaust, carrying with it the acrid stench of death and decay. The engine roared like a beast, a deep, guttural growl that reverberated through the air. Rusted chains clinked ominously as they swung from its sides, and the remnants of past victims' belongings were gruesomely displayed as macabre trophies.

But the scariest thing of all was the small sticker stuck to the windshield of the truck. It simply read, 'Let's get isekai'd!'

Lex had seen this truck before. How could he not have? When he was checking his own bounty posters, he went over the posters of all the criminals with bounties higher than him. Among the very top was a poster for this mass murdering vehicle of chaos and destruction.

The worst part was it was immeasurably stronger than Lex. In front of it, he could put up no resistance whatsoever.

Considering the fact that even Fahad and Noor were unable to stop it, it was clear that Lex stood no chance.

Yet just as abruptly as the fight started, the fight ended. The planet had been under lockdown, with all its greatest forces on patrol. As soon as there were any fluctuations, they all came crashing down.

A grizzly bear over twenty feet tall, radiating a powerful aura tore through the ceiling, followed by a hummingbird, a wolf and moose.

Each of them were at least as powerful as Fahad, and each of them attacked the truck. Yet the attacks never landed.

The truck, after giving Sim one last evil look, disappeared, as if it was never there. The danger elapsed, but that didn't stop more massive animals from bursting through the walls, though upon discovering that the threat was over, then began to morph back into the Druid forms.

"How did it escape? I felt no spatial ripples."

"Who knows. But is the threat finally over?," asked Noor. "According to its history, after making one attempt on the victim, it leaves. If the victim manages to survive, then that's their luck, though there have been very few survivors. But just because it has done that in the past doesn't mean that it won't change its ways."

"Does that mean we can lift the lockdown?"

"It will need confirmation…"

The countless Druids, each and every one of them much more powerful than Lex, began to argue amongst each other about what to do, leaving Lex standing there feeling awkward. Sim, who looked thoroughly distraught, walked up to him, trembling.

"They said that thing was waiting for me to come back. If I hadn't… if I hadn't come back with you, and there weren't two Celestial immortals standing there to protect us, I would have died!"

"You're welcome," said Lex. "I accept gratitude in the form of free feathers."

The shivering, shocked Druid suddenly stopped shivering, and looked at Lex with a lame expression. How could he just dismiss such a dangerous near-death experience so easily? Not to mention, he was still obsessed with the feathers.

"Fine, fine, I'll give them to you as soon as we return to my ranch, though I don't know when that'll be. Everyone here is arguing over whether to keep me under surveillance for another two weeks or to just let me go."

Lex looked at him, then the arguing Druids, then back at him.

"I'm sorry to tell you this, but they're not arguing because they're worried about you. My best bet is that they're just trying to leverage the situation to get the Henali to pay up for losses they experienced during this period. I could be wrong but-"

Lex paused, as every other Druid in the room simultaneously turned to look at him. It seemed like he had hit the nail on the head.

Fahad and Noor suddenly appeared in front of them.

"If you'll excuse me, we have a meeting with this friend of ours," Noor said with a polite smile.

Everyone in the room grumbled, but even then, Lex felt no danger from them. It was much more like they were annoyed that Lex had spoiled their game.

It couldn't be helped. Lex had seen too much of how the various countries in the Midnight realm treated each other, and learned that all politics, whether between servants, companies or countries, was all the same. He supposed that extended to immortals too.