The Innkeeper
chapter-1195

A literal tide of darkness, formed from countless abominations shapelessly coming together to pool their strengths, crashed down on Lex. Yet the light of his furious fires kept the darkness at bay.

It was an epic battle between light and darkness, a symphony of good and evil, a contest of power that transcended typical conventions, and in the middle of it all, a man working single-mindedly on his task.

The steady rhythm with which he was smashing down his hammer gave the impression that he was nothing more than a blacksmith, forging something of mythic power as he harnessed the abstract chaos around him.

The abominations had no shape or form to which they adhered. They were darkness, and within it they could be megalithic monsters, or an army of infinite individuals. Their very nature caused weakness and fear to spread, their body a poison that could kill mind and soul alike. Being in the very presence of an abomination diminished the strength and stature of those who could not handle it.

Yet clearly, if it was not for their abundance, they would be worth nothing more than a minor irritation to Lex. It was not like his actions said that dragonfire was weak. It was more like saying that if they could not even overcome his dragonfire, why did they deserve anymore attention from him?

Instead, Lex focused on the task at hand, and continued to smash down on the space before him until there was finally a change. There were countless cracks right in front of him, and though they spread out far and wide, they all originated from this point. The concentration of cracks continued to rise, until eventually, a small piece of space chipped, revealing the Void underneath.

Lex's eyes gleamed. Among the most powerful space attacks he learned, Space Warp and Space Unraveling were still the strongest. Space Warp basically allowed Lex to manipulate space to cause fluctuations in gravity, while Space Unraveling literally undid space, and instead turned it into a highly concentrated, incredibly dangerous form of energy that even he could not tolerate even still.

But the fact that the energy was so dangerous it could harm even him made it the perfect weapon. Moreover, Lex's control over the Space Unraveling technique itself had grown tremendously since he last used it.

Lex extended his hand and held the chipped piece of space in the center of his hand, never actually touching his skin, as he began unraveling it. Yet before it completely unraveled, he flung it out, in front of him, into the dark tide.

The chip, which was not even as large as a fingernail, completely dissolved, releasing an overwhelming eruption of energy. Compared to BGY-987 where space was weak, and hence contained only trace amounts of energy, the space here was strong, so when it unraveled the amount of energy it released was also massive.

It was as if Lex had set off some kind of vaporizing attack, as an entire large segment of the dark tide just suddenly vanished as the tide of energy ate away at everything it touched. But the energy did not last long, dispersing into thin air.

In truth, this was a very powerful attack, but it was not unstoppable. After all, immortals attacked with laws, and even if an immortal did not control the law of space, they could use other laws to counter it.

But he would deal with the abominations who could defend against his attacks later. First, he would reduce their numbers drastically.

By now, the other contestants had also begun their battles, though not a single one of them came close to Lex, and that suited him fine. Lex kept shattering bits of space and then throwing them out like frisbees, having them unravel along the way, eradicating massive chunks of the abomination tide.

His strategy was effective. In fact, it was so effective that he alone had done more damage than all the other contestants combined together. But after a few hours, Lex stopped as a frown painted his face.

Despite killing so many abominations, there hardly seemed to be a dent in their endless numbers. No wonder this was expected to take months. He needed to come up with a faster way to kill all of them.

For a moment, he paused and rubbed his chin as he thought about his options. He could give up his control over dragonfire and let it spread unchecked. That's exactly what happened when he used dragonfire for the first time, which was against the Tree of Heaven. But even if he assumed no immortals would put out his flames, it would still be too slow.

What he needed to do was identify the abomination's greatest weakness, and then think of a way to create one or a number of overwhelming attacks that could influence the entire graveyard.

He spent some time planning, and came up with a feasible idea. Ironically, the fastest way to clear this whole place of abominations required a long preparation time.

Lex used his left eye to study the laws attached to the abominations - specifically, he looked for their weaknesses.

Conveniently, it seemed like their greatest weakness was Yang energy, which was abundant in dragonfire. Oddly enough, Yang energy would also allow abominations to grow stronger, as the Yang would nourish and strengthen them somehow. But the nature of how they received the energy is what would determine if they were annihilated or nourished.

Lex immediately got to work. Although Lex had learned a lot about formations recently, he still preferred arrays. Especially after he learned to augment the results of arrays using Glyphs, he managed to overcome that invisible threshold of power that he seemed to reach with his arrays.

Not that it mattered right now. The array Lex began to design was not an attacking array to begin with, so the threshold of power didn't matter. Instead, the array would only facilitate the result he wanted, not cause it.