The Innkeeper
chapter-1204

"This realm is being absorbed by the Origin realm, I've told you that much. But the source of this realm seems to have manifested in the form of that tower. Basically, that is where the laws of that realm are the strongest, almost making it like an entire realm altogether. For you to find it using your senses would require you to have senses that could transcend the boundaries between realms. Even for you, that would be a bit much.

"That is also one of the reasons why the purpose of this final trial is to clear a floor in the tower. For every floor you clear, a bit of its power gets used up, and it becomes easier for the Origin realm to absorb this realm. If you somehow manage to clear the whole tower, then not only will you gain a tremendous reward, but a massive amount of energy will be used up."

"Let me guess, your goal is that final treasure on the last floor?" Lex said casually. He had no doubt whatever the final reward was, it would be great. Yet he had access to the Tower of providence and another unnamed tower back in the Midnight realm. If he ever felt greedy for treasures, he would just go there. Not to mention the Fishing well, which could randomly pull out amazing objects.

"Of course it is," she said as a matter of fact. "Just like you have your goals at the moment, so do I, and I need every single advantage I can get to help me along the way."

She paused for a moment and looked at Lex with a challenge in her eyes.

"But since my next target is the tower anyway, I won't ask for your help in getting through the tower or getting the final reward. Whoever earns the reward should keep it."

Lex raised an eyebrow. Was she… challenging him?

Although given she was an immortal and he wasn't, she should be extremely familiar with what he was capable of. It was not bragging if he said he was quite confident that he was stronger than her.

"In that case, I wish you the best of luck," Lex said with a smirk.

Giselle snorted, and began leading the way.

That's when Lex realized that the maze wasn't as harmless as he had believed so far. It was filled with natural disasters he knew and understood, such as hurricanes, but since this place was born as a result of the death of a realm, it also contained disasters the likes of which he had never imagined. The closer they got to the center of the maze, the more devastating they became.

The first real threat they encountered was a vacuum, not just of atmosphere, but energy as well. Considering that the Earth was in a dead zone, Lex thought he knew what it felt like to experience minimal spiritual energy. But even he hadn't experienced no ambient spiritual energy.

It was dangerous and devastating in a way Lex could never have imagined. He literally felt like his skin was about to rip off his body, and that the energy within his body would spontaneously explode just so that it could leave the confines of his body.

It was like the opposite of the Void, which put an immense amount of pressure onto his body. The vacuum instead pulled at his body with the same, or possibly even greater intensity.

The worst part was that nothing that Lex did helped. Using laws did not make him more immune, channeling his energy was pointless and arrays failed completely. If he used any techniques, they would disperse into the air before they could show any effect. He literally could do nothing save tolerate it for as long as it took to exit that place.

Then came spacequakes. Lex was fairly confident in his ability to manipulate space so he felt like this would be a walk in the park, but just as he was about to use his ability to protect himself, his instincts warned him not to.

Listening to his instincts, Lex allowed the spacequake to hit him directly, which felt like a truck had smashed directly inside his body while bypassing his skin entirely. Heck, Lex was certain that if anyone else would have been in his place, their golden core would have popped just from that crash.

But it also allowed him to understand why trying to use any spatial abilities would be a bad idea. Whenever he controlled any amount of space at all, for any purpose, he experienced the equivalent amount of pressure. An easy comparison was using a weapon. Before he could use it, he had to bear the weight of the weapon.

But most of the time that weight was not enough to cause any problems. Yet if he tried to manipulate space during a spacequake, then he would have to tolerate the pressure of the entire region that was experiencing that quake.

Even if he aspired to be tough enough to tolerate an attack from a Heavenly immortal, he was instantly reminded that in the face of nature he was nothing. He did not doubt that his entire body would turn to mush if he had tried to fight against the spacequake. Even if he managed to survive that somehow, he didn't want to go through adolescence again.

In comparison, Giselle was having a much easier time. It couldn't be helped. Even if Lex had a tough body, it was still that of a mortal, while Giselle's had experienced the tempering of tribulations, and was fundamentally different. Not that Lex let her know he was struggling for even a second.

After the spacequake they experienced a spirit storm. That was not a storm of spiritual energy which was used for cultivation, but rather a storm made up of the part of a living being which determined consciousness. It was a storm of thoughts, and while Lex's body was completely unharmed, his mind was battered by the final wails of the countless living beings right before their realm died.

Even someone as tough as Lex could not be immune to the anguish of an entire realm.