The Innkeeper
chapter-1205

He experienced no physical change, but for a half a second, Lex blacked out. His mind shut down from the sheer extent of the despair he was forced to experience as a self defense mechanism. It worked, and he was saved. But the problem was that he was in the middle of a storm, and so the moment he woke up from his blackout, he was hit by another wail, causing him to fall into another blackout.

Giselle noticed that something was wrong with Lex, and moved to surround him with a protective bubble. Yet before she could do anything, Lex woke up again, and immediately activated Mindmeld.

This was an ability he gained which allowed him to turn into thought itself. Or another way of putting it was that he gave up his physical form to whatever extent he wanted and turned it into the same spiritual energy which made up this storm.

This storm allowed him to realize that his passive defense against spiritual attacks might not be the best, so he needed to work on that. But that did not mean his active defense was weak.

His spiritual energy pushed against that of the storm, and he kept it from attacking his mind. After giving Giselle a reassuring nod, he pushed through till they passed the storm. Afterwards they encountered various other obstacles, each of which was challenging in its own way. Realistically speaking, let alone passing through the tower, just reaching it would disqualify most participants if they weren't in the immortal realm.

Yet that was not an obstacle for Lex, and after endless struggle they finally made it to the tower in the middle of the maze.

Truthfully, it was far from what Lex was expecting. He thought he would be welcomed by a magnificent piece of architecture, radiating an ancient and deep power - or at least something along those lines.

Instead, the tower seemed like a mix of all the topographies he had seen in the maze, forcefully pulled up from the ground and joined together in a haphazard way to form a tower.

Dirt turned to stone which turned into wood, and that into flowing water. Each and every section of it was a twisted amalgam of what had made up the realm before.

Lex could literally visualize how, when the realm was destroyed, the broken pieces joined together pulled by all the remaining power and formed a tower.

The opening, at the base of the tower, was not a door, but rather a dark passage that bent the mixed makeup of the tower inwards. It was large enough to easily accommodate even the tallest of contestants, especially since the behemoth of a tower rose as high as the walls that surrounded it.

It was not unexpected that there was no one else around, but what did surprise Lex was a massive sign board hanging above the opening in the tower. At the moment it was empty, but he could see various categories printed onto it, such as contestant, level, and time.

Although Lex had seen many incredible sights, that did not prevent him from enjoying the splendor and grandeur of new ones.

He stood before the tower and felt like an ant standing in front of a dragon. Not only was the difference in size great, but so was the sheer scale of the power contained within the tower. It had forcefully contained the laws, the energy, and who knew what else from inside an entire realm. Even though Lex had grown a lot, he was still far from being able to compare to the tower. Yet he was about to venture forth in an attempt to conquer it nonetheless.

"Good luck in there," said Giselle as she walked up beside him.

"You too," Lex said.

For a moment they both basked in the magnificence of the tower. Then they stepped in.

Lex was immediately teleported to a dark room, where an image began playing in his mind.

At first there was only chaos and fire, so that he could not understand what he was seeing. Then the vision began to change, and through the fire he saw a few odd shapes through the fire, moving quickly. Abruptly it changed, and Lex realized what he was seeing.

From broken into pieces, the space that constituted the realm returned to a fractured state, and time played backwards in front of his eyes. In a matter of seconds the realm, which reminded him of the crystal realm in the sense that it was one, continuous territory from border to border, appeared. It was a perfect circle, and the distribution of all territories in it seemed to follow a certain flow.

As time sped backwards in front of his eyes, he could see the land shift and ripple as if it were liquid, changing over the course of millions of years, acting out in perfect synchronization with the countless energies that existed around the lands.

Compared to every other realm he had ever seen, this one was in perfect balance, to the extent that it seemed strange to him. Not only were the changes in the lands moving in one particular flow, but so was the movement, progress and decline of the countless races that inhabited those lands.

Then the image zoomed in, and instead of the realm, what he saw was the development of human civilization play out - just in reverse. In a matter of a few seconds, from the peak of a technologically advanced race, mankind was brought back to the stone age.

In front of Lex was a small boy, walking awkwardly through a small forest, looking for something. A twig snapped, and when the boy looked over he saw a dog, skinny and mangy, but much more deadly than an unarmed little boy. It growled, and then pounced.

The boy jumped to the side, but he was too slow, and the dog bit into his leg.

Startled, afraid, and in pain, the little boy went manic, blindly hitting the dog with everything he had in an attempt to save himself. At some point, without realizing, he picked up a small rock and smashed it on the dog's head, causing it to fall limp.

At that moment, the scene froze, and then dissolved. Lex found himself standing inside a forest, and a twig snapped behind him.