The Innkeeper
chapter-1303

Lex did not directly teleport over to the capital, but that was only because as the realm underwent some change, the spatial coordinates of many places had changed as well. The fact that when he teleported over, he appeared over a large, charred piece of land covered in darkness, with countless monsters sleeping within.

Lex had actually forgotten that within the Crystal realm, darkness could breed Monsters out of thin air. He was quite curious about how such a thing was possible, in terms of laws, and would definitely take some time to look into it.

It was funny - coming back to the Crystal realm, Lex felt like his time here had been like a vacation. Yet it was within the Crystal realm where he faced some of his greatest humiliations. It was here that the Crystal race tried to imprison him. It was here that the Kraven attacked the tavern, nearly killing all his workers.

He had to run away from King Cornelius II because of how weak he was, and it was here that he had been looked down upon by the two deities who led the Sol and Frio birds.

Never had he been more aware of his weakness than in the Crystal realm, yet now that he was returning as an Earth Immortal, all of it seemed so silly.

Of course, it was far from being irrelevant. Lex was not the kind of guy who would take revenge for every petty thing, but he would definitely not forgive the actions of the Kraven. As for the others… well he did not have too good of an impression of the Crystal race, but at least the Trelops weren't bad.

"The realm has clearly grown," Lex said awkwardly, as if explaining why his teleportation failed. "This realm is a territory of Ventura academy. They artificially created a near extinction level threat here so that they could hold exams for some of their students. Although the manager for this realm from Ventura has claimed that they won't actually allow the realm to fall to destruction, who knows if that claim is true. Perhaps having the realm grow artificially like this is one of their plans to harvest more treasures from the destruction of the realm."

"It is entirely possible," Cassandra said. "The realm wars have seen countless such things. Larger realms feeding on smaller realms to speed up their own growth is a common sight now. Everyone wants their realm to reach maturity before the universe enters its next phase. If they can bring a new realm to maturity, or close to maturity, they might be able to nurture another Dao Lord, or strengthen their existing ones. Even a single Dao Lord is more valuable than a dozen realms such as the Crystal realm."

Lex recalled what Cassandra had told him before about the realm wars. The universe was about to end its early or beginning phase in which realms would grow stronger. The birth of a new realm was good to nurture a new Dao Lord, and the maturing of a realm was good to strengthen a Dao Lord, which is why everyone was in a rush to strengthen their existing realms to mature realms, or get their hands on others realms. It was essentially so each faction could get and train more Dao Lords.

Lex did not know the details of what phase would follow the early phase. Would it be the adolescent phase? The middle phase? If Lex had to guess, then if the theme of the early phase was to birth new Dao Lords and strengthen existing ones, then it was about rapid expansion. That would then be followed by a period where a new order would be reached, and the focus would be on maintaining the advantage rather than expanding rapidly.

Of course, this was just a simple guess based on his limited knowledge of things. Whatever it would be called, and whatever traits it would have, that was countless years in the future, and too far from Lex. What mattered more was that whatever was happening inside the Crystal realm was a much more tame version of what was happening in the whole universe.

"The guy we're going to meet, King Cornelius, is also a member of Ventura. Last time I talked to him, he claimed to be trying to redeem the realm from its current manager by providing enough merits to Ventura. I don't know if it's possible, but he is an ambitious man. He is not planning just his own growth, but that of the entire realm."

For what it was worth, Lex hoped that Cornelius would discover a way to redeem the realm. The Crystal realm was quite massive, at least as far as Lex was concerned, and was home to countless beings. Even though a lot of them were incredibly shady, that did not mean the whole realm deserved to die. Also, Lex himself was quite interested in the realm.

It held many secrets, and though Lex was not interested in taking huge risks for resources anymore, within the Crystal realm, he was now near the peak of power. He feared nothing here, which meant that he could explore the secrets of the realm freely.

Once, when Lex had a weaker understanding of deities, he thought that there might be something special about the realm which made it easier for deities to be born here. While now he knew that such a thing was not necessarily true, his gut told him that this realm was far from normal.

"By the way, I just remembered something. Someone once told me that the Kraven are devouring the laws of this realm, using them to nurture Earth immortals. How is that possible?" Lex asked once he teleported one more time, and still did not end up in the capital. It seemed the realm had changed a lot. But the fact that he couldn't find the capital was fine, but why could he find no signs of Hum nation? The area covered by that empire was greater than the surface area of the entire earth. He should be in the vicinity of it.