The Innkeeper
chapter-997

Scourge, the evil potato, was definitely not happy being attacked. It made sense, who would? But to have the guts to attack the Sovereign turtle? Lex wanted to whistle. Come to think of it, had he ever seen the turtle get attacked before? Surely during one of the many invasions of the Inn, it must have happened!

Oh well.

He watched as the potato vines tried to wrap around the turtle's legs, not that it cared.

"Oh dear, oh dear, how did you get so corrupted?" the turtle spoke to itself, and sniffed the ground.

Lex saw that the vines were trying to squeeze the turtle's legs, to no avail. It grew thorns dripping with some kind of poison, but they could not harm the turtle whatsoever. It was quite pitiful to watch, actually.

The turtle continued to investigate, uncaring about any attempts that vine made to harm it whatsoever. Lex, on the other hand, noticed something. The arrangement of the potatoes in the ground seemed random at first. But as the vines moved and uncovered the countless potatoes hidden under the dirt, he began to see a pattern.

He could not tell what it was, but he distinctly felt that there was some kind of reason to the arrangement they had taken, some rule they were following. He sharpened his senses, and faintly felt the presence of laws. That was normal, laws were everywhere. But in sensing just the barest outline of some pattern, Lex was for the first time able to detect the presence of some law.

But he made no other progress. Though he could detect that there was some pattern, he could not pick up what it was. He used the Host Attire to observe the entire arrangement of the wild potatoes as a whole. On some level, he could sense the pattern better, but he could not quite discern what it was.

It did not help that the potatoes began moving due to the not-so-epic showdown it was having with the turtle.

Once the turtle was done with its evaluation, it used another ability. Its horn began to glow, and somehow, the potato vines all came under the turtles control. The entire length of its body, which extended hundreds of acres, began to gather in front of the turtle and roll up into an ever increasing ball.

To save space, the turtle had all the actual potatoes drop from the vine, forming a massive hill underneath the even larger ball of shrieking vine.

"Those are edible," the turtle said, looking at the potatoes. "We can head back now. This child needs detention."

At the mention of detention the vine shrieked even louder. Lex waved his hand and muted it, and then paused. He realized that, instead of using his authority over the Inn, he could do the exact same thing using arrays, just as effectively. His mind automatically evaluated what characters he could use to have such a lasting effect.

It was as if Lex was more attuned to the characters used in arrays all of a sudden. For a long time now, Lex was slowly moving away from the use of arrays because he had encountered a sort of plateau in terms of the amount of power he could bring out of them.

He had not had any time to test out his strength, but he was certain that his normal attacks now could surpass that limit as well. But with this sudden new inclination for the characters might lead to a breakthrough.

But Lex had too many things to do right now, he did not have the time to experiment. He teleported them back to the Inn, leaving the turtle to punish Scourge, or whatever else it wanted to do. He didn't doubt he had it handled.

But he had no time to rest. He instantly disappeared again, appearing near the boundary wall in a certain section where a dozen hairy creatures were standing atop it.

They were small, between one to two feet (0.3 - 0.6m), and looked like a strange mix between a beaver and a cat. Their long, petite tails swayed freely in the air behind them as they discussed amongst themselves how to proceed.

Lex had noticed them the moment he woke up from his nap. They were the first 'sentient' beings to enter his Inn from the outside, but remained on the wall the entire time.

"Explain thyself, Lieutenant Jacob," said one of the beaver-

cats, his tone deep and foreboding.

"Punish me if thou must, Captain Haboob. Ostracize me from the group if you wish. I would rather accept a marr on my record than a stain on my conscience."

"Tis not honor that bars thou, Jacob, tis hubris. How can an individual be above a community? Duty before dishonor, death before defeat!"

Jacob, who was visually indistinguishable from any of the other beaver-cats, turned his head dramatically and looked back at the land outside the Inns boundary.

"Death is easy, Haboob. Death is easy, but doing what is right weighs heavier than a mountain. Tis not in me to commit such sacrilege."

"Then you have betrayed us," Haboob said solemnly. "You have betrayed your fellow soldiers, your family who raised you with such expectations, your teachers who guided you on the path, your community that depended on you."

Jacon trembled, as if struggling up hearing those heavy words. But he did not look back.

Lex almost felt bad intervening in this obviously grave situation, but he wanted to avoid any tragedies from happening in the Inn, at least for the first ever guests he received from the Midnight realm.

He coughed loudly, as he lowered himself from up in the sky where he was observing from, attracting the attention of the cleaver-cats. Even Jacob turned, ready to face the unknown threat.

"Excuse me for interrupting. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn't help overhearing that you all are facing some issue. Can I offer any help? I am the Innkeeper, by the way, and this is my humble Inn."