The Innkeeper

Chapter 1384  Treehouse of his dreams

Lex returned to a place he had not been to in a short while: the home of the dwarfs in the Midnight realm.

The last time he was here, he had forged Naraka, his sword. It was genuinely a tragedy that Lex was not a wholehearted sword cultivator, because his sword was amazing. Its potential was just as endless as himself, and the stronger sword intent it was bathed in, the faster it would grow even stronger.

As it was, Lex's truly varied array of skills and abilities overshadowed the actual power of his sword. To say that the sword had just as much potential as Lex was a testament to how genuinely absurdly strong it was, considering all that Lex had been through.

In all his time in the cultivation world, Lex had only ever faced a single person who could rival him in the same realm as him: Cornelius. Besides that one, enigmatic king, whose schemes ran deep, whether it was dragons, devil, angels or beings of some other race, none had been able to stand toe to toe with Lex.

The fact that Orin I of the Veevatil mines, the first dwarf of the realm, had the skills to forge such a treasure spoke not only of the immense amount of skill and talent he had, but knowledge as well. Considering that Orin did not have the legacy of the other realms to improve his own treasure manufacturing capabilities, everything he knew was self taught.

In the time that Lex had locked the Inn away, he had studied treasure manufacturing from the dwarf as well, in exchange for giving him an immense amount of knowledge later on. True to his word, once the Midnight realm had been opened again, he had bought countless books, tomes, inheritances, video tutorials and podcasts for the dwarf to go through to expand his knowledge.

Even when Lex returned, the dwarf was still studying, immersed in all things related to forging.

"Old dwarf, I'm borrowing your forge," Lex said, completely aware that Orin probably hadn't heard him. It didn't matter - he was well known here anyway.

Deep in the heart of the mountain, above a flowing river of lava, sat a forge made out of 300 tons of Veevatil - an utter and sheer waste in Lex's opinion. Once forged, Veevatil could not be reforged, so till the end of time, this Veevatil would only exist in the form of this forge.

Maybe Dao Lords could do something about stuff like this, for much like Sovereigns they could reshape reality to their whims, but that was not for Lex to know. Even if they could, why would Dao Lords care about Veevatil?

Though the metal was precious and rare for immortals, it was nowhere near as valuable as a Dao level ingredient.

But as ridiculous as it was, Lex had to admit that the forge technically was awesome, and was an immense aid in treasure manufacturing.

Without wasting a single second, Lex used dragon fire to heat up the forge, and brought out the remainder of the treasures he had bought from the Emporium, and began his forging process.

One reason he wanted to learn about treasure manufacturing is because of a whim he had long ago.

Once upon a time, when he was learning arrays, he had wondered if he could create an array so complex, it could act like his system did. As his cultivation grew, he understood that while arrays theoretically could unleash limitless power, they could not really touch upon laws, for they themselves depended on laws to operate.

But his ambition, or whim, had not died. Lex had learned formations, Glyphs, arrays, treasure manufacturing, and so much more, and at each step he remembered that whim of his.

One day, he too, would create a system that could rock the universe. But now was not the time for that-

Lex froze, and suddenly he had an epiphany! His Karma was not in balance between his identities, because he as himself did not have nearly as many achievements as he did as an employee of the Inn. But the thing was, he was not truly an employee of the Inn. That was a facade.

For reasons he could not understand, that facade clearly touched on certain rules of the universe he did not understand, and was affecting him negatively. So all he needed to do to balance that out was have an achievement sufficiently great as himself, carrying a massive amount of Karma to balance things out.

One reason he didn't make a preliminary System himself was because he knew he wasn't at the level where it would be good enough. But did his system need to match up to the Midnight Inn? What if he made a System with whatever skill he had, and granted it to a mortal in a 1 star, or in an even lower star world?

As soon as Lex had the idea, it latched on to him, and wouldn't let go. Unfortunately, he was already busy with other things, so he would have to push it aside for now.

Why was he always busy with so many things? It was like he hadn't even finished one task and several more hopped onto his plate.

Truly, being a rich, successful business owner was not easy.

Casting his distractions aside, Lex began crafting his new treehouse. Suddenly, he felt even more motivated than he was before to create the best possible treasure that he could.

His left eye activated, peering into the laws of all the ingredients he summoned, and his right eye activated, creating countless arrays and Glyphs to help with the forging process. Lex immediately began forging the treehouse of his dreams.

*****

Within the Origin realm, on an frozen planet, seemingly devoid of all life, a wolf suddenly appeared. His appearance was oddly similar to that of Fenrir, almost as if they were from a similar breed, but it seemed to lack a certain, almost imperceptible charm. He also gave off an incredibly powerful aura.

The wolf sniffed the air, and then teleported away, appearing in an underground, abandoned bunker. Or, well, abandoned was not the right word for it, since the bunker still contained the corpses of all who had worked within the bunker.

After the debacle with Sanguis Pluvia, many organizations that had been acting in secret abandoned all their activities, cutting ties and eliminating all loose ends lest their dirty dealings be exposed.

This cloning clinic was one such place, which is why the wolf had to come here personally. A few years ago, it had given countless companies samples of a 99% pure Fenrir bloodline, asking them to try and cultivate a pure 100% bloodline if they could, while he tried to do the same.

Before they could make any substantial progress, many such facilities had been attacked, and now even more had been closed. The wolf was naturally here to retrieve whatever samples the facility had, as well as to look through their research data.

Yet when it arrived, it suddenly smelt a certain scent that stunned it. Its own bloodline, which had ceased growing for so long, suddenly trembled with excitement! There was something within the facility that could help it!

The wolf, at first, thought that the facility had achieved the full 100% blood purity in one of the clones, but when it followed the scent, it discovered that the thing that was exciting its bloodline was not a pure blooded Fenrir clone. No, it was the clone of a human woman!

The wolf was stunned, by the agitation from its bloodline was too great. The wolf was completely unable to stop itself, and broke the clone out of its container and devoured it!

The clone naturally lacked a soul, and had been merely in the mortal realm, yet suddenly the wolf felt a certain hint of warmth! There was hope!

Greed flashed in the wolf's eyes as searched through the entire facility, devouring each of such clones, yet none of them were actually enough. The disparity was too great. But it presented a hope, and so the wolf began to search through the facility's logs and files.

Unfortunately, when whoever ran the facility killed all the facility workers through whatever means they had used, they also erased all the data files that the facility had.

But now that the wolf had had a taste, how could it give up? Since it found these clones in one cloning facility, it would continue to look through more. Chances were high that it would encounter those clones again.

It would be best if the wolf could get a lead on the original. Either way, now that the wolf had devoured the clone, it would find it much easier to pick up its trace across the realm.

The wolf quickly took all the Fenrir clones, and then teleported away, destroying the facility thoroughly before he left. Finding even one of these facilities had been hard to begin with, due to how well they hid, but the wolf would not give up so easily. Not when it finally saw hope for advancement!n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om