The Innkeeper - Chapter 1828

Chapter 1828: Playing Go I

The weight of the knowledge he had gained within Abaddon still weighed on Lex’s soul, even now. What was worse was that even if he didn’t want to believe, or even doubt the things he had learned, he almost seemed unable to. It was as if that knowledge was seared into his mind as truth, and he could not entertain the notion that it wasn’t.

So then, if one were to consider what kind of karma it contained, they could easily imagine that it far surpassed even what was considered extraordinary.

It was fortunate that simply carrying karma did not kill, for Lex would surely be dead otherwise. It was just that according to his level, he could not absorb all the karma he had normally, so much so that he could be easily affected by his karma. Such a thing could just as easily give him tremendous rewards as it could lead him to certain doom.

On 11 separate occasions, within Abaddon, Lex encountered things with greater karma than his system, though none of them seemed to match up to the book Fable of Time. But the bead could not look into the history of a single one of those occasions, so much so that Lex couldn’t even identify what 9 of those 11 occasions were.

The only two he could identify were when he went to one of the ruins to learn some ancient history, and when he approached the chalice. Both were predictable, though Lex could not glimpse into what the karma they contained was.

Once he was done with Abaddon, it took the bead all of two seconds to fuse with his remaining karma, finally completing the fusion process with Lex. The bead had disappeared entirely. It was no longer in Lex’s hands, nor could it be found anywhere else in his body or soul.

The bead resided solely in Lex’s karma, and thus was usable by both Lex and Jack. With the completion of the fusion, the karmic weight encompassing the Inn also vanished, much to the disappointment of many. The spiritual phenomenon that would occur when someone pierced through the veil covering the first age did not occur, meaning that the Innkeeper hadn’t been able to discover the truth. Many already expected as much.

Lex couldn’t be bothered to deal with them, instead going into closed-door meditation. That basically meant that unless there was some kind of emergency at the Inn, he would not step out.

Despite the unusual process of fusing with the bead, Lex wasn’t tired or even worn out, retaining his peak state. Thus, he went into seclusion, focusing solely on his bead, learning how to use it.

The bead itself was quite interesting, with absolutely no power of its own. Yet the thing was basically indestructible. If he put on a mask and called himself Sniper King, he could use the bead as his ultimate weapon when using a slingshot.

Even so, using it to manipulate karma gave Lex unprecedented control and power. In essence, it used the entire weight of all the karma Lex had ever accumulated for any action Lex took through it.

For example, if he wanted to attack someone through their karma, it would be slightly challenging. Not only would Lex need to get his hands on sufficiently powerful karma through which to attack, manipulating the karma itself was complicated and difficult.

But with the bead, it would be simple. In one situation, it was like asking a mortal to pull a very heavy cart, its handle covered in grease and its wheels removed. In the other situation, the same cart was attached to a rocket ship. All the grease in the world couldn’t stop that cart from moving, wheel or no wheel.

Of course, karma was still not so easy to use, or understand. There were many subtypes of karma, good and bad karma being two examples of them, and they all behaved in unique ways and required careful handling.

It didn’t matter though. Lex had been studying karma for a long time already, and with his recent experience of the bead thoroughly investigating every strand of karma he had, Lex had learned even more.

Familiarising himself with the bead and how to use it was merely a last minute precaution. It was time to end the mess with the Go board.

During his dance, he had felt the Go board try to interfere with him, like it had so many times before, yet for some reason, it failed. Lex suspected that the failure was because he was using the Host Attire, and appearing as the Innkeeper. He had a feeling that his own system had interfered, since systems were the weakness of other systems.

He had no way of proving it, since he got no notifications or anything, but it was the only thing he could think of. Yet he couldn’t rely on the system to save him every time – it was too temperamental for that.

After two days of practice, Lex took a deep breath, and grabbed the bead. In his mind, a new black bead had formed, ready to place on the Go board. This bead was formed because of Lex’s increased mastery of karma.

Yet Lex didn’t place the new bead that was formed in his mind – he merely used it to summon the projection of the board in his mind.

Once it had appeared, Lex summoned the karmic bead and focused on the board. He found the karma connecting him and the board – it was easy, the bead had already shown it to Lex when he was binding the karmic bead.

Then, leveraging that connection, Lex placed his Karmic Bead on the Go board causing a ripple.

The Go board wasn’t real, it was a mere image in his mind, yet suddenly it started to feel incredibly real.

Lex disappeared from the Midnight Inn.

At the same time, in the Artica realm, Axios was in a very important meeting when his body, right within the view of countless people, suddenly disappeared.