The Innkeeper

"I had to practice the technique somewhere… how was I supposed to know that if I break a training bot, I have to pay for it." Alexander said bitterly. For the first time, he felt the bitter pinch of poverty, as he didn\'t want to use his family\'s resources during this time where they were preparing to shift from Mars to Vegus Minima.

"Now you\'re making me curious. Let\'s head to a training hall. But, just a heads up, I don\'t have a lot of time so this can only be a short sparring session."

Alexander accepted, and the two made their way to the nearest training hall. Although Lex was looking forward to having a proper spar with Alexander, he knew that his current purpose was to allow the latter to become more accustomed to his latest techniques.

"We can get right into it and start the fight," Lex offered, "or you can first test out your techniques on me to practice. You don\'t need to be worried about holding back, I\'ve improved considerably since we\'ve last met. In fact, if you manage to actually hurt me I\'d be extremely impressed."

"No, treat this as a normal fight. The whole point is to see if I can deploy the techniques under the pressure of combat. Moreover, some of the techniques rely on the element of surprise. Knowing about them beforehand can severely reduce the impact."

With the decision made, Lex no longer hesitated. Without forewarning, Lex launched himself at Alexander. Due to Lex\'s current abnormal strength, his speed was devastating and not easy to cope with, especially in the range that they were in.

Holding nothing back Lex threw a punch towards Alexander\'s face, completely expecting to make contact. But, surprisingly, Alexander had already started to evade even before Lex began to throw the punch.

Instantly a couple of thoughts ran through Lex\'s mind. First, he was fighting against someone who had some semblance of instincts similar to his own. Second, since attacks with a limited area of impact, such as punches, could be easily avoided by making small movements under the guidance of instincts, he should aim for harder to dodge attacks.

Instead of punching, Lex decided to tackle Alexander with his body instead. Surely Alexander would have tried to dodge this as well, but Lex was moving too fast and they were too close.

Lex came in like a wrecking ball and smashed the teenager across the room, leaving destruction in his wake. The training room they were in was supposed to be able to accommodate Golden core experts, but Alexander\'s body broke several of the floor tiles and cracked several of the pillars in the room as he hit them. To be honest, Lex suddenly felt a little guilty about hitting him so hard.

In fact, his guilt slowly started to eat at him, and Lex began to wonder if his own sheer awesomeness had left behind a permanent scar in Alexander\'s psyche. Lex fell to his knees, on the verge of wailing about the absolute tragedy that was destroying the future of such a promising young lad, when he realized that his emotions were abnormal.

It was when he had that realization that he also realized that his instincts were warning him of something, but he had been too focused on his guilt to focus on it.

A golden laser as thin as about a golf ball suddenly hit Lex on the forehead. Lex had been too slow to dodge, as even he could not keep up with the speed of light, but the laser barely harmed him. Besides making him feel slightly warm, it brought a slight red color to his skin where he was hit, and a single tendril of smoke escaped.

Lex suddenly woke up from his abnormal state and realized that at some point, Alexander must have attacked his spirit! The fact that it had worked, however briefly, was absolutely startling!

For a moment, both Lex and Alexander looked at each other as if they were looking at monsters. Lex could not believe his mind was affected, for that would require influencing his \'spirit\'. But since his spirit was fused with his body and soul, they had the same level of defense.

Theoretically speaking, since Lex had survived a physical attack from an immortal, then his spirit should also be able to do the same - albeit he had only \'survived\' that attack, and came out of it heavily injured. Still, the comparison was enough to explain how difficult it was to sway Lex\'s mind.

Alexander, on the other hand, looked at Lex like some kind of freak out of a fiction novel, for being able to survive such an attack completely unharmed had to be fictional! The spirit attack Alexander had launched on Lex was an incredibly powerful one which required him to make many preparations before battle ever even began. That meant if he used the attack once, he could not use it again unless he went back and prepared again.

But it was worth it, for against a single powerful opponent, let alone freeze them, it could even completely destroy their psyche. Yet Lex had only suffered some mild guilt! Moreover, he recovered in less than a second!

Then there was the laser! He had actually killed many Golden core cultivators using that technique with a single hit, yet it could not even singe Lex\'s hair.

For a moment, both of them admired each other\'s skills, labeling the other as a freak. Then combat continued.

Lex popped in his Fancy lenses and, supported by his instincts, became impossible to hit. Moreover, since this was a spar, began testing out some theories that he always had.

His favorite technique these days, Impervious Hands, had a lot more potential than he initially assumed. Not only did it have a monumentally stronger defense, he could fuse his soul and spirit sense into it to be able to interact with souls and energy respectively. Moreover, once the technique was active, if he augmented it with more spirit energy, he could directly touch whatever affinity Lex had.

While previously his affinity was a vague and abstract concept, he had since developed an affinity to space. He wanted to see how his technique would be affected by that. Moreover, he wanted to see how well he could consciously control the energy in his opponents\' attacks.

The triad that followed wrought untold destruction across the training room. It looked like a tornado had been trapped in the room rather than two people sparring.

Lex\'s absurd physical strength was alone in taking credit for the damage. Alexander had learnt a number of new techniques that relied on the golden colored laser he shot Lex with earlier.

Lex\'s strength and Alexander\'s lasers jointly became so destructive, they actually had to pause the sparring because it compromised the integrity of the training room. But since Lex still had more time, they just shifted to a new room and continued to fight.

Lex had to give Alexander genuine recognition. Although it could not be said that Lex was going all out, he had not held his physical strength back at all. Despite taking a few hits head on, Alexander seemed to be doing fine.

In fact, Lex could subtly detect the means Alexander was using to negate the strength of his attacks, but that did not reduce how impressive the task was. After all, who said one needed to take on all attacks? Not everyone was built as tough as Lex, so it was completely unfair to expect them to do so.

In the end, after a few hours of fighting, Mary finally informed Lex that Fenrir had woken up. As much as he enjoyed the fight, that was his cue to depart, so he informed Alexander. But, instead of ending it, Alexander asked Lex to withstand one last attack from him.

Unlike his previous techniques, which he was proficient enough in to use in battle, this one would take some time to prepare, so he needed to ask Lex to stand still.

Once Lex agreed, Alexander quickly sat on the floor cross legged as if he was meditating. But he was clearly not. The six blades that were by now Alexander\'s signature weapons, were summoned and arranged themselves in a circle, pointing towards his palms.

Beads of golden light began dripping across the lengths of the blades, falling from the tip into his hands as if they were liquid light. At first, Lex only watched silently and observed, but as time went on, the energy accumulating in Alexander\'s hands began pressuring him.

Although Lex was far from threatened, his eyes widened as he realized just how incredible Alexander was progressing. In fact, considering that the other was doing so well without a system made Lex feel a little ashamed. He decided to lend Alexander some help.