The Innkeeper

All in all, he could be considered to have vast experience in various fields. Yet at the moment he found himself completely at a loss. He did not even consider how Lex was able to discover his intentions, for that no longer mattered.

What truly befuddled him was how Lex was able to trap him after he had already left. After all, the opaque barrier surrounding him had not appeared until he tried to enter the control room. Moreover, the fact that Lex\'s voice spoke to him after the barrier appeared also meant that this was no accident.

But his panic dissolved quickly, and instead he focused on breaking the barrier. He took his time to use one of his most powerful spiritual techniques which had a long starting time, and attacked the barrier full force.

Truthfully, this was not a good idea as using such a destructive technique in close quarters would also harm him, but he would deal with that after he broke free. Unfortunately, not only did he not break free, the barrier did not even waver.

Disbelieving of what he was seeing, Marcus tried again. Then again. The barriers were not breaking. Moreover… to his alarm, he discovered that as he absorbed the spirit energy in the atmosphere to fuel his techniques, the energy density of the room was falling. That meant that the barrier prevented more energy from coming into the room!

This was even more alarming. If such a trend continued, not only would he soon run out of energy to fuel his attacks, he would run out of energy to sustain himself. If what Lex said was true, and he was trapped for weeks or months, he had to be extremely sparing in his energy consumption. Such a period of time was not a problem for him to survive even without food or water, so long as he had enough energy to fuel his nascent soul.

Desperation began filling his eyes and he took out some weapons from his spatial ring and continued to try to break free, but it was not destined to be. There were many things Lex could not claim to be skilled in. But as far as putting up barriers that could absorb a lot of damage was concerned, Lex felt himself an expert.

A few minutes later, Lex\'s teleportation ended, and he found himself in a smaller room with a few guards standing by, taking note of all the arrivals. This was the arrival terminal for Delurian Drip Bog. The area was not really a part of anyone\'s territory, but bordered the territory of various nobles and so was considered somewhat of a transit area.

There were a minimum amount of facilities available for travelers, but that was it. This was because the Bog was actually quite massive, and home to numerous savage beasts of considerable strength. In fact, even Trelops had given up on using the bog for themselves, as the local fauna was not conducive to occupying territory. Therefore, building too many facilities was also not a solution.

Usually, traveling through the bog meant following certain, pre-established routes which avoided the known beast territories. Even that carried with it a risk, which usually prompted large groups to gather and form caravans.

Lex, of course, was not going to bother with any of that. He would make a beeline towards his destination, only taking diversions if his instincts warned him. Well instincts and now his lenses. He was truly beginning to like them.

After all, based on the data provided by the lenses and his own instincts and intuition, Lex was able to predict that Marcus would take one of two actions. He would either leave without doing anything, or interfere with Lex\'s teleportation, sending him instead to some unknown territory.

Having narrowed down Marcus\' possible actions, Lex began devising his actions. Although he had incredible defensive techniques, he could not deploy them without being there himself, so the only alternative was to use arrays.

That in itself was not an issue. He quite enjoyed arrays, and with practice he was slowly mastering stronger and more complex arrays. He also kept consulting the book in his ring, though by now he had covered almost the entire book and would soon need a higher level book to consult.

The real issue was twofold. First, he had to ensure that the array would only trigger its trapping function if Marcus tried to take some action against him. Second, he needed to trap Marcus in barriers strong enough to actually hold him.

If he could use his techniques that might not be an issue, but his arrays never benefited from the strengthening effect of Regal Embrace. Ideally he wanted to create some kind of barrier as strong as his Impervious Hands - his strongest defensive technique.

Creating a condition for the activation of the array was challenging, but not impossible. He entered the Overdrive state and ultimately came up with a solution. Creating a barrier strong enough to trap a Nascent realm cultivator, though… also ended up being pretty simple!

Back when Lex was going through the floors in the pagoda, one of the rewards for clearing the floors had been an array character that meant \'self\'. Learning that character enabled Lex to try something new. Instead of creating complex functions that would eventually result in a strong barrier being created, he used the techniques he could use as a natural standard. Conveniently, the array seemed to work.

With both the issues resolved, Lex happily entered the teleportation formation without concern for what happened. The fact that he had arrived safely either meant that Marcus had not attempted to harm him, or that he had, and his plan was foiled by Lex\'s own array.

Either way, Lex was satisfied with the outcome.

"You ready?" Lex asked Fenrir as they exited the terminal. "This next part will be longer, and probably more dangerous too."

Fenrir only gave a single, excited bark, indicating his answer.

An odd thought occurred to Lex as he climbed onto Fenrir\'s back, allowing the pup to begin his sprint through the bog. Fenrir was in the golden core realm, yet the pup could still not talk. Yet Lex had met so many other beasts who had been able to actually talk with him even at the Foundation realm.

He wondered why there was a difference. Clearly Fenrir was intelligent, and his abilities were powerful and numerous. So then why was the pup still limited to barking and yelping, instead of talking like other beasts? He refused to believe that other beasts had a higher pedigree than Fenrir. This belief was not a result of a bias, but a clear answer provided to him by the system.

After pondering for a bit, the only answer he could come up with was that Fenrir was still a pup, and would have to grow for a few more years before it could gain the gift of speech.

Unlike the previous time, where Lex had a clear destination, this time Lex only had a direction. He had to travel using the Crystal realm equivalent of a compass, and head north-east until he reached the territory owned by Sentinels, one of the main races of the Crystal realm. Moreover, the trip was also much longer than his previous one.

Traveling through the bog was not easy or pleasant. Besides the various pungent smells of unknown gasses, which only made one lightheaded due to the overpowering scent, there were also many poisonous gasses.

Fortunately, Lex quickly discovered that both he and Fenrir seemed to be immune to most of the poisons they encountered. Moreover, by reading about them from the lenses every time he encountered them, Lex began to learn exactly what types of poisons his body could withstand. Of course, there were some poisonous gasses they had to avoid, for they could harm even them.

Besides that was the extremely damp and humid environment, not to mention the endless puddles, the soggy, squishy ground and what often looked like firm ground, but ended up being a soft layer of dirt covering some strange viscous liquids.

The extremely uncomfortable environment almost made one ignore the numerous decaying corpses they encountered on almost every turn. That was because hidden in every puddle, under every clump of soil, behind every rock was some kind of creature, waiting to devour its prey.

Fenrir quite enjoyed the game of tag the endless creatures played as they chased them through the bog. Lex, too, would not have cared so much, if he hadn\'t encountered his oldest and most hated nemesis in the bog: mosquitoes. Moreover, they were overgrown, mutated mosquitoes!