The Innkeeper

For him, the threat of death this time was no greater than any other time he had faced death. For example, being crushed to death by the aura of a dragon might feel different than being erased from time, but both objectively ended up with the same result.

That is why, although the danger was from a much more powerful source than Lex usually faced, the pressure he faced was actually the same. Not only had Lex learned to tolerate that pressure, he somewhat enjoyed it as well.

Now that he was, more or less, on the path to becoming the strongest being in existence, not that he had decided to pursue that goal yet, he would constantly be faced with death, so there was no reason to be so apprehensive about it.

With his back still turned towards the hill, Lex activated his treasure searching Glyph. There were few who could compete with dragons in searching for treasure, and Lex was quickly becoming one of them.

As a man who had his body absorb Dao level ingredients, he was not afraid of eating time related ingredients as well. Who knew, he might even develop an affinity for it.

That thought was nearly enough to throw Lex out of his state of Flow. Time was the most dangerous thing in the universe, Mary had said it straightforwardly. If Lex could develop an affinity for it…

He dared not even imagine what he could do, mostly because he himself didn\'t know. But he could find out.

Under the guidance of his Glyph, Lex identified something extremely attractive, and like a flash of lightning, disappeared from where he stood. Those standing below him literally gawked, for he had disappeared so fast they could not perceive his movement at all.

This was partially due to Lex\'s speed, and also due to the fact that he was purposefully moving away from the hill. His flow of time surpassed everyone else, and so, through the strange twist created by multiple flows of time existing simultaneously, from the point of view of others, Lex had moved several times faster than the speed of light.

"Mary, what do you think would happen if a Sovereign came to a time bubble?" Lex asked randomly.

He was genuinely curious. Between the most dangerous thing in existence, and the darlings of the universe itself, who would come out on top.

"It\'s not like there are no Sovereigns who haven\'t died," she answered. "So they definitely can die. But as for what would happen in such a situation… I don\'t think anyone can give a proper answer to that."

Lex nodded. It was just a random, fleeting thought he had while he directly approached the strongest aura he could detect.

In this entire rainforest, despite its vast size, Lex only sensed four or five powerful treasure aura, and even of them, he directly went for the one that attracted him most, arriving quickly to the mouth of a cave at the base of a tree.

Lex looked at the time remaining for his quest and realized that it was already 600 hours. Not willing to dilly dally any longer, he stepped into the cave and saw something extraordinary. Most trees have their fruits hanging high up in their branches, but not this one.

No, in a hollowed out region directly underneath the trunk of the tree, a single, thin root was dangling down, and from its end grew out the tree\'s fruit.

He didn\'t know why he knew that what he was looking at was a fruit, and not something else. It was as if the information directly entered his brain. So the fact that the \'fruit\' had the appearance of a hardcover book, with ominous characters drawn that he could read solely because of his system was not creepy at all.

The title of the book, or fruit, was The Fable of Time.

Minutes ticked by like seconds, but Lex didn\'t approach the fruit book. He was searching for danger. He was looking for the trap, or the guardian monster, or Void creature, or time creature, or something that would make taking this clearly magnificent treasure a huge risk, but he couldn\'t find it.

Usually, in life, when a thing was too good to be true, there was a nasty surprise waiting around the corner.

"I\'m not crazy right? This is too easy, right?" Lex asked Mary, and even she looked around confused.

"I mean… do you have any other choice?"

Lex looked at his quest time limit and realized that it had reached 500 hours. He really didn\'t have the time to be messing around. He stepped forward, and carefully grabbed the book-fruit before pulling it off the root.

Nothing untoward happened, so Lex carefully retreated from the cave to a safe distance.

"I\'m totally about to get cursed," he said as he looked at the creepy characters on the cover of the book. He realized at that moment that those characters… were array characters. He had literally discovered the array character for time.

Unsure if he should take a bite out of the fruit, or open the book, Lex did the only sensible thing and opened it. After all, some fruits needed to be peeled first. What if opening the book was the same as peeling it?

Somewhere else, out in the universe, Jack the fairy suddenly felt the connection between himself and Lex disappear. n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

That was not the same as dying, for he would have felt that in his soul. He just felt the connection disappear altogether.

Jack paused, and recalled the last thing he remembered. Since he and Lex were the same, they shared each other\'s memories. But for some reason, he could not remember what Lex had been doing. All he remembered was that he entered the preliminary tournament.