The Innkeeper

Once he spotted the geysers, Lex flew high into the sky to get a good view of the entire region. With a birds eye view, he finally realized why he hadn't been able to tell there was an entire city here when he received information about the whole realm.

The leopold had built their city in a way that incorporated nature into their construction style. They were not worried about wasting space if a clump of trees couldn't be worked with, or a specific region had a river running through it. They instead adapted their construction to the natural contours of the land. They had managed to keep alterations to the land to a minimum, which was quite impressive.

But Lex put them out of his mind and instead began trying to guess the next location he had to teleport to. The problem was that as far as he could tell, the region where the resin was had no distinct features. It was a relatively barren area because of how rocky it was, but the region was vast. He might need to search for a long time.

After approximating the distance, Lex teleported away, but arrived in a location that looked nothing like where he wanted to go. He had to teleport back to the geysers and try again, and then repeat the process a few more times.

The tenth time he teleported, and still was not able to find the place he was looking for, Lex got the feeling that his upcoming year was going to be very tedious. He needed to come up with a better strategy for searching for his target.

Honestly speaking, the Midnight realm was quite beautiful and he would really like to explore it some other time. But for now he kept teleporting, attempting to adjust his teleportation range according to his estimates.

Eventually, after much longer than he anticipated, he finally reached his destination. Compared to the usual lush and green landscapes he was used to seeing, the place he was in now was mostly various shades of gray and brown. Even though there were plants growing here, they too had taken on the shade of the land.

Despite the lack of any mountains nearby, the terrain was extremely rocky, with countless bounders covering the land, and the occasional spiky rock randomly sticking out of the ground.

It was quite commendable that in only a few hours of searching, he'd found the correct spot. But correct was relative. The resin was buried somewhere in this region, but he had no way of knowing exactly where, or how deeply it was buried. This search was infinitely worse than searching for a needle in a haystack.

Fortunately, he had a plan that he hoped would work. He turned his attention to the ring on his hand. The treasure spirit for the ring had gone to sleep after suffering damage while he was in the Void behind space, but Lex had more than healed it during this time. He had allowed it to sleep because he wanted to allow it to recover as much as possible, but it was time to wake it up.

After all, a part of that spirit's soul was a dragon, and it was well known that dragons were the best treasure hunters in the universe! Well, actually, Lex wasn't completely sure if they were unrivaled in the entire universe, as that was too vast for him to speculate on, but they were pretty good. If anyone had a way to find an extremely valuable, and incredibly well hidden treasure, then it should be a dragon.

Hopefully, a part dragon treasure spirit should also suffice.

Lex pricked his finger and squeezed out a single drop of blood, and then turned it into its soul state to heal souls, before drizzling it over his ring. The ring absorbed it easily, and started to warm up.

If the ring felt warm to Lex, then it was probably hot enough to burn through someone else's finger.

"Wake up Pel," Lex said using his spirit sense. "Your vacation has gone on for quite a while."

His voice, imbued with a trace of Domination, instantly roused the sleeping Pel from its deep slumber with a start!

"Huh? Wha- Who? Ma- master is that you? The last thing I remember was… ugh no, actually I have too many new memories to go through," Pel said lethargically.

"Yes, you suffered a minor injury which caused you to fall unconscious. To heal you I had to strengthen the ring a bit, which is probably why you have access to more of your memories, but you kept sleeping. I didn't want to disturb you, but now I need a bit of your help, so I couldn't wait for you to wake up anymore."

"I… I didn't wake up because I was reliving the memories in my head," the ring spirit said, with a voice so drained it seemed like he was recovering from a hangover.

"How are you feeling? Are you able to sift through your memories for something useful? We're hunting an incredibly valuable treasure. It's a kind of resin formed during the birth of a new realm."

"Do you mean the Amber Chaos resin?" Pel asked, suddenly sounding both invigorated and incredibly excited. The warmth of the ring turned mildly hot for a moment, before cooling back down.

"Amber Chaos resin is a Dao level ingredient that is so gentle it can be absorbed by any living creature in any realm and massively boost their strength, potential, lifespan and many more! It's the ultimate treasure for any dragon! In my previous life I spent countless years dreaming about it!"

Pel's excitement was such that Lex could not help but imagine his cultivation mat hopping around in excitement like a little kid about to receive his most anticipating birthday gift!

"I'm not sure if that's the same resin you're talking about, but it might be. The problem is, it's locked down by a seal of some kind, and I can't even locate a trace of its aura. I have no way of finding it."

"Of course, it's sealed! It has to be! But that's no concern to a dragon! That just makes the hunt even more worth it."