The Innkeeper

Besides messing with his awareness of space, or perhaps moving him through space, it was also messing with his concept of time. He only felt like a few hours had passed, at most. Only when the strange feedback he got from being awake and asleep at the same time distracted him from his environment did he realize that, in fact, he had already spent days inside the hole.

For others, Lex imagined that the difficulty of the hole would be the strange creatures that blended perfectly within the darkness, remaining completely undetected. It was a fair assumption, since they were also fairly powerful, almost reaching the Golden core level, not to mention their fangs and claws all contained a powerful poison.

But for himself they weren't even worth considering. The first time he encountered them he was surprised. He was not used to not being warned by his instincts, but his fairy body could not replicate them. He also wasn't so adept at fighting in this new body yet, nor did it have the incredible defense he normally boasted.

But Lex had, after all, plenty of combat experience, and sword intent. After he cut down the first of the creatures, which would then dissolve back into the darkness as if they had no real bodies at all, he employed his Glyph that gave him a powerful presence.

Since then, any shadow creatures, as he named them, that he encountered would immediately reveal themselves and prostrate themselves before him. At that point, he couldn't even bring himself to use them as target practice. It was just as hard to hit a shadow creature worshiping you as it was to hit a smiling face. All he could do after that was explore the hole. Since there was no real time limit he was not worried, but it wasn't like he wanted to spend all year here.

After he paused, he came up with various methods he could use to try and overcome this hurdle, but there was one in particular that he was interested in trying. He cut out a platform for himself to sit on, and placed his Glyph right above himself. Then he began to cultivate.

Although fairies weren't supposed to have affinities, per se, he had discovered that fairies were really strange and defied common sense.

In fact, Lex personally felt like the thing holding them back most was not the curse but their personalities. If they had more aggressive or more ambitious personalities, then with all the tools they had at their disposal they would be practically unstoppable.

That was also why he wanted to see what would happen if he cultivated in this dark region. Would he absorb its strange properties? There was only one way to find out.

As he began his cultivation, alongside spirit energy, his body began to absorb the darkness as well. It was as if… the darkness itself was energy of a specific nature. But alongside the darkness, the creatures began to turn into dust, and got pulled alongside the darkness right into Lex's body!

Lex himself felt nothing different, and kept cultivating for hours, right up until baby Lex woke up. The sudden shift let him know that he once again spent a long time cultivating, so he slowly wrapped up.

When he opened his eyes, Lex was surprised to find that the atmosphere in the hole had changed. The overbearing darkness had changed into normal darkness, and all the creatures were gone.

He checked his body and was pleasantly surprised to find that he had broken through to the Golden core with his fairy body. That was easy. More importantly, Lex felt a connection, not to any element, but to the shadow plane.

Suddenly, a few things made sense to Lex, and he also realized he had gained a few abilities.

Firstly, the reason he kept getting lost was because within this hole, for whatever reason, the shadow plane was leaking out and mixing with everything else. He was not moving through space, he was moving through shadows!

He could not wrap his head around why that worked the way it did. Even with his spatial ability, his understanding of space was in its initial stages compared to the proper complexity of what space really constituted. The shadow plane made even less sense to him. But it was what it was. He didn't need to understand why it was happening to know that it was happening.

Secondly, while his body did not gain any affinity, it did hardcode a specific affinity into his body which when activated resulted in an ability. Oddly enough, the ability had nothing to do with shadows, but instead granted him stealth. Both he and his fairy dust would become visible, and lose all aura and presence.

Thirdly, the last ability he gained was to do with navigation. He would be able to channel laws related to the shadow plane, which meant that he wouldn't get lost in it at least.

With his problem solved, Lex once again started traveling through the tunnels, this time without the Glyph. He wanted to see if his stealth worked on the shadow creatures.

Soon he returned to a portion of the tunnel containing the more malevolent darkness filled with nightmares that had taken to worshiping Lex, and it felt like home. He could see through not only the darkness, but the folds of the planes in the hole, and saw them as shortcuts - if used correctly.

He also remained completely undetected to all creatures. Even when he reached the end of the hole, and found the Null clams, they did not respond to him. When he opened them up and grabbed their pearls, they only became confused, but did not realize someone had come in.

Fifteen minutes later, Lex had made his way out. He had also thought of the perfect name for his second clone to go by, especially since he had a ship he planned on keeping with him.

From now on, he would be…