The Innkeeper

After a long time, Lex eventually found out why the Cosmic sea was so dangerous to everything it touched. It was not that the sea would kill everyone, or destroy whatever it touched. Rather, it assimilated everything into it.

The Cosmic sea appeared to be liquid, but in reality it was its own type of entity altogether. It could not be qualified and solid, liquid, gas, plasma or anything else Lex was familiar with, because it was a diluted essence of what made up reality. Basically, besides chaos energy, the cosmic sea is what the Midnight realm was using to build itself up.

Only and only once all of the cosmic sea was used up would the Midnight realm finally exit the very initial stage of being formed.

How Lex found out about the various traits of the cosmic sea was by testing out a technique that let him create many temporary clones that could be controlled within a certain range until they were killed or ran out of energy. The clones did not really contain any part of Lex's soul, so he was not afraid of it dying,, which is why one of the first things he did with his clone was send it swimming in the sea.

The clone was much weaker than Lex, and could at most amount to 1% of his strength, which is why Lex almost expected his clone to immediately die. But that's not what happened. Instead, he could feel as his clone was assimilated by the sea, turning into more of whatever the cosmic sea was. It reminded Lex somewhat of Cosmic Erosion Elixir which would absorb other things to create more of itself. But in this case, the sea was a lot more selective, and a lot more potent.

Having said that, Lex could resist the assimilation, which was good practice, not to mention it easily boosted his defense. Lex had not yet figured out how to absorb some of the sea during his cultivation yet. He was hoping it would give him some kind of massive powerup, but it did not seem possible yet. Considering the fact that Lex had by now absorbed two pieces of resin, the fact that he couldn't absorb the sea made him think it might be on an entirely other level!

Or that it just couldn't be absorbed. Speculation was pointless.

"Morning Lex," said a massive Koi fish as it stuck its head out of the sea.

"Morning Nemo," Lex responded, disregarding the slightly uncomfortable feeling the fish gave him.

After Lex learned what the sea was, he became genuinely curious as to what the monsters that could swim in the sea were! As it turned out, each one of them were extremely unique beings that could grow to become terribly powerful under the right circumstances.

The only reason Lex knew that was because Mary, who could now share more of her knowledge, knew about them. That was a big deal since even Pel had no idea what they were.

But Mary assured him that they would not be an issue since most of them would naturally die out once the cosmic sea was used up. Lex didn't mind so much, except for the fact that he and Nemo had become good friends.

The poor fish was incredibly lonely, since it had never met another living being. This was not because it lived in the cosmic sea, but because it naturally gave off an aura that was many times more potent than Dragons might! Even with the Inn suppressing its aura, it still managed to make Lex feel uncomfortable.

Lex had tried experiencing its aura outside the Inn, and had to rely on Domination to keep himself from crumbling. In its presence Lex felt a suppression similar to the from beings higher than him on the Cosmic Ascendance Spectrum, but much more extreme.

Naturally, given the extreme circumstances of the fish, Lex had scanned it, and suddenly everything made much more sense.

Name: Nemo

Age: 18,001

Sex: ~

Cultivation Details: Nascent soul peak

Species: Heavenly Koi Sovereign

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: 1

Remarks: Sovereigns can stay at the Inn rent free. Don't even think about charging!

Nemo was yet another sovereign, though it was much more naive and simple than even the turtle, which was technically a baby, since it had never met another living being. Since all it had ever done was swim in the Cosmic sea, Nemo had no whims or desires. It wanted for nothing, nor did it even understand what desires were. In fact, it had no complicated thoughts at all.

It was just happy that it had met Lex, and that there was another living being it could talk to. Considering how innocent and wholesome Nemo was, Lex wanted him to become an employee of the Inn, and that's when he learnt something new about systems. They absolutely refused to constrict Sovereigns in any way!

The turtle had become an employee because it wished for it to begin with, and if one day it wished to leave, the system would subserviently free it of its bindings and wish it well on its future endeavors!

Lex finally began to understand how dangerous Sovereigns actually were, but what he didn't understand was why the fish had such a strong aura when the turtle didn't. But that was a question no one could answer, not even Mary.

"Did you go swimming with Little Blue again?" Lex asked as he carefully dipped his toes in the cosmic sea.

Little Blue was not so little anymore, and had grown quite powerful as well. But regardless of its size and power, it still acted like a baby, which is why it and Nemo immediately became good friends. Considering Little Blue could tolerate the cosmic sea, and could be around Nemo as long as they were in the territory of the Inn, the two often went swimming together. Fenrir, who often felt left out, could only sulk on the beach since it could not enter the waters.

"Not today. Apparently Z is having a concert today, so it's busy with that."

"Ah, the concert, right. Well, be sure to watch the concert through a projection screen as well. There's no reason for you to feel left out."

"I will, but first I wanted to see if today is the day you can enter the sea."

"Seems fine so far. Now I just need swimming trunks that won't evaporate," Lex said as he watched his pants slowly assimilate with the sea. No matter what, he was not in the mood to swim naked in a sea made of universe fuel alongside a Sovereign. That was practically setting himself up for some kind of misadventure.