The Innkeeper

"Mary, what's a realm?" Lex finally asked. Currently, he was being carried high in the air by some force, flying quickly away from whatever danger the man had been talking about. It was fortunate that whatever force held him also protected him from the rain and wind. Yet after a while, he was left with nothing to do, and with poor visibility, he wasn't able to see much around him either.

That allowed his mind to wander, and he was finally able to ask some questions.

"The universe is bigger and more complicated than your understanding of it. Your original perception was that the universe, as infinitely vast as it is, is connected by physical space, and that you can traverse that space to reach any destination. That, however, is incorrect.

"The easiest way to explain it to you, so that you can understand, is to think of the universe as a multistory building. The realm that you are from, let's call it the Origin realm, since that is where you originate from, is just a single floor in that building.

"Above and below that floor are other floors, all of which are also realms. The size of each realm is not necessarily the same, and the rules that govern each realm do not have to be the same either."

Lex whistled mentally. The universe, as massive as it already was, had suddenly become much bigger.

"I'm afraid there's more to a realm than just that," Mary said, appearing before him with a worried look on her face. "The information I'm providing you is actually above your authority level. A special event has triggered emergency protocols, which have temporarily given you a higher authority. See, traveling between realms is no simple task. It is something way beyond your authority level, and is definitely way, WAY beyond anything a Wooden ticket should have been able to do.

"Some kind of accident must have happened while the system was scanning for planets, which resulted in you being teleported to a different realm. Now, there's good news and bad news. Which would you like to hear first?"

"The bad news," Lex said, as he mentally prepared himself.

"To understand the bad news, I need to explain a few things to you first, taking advantage of your increased authority. See, the capabilities of the system are actually linked directly to the user, meaning you. The system is constantly absorbing a higher form of spiritual energy, but how much and how quickly it can absorb the energy is based on you. The stronger you are, the faster the system can absorb this energy.

"The system uses this energy to function, as well as grow its capabilities. The system hides this growth behind the authority system, which is designed in such a way as to promote you to increase your strength directly or indirectly.

"This is also the reason behind why it takes so long for the system to anchor itself to the planets you visit. If you had a higher cultivation realm, the system itself would be stronger, and the speed at which the planet is anchored would be quicker.

"Now, with that in mind, since you have been sent to a different realm, but you are not as strong as you should have been, the time it will take for the system to anchor to this realm… honestly, I have no idea."

Lex visibly paled when he heard the news, but then quickly recovered. First of all, he was thankful that he wasn't in this situation because of some mistake he himself made. Self doubt was an extremely difficult enemy to overcome in any situation, and didn't need his help in growing it. Secondly, since he had gotten the system, he had been constantly dealing with various difficult situations of different degrees. If this had been Lex prior to the Midnight Games, maybe he would have spent quite a while panicking. Now, however, he quickly took hold of himself and focused on the solution.

"And what's the good news?" he asked, his tone unwavering. Unaware if he was doing it on purpose or by accident, Lex had stepped into his Innkeeper persona. The Innkeeper was strong. The Innkeeper was calm. The Innkeeper would be able to handle any situation thrown at him.

"The good news is your increased authority, as well as the emergency protocols. Instead of waiting for you to grow stronger yourself, to speed up your return, the system has initiated a special feature. You can feed the system any kind of energy you encounter, which will directly go towards speeding up your return. There's a progress bar in the system you can check. Furthermore, during the period of your increased authority, the system will divulge more information to you than you normally would have access to."

Lex silently absorbed the information as he wrapped his head around the new information. His first reaction was cursing at the fact that he put all his spirit stones in his apartment instead of the gift shop. If they were in the gift shop, he would be able to immediately withdraw them and feed them to the system.

His second reaction was asking Mary, "do you still have access to the Inn? Can you still control the Vine?"

"Yes, fortunately, I still have access to the Inn."

"Well that's good at least. In case I get stuck here for too long, I can directly start the expo from here, as well as manage the Inn directly through the system. People might get suspicious though if I don't show up for a long time, if only I had hired a manager or something."

"Hello, what did I tell you? You have increased authority, which means I can directly appear as a hologram at the Inn now. I can stand in as the manager while you're away."

"Yes, that's a good idea," Lex said.

At this point, he was not forcing himself to be calm, he still felt stressed and panicked somewhere in the back of his mind. He had just become trained in handling difficult things so that he was able to continue to function even in difficult times.

"If I have increased authority, can I learn extra information about this realm?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, you can. This place is called the 7 Nation Crystal realm. Unlike the Origin realm, which consists of planets and stars, this realm consists only of one gigantic land mass that covers the entire realm. The size of this realm is approximately the size of your solar system, and its name originates from the seven dominant countries that rule this realm, consisting of 7 different races.

"There is something unusual about this realm that the system is unable to identify, mainly because the diagnostic function of the system is extremely basic. Whatever the anomaly is, though, it is likely whatever caused you to be pulled in - that's just my personal guess, though."

"Is there any way you can tell me anything specific about this realm and its inhabitants?"

"No, not really. The system…"

Before Mary could continue to talk, there was a flash of lightning particularly close to Lex, and suddenly he saw something in the air in front of them.

Before he could process what the 'thing' was, or react in any way, Lex heard a loud boom, and it wasn't from the thunder.

A fight had broken out in front of them, and three of the men who had been leading them started fighting the enemy while the fourth person quickly brought Lex and the rest to the ground.

"Hide and wait for us," was all the man said, before quickly returning to the sky to fight.

Lex tried to see if his Fancy monocle could observe what was happening up in the sky, but it was too dark and everyone was moving too fast for even the Fancy monocle to detect what was happening.

"What are you doing?" one of the guys from the group whispered aggressively as he yanked Lex and pulled him along. It was still raining heavily and the ground had become very muddy, making it difficult to run, but the fear for their lives pushed the group to keep moving. Lex was surprised at the group's sense of unity, but that didn't change the fact that since all of their cultivation levels were below Lex, they moved very slowly.

"Where are we going?" Lex asked the boy, pulling him along. He hoped they had a plan instead of running randomly, and indeed they did have a plan. It was to run in a straight line as far away from the fight as possible.

"There's no use hiding, the Kraven can track us using our body temperatures. The only thing we can do is get as far from the fight as possible and hope we don't get caught up in the crossfire."

Lex had no idea what these 'Kraven' were, he had only gotten a glimpse, but they definitely weren't human. Despite knowing how weak he was compared to those fighting in the sky, Lex pulled out the Heavy Harley.

Then something crashed in the ground behind them, releasing a shockwave so strong they were all flung onto the ground. Lex quickly picked himself up and looked behind himself. He still could not see anything, so he may as well have just kept running.

That's when the Fancy monocle flashed in giant red letters, "DANGER!"