The Innkeeper

Chapter 2335: I swear

Months went by, and eventually the notorious pirate crew that had recently come to be known as the Pocket Pirates - much to Jack’s utter dismay - suddenly disappeared. The observers had no idea, but the various Deities and missionaries knew the full extent of the harm he had done to them.

In total, he had stolen almost 400 kgs of the purified, divine metal that made up the various treasures they’d made after getting their hands on divine ore. In truth, that was an absurd amount! Jack literally had more divine metal than quite a few Dao Lords and most Deities!

The meager number should not fool anyone - this was an extremely rare resource that was difficult to come by - especially since the Artica realm closed its borders due to the war - and due to the immense competition, most did not get their hands on much to begin with.

Some Deities literally tried to ally with the Dao Lords of the realm to exact their sweet vengeance on that pirate, but that is when they discovered that in the Folklore realm, people did not respect power. No, they didn’t respect money or status either. The only thing they respected was a good story, and Jack the Pocket Calamity had good stories.

From his trip into the River Styx, or how he struck a deal with the Dragon Dao Lords, to how he had played with Deities like they were puppets, Jack had a lot of good stories, and the potential for a whole lot more of them.

So none of them received help, no matter how they asked or tried to persuade. Of course, it could also just be that no one wanted to provoke seven Dragon Dao Lords just in case they thought fondly of him. Who could say?

Jack himself had no idea, for after accumulating enough divine metal, he went into hiding. He needed to absorb that divine energy, strengthen his cultivation, and try to send the metal all the way to Lex. Since he’d done it once before, he figured he might be able to do it again.

Thus, he took the smallest, most invaluable treasure of the lot he had stolen and began his experiments. He drained the divine energy till the treasure was basically empty, and then began to bond with it.

The process was slow, but surprisingly smooth. He thought that breaking a Deity’s connection to the tool would be incredibly hard, but he forgot that miracles did not need to make sense, and that he was practically swimming in the energy that granted miracles.

The issue, however, was that miracles could not be granted on demand. Once he bonded with the treasure, he focused on what he wanted. He focused on sending the divine metal to the piece of his soul fused with the necklace - to send it within the Gilded Hollow. Yet it was easier said than done.

The last time he achieved such a thing, it had been by accident. This time, trying to do it on purpose, especially when his target was potentially within an extremely difficult to find, closed off place, was not something he could do so easily.

Jack was not one to quit so easily, though, so he continued to try, and slowly a few more months passed. His focus had not wavered this entire time, yet something happened that suddenly diverted his attention.

A contingency that he had put into place had been triggered. Z was undergoing the Heaven Immortal tribulation! That was... faster than Lex had expected.

Although neither Jack nor Lex could sense Z’s location, he could sense the activation of his contingency, which likely meant that the kid was doing alright. Heck, if he was breaking through to the Heaven Immortal realm, he was probably better than alright.

Across realms, maybe even across universe’s, Lex and Jack smiled at the same time. If that lazy child was working so hard, then Lex had no excuse not to work harder. He closed his eyes, closed his mind, and focused on nothing else. It was not a matter of whether it could be done or not - impossibility did not exist. He would send the divine metal over to the necklace, make the necklace far stronger than it currently was, and reclaim everything he had lost.

Jack’s wings began to flap, and the divine energy from the various treasures around him began to flow out and pour into his body. Overhead, the dark clouds of a Major tribulation began to gather as Jack teetered on the boundary of ascension.

*****

It had not been an easy journey, not only because of his predicament, but because Z always refused to take his help. He marched on the battlefield with an army, but all they ever did was play music for him while he honed himself on the battlefield.

They called him the Mad Slave. They called him one who had lost all reason, and even the will to live. They called him many things, but what they did not know was that Z was none of those things. From the start, he had only focused on one thing - matching up to the standard of Lex.

Maybe, one day, he hoped he could be stronger than him, but if not then at least being his equal would suffice. Yet if that was the case, how could he accept help? How could he walk the easy path, the path that everyone else walked?

So then today, or rather, these past few months, when he faced an enemy he could not defeat directly, what did he choose to do? Naturally, he spent the month carefully positioning everyone, orchestrating the battle directly and indirectly, to bring himself face to face with the strongest opponent. Then? Well naturally, he learned from Lex, and used a Major tribulation to defeat his enemy.

On a distant mountain, the Slave Army stood, playing a number of instruments as if Z’s personal orchestra as lightning rained down from the sky, the thunder almost synchronising with the music.

Standing in the center of a scorched wasteland, Z heard an unexpected voice inside his mind.

"If you’re hearing this, then that means I’m not around for your Heaven Immortal tribulation," spoke Lex in a very casual tone. "I doubt the lightning and fire tribulations should be an issue for you, but let me give you a piece of advice for the Spirit tribulation. Do not trust the voices on the obelisk."

The voice sounded like something that had been recorded as an afterthought, and it caused Z to click his tongue. Why the hell was he so casual about the lightning and fire tribulation? Those things could literally kill immortals!

Z didn’t have time to waste on Lex’s nonchalance. Instead, he activated one of his new forms that he had created after years of study and practice.

"I swear to the Innkeeper, if he’s chilling somewhere sipping a pina colada..." Z muttered. He did not finish the thought, mainly because he could not afford to distract himself. The lightning was coming for him.

*****

Lex smiled as he felt his contingency for Z activate, but he didn’t think about it for long. While Jack was trying to send him divine metal to improve the necklace further, Lex had been devouring the resources of the Gilded Hollow like a black hole.

Not only was he strengthening and restructuring the necklace, he was also adding things to the space inside. He had ground up resources until they were fine sand and poured them inside the space in the necklace, forming a bed of grey and black sand.

He added countless organic and inorganic material inside, and then unleashed concentrated spirit essence, forming a sea of spirit essence within the necklace. The weight of the essence would, over time, turn the sand into stone and provide him with the perfect foundation upon which to continue developing the space inside the necklace, and enhance his fake realm.

At the same time, he gathered items which contained trapped fragments of law, and used them to create pillars within his fake realm. For now, he let them stay as they were, but he would eventually use them to establish an artificially designed set of laws for his realm.

After years of devouring, the necklace had undergone a significant evolution, the likes of which he could not have even imagined. He had already surpassed his original plan - the one he had formed before he knew he could enter the Gilded Hollow.

What did that mean? That meant that, theoretically, the necklace could already produce the amount of strength Lex thought he might need to exact his revenge. Now, he was developing it even more.

Lex suddenly paused, and interrupted his thoughts, when he sensed something on the very boundary of his spirit sense. He’d already gotten used to the Gilded Hollow so far, and had not encountered a single danger that could actually threaten him at all - not that he took things lightly because of that.

He would not make such a basic mistake. How could a realm that could kill Dao Lords ever be simple? That’s why, the moment he sensed something unusual, he paused immediately. Yet upon investigation, he found that what he sensed was not a threat.

Instead, it was a message in a bottle.