"NO!" a scream echoed through the Inn, accompanied by a horror-stricken Helen. She did not know when she stood up, nor did she realize that she had screamed. All she felt currently was panic so deep it and firmly grasped her heart.
Even Lex, who had been marinating in his own endless anger, was woken up from his thoughts by her yell. He was startled again to see Alexander on his screen, standing with a sword running through his chest.
"Absolutely pathetic," the head said, as its body left the sword in Alexander's body and approached it. "For all your arrogance and bravado, I expected a better fight. But you fell so easily for the first trick I used. Although I must give you props from moving out of the way just enough to protect your heart."
The demon picked up the head and reattached it to its body, now looking down upon Alexander, who was still standing in the same posture he had been stabbed in.
"But then again, it was my own fault for expecting so much from such a pathetic species as humans. How can you even begin to imagine my power? You probably thought I was dead after you cut my head off. But I'm not a low level demon like the zombies. I'm a nightmare demon, understand? I'm immortal!"
With that the demon burst into a fit of laughter. It seemed like he was enjoying talking down to Alexander, but the truth was the demon was only casually chatting while its head properly reattached to its body..
A being such as that really was outside the understanding of humans. Even the guests at the Inn or the Jotun soldiers had a dark expression on their faces. Alexander was someone who had attracted a lot of attention, and his current condition left a bitter taste in the mouth.
But compared to a demon that could live even after getting its head chopped off, let alone Alexander, all humans looked weak and insignificant. What inherent power did humans have? What was their strong suit? If they did not cultivate, humans were so weak that a fall down a small flight of stairs could end their lives.
All humans were really good at was adapting. They could understand the rules of the world around them, and since they could not bend the rules, they could use them to their own advantage. They could fashion weapons out of wood, make utensils out of stone. They could grow crops in the dirt and predict the weather from the wind. Even if they advanced enough to build a civilization advanced enough to fly in the sky and travel through the stars, all their accomplishments were external. They could harness the energy of the universe to make the most complex of tools to aid them, but in the absence of those tools, they were still weak. They could not reattach their own severed heads the way the demon had.
Of course, if humans ever gained the ability to directly interact with and control energy themselves, instead of just taking advantage of their understanding of how energy normally behaved, what they could possibly accomplish was… unimaginable.
"Relax girl," a calm voice washed over Helen, attracting her attention from the nightmare on screen. Behind her stood Audrey, Alexander's grandmother. "My grandson is not so easy to kill."
Helen was taken aback by the old woman's seemingly calm attitude. If Brandon were not in a meeting and saw the current situation, his reaction would not be much different from Audreys.
They had unwavering faith, not only in their grandson, but in the life-threatening training he had undergone his whole life. They had confidence even more so because what was spirit energy if not a supreme form of energy, and what was cultivation if not… controlling and manipulating that energy?
Pramod continued to give a condescending speech, not at all noticing that the golden aura around Alexander had not diminished at all, unlike the last time he had taken Alexander by surprise. If anything, the color seemed to be getting richer.
If one could see into Alexander's body on a microscopic level, they would notice millions upon millions of nanobots repairing the wounds in Alexander's body. The nanobots gathered in clumps around where the blade pierced his lungs, preventing blood from entering them as well as getting ready to seal the wound as soon as the sword was removed.
But that was not all. Normally, when a human healed, his cells would undergo a division to replace the lost or damaged cells. But there was a limit to how many times a cell would divide during a person's lifetime. However, there was a technique used by cultivators who practiced both their body and spiritual cultivation at the same time which would use up all the spiritual energy in a person's body not only to force the cells to split, but undergo a rejuvenation which would actually increase the number of times the cells could split.
That was only one aspect of the technique called Buddha's Grace, and the technique was a lot more complicated than that. It was meant to be used when one was critically injured, and would allow the person to heal just enough to survive a little longer. That was because, normally, the amount of spirit energy a person wielded was limited. But what if there was unlimited spiritual energy? And what if the body would not be exhausted no matter how much it healed itself?
By now, even some of the guests noticed that the teenager who had a sword hanging out from both sides of his body was still standing, while he should have fallen down a long time ago.
"Immortality," a single word from Alexander's lips interrupted Pramod's speech, who suddenly woke up to the fact that the human still had not keeled over and died.
"It sounds interesting. Let me give it a try."
He grabbed onto the blade protruding from his chest and slowly pushed it back out, all the while maintaining eye contact. When the sword was pushed all the way out and fell to the ground, only a small amount of blood squirted out of the wound before a metallic sheen covered the wound. If people didn't know better, they would assume that instead of a human, a robot stood before them.
"While I'm at it, let me put your immortality to the test!" he said with gritted teeth, a twinge of anger coming through. He was putting on a brave face, but only he knew how close he actually came to death. If his heart had been punctured instead of his lung, while he could have continued to live, he would not have been able to move. The demon could have easily finished him off.
Right now, his body was still healing and using a tremendous amount of spiritual energy while at it. The more energy that he burned, the darker the surrounding aura became.
Without any words, the two suddenly launched towards each other and clashed, fist against fist. They had prepared to smash each other to bits, but a small spark from their first clash completely ignited the aura around Alexander.
Instead of gold, he now appeared to be covered in flame, but he did not slow down even for a moment. An ungodly amount of strength flowed through his arms as he punched the demon's face, determined to see if he could still live after he squished it to a pulp.
While Alexander himself still remained unaware of the fire surrounding him, the guests, and especially Pramod, were extremely aware of its awesome power. The strength of Alexander's augmented fists could be dulled by his armor, but the heat of the flame seemed to reach directly into his being.
Pramod roared as his ominous purple aura exploded around him, but before he could use it to his advantage, six flaming blades attacked him from different angles. Pramod barely defended himself, but his aura was eviscerated.
Alexander did not give him any time to rest, though. He raised his right hand in the air, and the six blades oriented themselves right beside it. Small yellow balls of light floated out of his fingers and started collecting at the tip of each blade, influenced by the blazing glory of the flame around the teenager, the balls slowly became alight.
Normally this would be a slow process, but the rate at which Alexander was burning spirit energy sped up the process so that in a couple of seconds, six flaming balls hung in the air. This was the technique he had learnt from John, called Final Glory – meant to be used as a last resort that would normally drain him of all his spirit energy. Alexander did not care much for the name, but its effect was truly amazing.
Alexander pointed his hand at Pramod and shot the blades towards the demon as if out of a bazooka. Each blade passed through the flaming ball, absorbing its energy as it passed.
Pramod immediately sensed the threat and let out a ferocious roar before slamming the ground. A wall of dust rose into the air, hiding the demon from view, but that did not prevent the now flaming blades from reaching him.
Six earth-shattering explosions rocked the entire small pocket dimension, immediately attracting the attention of each participant. They looked towards the center, wondering what had happened.
But while everyone was feeling a mix of shock and awe and reverie, Alexander cracked his neck a couple of times before he slowly started walking towards the dust cloud.
"Who knew immortals could make such great punching bags?"
An angry and crazed roar responded to his casual remark, but he did not care. Six blades were floating around his right arm again, gathering six balls of flame, as he prepared his next round of attacks. Today, he would beat the crap out of an immortal.
The crowd at the Inn was going wild. They enjoyed the twists and turns in each fight, swooned as they saw the various weapons on display. Alexander's fight was just one of many, quite a few had managed to make a name for themselves. A few outstanding beasts attracted a lot of attention, and naturally many of the humans. The Jotun soldiers did not dazzle with ostentatious displays, but their extremely consistent and steady performance was an award winner. Even up until now, they had not suffered a single casualty.
The participants themselves, though, had a very different mindset. Most of them were extremely tired. Large-scale battles were very different from small scale fights, and they had to balance their physical and spiritual stamina, something that not many were trained for. The mental fatigue had also started to wear them down. But despite all of that, they had around 5 hours left, and somewhere between fifteen to twenty thousand zombies still standing. They didn't even want to kill the zombies, they just wanted to get their hands on the treasure chest the horde was quickly escorting back, but just that seemed a momentous task. And if they weren't able to do this much, destroying the node would be even harder.
But little did they know, the node was almost destroyed simply by accident. Pramod, battered and beaten, kept trying to lure Alexander away from the center. For a while now, he had just been using devastatingly powerful attacks that threatened to destroy the node just by attacking the vicinity near it.
He himself was bleeding from all over, and his armor seemed destroyed in many places. But he truly did not care about the damage he was taking – in a sense, he had not lied when he said he was immortal. Such attacks, no matter how many times he received, would never kill him. Of course, he would not explain that to Alexander.
The only thing on his mind now was to hold Alexander off long enough till his zombies brought the treasure chest to him. After that, he would let Alexander destroy the node because the truth was he had realized it was impossible for him to actually kill Alexander right now..
While all of this was happening, Lex had calmed down now and was watching the game with a critical eye. He did not know enough about cultivation to understand the complexities of the techniques and abilities being used, but the one thing he could understand very clearly was his own inferiority.
As of late, he had been getting slightly arrogant with all the influence he held at the Inn. People older and stronger than him hung on his every word, and he made decisions arbitrarily. In brainwashing himself to seem more confident for his performance, he had at some point really started believing himself something great.
But all it took was a single crisis on Earth to bring him back to reality. As much influence as he had at the Inn, outside of it he was nothing. His personal strength was weak, and Lex Williams' connections were all for naught. He was so caught up in avoiding trouble on Earth that when trouble came, he had no one he could ask for help. Even his connection with Marlo he had terminated.
But this realization did not mean he was indulging in self pity. Far from it, in fact. He was waking up to the cold hard truth, so that he could remedy it. If he stayed within his delusions, a simple accident was all it would take to cause him irreparable damage.
With his self-actualization achieved, he needed to decide what to do next. He already put up a commission for items to heal the soul or information about it, so now in that regard all he could do is wait.
Much more importantly, Lex was worried about his family. Without moving a muscle, he used his ability to put up another commission in the Guild room for detailed information about the situation in London, which is where his family was currently staying.
He also put up another commission for general information about the details behind what was happening on Earth.
Once he had enough information, he would then decide what to do. His greatest power and asset was the Inn and its influence, and he intended to use it fully. Currently, his attention was split between the family heads and the games. They seemed to be waiting for someone, which was good enough. The moment they learnt anything, so would he. And in case his family was in trouble… he would hold events, put up commissions, offer jobs, give out trials, whatever it took to make sure they'd be safe.
"Lex, you're getting angry again," Mary said softly, waking him from his thoughts. She was sitting on his shoulder, looking at him with a little bit of pity. Lately she had spent less and less time with him, because she realized she could not help herself but give him recommendations. That in itself was not a bad thing, but he needed to learn how to make decisions based on whatever information he had himself. After all, if her way of doing things was so great, she wouldn't be…
"Thanks," Lex muttered, and turned his attention back to the game. He needed to keep himself occupied.
Back in the game, the horde had neared Pramod enough that he completely ignored Alexander and sprinted towards the horde. He couldn't let the human realize that the horde had the chest or he would use his overwhelming firepower to steal it.
From Alexander's point of view, it merely seemed like Pramod was running away. Initially, he thought to chase after him, but by now even he had realized that despite doing a lot of damage, he was unable to kill the demon. And with various other forces chasing close behind the horde, Alexander decided it was a better idea to look for and destroy the node before they arrived.
He didn't know which of them was able to get the prize, but it hardly mattered to him anymore.
"Squads 1 and 2…" before Alexander could continue to give orders, he realized that his earpiece had fallen out or had been destroyed at some point. He could not communicate with his soldiers, so he would have to figure this out on his own.
Right now, he had no equipment or weapons other than his blades, so it would be a little hard to determine the location of the node. His emotions, in the heightened state that they were in, made it difficult for him to make a detailed plan, so he went with the most basic and brutal one.
He started bombarding the ground with an endless barrage of Final Glory. The ground shattered and quaked as his attacks landed. Each attack brought about its own cloud of dust and dirt to the point where Alexander felt like a smoke machine, but he did not stop. And, just like that, in the stupidest way possible, one of his attacks finally reached deep enough and hit the node, destroying it.
A siren rang throughout the battlefield before the Innkeeper's voice was heard, full of energy and mirth.
"Congratulations to Alexander Morrison for single-handedly destroying the first node, and kicking off the games in such a splendid way! The rest of you performed remarkably as well. Why don't we get you some well-deserved rest?"
With that, all the participants were covered by a protective bubble, and teleported back to the Inn. Since many of them were in combat, when they returned, they were spaced far apart so as to not accidentally harm one another.
The sudden change caught many of them with surprise, and most of them felt frustrated rather than relieved that the game was over. After all their hard work, the points for the node had been single-handedly snatched by Alexander! Of course, the other Earthlings were ecstatic. Though they separated from Alexander, his points would ultimately count towards Earth's total as well.
Followed by the feeling of frustration, they were hit by exhaustion. The next game was supposed to be in around 17 hours, which was definitely not enough time to completely rest up. This was not even considering those of them that had been wounded. But of course, since they could think this far, so could Lex, and he had already taken care of it.
"To all the contestants, I recommend you return to your allocated bases and get some rest. The housing in each base has been fitted with the healing capabilities of the Recovery room, so that all remaining participants will be in tiptop shape for the next match."
The participants, too tired to think about anything else, started marching back towards their bases to get some rest. The sounds of hooting and cheering from the coliseum made a nice backdrop to their return, but while most Earthling participants were reveling in their victory, Alexander was staring at his grandmother.
His grandfather was missing, and so were the other family heads. Something must have happened. Something bad.
The hours after the game ended passed in a much needed lull, at least for the guests. After watching for several hours straight, despite the excellent excitement, they were getting tired. Many chose to stay in their rooms to sleep, some decided to return to their respective planets. Those that returned to Earth soon received a big surprise. Everyone had plans to return to watch the next match, but how many would actually return was yet to be determined?
Will Bentham was one of the guests who had decided to stay at the Inn. Truth be told, he was seriously considering living at the Inn perpetually, as the air on Earth was too putrid for him to tolerate after spending time in this heaven. This plan of his was slowly starting to seem more likely because he had placed a nominal sum as a bet to show support for Alexander. Keeping in mind the lad's excellent performance, he had received a whopping 11,000 MP as credit! This solidified his plan to continue betting, small amounts of course, and could use that money to supplement his plans – not that he was really short of money, but he had never disliked a sudden windfall.
While Will had become an unexpected winner, most people had lost their bets – including Anthony, who had placed a personal bet that the Jotuns would be the ones to destroy the node. Since this was the first match, people had bet only small amounts, as they did not know what to expect from the participants. The next match would likely be when the real betting began. Despite that, Lex had made a spectacular 330,765 MP profit from the bets alone.
Something worth noting was that other than Will, Igishima won nearly 8000 MP in bets. Oddly enough, his prizes didn't come from a single win, but from various random bets. It seemed as if the tree did not understand the concept of gambling very well and randomly placed bets on whoever it thought looked good.
Other than that, his income from food and other services was only 440,765 MP since about 15,000 of the mouths he was feeding were participating in the games. Even though he was not really in the mood to pay attention to these things, he could not help but remember just a month back when he was struggling to raise a measly 10,000 MP. In comparison, his current total was 981,530 MP.
But he did not touch the MP this time. He planned no upgrades and didn't think of fixing any issues. This MP would stay in reserve for now in case he needed to use it for any particular reason.
He spent his time meditating back in his room and told Mary to inform him when the people who were going to negotiate with the family heads came. While Lex was meditating, a lot of people were waiting in anxiously..
Brandon, of course, had already cooled down and was spending time with his grandson, laughing at his reaction when Alexander finally learnt about the golden aura. As it turned out, Brandon had specially modified the technique so the user would not be able to see the aura. It was the only way to have people actually practice the technique all the way. Helen sat quietly in the corner. Since she learnt about the war, she had not spoken a word.
Anthony was having all the data analyzed and discussing the strategy for the next match with Crawford-41. It was confirmed now that Pramod had been able to get his hands on the second chest, which would likely make the next match incredibly hard. He had also sent someone to invite the leaders from Earth to discuss the strategy, but apparently they were preoccupied at the moment. By now, as dismissive as he was of Earth, he at least recognized they were not completely worthless. He had even sent a clip of Alexander's battle to Ragnar back on Vegus Minima.
Speaking of which, the bubble surrounding the first battlefield had disappeared once all the contestants retreated. Ragnar immediately secured the location and had his troops try to locate any remnants of the node. If they could understand it better, they would be able to search for it themselves on the other planets.
The beasts were undergoing their own form of strategy meetings. They had racked up a decent number of points, but not enough. The sloth was having a few discussions with the various leaders from the planet about how they can improve performance. The consensus, generally, was that during the first five games, they only needed to get a decent number of points. It was the last five games during which they would steal the show.
Like this, the time passed and just as the first light of the new day shone down on the Inn, three new guests appeared at the Inn. In the lead was a woman, and behind her two men. This was the first time they had come to the Inn and took a look around. When their personal holograms showed up and introduced them to the rules and asked if they needed help with anything, they were particularly impressed.
"This is a good place. If I can cultivate here, I feel like I'll be able to break through in just a few months," said the man with short, blonde hair.
"We need to find out more about this Inn. If we can cultivate our forces here…"
"Focus on the task at hand," the woman said in a tired voice. She was exhausted from babysitting these two. Why couldn't hidden co-conspirators be more serious, like in the movies?
Little did she know, her two partners were thinking the same thing about her. She had an unusual form of OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) wherein she could only focus on one task. Anything at all that was not completely relevant to that task would irritate her to no end, and she would, in turn, irritate them to no end.
"Fine, fine, let's just get on with it."
The three asked their holographic-assistants to escort them to the family heads. As soon as they met someone from the entourage from one of the families, they were escorted to a room for a meeting.
Mary naturally woke Lex up so he could pay attention.
In the room, four of the family heads and a few other relevant dignitaries were staring at the three newcomers with murder in their eyes. The three of them were quite nonchalant about it though – they already knew about the security provided by the Inn.
"Don't look at me like that, grandpappy Sam. What will you do if I get scared and run away?" asked the blonde man sarcastically.
"You have some gall to speak to me like that, Kevin!"
The blonde man only chuckled and ignored the senile fool.
"So you really have betrayed us," said Richard, looking at the other man.
"Is it really a betrayal, old man? The way I see it, we just took our inheritance a little before you died. It's not a big deal."
"You disappoint me, Lee."
"The feeling is mutual," he said, as he comfortably took a seat. To be honest, Lee felt like annoying these geezers a little more, but he could tell the preamble conversation was already irritating Miranda, and he'd had a long day taking over the world. He didn't want to hear her bickering.
"Were all families involved?" the Queen asked Miranda.
"Does it matter? That's not what we're here to discuss. Someone hurry up and call Brandon so we can begin."
"Ho ho, I didn't know you were missing me so much," rang Brandon's voice as he appeared close behind Miranda. She didn't know if she was imagining it, but she could feel his warmth behind her. Despite herself, Miranda blushed. Then Audrey appeared in the room and pulled the century old playboy to his seat – pulled him by the ear, of course.
The other family heads felt stifled. They didn't know if they were angrier at their descendants who had appeared before them or this stupid old man who had somehow completely stopped caring that the Earth was being taken over.
"Let's begin," Miranda said, sitting down, her gaze still lingering on Brandon. He had gotten a few new tattoos since the last time she saw him…
Miranda gulped as she suppressed her wandering thoughts and regained composure. To help her retain her focus, she made direct eye contact with the Queen – the unofficial leader of the five family heads.
"It is only out of filial… pity… that we are even meeting. A lot of the members from the council wanted to directly wait for you with Gravedigger formations back on Earth and finish you off once and for all."
The family heads suddenly grimaced when they heard those words. Gravedigger formations were the nuclear deterrents of the cultivation world. It was a hassle to set one up, simply because of the resources required to actually make one, but they had no theoretical upper power limit. If used properly, and if they were caught unaware, those formations could be a real threat to them.
"Hey, don't forget about Sam jr. who wanted to use hydrogen bombs," pitched in Kevin.
Miranda gave Kevin a dirty look, but continued, "Yes, many ways of… disposing of you were discussed. You should be thankful that in the end the council only decided to imprison you at the Inn."
"Hey, I can think of a few ways to thank you," said Brandon with a wink.
Without missing a beat, Audrey stabbed Brandon in the leg with a small dagger, completely unconcerned that the Innkeeper would consider it an attack.
As if to emphasize to her husband to behave, she looked towards the two men sitting beside Miranda and said, "I'm considering taking concubines. Would you be interested?"
Back in his room, Lex felt like flipping a table. This was supposed to be a serious meeting. WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON?