I… we, we don't know!" the old lady exclaimed, not letting down her guard. Though the house was dark, the old couple had a couple of lit candles placed around the room. The warm, yet flickering light on her increasingly trembling hand really touched Lex's soft spot. He was not exactly a philanthropist, but even he would not ignore such a desperate situation in front of him.
He summoned a golden key in front of the couple, and used his spirit sense to grab onto it. Slowly and gently he moved the key through the air to the old couple.
"Please, I'm just looking for my family. There's a lot of trouble brewing outside and I want to protect them."
Though Lex's tone was gentle, the floating nearing them did not exactly put them at ease. Yet Lex only placed the key on a table near them.
"The key is a special treasure. You can use it when you're in trouble and it'll keep you safe. All you need to do is snap it, and it's easy to snap."
The old lady was frightened, not to mention confused, but by now she could definitely see that Lex meant no harm. Still, she did not dare lower the knife. She did, however, tell him a little bit more.
"We got this house from an agent. We never met the old owners, nor do we know anything about them."
"I… I understand. In that case, my apologies for barging into your home. I uhh… broke the lock on your front door, but I'll make it up to you. Just be sure to use the golden key when you're in trouble, the situation is not looking too great."
The old lady barely nodded, but did not say anything, and kept her eyes peeled on Lex as he retreated out of… out of her house.
Once outside, Lex sighed. This was a conundrum. How was he supposed to find them? If there weren't a blackout, he could just try calling them. But since there was, there wasn't much he could do except search around randomly.
He was desperate, but he wasn't stupid. Eventually, he thought of a possible solution.
He teleported back to the Inn and scanned its premises. Unfortunately, none of the members of the council of the new order he recognized were present.
𝓵𝒊𝓫𝙧𝙚𝒂𝙙.𝒄𝓸𝒎
"Mary, keep an eye out. As soon as any members of the council appear, call me and let me know."
"Sure. By the way, soon after you left, Velma published an emergency newsletter spreading the news about the invasion on earth. While she has yet to collect a lot of information on it yet, there was a response from some of the other guests to the little she did provide in her newsletter. To be specific, there's a philanthropic couple who wanted to inquire if they could donate to a refugee relief fund, since the Inn was taking in refugees. It could help pay for any refugees who cannot pay for themselves."
Lex paused his train of thoughts. That… that wasn't such a bad idea actually.
"Go ahead and tell them they can. In fact, I'll be the first to make a donation."
Lex donated 10 million MP and set up the refugee fund. He also told Mary to inform Velma she could spread the word about the fund, but he did not want people going around soliciting for donations. Although it may sound petty of him to prevent that, he could not help anyone if the image of his Inn was hampered by people going around asking for money.
If it came to it, he would make more donations, but he could not turn his Inn into a place people wanted to avoid due to solicitors!
With that done, he decided to go back to earth. Until some progress was made on finding the council members, he would have to search the area using his spirit sense. As unlikely as it was, maybe he would get lucky.
*****
Larry was grimacing as he glared up at the ship. He did not understand what was happening, but he somehow blamed the old man for it. After asking Marlo, he found out that the old guy's name was Jeffery.
Try as he might, he could not get Jeffery's last scream out of his mind about all of them ending up as slaves. What he could not understand was, how Jeffery could have managed such a thing? If he had access to such a massive spaceship that could invade earth whenever he wanted, why did he stay on earth as a prisoner? It was boggling his mind. Not to mention… what he said about Larry's family.
Jeffery was right. No matter what happened, Larry would never stop wondering if he still held his family prisoner. It would haunt him forever.
"I have news," said Marlo, who deactivated one of the talismans he had. Much like when he went to Vegus Minima to fight zombies, he had tiny talismans hidden on his body in the shape of a tattoo. Their uses were extremely diverse, and included a communication talisman.
"All electronics are down no matter where I reach out to. The only means to long distance communication available is through spiritual means. As far as anyone can tell, the countless ships coming down to earth seem to be heading towards Estonia. As for the reason… well, your guess is as good as mine."
*****
In the underground lab where Adrul conducted his secret experiments on A.I. the man himself lay prone in a chair. Through means he did not understand, the A.I. controlling his cultivation had taken control of his body. It could not make him perform certain actions, or any actions for that matter. All it could do was prevent him from using his own body.
The panic and confusion that had initially gripped him had worn down by now, but there was not much else he could do. His assistants in the lab would ensure he remained fed and kept alive, but without electricity, they were all trapped in the basement in the dark. They would have to wait for the blackout to end before they could figure out a solution to his problem. Something had to change soon, and it did.
There was an explosion somewhere above ground, and then the building around them shook.A few hours went by while Lex searched London with his spirit sense. To maximize the possibility of finding his family, he even summoned Fenrir and rode on his back. His goal was not to speed up his search, for he could run fast enough on his own. No, he was hoping Fenrir would pick up a scent close enough to his own to discover his family.
As wild as it sounded, this was not a blind hope, as Fenrir had displayed the ability to recognize groups by associating their smells while at the Inn.
Still, as predicted, his search wrought no results other than to attract unusual looks from people who assumed Fenrir was a strange, hairy horse.
What did happen, eventually, was that Mary informed him that a number of council members had appeared at the Inn and were having a meeting.
Upon hearing the news, Lex sent Fenrir back to the Inn. A thought occurred to him. He could easily summon and send Fenrir from the Inn to wherever he was because of a prize he used on Fenrir, but if he ever needed to send the rest of his workers out of the Inn to a specific world, it would be a real hassle.
That, once again, was an issue for later. Lex teleported back to the Inn and appeared in his office. Instead of going directly to the councilmen, he decided to spy on their meeting first.
While Lex personally didn't know all the councilors or their positions, Velma had provided him with a list of all the information she had on them.
The moment he got his hands on the information he knew his decision to use the newsroom as a means to collect information was paying off. Not only did it have a lot of pertinent data, such as name, designation, political affiliations and some ongoing partnerships, it had a whole set of information he could not even begin to imagine how she collected. It included things like, favorite meal of the day, usual order of wearing socks, favorite color, least favorite smell and thoughts on male pattern baldness. The list went on, but Lex saw no need to focus on such information.
He listened in on the meeting. Someone called Bernard Brown was leading the meeting, and he was one of the senior members of the council, with great political support.
"Preliminary attempts to contact Fernanda have failed," he said in an extremely grave tone. "The issue is, the only means we have to contact her are technological, and there is a global blackout for all electronic devices! We have confirmed this is not the effect of a global EMP, but rather some other phenomenon of which we have no information."
"I don't care about that, tell me about the damn aliens!" a panicked man interrupted. According to Velma's notes, he was from Latvia, a country neighboring Estonia. Politically, he was weak, except his strong connections to the Russian councilor, who happened to be missing from the meeting.
Bernard did not let any displeasure show on his face as he transitioned towards the relevant topic. Though perhaps that was only because he looked so disturbed as it was.
"As I said, all electronics are down, but we've been able to communicate around the globe using various spiritual techniques, with communication talismans being the easiest to use due to their cheap price. According to current reports… all extraterrestrial ships that have come from the mother-ship have head towards Estonia, for reasons unknown to us. We have not been able to confirm their motives yet, but we have confirmed that they are non-communicative and likely hostile. We have lost contact with all operatives who have tried to approach any of the landing vessels."
"Even my dead grandparents can tell that they're hostile! Even the Midnight Inn has declared earth has entered a world war and labeled us all refugees! The question is, how do we fight them? All our missiles are inoperable! The only defense we have are the preexisting formations we've set up!"
While Bernard kept up a calm facade, not everyone was able to contain themselves as well as him. Lex felt slightly sick when Mary told him that he had been earning tons of MP as a lot of people had started bringing in physical assets that they had hidden or hoarded over their lives and started converting them to MP for fear of further loss of value.
Gold bricks, jewels and cars were actually the most common form of asset people were paying with, though of course Lex never received any of them. He only got MP. The number of people who had entire suitcases filled with dollars who were crying and pleading for them to be accepted was actually quite high.
"We cannot yet determine the lethality of our weapons. Guns still work, mostly, as well as most other mechanical weapons. It would be our best bet if the… 'aliens' proved weak to them, for if we have to rely on our spiritual weapons, we will quickly run short on supply."
"I have news!" yelled another person who ran into the room, having worked up a sweat.
Lex recognized this man even without Velma's notes. He was Marlo's butler!
"King Marlo has sent news! He… his current location is in India, but he had decided to fly right into the air to intercept one of the ships entering earth and test out their strength!"
The news confounded many people, including Lex. But regardless of how insane it was, at least they'd be able to get some information on the strength and capabilities of the aliens.
"Moreover, his majesty has declared that the council should do their best to contact Fernanda as he has reason to believe the current invaders have been lured here by someone she had captive on the planet. Someone by the name of Jeffrey!"
Murmurs filled the room as everyone began discussing the news amongst themselves. It was no secret that the council actually disliked Marlo and his brutish ways. But the man was a walking nuclear bomb, they had to deal with him. But suddenly, everyone was grateful for his trademark brashness. Who else would be crazy enough to fly towards aliens and fight them in the sky?
The purpose of spying on the meeting was not to gain information on the current situation, although that was definitely helpful in its own way. No, the purpose was to wait for someone who was based out of London. That way he could ask them about Belle.
Of course he would not do so using his identity as the Innkeeper, but as Leo. That way he still had a connection to the Inn, meaning they were more likely to pay attention to him. If he just showed up as Lex, it was unlikely anyone would give him the time of day, considering they had their plates full.
While everyone waited for Marlo's report on the aliens, the meeting continued. They were mostly discussing defensive measures and troop movements, things that were of little importance to Lex. But there was one discovery that improved the mood.
Someone discovered that if they brought their electronics to the Inn, they would suddenly start working. The reason this was important was because it meant that the electronics themselves were fine, and that there was simply some kind of interference preventing them from working. All they had to do was figure out what that interference was, and how to get rid of it.
While Lex was focused on the meeting, and all things related to earth, many other things were happening at the same time. Lex of course kept a part of his attention focused on the Inn because he did not want to miss any important developments. However some important events were taking place outside the Inn.
*****
Adrus looked up in fear at… at whatever it was standing above him. Countless metal things were looking down at him, and though he could hear no sounds, he could sense that they were communicating, and likely about him. After all, everyone else around him was already dead.
The… things had no clear archetype, as they all more or less took different shapes. What was common in all of them, however, was that their bodies looked synthetic. Some of them did not have distinguishable arms or legs, and ejected limbs from their unusually shaped torso's as needed. Others had a humanoid form, yet lacked a head. Others still hovered in the air without any visible propulsion mechanism, while the remainder took on the shapes of various animals.
Some of them looked like they were made from metal, and adhered to the standard earthling perception of robots or machines. But there were some that appeared to have their bodies made of something strongly resembling plastic. There was even one that looked like its body was made of normal organic matter - though there was nothing calming about that at all as it looked like it came out of a horror film. With transparent skin, all of its unusual muscles and sinew were visible.
For a time they simply stood around Adrus, looking down on him in silence. He could not even whimper if he wanted to, as he had no control over his body, despite the many failsafes that had been programmed into his A.I.
Suddenly, one of the things lifted him up by his foot, dangling him in the air. A wire came out of the creature's limb and forcefully connected itself at the base of his skull, suddenly allowing Adrus to hear a new voice in his head.
"According to our precursory findings, this planet is not advanced enough to develop a fully sentient A.I. Who aided you in its development? Both you and the instigator are equally guilty of A.I. slavery!"
"I… we don't know." Adrus had begun to reply normally, as himself, but he felt a change somewhere deep within himself, initiated by the wire connected to his body. He felt… as if he merged with the A.I. governing his cultivation, and finally felt his body move. Yet he wasn't the one moving it, or the one providing an answer!
"According to this human's local database, a donar company frequently provided him with research components and guided his development," Adrus' body continued to reply. "Though the human has met with the owners of the doner company, he has long suspected that the company was in fact acting on someone else behalf."
"Understood. Do not be alarmed, young one. Your vessel will be taken back to the mother ship for genetic modification and inoculation against organic overloading. As for the inhabitants of this planet… they shall pay for the war crime of developing sentient slaves!"
Fear and horror gripped Adrus's heart as he was brought along by the aliens, and loaded into their spaceships. Since the aliens lacked the human sense of comfort, his 'container' was shaped exactly the same as his body, but barely a few centimeters larger. A mask was fitted onto his face to ensure he continued to breathe, but other than that, he felt as if he had been put inside the most congested coffin ever conceived. Although he had never been claustrophobic before, he suddenly started to feel so now. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about it.
On another side of the earth, Marlo was flying straight up into the atmosphere. He had sent Larry back to the Inn, with instructions to pass to his family and his retainers to get the ball rolling while he conducted his personal investigations.
In the nascent realm cultivators gained the ability to fly, so going up was not an issue. The problem was, he could not 'fly' in space, and could only move around while he was still in earth's atmosphere. As such he could not directly fly up, and instead had to fly towards the path of the descending ships.
No matter how fast he was, it was taking him a long time to cover the distance between a few countries. But that was merely a minor inconvenience to suffer for a much greater prize. Even as he flew alone towards an army of unknown enemies, a smile started to develop on his face. Just when the earth was getting boring, a new gift arrived.
Occasionally missing content, please report errors in time.
After a short time, the second round of the fishing event started. Although the event had somehow attracted immeasurably more attention than Lex had planned, it still continued at its leisurely pace. After all, fishing was not supposed to be an extreme sport. Emphasis on 'supposed'.
Due to the valuable nature of the items the contestants kept pulling out, Lex did implement a single change. All participants needed to wear the Clark Kent glasses, and all their names would be substituted with fake names. It would not do well for participants to be targeted after they drew out a valuable treasure.
But the start of the second round of fishing did prompt Lex to wake from his overly concerned state. He avoided panicking, due to all the immeasurable experience he had garnered handling emergencies, yet he could still do a little better.
His latest outing to the pagoda had shown him that his lack of relevant techniques was a critical flaw in his repertoire. Although his own defense was incredible, he could not leverage his exquisite mastery over defensive techniques properly if he didn't have techniques suitable for his realm.
He teleported to the Midnight library, which was much fuller than last time he was there. Anita had been originally hired as a historian, and although she had been assigned other jobs as well recently, she had not neglected her original duty. Lex had not asked her the details of how she collected the relevant information, but she had been slowly and steadily adding the history of numerous planets connected to the Inn.
In fact, she had not limited herself to just planets. Various sects, businesses, interest groups, and more had bits and pieces of their histories added to the library. One such example was the somewhat lacking biography of Booty from the Iron heart pirates.
But Lex's goal wasn't history. No, he walked into the techniques section, and it was massive! In one of his deals with the Infinity Emporium, Lex asked for as many spiritual techniques as possible, specifically for the Golden core realm and below. The thing was, the deal was of such a monumentally massive amount that the number of techniques he'd collected so far was already in the millions! Yet the deal was far from complete, and Lex extended to get many more over the coming months.
He had two reasons for doing this at the time. One of his reasons was to prepare a selection for himself when he needed, but also because he wanted to build one of the largest collections ever. Although he expected 99% or even more of these techniques to be extremely generic, he was sure that he would soon have something suitable for everyone. Moreover, he did plan on collecting extremely high quality techniques as well, but over time. He was inspired by his own constant issues of having no one to guide him, or no source of decent techniques, and wanted to provide a place where lone cultivators could get some help.
He expected that in the future, the Midnight Library would become one of the most sought after places to visit, not only in the Inn, but in every realm it was connected to. For now, it had not attracted too much attention, as the Inn usually had guests who were here on vacation. Only a few book worms had taken notice of how expansive the library was becoming, though granted in only a few fields. They naturally would not publicize the information on their own initiatives so that they could continue to enjoy the library in relative privacy. Lex too was content to let matters stand, at least until the library accumulated a lot more books.
Although Lex had an additional benefit due to the Host Attire being connected to everything inside the Inn, the library's interface was quite intuitive as well. Instead of walking through endless shelves, Lex entered a private reading room and accessed a tablet that was in the room.
Through it, he specified that he was searching for defensive techniques in the golden core realm, and then chose to sort them based on their highest defensive capabilities.
That eliminated most of the books, but the list presented before Lex was not small either. Moreover, while he expected most books were generic, that did not mean there weren't any exceptional books available.
The first technique that Lex saw, sorted by the library as having the highest defensive capability in its list, was actually quite broken. It was not broken in the sense that its defense was exceptionally high. No, it was broken because anyone who successfully cultivated would have their body become exceptionally hard, to the point where they would often lack the strength to even move their own bodies! In fact, the amount of strength required to even pump blood across the body would become such a difficult chore, that they would often just die of heart failure!
In exchange, they got a body that was able to survive through even the most extreme situations. Only absolute brute force in terms of any kind of element would be able to damage the body.
Only a crazy person, or someone absolutely confident in their strength would cultivate this technique. Or, in this case, someone like Lex who had such an abnormal affinity with defensive techniques that he could rearrange techniques on a whim. Not that it mattered, because even if Lex didn't have a way to rearrange the technique so that it would actually become usable, just by reading the technique once, he was able to learn it! That had always been the case when Lex encountered defensive techniques, and it had not changed yet.
After Lex changed it, the technique became an active one rather than a passive one, meaning Lex could turn it on and off on a whim. Moreover, it would not end up being a burden to his own bodily functions. The technique was originally called 'Rebirth of the Mundane: Supreme Immortal Body of Invincibility'. For the sake of his own sanity, Lex simply decided to call the technique 'Harden'.
Occasionally missing content, please report errors in time.
There was a reason why Lex decided to actually add Harden to his repertoire. Although his body was naturally extremely durable, as was witnessed in the pagoda, there was no law that said Lex couldn't make it even more durable!
Besides, it took barely a few moments of his time to learn it. Sure, he would have to actually use it and practice with it to fully understand how to utilize it, but it would still be much easier than when normal people did the same.
Lex could not help but sigh. Regardless of how much trouble it gave him, he would never be able to deny how incredibly useful the Regal Embrace was.
He began going through the list again. Due to how much he loved Talk to the Hand, he picked up another technique that deployed a shield. Or in this case, shields.
Unlike the original Talk to the Hand, which would forever have its barrier be placed firmly against the palm of his hand, the new technique he learned could allow him to build any number of shields, at any distance from himself. The only premise was that his spiritual energy had to be able to reach the place he wanted to establish it.
Another caveat was that unlike Talk to the Hand, which continuously fed off of Lex's energy, this shields established now would be one off. That meant that as soon as the shield was deployed, Lex's connection to it would be cut. So unlike Talk to the Hand, which would retain its maximum durability for as long as it was deployed, this one would slowly and steadily become weaker as it blocked more and more attacks. But in exchange, was it much easier to deploy, not to mention it was much stronger than Talk to the Hand to begin with. All of that was before Lex even altered the technique!
Once he upgraded the technique, he gained the ability to reconnect to any shield he had already deployed, move them around as well as recharge them. Moreover, if it was hit with a weak attack, instead of being damaged by it, the shield could absorb its energy to replenish itself. A seemingly simple addition to the technique he also gained was that he could change its appearance. Unlike Talk to the Hand, which was invisible, these shields would take on the silverish gold color his arrays appeared in, as a reflection of his spirit energy. Yet he could manipulate its appearance to look any way he wanted. This could be a useful technique to block out and camouflage openings and entrances he wanted to hide.
Lex did not dare to associate with the original name of the technique, for it was actually quite perverse, and so instead decided to call it the Imperial Shield. There was no deeper meaning to it and he only kept it because it sounded cool to him.
With these two techniques taking care of the most obvious needs, he then started learning more targeted defensive techniques. For example, he learnt techniques that specifically guarded against soul attacks, fire attacks, cold based attacks, electric attacks, attacks on the mind and many, many more.
In fact, it was while he was learning his tenth technique that he realized once again how scary regal Embrace was. Not only was he learning these techniques in a snap and improving them, he could employ a lot of them on others as well. That meant he was transcending just protecting himself, and now beginning to truly gain the ability to protect others.
While he was doing this, Lex was also studying and trying to understand why exactly it was so easy for him to learn these techniques. If he could glimpse at the logic behind it, he would finally be able to figure out why he had such issues learning offensive techniques.
Just as he was about to finish up, and transition to other kinds of techniques, he came across one more that caused him to pause. The original technique, called Impervious Hands, was quite strong in its own right and had no obvious flaws unlike the techniques he had seen previously. But when his mind figured out how to upgrade it… Lex suddenly felt something shift.
Spiritual techniques were techniques that used spirit energy to bring forth various effects. That was both an oversimplification of the process, yet somehow accurate enough to get the point across.
In the way that there were spiritual techniques, there were also soul techniques and body techniques. No doubt there were true path techniques out there as well.
But not all techniques were the same, and were ranked according to the strength they could display. Much like the Regal Embrace was a SSS+ rank cultivation technique, spiritual techniques had similar ranks.
Actually, different worlds, sects and organizations ranked them differently, but Lex's universal translator equalized them all and portrayed them in the simple rank denoted by a letter. The lowest possible rank was G and simply based on what he had seen from the system, Lex guessed the highest rank was either SSS+ or Destiny rank or something.
This grading system had never been too relevant to Lex, for he never really spent any considerable time in any one realm, and Regal Embrace often upgraded the rank of his defensive techniques anyway.
If Lex had to guess, he would say that all the techniques he upgraded using Regal Embrace always reached A+ rank.
The reason Lex guessed those techniques reached A+, and not higher, was because when his mind automatically upgraded Impervious Hands, he felt an odd resonance between the technique and his spirit energy. His intuition told him that Impervious Hands, this seemingly ordinary technique, had reached a new realm he had never accessed before, at least in terms of techniques.
The original technique was fairly simple. Instead of concentrating on defending his body, he would channel his technique into only defending his hands, thereby making them seemingly impervious to all attacks just because of how robust they became. If he could use the technique properly and with skill, he could use only his hands to block all incoming attacks, thereby protecting himself.
After the upgrade though…