Chapter 649 Ash
The conversation with the dua about the distance to the Crystal nation did not last too long. Unlike the other races, which had a clear positive or negative relationship with one another, the Crystal race equally shunned all the other races. They kept their territories closed, and did not usually bother much with the outside world.
That did not mean that no one was allowed to enter their nation - just that they were extremely selective in who entered. In a way, one would have to prove themselves worthy of interacting with the crystal race.
The duo mentioned nothing about that, for they assumed that Lex already had some kind of relationship with the Crystal race if he was heading over, and they were technically correct.
Lex did not have much else to discuss with Bertram, as the man had already promised to provide Lex with a map leading to his destination.
That would have to suffice for now, though the two were still being very vague about how far the nation was. That was Lex's next great concern. The Crystal realm was as big as the entire solar system, and if the distance between him and his destination was equal to the distance between planets, it would take forever to reach! He could only hope there were enough teleportation formations.
He did, however, have something left to discuss with Jolene, and even Jess! Fortunately, it appeared as though Jolene knew about it and on her own requested that they 'have a word in private'.
Lex manipulated space and created a separate 'room' around the two of them, putting up opaque barriers so that no one could lip read what they were about to discuss.
"Are you satisfied with the results of your request?" Lex asked, without waiting for her to broach the topic. It was as if he already knew what she was going to talk about.
A random stranger had left a box with unknown contents at the tavern, with the hope to use the place as a drop off point for certain items, allowing Jolene to take the box at a later date. It was a discreet way of passing along whatever it is she wanted delivered, as she would never actually cross paths with whoever was delivering the package.
At first, she had only left a package at the Inn for 3 days, testing to see if the tavern was capable of isolating its aura. Once she discovered that it actually could, she had the real package delivered to the tavern to collect it herself later.
All of this was fine, as far as Lex was concerned. Or at least, it would have been normally. The fact that it seemed like Lex was aiding and abetting in probably illegal, or at least highly suspicious behavior did not phase him. What got to him was the fact that the aura from Jolene's package… was extremely repulsive!
The box she had left at the Inn to test if the aura leaked already disgusted Lex, even though he had no idea what it contained. The actual package itself was even worse. Technically speaking, Lex's real body had not been here when the package was delivered and received, but even the aura it left behind was so strong that Lex was still disgusted by it when he felt it.
𝒍𝓲𝒃𝙧𝓮𝙖𝒅.𝓬𝙤𝓶
Whatever the package was, illegal or not, he decided he no longer wanted to facilitate it. Although the purpose of the Inn and tavern was to host all guests equally without discrimination, Lex was not a mindless slave of the system's directives. Since it was disgusting to him, he no longer wanted a part in it.
"Extremely," Jolene stated with a massive smile. "You do not know how much you have helped me with this."
"I'm glad you are satisfied with our service," Lex said with a soft smile. "That is also why I feel extremely regretful to inform you that the tavern will not be able to help you in such an endeavor in the future."
Jolene was genuinely startled, as she was not expecting such an answer, especially since the previous exchange had gone off without a hitch.
"Can… can I ask why?" she asked hesitantly. She did not forget Lex's powerful aura, so she was hesitant to get on his bad side. Yet at the same time, this task was genuinely too important to her to let go of so easily.
"Rest assured, you did not break any rules of the tavern, and so there will be no effect on any other services you acquire from the tavern. But the matter of fact is, while I usually do not interfere in the matters of guests, the aura of the item you exchanged was… I found it too revolting. I did not investigate its contents, for I thoroughly respect the privacy of all my guests, but I cannot, in good conscience, continue to facilitate this exchange."
A hint of fear appeared on Jolene's face, despite the fact that Lex said he did not investigate the contents. This was an extremely sensitive matter, which she could not risk exposing, but at the same time could not give up either. Since Lex did not want to help out anymore, she would have to figure out another way.
"Please do not misunderstand," she explained while smiling weakly. "My… 'transactions' are not what they might appear to be. These are related to an extremely important issue that needs resolving. But since you do not want to facilitate them anymore, I will not bother you with them anymore. Not that it matters, as I am scheduled to depart soon anyway."
They talked a bit more while Lex ensured that he was not drawing any conclusions about her affairs, and simply did not want to participate in this particular one anymore.
Once they were done, Lex removed the barriers, ending their private conversation.
"I'll leave you and Jess to it," Jolene suddenly said, standing up. "There are countless matters relating to the wedding to get to, so there's no doubt you two will be holed up together for quite a while."
Amazingly, Jolene was completely back to her normal self, returning to her antics of trying to set up Lex with her daughter!
"I wish I could stay and help, but I just dropped by to introduce you to Jess. She can get in contact with me at any time, and if for some reason she can't, she knows full well what to do for the wedding."
Jess, with an extremely serious face, nodded, as if accepting a task that would determine the life or death of millions.
But while Lex joked in his mind, he was unaware that this wedding really would be such an affair. The interest of the nation, and thereby any family connected to its interests, determined the life or death of billions on the regular.
"I'm sure our cooperation will bear fruitful results. Believe it or not, I'd say I'm more invested in making this wedding a success than even you."
Jolene smiled at Lex's remark, but she was unaware that he really did care more about it than anyone else. He was determined to get a SSS+ ranking for this quest!
Once Bertram and Jolene departed, Lex was left alone with Jess who silently stared at him. Rather than feel like an awkward silence was building, Lex felt relieved. If she was as determined as her mother in her ulterior motive Lex would find this matter quite problematic to handle, but since she wasn't, things would be simple.
"Although we have six months until the wedding, I don't think we should waste a single moment," said Lex with a warm and confident smile. "Do you?"
Before Jess had an opportunity to reply, Lex stood up and opened the door to the private room, waving at Roan to send someone in.
As soon as he got this quest, he had delegated a lot of research tasks to the planning division, and even asked Mary to look up the best wedding consultants they could find - not to mention conduct extensive research on Indian wedding culture. What he did not expect to learn was that there was such an expert within his own planning division. The moment he learned about her, he decided to bring her to the Crystal realm and have her help out.
A tall, caramel skinned woman walked with, dressed quite casually instead of the usual formalwear associated with the Inn. Yet even in a T-shirt and pants, she looked stunning - though one should not expect less from a worker at the Inn.
"This is an expert I've called in who will be handling a lot of the wedding preparations. Since you'll be working closely together, why don't you guys introduce yourselves?"
The woman from the planning division looked at Jess, and gave her a soft, welcoming smile as if she was looking forward to working together.
"Hi Jess," she said, her voice calm yet confident. "My name is Aishwarya-Rai, but my friends call me Ash. It's a pleasure to meet you."
Chapter 650 Warm Up
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Jess was startled by everything that had happened, especially since she had been informed by her mother that she would be working closely with Lex. Jess was a perfectionist, so any task she did, she did with the aim of achieving perfection. This was both a boon and a flaw.
On one hand, everything she did achieved perfection, catapulting her reputation not only amongst her own family, but the general public as well. On the other hand, she barely ever ended up doing anything, because the more matters she picked up, the less time she would have to achieve perfection in each one.
For this upcoming wedding, she had started working the absolute moment she heard about it. In fact, to aid her in achieving the best possible task, she even asked her family to compile an extensively detailed file on the Midnight tavern so she could research it thoroughly.
She had, in her opinion, perfectly worked out Lex's personality, and mentally prepared herself accordingly so that they could achieve maximum efficiency in attaining results. As for her mothers wish for them to fall in love with each other, she knew nothing. After all, her one track mind could not handle multiple projects at the same time.
But from the very start, a wrench had been thrown into her plans! Who was this Ash? Where did she come from? She was not in the file Jess had studied! Moreover, why did it seem like Lex was transferring his responsibilities to others?
"The pleasure is mine," Jess said, shaking Ash's hand. But then she immediately turned to Lex and said, "when you say we'll be working closely together, do you mean that you won't be the one handling the wedding preparations?"
Lex smiled. Since he knew Jolene was setting some kind of love trap for him, why would he be stupid enough to stay put? Of course the first thing he did was look for someone to take his place. But he was not just shirking his duties - he had grander plans for the wedding than anyone knew, and only he could fulfill them.
"Yes and no," he said. "You and Ash will be handling the normal sequence of events and handle the bulk of the tasks. But that does not mean I won't be doing anything. You may not know this, but Pvarti and I are old friends, so naturally I want to make this wedding amazing as well. As such, I will be handling a special task which, if I succeed in, will take this wedding up by another level."
Jess looked skeptical, but Lex was sincere. From the moment he had received this quest, he had been thinking about how he could make it worthy of an SSS+ ranking. Having over the top theatrics was, of course, necessary, but that would not be enough.
Lex had some experience in completing quests with extremely high rankings, but each time it was more to do with luck than his own performance. Whether it was the appearance of two Demi-Daolords, or an actual Daolord, it was not something he could have anticipated or arranged.
But the experience had taught him something. Although his quests may seem random, they all were ultimately linked to the Midnight Inn. As an Inn, one of the most prideful things was that important or powerful guests made an appearance.
There were probably more layers involved in determining his quest ranking, but it could not be denied that that was a major one. As such, Lex had been thinking along the lines of who he could invite to make this wedding the best or most prestigious.
Originally he was thinking that Aegis would have to do, but now he had a better idea. The realm itself was being destroyed. If Lex could reach the Crystal race in time, and convince them of what was happening, he could use his vast experience in manipulating… eh, he meant his vast experience in persuading people to have the Crystal race treat this wedding as a kind of conference.
If a simple wedding between two human nobles ended up inviting the leaders of all the nations in this realm, he would consider that as an excellent wedding.
He did not know if such a thing would be enough, or if he could even pull it off, but for now that was the best plan he had.
Jess tried asking Lex what he had planned, and convincing him to once again take over planning, but he would not listen. Since he was planning on leaving anyway, he would only be here in the form of his projection anyway. As such, he was only planning on handling and resolving emergencies. His entire personal focus would be on reaching the Crystal empire.
He hoped he could reach it in enough time to set up the meeting with everyone, and make it back as well.
The following day, or, well, 24 hours later since the concept of day and night was screwed up here, Bertram returned to the Inn and handed Lex a leather scroll.
This was not at all what Lex was expecting when he had been told he was getting a map, but it would have to do. Instead of detailing the entire terrain and surrounding areas, the 'map' just listed a path using prominent landmarks as markers. It would have to suffice.
With everything in hand, Lex departed from Babylon, making sure not to be spotted as he did. After all, he was supposed to be inside the tavern this entire time.
After a solid 6 hours of running at his top speed, Lex finally stopped and pulled out the map. Fortunately, other than visual markers, the map also recorded auras and spiritual markers which Lex could track using his spirit sense and intuition. Or better yet…
He summoned Fenrir, who was sleeping, and woke up the pup. He climbed onto its back, and held out the map for it to sniff.
"Follow these auras," Lex told the excited little wolf. "Think of this as… we're going on a long walk, through an endless park, filled with monsters and unknown dangers. Also, we're on a time limit so you better run fast."
Fenrir howled in excitement and began running! Every word Lex had said excited it more than the last!
*****
A single spaceship was moving through space, unbothered by the much larger ships nearby. Each battlefront with the Fuegan was different, in many ways. The battlefront in which Alexander had fought was artificially created, and seemed like an endless plane. This one, which the Midnight Battalion was being brought through, consisted of an unusual region of space enveloped by a cosmic cloud.
Normal cosmic clouds were vast regions of space containing gas, dust and other small particles which brought about the appearance of a cloud. Yet this one not only contained hundreds of rogue planets, it also contained currents of chaos energy - a form of extremely concentrated spiritual energy that not even normal immortals could handle.
The interference from the chaos energy made it so that the actual contents of this cosmic cloud had been hidden from millions of years, serving as a breeding ground for Fuegan forces.
When it was finally discovered, it naturally suffered an all out assault. The rogue planet that the Midnight Battalion was being taken to was an extremely volatile, yet extremely important one!
According to the briefing Luthor got, the planet had some extremely valuable resources that were hard to find in entire galaxies, so taking control of the planet was of the highest priority. Yet the planet also had an unstable core, so it could not tolerate fights between higher level cultivators. Moreover, bombarding it from space was also out of the equation, because that would not only risk further destabilizing it, but also risk destroying the resources.
The man briefing Luthor made it very clear that to the leaders of this war, those resources were a lot more valuable than all of their lives, so he better perform well. The reason they were being led to such an important site as their first deployment was due to their excellent rating and performance. It seemed… that the Battalion had developed a reputation without even setting foot on the battlefield.
Of course, to Luthor, none of that mattered. He was indifferent to his superiors' purposes and reasoning. He simply didn't care. His one and only objective was to ensure that no one from the Inn died.
As the spaceship approached the planet, Luthor looked out at it from one of the screens projecting the outside, then turned to his comrades.
"Once, when I was talking to one of the Inn's oldest guests, I heard him say something extremely profound."
Luthor did not raise his voice, but it carried to everyone in the room, attracting their attention.
"He said the best defense, the best way to protect yourself, is to kill your enemies before they have a chance to attack."
He paused, and looked at the 'soldiers' from the Inn.
"Within one month, I want the planet wiped of all hostiles. That will be our warm up for this war. Let's go."
Chapter 651 Boring
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The ship carrying all the soldiers did not land on the planet. In fact, it did not even enter the atmosphere, for the planet was infested with hordes of mindless yet violent aliens. They were one of the many species that had been bred especially for wars against planets.
The Fuegan were, in fact, not the first to use such tactics, though currently they were the ones employing it the most in the origin realm.
The concept was simple. Once any civilization reached a certain level, and grew enough, they would gain the means of genetic manipulation, whether through technology or spiritual techniques or something else. With such advancements, there naturally came military applications.
Although uncommon, when larger civilizations wage war against one another, it is often too intensive on 'human' resources to invade each and every planet or strategic location. They would create fast-reproducing aliens to overpower or weaken the planet's inhabitants. Through long lasting wars of attrition, the planet was usually either overwhelmed, or was at the very least greatly weakened, all without the ones responsible putting in any real effort.
Of course, the perpetrators themselves naturally retained the means to combat this engineered alien species in case they ever needed to take the planet themselves.
There were many ways of managing this was circumnavigating the Henali prohibition on genocide, such as the case with the devils and zombies. Of course, in the case of the Fuegan, there was no need to care for any prohibitions or rules at all.
They populated the planet with extremely vicious creatures which were designed to not only tear apart any living thing, but the planet as well. That was also one of the reasons the planet was so fragile.
Once the ship got into position, all the soldiers were instructed to get into their launch pods. Besides those from the Midnight Inn, there were countless other teams as well, all of them much bigger than the Midnight Battalion. After all, regardless of how powerful or effective the Midnight Battalion might seem, it was just stupid to send 1000 soldiers to clear out an entire planet. Each team being sent to this planet, though, was considered elite.
Luthor couldn't have cared less about that, though. With an impassive face, as if he was bored, he climbed into his pod, after which support technicians came in and ensured he was properly strapped in.
Hundreds of thousands of pods were launched all over the planet's surface. The aliens on the planet noticed the rain, and tried shooting the pods out of the sky, but they came equipped with safety measures.
Like hail of metal instead of ice, the pods crashed into the ground and spread devastation wherever they landed, despite the fact that the ship had come as close as possible for launch.
When the pods opened, the soldiers who were completely safe climbed out. They had only a short while to reorient themselves and get used to the conditions on this planet before the aliens would attack them. But while everyone was gearing up and getting in position to defend, the Midnight Battalion attacked.
It could not be helped. Luthor, as well as the rest, were born in the clean and pristine environment of the Inn, yet now they were exposed to the polluted and stale air of this rogue planet. Although their masks had filtration functions, it was a pale imitation of what they were used to. They were irritated and uncomfortable. Fortunately, there were targets nearby to help them vent their frustrations.
All around the pods, where most of the soldiers were waiting to make their first stand, sounds of distant growls and the thumbing and stomping of approaching beasts could be heard. Well, all around them except one direction, where Z was warming up his speakers with a soft and tempered melody titled 'Enter Sandwoman'.
*****
Astride Fenrir, Lex was traversing the land with incredible speed. A part of him wanted to believe that if he had been running on his own two legs, he could have still maintained such speed. He couldn't be blamed for thinking like this, as he boasted greater physical strength and resilience than Fenrir. Even given the situation where he could replace the pups' sheer excitement and joy at being allowed to run so fast and freely for so long, with nothing but discipline, the one thing even he had to admit that he couldn't replicate was the tranquility of their journey.
The pup boasted great stealth capabilities, Lex always knew that. But after a certain time, lex realized that Fenrir wasn't actively being stealthy - it was ingrained into his very nature. If Lex had been running at the same speed, massive craters would be left in the ground with each step he took. The roaring wind would herald his arrival wherever he passed, much like the sound of a jet was usually heard even as it had already passed the area by.
Yet as Fenrir passed, not only was not a single blade of grass disturbed, there was barely even any sound. Lex watched in wonder as the duo actually passed by a few animals walking in the wild, completely unaware as they passed them by.
If Lex didn't know for sure that Fenrir couldn't do that, he might have started to believe that they were invisible.
𝑙𝒾𝒷𝘳𝑒𝑎𝒹.𝑐𝑜𝓂
Yet even as they traveled at incredible speeds and never took a break, even hours later they were still far from just their first destination. They were heading towards the capital of the Noel family's territory, from where they would take a teleportation formation and continue on their path. Lex was sure they were heading in the right direction, for they kept consulting the map, but as the map did not denote the distances, there was no way of knowing when they would reach.
This journey he was expecting to be tense and fraught with danger… ended up just being a long stretch of uneventful traveling - at least so far.
Ten more hours later, when they still had not reached their destination and it was nowhere in sight, Lex gave up. This was too boring. Back at the emporium when he heard about that spaceship which could easily travel even between galaxies, Lex had been impressed but did not think he needed such a thing. Now he knew he was wrong. He should look into getting himself a similar ship for long distance travel as well. The only issue was that transporting such a massive thing to and from the Inn was a problem. He would look into finding a ship that can easily fit into his spatial bangle.
Until then, he had to fill his time with something else, so he used his Remote presence ability to project an image of himself at the Inn.
It had been a long time since he hosted some guests himself as the Innkeeper. It might be interesting if he did that for a while after all this time.
Technically he could use this time productively and actually work, but after so much boredom he did not feel like working.
A scan of the Inn revealed that all was more or less normal. The absence of some of the most notable faces at the Inn had not gone unnoticed, yet he had strictly ordered not to reveal any information to the public. All anyone who asked was told that they had gone somewhere for special training.
Besides that, the focus of the guests seemed to be on the event of the week that was going on. Various performers and artists had been invited from multiple planets to have live shows. While earth was no longer in a position where anyone could focus on such things, some of the refugees participated. Besides that, a lot of participants from the other planets that were linked to the Inn came as well.
In fact, from X-142 there was actually a musical band consisting of all fairies. The tiny stars were unusually popular, though Lex had to admit their music was quite catchy.
As Lex was observing the event, and all the guests, his sight eventually focused on two teenagers. A short yet plump boy was accompanied by a taller yet skinnier girl. The faint resemblance in their appearance hinted that they were related. They were dressed oddly, with clothes that looked like they had been worn in sections. For example, the shirt - or whatever was covering their torso - actually consisted of 7 small bits of fabric which had to be worn one at a time. The same kind of clothing was also on their arms and legs.
Yet strange as it was, they were not showing much skin, and by the way that the two held themselves up, Lex got the feeling that they were dressed formally rather than casually, at least according to their own standards.
"There's too much of a crowd here," the girl complained as she looked at the crowded Main street. "Whoever sold us the keys lied to us. How is this a relaxing spot for a vacation?"