The Innkeeper

“Try though you might, you cannot escape from your appointment,” the dentist said, his wide grin beginning to appear very grating to Lex.

“You might want to get yourself checked out first,” Lex said. “You have tremendously bad breath. Probably tonsils. You should stay quiet to spare yourself the embarrassment of letting others find out.”

The dentist clenched his teeth and glared at Lex.

“Give up human,” the dentist finally said, dropping the facade. His voice became impossible deep, and carried a power to it that affected Lex even behind his barrier. Talk to the Hand version 2 had not elapsed, but Lex could sense that it was strained.

The dentist’s power was rising exponentially, meaning that he was no longer suitable to test the techniques he had come up with. There was, however, one last thing Lex still wanted to try.

Dr. Charles and Ragnar were working together to find a way to cure the zombification process, and for that they were creating a body cultivation technique that could fight it. Relying on Holy aura was one solution, but since it was the sole domain of Angels, it was not easy to get their hands on.

Though the Paladin, a smaller human force, somehow also had access to an energy similar to that. Lex had looked into their methods, and soon realized why, despite having an incredibly powerful cultivation system on their hands, why they weren’t able to grow as large or influential as a traditional cultivation force.

It was because their method of cultivation, while direct, was incredibly difficult and stringent, and was not suitable for the masses.

It required an oath, and though the oath could be anything, the Paladins had concentrated their research and study and distilled three highly effective oaths that most chose from. It was a path dedicated to justice and helping the weak.

Any selfishness, any weakness of character, any action that might even seem good but went against the core creeds or oaths, would result in a backlash, causing them to become Oathbreakers. The Oathbreakers, too, could cultivate, but were considered sworn enemies of the Paladin order.

Their history as well as social and political complexities, while interesting, were not what Lex was focusing on. He wanted to study their path to power to try and understand how exactly they gained access to the Holy aura. If he could understand it, then he could help Ragnar – someone Lex genuinely looked up to.

As such, after studying for a long time, Lex wanted to try his own hand at their cultivation path. Of course, he was not going to rely on the Paladin’s oath – he had come up with one that suited him much more. Although, according to their path, the more stringent the oath, the greater the feedback and power, Lex did not intend on properly following a Paladin’s path to begin with. He just needed a proper oath to which he could be entirely sincere.

Now, against this formidable foe, in this capricious environment, he had found the perfect opportunity to take his oath and see how it affected things.

But this was not something he could do casually. A Paladin’s oath was no joke, and had very stringent requirements, not only in terms of the oath, but from the individual Paladin as well, or else their unique Holy power would never be born within them.

“Give up?” Lex repeated the dentist’s words, his casual smile slowly fading as he put himself in the right state of mind. “Give up on what exactly? Give up on fighting you? Give up on finding my nakama- oh no, I meant friends?”

Lex was not smiling anymore, his eyes fixed onto the dentist, trying to see into his very being. He was tempted – very seriously – to use that Lawcraft. The one he had been working on for a long time. The one that used up all his body’s physical strength.

But no, that Lawcraft was something he had reserved for a very special target. It could not be used on others – not yet. Instead, he renewed his focus on his oath.

He had not even said the words yet he could feel an unknown power gathering around him, with his very soul at its epicenter. Lex could vaguely sense something familiar in that power, but for once his perfect memory failed him. He could not recall where he had felt it before – or at least, felt something similar to it.

It seemed even the dentist sensed the power gathering around Lex, and looked at him hesitantly, studying what he was doing.

“I was minding my own business before your forest pulled us towards it, and lured Little Blue in. What could you even want with a helpless little whale?” Lex asked, though he did not expect the dentist to be behind the scheme. “Do you think that just being powerful affords you the right to do as you wish? Or did you think that everyone would just go along with what you wanted?”

Lex was no longer speaking merely to the dentist. He was speaking to the power behind the dentist. Some might consider provoking a more powerful enemy foolish. But Lex, no longer constrained from an injured spirit, had come to a few conclusions of his own.

He was aware of what had happened in the castle, and when Z learned that the armies outside would never be able to destroy the jungle, Lex had learned it too. He did not believe even for a second that he could hide anything from an entity strong enough to defeat, destroy, divert or whatever else it did to so many Dao Lords.

The fact, then, that he had not already been stopped or punished, and had even been allowed to take so many privileges from the jungle, meant that whoever it was behind this scheme did not mean to harm him – or harm him immediately at least.

These things could not so easily be predicted. After all, the whims of the powerful were a flimsy thing to depend on.

“Listen here, dentist. I may be no beacon of justice for the universe, but that does not mean I will ignore every injustice. So long as I live and breathe, I will never stand by and let those I care about come to harm. And should it happen that I am unable to protect them, for whatever reason, my retribution will not go unmet. This, I swear!”

As far as oaths go, Lex’s was nowhere near as deep, as stringent, or as noble as most Paladins. In fact, to a degree, his oath was anchored in Lex’s selfish nature of only attending to those he cared about, rather than the weak or innocent that normal Paladins seek to protect.

But Lex’s oath was sincere, and he was willing to act on it, even in the face of great obstacles. The fact that he nearly died crossing the previous barrier proved it, and served as a testament to his integrity. That was enough to elicit the faintest of responses from the path of power that the Paladins followed.

The fact that his oath was witnessed by… by beings of unimaginable power… granted it a whole lot more power than Lex could have ever expected, or anticipated.

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