The Innkeeper

The first thing Lex did was teleport to Leroy. The fairies were still around the Manor, and had actually moved towards the lake. They had never seen such a large body of water, and its soothing waves and clear waters attracted their weary minds.

They had been prepared to begin their lives on the run, and a part of them still felt like they could not stay at the Inn for too long. But the land was too beautiful, the waters too calming, the people too welcoming, which was already eroding their weakened will power.

Lex's sudden arrival startled the group, but he only waved at them, and hurried to turn to Leroy.

"I have a small favor to ask you. Do you know how I can store fairy dust? Does it require some special material?"

"Fairy dust, like I've told you, is something similar to partially solidified spiritual energy. As soon as it touches something, it is absorbed into it. But storing it is also pretty simple. You either need material which is completely saturated with spiritual energy, and cannot absorb anymore.

"High quality spirit crystals can be used for this purpose, but they cannot be used to store fairy dust for long periods, as they will eventually lose their energy if they do not remain in a high energy concentration area. The second is a material that is completely inert, and cannot absorb spiritual energy at all. That is much harder to find, but is better for long term storage.

"Do you need some fairy dust? You can just say the word, and we will do what we can."

"Not for now, but if I need your help I'll let you know," responded Lex, before teleporting away once more.

He did not need to store fairy dust for long anyway, so he would just make do with making a bottle out of spirit crystal. There was a small issue. Haraash did not mention how big he wanted the bottle to be. Considering that this was supposed to be rare, he assumed it was not too big.

After that, it was just a matter of teleporting everywhere he needed. All the ingredients were pretty simple to gather, and he decided to grab an extra drop of Mountain milk for Vera as well. The fairy dust proved a small obstacle, mostly because Lex didn't know how to judge if what he was making was good enough.

He focused and did his best. If it wasn't good enough, he could just make more. It wasn't as if he was losing anything, since it was free to make.

That is where Lex was suffering from a misconception. Fairies would feel physical exhaustion after making complicated fairy dust, which when accompanied by their weak bodies, meant they could only produce so much at a time. But the first thing Lex did when he got a fairy body was strengthen it, which is why his ability to produce fairy dust was far beyond the others.

True to his word, about four minutes after he left, Lex reappeared in Haraash's room.

"Please check if everything is up to standard. The fairy dust was a little hard, but if it's not good enough I'll see what I can do about it."

Haraash, and even his assistant Lend, were frozen in shock at the times displayed in front of them. Each item radiated its own unique power, which was more than enough to identify their authenticity. More importantly, they were incredibly fresh, as if they had been just harvested moments earlier.

"To be clear, did you get these yourself? I must emphasize that the relevance of the instructions of the Innkeeper go beyond just what you know. Doing a thing yourself, and having it done for you are very different things. I don't want you to think that I will withhold information from you - not at all. But your success in implementing that very information will be stained by debt you will owe if you did not pay for it yourself.

"In normal, mortal levels, such things matter little which is why you may never have noticed their effects. But in the Immortal levels, every action is stained by karma. That should not matter to you now, except that the knowledge you are about to attain is at the immortal level."

"Oh, don't you worry about that," Lex said as he sat down in front of him. "Everything here I sourced, obtained and then harvested myself. Well, for the divine essence I used an Inn facility, since it's really a part of the Inn now, but I was the one who gave the object producing the essence to the Inn in the first place, so I think it shouldn't matter. This should also give you an understanding of the kind of trouble I attract."

Haraash looked from him down to the blood essence of a dragon. He could tell it was extremely fresh, harvested mere minutes ago, and that it belonged to a Heavenly Immortal level dragon. How could Lex even harm such a being? Was he even able to cut through its body to reach its heart, or did the dragon donate it itself?

Lex was not about to reveal that he just entered the dragon's body using his soul state, apologizing to Pel. Jr. as he did so, and gathered the blood.

Haraash looked at Lex, then back at the dragon's blood. Then back at Lex, then down at the Mountain milk, then at the bottle made from a spirit crystal so pure that even immortals could use it, then back at Lex.

"Sit child, sit," Haraash suddenly said, putting all the items away. "Clearly you are in great need of this information, lest someone squish you one day. But the price has been paid, so you can only get what you paid for. The method I will teach you has the possibility of completely cutting off all ties of fate, karma and such. That means if anyone wants to track you, they will have to use some other method, which is far from simple.

"But there is a drawback. This method is not strictly mobile, and cannot be on your person. It will require you to choose a place which will then be sealed off. The area does not have to be small, so you can potentially create a base or a proper home there. I thought that this might not best fit your needs, since if you ever need to escape you can always retreat to the Inn, and that is essentially what that place will become. A refuge to where you can escape, unless you mean to start living there perpetually."

Lex frowned for a moment. Indeed, that is not what he had imagined. But at the same time, he could think of more than a few reasons why such a thing might be useful. More importantly, although Vera might not know what problems he might face in the future, she foresaw him paying her multiple times for this!

That meant that he really might end up needing a place to hide, besides the Inn! The insinuations for that weren't good, if he was being honest. Why would he ever need to hide elsewhere, when he can retreat to the Inn? Once it was in working condition, he could teleport to it from anywhere in the universe.

Surely any refuge he created himself would not allow him the same convenience. The thought was… troubling. But he would think more about it at a later time. For now, he turned his attention to Master Haraash, his expression much more serious than it had been before.

"Since the Innkeeper has asked me to rely on my own abilities, then I must have the mental fortitude not to use the Inn as my last form of defense. Even if it never happens, I need to at least prepare a safe place for myself with the intention of relying on it. Please, enlighten me about how I can go about building this protective layer. I assume it will require a lot of work."

"You have no idea young man. The requirements to build it are far from simple. Just picking out the right location, the first hurdle, has defeated most who sought to build this. Give me your hand and close your eyes. I will begin transmitting all the information to you. This will take quite some time, so I hope you have nothing urgent coming up."

"Nothing that can't wait a bit," said Lex as he closed his eyes and prepared himself.

Haraash began transmitting some information to Lex, but before he even began to teach him just the requirements of this protective barrier, he had a lot of prerequisite knowledge he needed to teach Lex.

On the bright side, Lex was receiving a crash course on many complicated topics. Since he had been so interested in learning new things lately, he had hit the jackpot.