The Innkeeper

The creature's scream reverberated across just as it fell out of Lex's body once again. But this time, that was not all. The creature started writing on the ground like a poisoned insect. It used its own wings to beat its own body while its eight legs curled up and dug into its own flesh.

Lex was not able to take advantage of the situation immediately, as he himself was recovering from his sudden weakness and fatigue. Fortunately, he had only recalled that meeting for a moment instead of dwelling on it, or he might have once again succumbed to just the memory of it.

When he came to, he saw that the creature he had been unable to harm at all lay on the ground covered in its own blood, though it wasn't dead yet.

Lex had been forcibly brought out of his Berserk state by the mere memory of that meeting, which is why he retained the sense to not rush over and attack immediately. But that did not mean he gave up.

Physical attacks weren't working, and though Evisceration hurt the creature, it wasn't doing significant damage. It was at this moment he was really regretting not having a strong attack that used his spirit sense, for he had a feeling that such attacks would be most effective. But instead of lamenting what he lacked, Lex focused on what he had.

Lex entered his Flow state, and focused on his spatial affinity. Although he was not a master of it yet, he had teleported enough to learn tidbits about his affinity since he got it. Moreover, his increased analytical skills made it so that Lex could learn new skills much faster than before.

The easiest thing to do would be to manipulate space to somehow cut the creature into pieces, and that's exactly what Lex tried to do. Unfortunately, creating a 'blade' out of morphed space was not exactly easy, let alone anything else.

Lex did, however, manage to warp space a little exactly where the creature was, causing it to suffer immense pain, waking it from its stupor finally. All of its eyes focused on Lex with a newfound viscousness, as the creature tried to disappear once again. But that was easier said than done.

Lex kept manipulating space within the creature's body, trying to tear space open, or use space to tear the creature open. Either one would do, though all he effectively managed to do was torture it.

"Wait, I'm sorry! I know the dragon's secrets! I can tell you!" the creature pleaded, but Lex was no longer going to fall for such basic tricks. Although he longed for the satisfaction of beating the creature up with his own hands, he had to rely on spatial affinity. He could also come up with arrays to harm the creature, but somehow he felt like he couldn't make arrays strong enough to do that.

Theoretically, arrays could achieve the strongest power level the universe could support, since the universe itself powered arrays. Practically speaking, Lex had hit a bottleneck when it came to his arrays. Maybe his way of making them was obsolete or faulty, or maybe he didn't know enough significantly strong characters. Either way, his arrays seemed to be limited to the Nascent level in terms of power for the moment.

"Lex Williams, don't push me too far!" the creature roared as it tried to get up. But its efforts were in vain as its legs were too weak at the moment. The creature had clearly read through some of Lex's memories, which chilled Lex's heart!

He absolutely could not afford to let the creature live now. Since keeping a distance clearly didn't help, Lex leaped forward and immediately put its head in a lock and placed his right hand on the creature's forehead. His intention was to scramble the things brain!

As if sensing Lex's intention, the creature roared angrily and resisted Lex, but in terms of physical strength, it was clearly below Lex. At the same time, it tried to use its ability to disappear once again, but clearly it was too hurt to do so. It seemed the memory of that meeting had hurt it a lot more than Lex expected.

They struggled for a few dozen minutes before Lex suddenly succeeded in causing a tiny tear in space, within the creature's skull! The creature died instantly, and Lex actually tripped because it had stopped resisting his strength so suddenly.

Lex groaned, feeling exhausted, but did not delay at all. He immediately stored the creature's body within his spatial ring and began teleporting back to the Inn. He could not risk becoming a victim to spirit pull again.

Yet the next moment, the sound of a notification distracted him.

New Notification: System feature 'Murderer' activated.

Immediately he felt the change, as he was reminded of the feature he had unlocked so long ago, yet for some reason never triggered.

Murderer: Every time the host kills someone stronger than them outside of system grounds, the host can learn one of the victim's abilities/techniques!

The ability had finally been triggered, and Lex could tell that the system was transferring some information directly into his brain. He had not suddenly 'unlocked' a new ability, but the method to replicate the effects of the creature's ability using spiritual energy was fed into Lex's memories.

The ability was one of the most bizarre abilities Lex had ever encountered. It allowed Lex to turn his body into a 'thought' and enter someone's spirituality. What did that entail, and what he could do once he achieved those details he was not given, but clearly this was far from a simple technique.

The next moment, Lex teleported to the Inn, finally leaving the hoard. The effects of the spirit pull on him disappeared, but Lex had not given up on the hoard yet. Since the dwarves had a way to protect themselves from it, the emporium surely did as well.

He put aside thoughts of his newly gained ability, which he aptly named 'Mindmeld' and teleported over to X-14. He had some shopping to do.