The Innkeeper

Chapter 1965 Fallible

Lex smiled casually, as if he was enjoying messing with James. In truth, he really was enjoying it – he’d never met someone who cried so easily. It was fun teasing him. At the same time, though, he began to treat the situation a lot more carefully.

Destiny was messed up stuff. Its inevitability was well known and well established, so he didn’t like it so much. The fact that the Midnight Inn could block destiny was very reassuring. But he himself could not do that yet. So if a Destiny Devourer, a race that clearly had something to do with destiny, even if Lex didn’t know exactly what, said that Lex was going to commit a slaughter in four hours, he felt like it might be an inevitability.

But he wasn’t certain yet. Everything was, as of now, uncertain, and James was crying way too much to give Lex any straight answers. Lex had met many members from the Elder races before, but never had he encountered such a crybaby from any race. It was kind of funny actually.

“So you never told me,” said Lex as he continued to pull James along, his hand still firmly wrapped around the Devourers neck, as if they were the best of buddies. “How exactly does this devouring of destinies work?”

“We… we… we have to first… first…” James tried to tell Lex, but the more he looked at how his own destiny was being changed, the more he was unable to stop himself from crying. At first, his destiny was only affected for the next few hours, but now it had gone onto days, and he could tell that if this kept up, it might continue for months or even years!

That was absolutely not good. As a Destiny Devourer, he knew better than most how fallible destiny actually was. Everyone assumed that destiny was some mysterious and powerful force that controlled everything. Even many oracles thought that. Only they knew the critical flaw with destiny.

Of course, that critical flaw was not something everyone could take advantage of, or destiny would not be so influential to begin with. In short, if he followed his destiny which was increasingly tied to Lex, he was screwed, and if he tried to break free from it, he would be even more screwed.

After all, the number one best way to avoid destiny, as confirmed and recognized across the universe, was to die. No dead people could fulfil their destiny – unless death itself was a part of it. How tragic was that? Someone died, but their only destiny was to die.

“Here, drink some water,” said Lex as he handed James a glass. James, gratefully, drank the water hoping that he would choke on it and get sent to the hospital. Unfortunately, immortals could not choke on drinks so easily. Damn his strength.

“So you were saying?” Lex asked, unwilling to give up.

“We can devour destinies, yes,” James ultimately said, wiping his tears and utilizing his brain on thinking of ways to survive rather than to just cry about the situation. “But to do that, we first have to kill our targets. We can steal the power of unfulfilled destinies, or to be more accurate, we steal the energy from the power that binds you to your destiny. Once dead, that power often loses its anchor, and dissipates. We can steal it before it dissipates.”

Lex nodded. That made some sense.

“So I guess the greater the destiny of your target, the greater feedback you get.” Lex said, speculating. “That’s mighty convenient. You can find a weak person with a strong destiny and get powerful feedback.”

James felt like crying once more. How had Lex, in a single moment, understood the crux of their power? That’s why Destiny Devourers rarely fought against strong opponents. They could just find weak ones with great destinies to grow stronger themselves. Of course, that did not mean they were weaklings, or they couldn’t fight. They were actually pretty strong, and their control over destinies was significant enough to influence many beings regardless of how strong or weak they were.

It was just that in Arch-Heaven, even a race with powers as broken as the Destiny Devourers could not do much. That was even more so when Lex was involved.

“In that case, if you’re claiming I’m going to commit a slaughter, shouldn’t you come with me? You can get a lot of feedback by tagging along,” Lex said, as if the idea had just occurred to him. “Unless you need to kill your target yourself.”

“No, that isn’t the case, but what’s even the point of getting some feedback in Arch-Heaven? I just want to live peacefully, so brother, if you would be so kind as to go on without me…”

“Nonsense. How can I abandon you after you call me brother?” Lex questioned strongly, as if he had heard the most absurd thing ever. Yet the more he was like this, the more James was unable to hold back his tears.

“Anyway, since the topic of the Devourers makes you uncomfortable, how about we talk about something else?” Lex asked. “I’m actually looking for someone here. Do you have any idea how I might find someone?”

James hesitated, but eventually gave in. With his measly 4% power, he could do nothing in front of Lex. It had taken him 1700 years to improve his limiter by this much, so he couldn’t even imagine how long Lex had been here to become

an 11%.

“Do you know the target’s name? If you do, I can search for them for you. As someone with an official role as a guard, I can monitor those in the territory I’ve been assigned to protect.”

Interest flickered through Lex’s eyes.

“His name is Diyor Saliev,” Lex said, noticing something interesting in James’ words. He said he was ‘a’ guard, and his power extended to wherever he was protecting. That means that he could leave this mountain and work somewhere else, and that wouldn’t affect his job so much.

“Right, found him. Let me lead you to him,” James said, though his voice was filled with the sound of defeat. It seemed like the time for the slaughter had moved forward the moment James found Diyor’s location.