The Innkeeper

Lex immediately realized the problem. His lack of interest in the treasure made her think he was lying.

"Do you know the flow of time is flowing differently for everyone?" Lex asked. "The anomaly could go off at any moment. We really should hurry."

"Yes, I know," she said. "Let's hurry down then."

She did not wait for Lex, and instead jumped down the hole first. Going down first was dangerous, as it was unknown what kind of dangers she would be facing, but she was confident.

"Did you ever manage to find those kids?" Lex asked as he jumped down the hole behind her. The last time he saw Giselle was on Polebitvy. They had split because she was trying to find some kids under her protection, while he was trying to get the entire army to retreat to the Inn so that there weren't any unnecessary casualties.

After all, not only was there a war going on with alien insects, but everyone had been poisoned with such a potent poison it was almost impossible to heal.

"Yes, I got them out in time," Giselle answered, showing a brief moment of softness. "But too many other kids died on Polebitvy. I couldn't do anything for them."

"It's impossible to save everyone. That is the nature of the universe itself."

"I know," she responded, with a hint of sadness.

Lex shut up after that, and began to wonder if he was really as good a conversationalist as he thought.

As Lex expected, the internal structure of the pyramid constituted various hallways, corridors and halls, arranged in a way to form a maze, laden with traps. The traps themselves were largely inconsequential, not only for Lex, but for Giselle as well.

What was dangerous was something Mary had brought up before: time fractures. Certain halls and rooms suddenly dissolved into nothingness, and the dangerous thing about that was that 'nothing' was literally imperceptible.

The first time fracture they stumbled upon was right in their way, ending the pathway abruptly. There was no darkness replacing where the path formerly existed, no end to the road, no cut or fracture to indicate that any part was missing.

It was literally nothing, and even looking at it, Lex could neither see it, nor sense it in any way. His brain was incapable of processing it, so it replaced that nothing with what it expected to see, which was the continuing path.

It was only when they almost touched the nothing that they finally sensed something amiss.

Even then, all Lex felt was an abnormal reaction from his time affinity. He could not understand what it was. Giselle, on the other hand, did not sense itself. Instead, a watch she was wearing set off an alarm.

Lex, who was about to step into the nothing, paused, and looked towards the watch! He had missed it earlier!

He had neither seen it, nor sensed it! How was that possible?

"Take a step back!" Giselle said quickly, jumping back herself, the color draining from her face. "There's a time fracture there!"

Lex did not hesitate to take a step back. Even if he hadn't sensed something from his own affinity, just the fact that Giselle had taken this matter so seriously would have been enough for him to retreat.

In any other circumstances, Lex would have been willing to test out his defense. But when it came to time, he wanted to take no risks at all.

"What's a time fracture?" he asked as he looked back at the corridor. He could sense nothing.

But as Giselle explained, Lex's expression became more solemn.

"Time supports the existence of everything, so where there is a fracture in time, nothing can exist. Since our brains cannot conceive 'nothing' it automatically fills in the blanks."

Lex studied the hall in front of him, and even used his left eye's ability to study laws, and used various Glyphs, but could get no feedback at all.

"That's a pretty handy watch," Lex said, finally.

"It's an Eden watch. They're… very expensive, so they have a lot of features." Giselle did exactly lie, but it was obvious that she wasn't exactly being completely forthcoming. Not that Lex blamed her, since he in fact knew, or at least suspected he knew, the origin of that watch.

As a result of two very cooperative captives, over the past fifteen years, he had learned a lot about the universe at large.

While the Origin realm was still a developing realm, there were many realms that had already reached full maturity. It was extremely rare for a completely mature realm to be owned entirely by one entity or power, and instead the norm was for mature realms to be controlled by a group of cooperative powers.

Eden corporation was one such power that shared control over a completely mature realm. Since it was a corporation, it wasn't a surprise that they had products, and that they would be phenomenal ones. What was surprising was that Giselle got her hands on such a product.

After all, based on his understanding of the Henali, they would not easily allow any other powerful forces to enter into the Origin realm. It was their ambition to claim complete control over this realm. It was easy to invite others in, but not so easy to invite them out.

Whatever the case, Lex realized that Giselle was definitely not as simple as she appeared. But that was not the problem. The problem was that his instincts were telling him to go down this corridor, since they could not detect the time fracture. That meant he could no longer allow his instincts to guide him.

"I can sense that the anomaly is directly in that direction. Do you think you can figure out a way to bypass the fracture?" Lex asked.

This time… it was Giselle's turn to be stunned. He could sense the anomaly? Even her Eden watch couldn't do that!

"I mean, it's pretty simple," she said, and punched a hole in the wall before walking through it.

"The fracture shouldn't be too big. We can probably walk around it."

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