The Innkeeper

“NO!” a scream echoed through the Inn, accompanied by a horror-stricken Helen. She did not know when she stood up, nor did she realize that she had screamed. All she felt currently was panic so deep it and firmly grasped her heart.

Even Lex, who had been marinating in his own endless anger, was woken up from his thoughts by her yell. He was startled again to see Alexander on his screen, standing with a sword running through his chest.

“Absolutely pathetic,” the head said, as its body left the sword in Alexander’s body and approached it. “For all your arrogance and bravado, I expected a better fight. But you fell so easily for the first trick I used. Although I must give you props from moving out of the way just enough to protect your heart.”

The demon picked up the head and reattached it to its body, now looking down upon Alexander, who was still standing in the same posture he had been stabbed in.

“But then again, it was my own fault for expecting so much from such a pathetic species as humans. How can you even begin to imagine my power? You probably thought I was dead after you cut my head off. But I’m not a low level demon like the zombies. I’m a nightmare demon, understand? I’m immortal!”

With that the demon burst into a fit of laughter. It seemed like he was enjoying talking down to Alexander, but the truth was the demon was only casually chatting while its head properly reattached to its body._.

A being such as that really was outside the understanding of humans. Even the guests at the Inn or the Jotun soldiers had a dark expression on their faces. Alexander was someone who had attracted a lot of attention, and his current condition left a bitter taste in the mouth.

But compared to a demon that could live even after getting its head chopped off, let alone Alexander, all humans looked weak and insignificant. What inherent power did humans have? What was their strong suit? If they did not cultivate, humans were so weak that a fall down a small flight of stairs could end their lives.

All humans were really good at was adapting. They could understand the rules of the world around them, and since they could not bend the rules, they could use them to their own advantage. They could fashion weapons out of wood, make utensils out of stone. They could grow crops in the dirt and predict the weather from the wind. Even if they advanced enough to build a civilization advanced enough to fly in the sky and travel through the stars, all their accomplishments were external. They could harness the energy of the universe to make the most complex of tools to aid them, but in the absence of those tools, they were still weak. They could not reattach their own severed heads the way the demon had.

Of course, if humans ever gained the ability to directly interact with and control energy themselves, instead of just taking advantage of their understanding of how energy normally behaved, what they could possibly accomplish was… unimaginable.

“Relax girl,” a calm voice washed over Helen, attracting her attention from the nightmare on screen. Behind her stood Audrey, Alexander’s grandmother. “My grandson is not so easy to kill.”

Helen was taken aback by the old woman’s seemingly calm attitude. If Brandon were not in a meeting and saw the current situation, his reaction would not be much different from Audreys.

They had unwavering faith, not only in their grandson, but in the life-threatening training he had undergone his whole life. They had confidence even more so because what was spirit energy if not a supreme form of energy, and what was cultivation if not… controlling and manipulating that energy?

Pramod continued to give a condescending speech, not at all noticing that the golden aura around Alexander had not diminished at all, unlike the last time he had taken Alexander by surprise. If anything, the color seemed to be getting richer.

If one could see into Alexander’s body on a microscopic level, they would notice millions upon millions of nanobots repairing the wounds in Alexander’s body. The nanobots gathered in clumps around where the blade pierced his lungs, preventing blood from entering them as well as getting ready to seal the wound as soon as the sword was removed.

But that was not all. Normally, when a human healed, his cells would undergo a division to replace the lost or damaged cells. But there was a limit to how many times a cell would divide during a person’s lifetime. However, there was a technique used by cultivators who practiced both their body and spiritual cultivation at the same time which would use up all the spiritual energy in a person’s body not only to force the cells to split, but undergo a rejuvenation which would actually increase the number of times the cells could split.

That was only one aspect of the technique called Buddha’s Grace, and the technique was a lot more complicated than that. It was meant to be used when one was critically injured, and would allow the person to heal just enough to survive a little longer. That was because, normally, the amount of spirit energy a person wielded was limited. But what if there was unlimited spiritual energy? And what if the body would not be exhausted no matter how much it healed itself?

By now, even some of the guests noticed that the teenager who had a sword hanging out from both sides of his body was still standing, while he should have fallen down a long time ago.

“Immortality,” a single word from Alexander’s lips interrupted Pramod’s speech, who suddenly woke up to the fact that the human still had not keeled over and died.

“It sounds interesting. Let me give it a try.”

He grabbed onto the blade protruding from his chest and slowly pushed it back out, all the while maintaining eye contact. When the sword was pushed all the way out and fell to the ground, only a small amount of blood squirted out of the wound before a metallic sheen covered the wound. If people didn’t know better, they would assume that instead of a human, a robot stood before them.

“While I’m at it, let me put your immortality to the test!” he said with gritted teeth, a twinge of anger coming through. He was putting on a brave face, but only he knew how close he actually came to death. If his heart had been punctured instead of his lung, while he could have continued to live, he would not have been able to move. The demon could have easily finished him off.

Right now, his body was still healing and using a tremendous amount of spiritual energy while at it. The more energy that he burned, the darker the surrounding aura became.

Without any words, the two suddenly launched towards each other and clashed, fist against fist. They had prepared to smash each other to bits, but a small spark from their first clash completely ignited the aura around Alexander.

Instead of gold, he now appeared to be covered in flame, but he did not slow down even for a moment. An ungodly amount of strength flowed through his arms as he punched the demon’s face, determined to see if he could still live after he squished it to a pulp.

While Alexander himself still remained unaware of the fire surrounding him, the guests, and especially Pramod, were extremely aware of its awesome power. The strength of Alexander’s augmented fists could be dulled by his armor, but the heat of the flame seemed to reach directly into his being.

Pramod roared as his ominous purple aura exploded around him, but before he could use it to his advantage, six flaming blades attacked him from different angles. Pramod barely defended himself, but his aura was eviscerated.

Alexander did not give him any time to rest, though. He raised his right hand in the air, and the six blades oriented themselves right beside it. Small yellow balls of light floated out of his fingers and started collecting at the tip of each blade, influenced by the blazing glory of the flame around the teenager, the balls slowly became alight.

Normally this would be a slow process, but the rate at which Alexander was burning spirit energy sped up the process so that in a couple of seconds, six flaming balls hung in the air. This was the technique he had learnt from John, called Final Glory – meant to be used as a last resort that would normally drain him of all his spirit energy. Alexander did not care much for the name, but its effect was truly amazing.

Alexander pointed his hand at Pramod and shot the blades towards the demon as if out of a bazooka. Each blade passed through the flaming ball, absorbing its energy as it passed.

Pramod immediately sensed the threat and let out a ferocious roar before slamming the ground. A wall of dust rose into the air, hiding the demon from view, but that did not prevent the now flaming blades from reaching him.

Six earth-shattering explosions rocked the entire small pocket dimension, immediately attracting the attention of each participant. They looked towards the center, wondering what had happened.

But while everyone was feeling a mix of shock and awe and reverie, Alexander cracked his neck a couple of times before he slowly started walking towards the dust cloud.

“Who knew immortals could make such great punching bags?”

An angry and crazed roar responded to his casual remark, but he did not care. Six blades were floating around his right arm again, gathering six balls of flame, as he prepared his next round of attacks. Today, he would beat the crap out of an immortal.

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