The Innkeeper

Before Cassandra could explain what she meant, Lex summoned another missile. This time, he did not sit on it. Instead, he summed an Imperial Shield behind him on which he could lean back, and placed his legs on the third missile.

Of course, by the time Lex placed his feet on it, Cassandra had already isolated it again.

It was more than clear that Lex was extremely dissatisfied with the way he had been manipulated. But instead of being frustrated, Cassandra found his little tantrum amusing. She, of course, knew that his true age was not that of his body. She estimated that he was, at best, a few decades older, though so to her he still really was a child.

The fact that he was showing his dissatisfaction, and complaining, even if his form of complaint was to threaten the temple with a missile containing a Heavenly immortal attack, meant that their relation was not pushed to the point of no return.

Cassandra did not allow the appearance of the missile to pause her explanation.

"The assessment you have given me is the one you formed while you were fighting Ra. If you take a minute to think back, and look at everything that you know now, you may reach a different conclusion. But allow me to skip over your introspection, and bring the correct conclusion directly to your attention. From the very first moment you fought the deity, his intention had not been to kill you, regardless of whatever you may think. After all, the gravest injuries you have on your body were all caused by yourself."

Cassandra paused to see Lex's reaction, but he sat completely unashamed. Blood was dripping down his face from the massive hole where he used to have a right eye, but it had mostly stopped. Even if he did not seek healing from her, within a couple of weeks he'd be back to brand new based on his own regenerative abilities.

"If you think back, the deity claimed that he would never be able to step foot in the Origin realm. Someone had affected the laws of the realm, making them attack him as soon as he revealed himself. Quite an ingenious yet dastardly punishment, that. The deity must have really antagonized the wrong person for something like that to happen.

"Nevertheless, as a result of that, the deity is in hiding, and actively trying to change itself so that the law no longer applies to that. With this information in mind, if you think back to your fight, you will notice that the deity never really tried to seriously harm you. It merely tried to incapacitate or trap you. The reason for that is simple. From the very start, his goal had been to possess you, not kill you!"

Lex raised an eyebrow. The revelation made sense, now that he thought about it looking back, but it hadn't occurred to him at the time.

"When he sent his minions after you, he was just trying to stall you, and infect you with a parasitism enabler - the black goo that you so easily dodged. Time and time again, after that, the deity did not employ its most powerful attacks, but instead tried to hold you still. If Fenrir had not been constantly disrupting his efforts, you may have seen his subsequent preparations while you fought off his attacks.

"That time you were entombed, he nearly even succeeded. But I don't know whether it was out of sheer luck, or perhaps the influence of your prophetic intuition. The Invincible Tyrant mask you wore while entombed blocked the effects of the technique which would allow Ra to possess you.

"Of course, even if you had not worn the mask, due to your new bond with Lotus, it would not be so easy to possess you. It would be like possessing an entire planet. You would have been able to escape, eventually."

Lex frowned, his mind quickly recalling the various scenes from the fight. At first, Lex had thought that Ra was a has-been deity who was losing his mind due to the corrupt divinity. But then he later proved that he had been acting to lure Lex into thinking things were going his way. If that were really the case, and Ra had the ability to divine the future, since how long ago had Ra been planning this? Cassandra only guessed this much because she only saw the exchange within the temple, but what about their exchange prior to that?

If Lex looked at things more critically, even back then on that planet where Ra first appeared, capturing him had been easy - too easy! Lex had assumed it was due to being underestimated, and had subsequently used Ra's body to absorb divine energy. He used his own cultivation technique to improve his body using divine energy. Back then, he felt like he was taking advantage of Ra. But, if the same scene was looked at with a different lens, wasn't Lex altering his body and thereby making it the perfect vessel for Ra to possess later on?

He got chills as he reached such a conclusion. He may feel like he had escaped Ra's clutches already, but what if that was also part of his plan? What if he was lowering Lex's guard, and would find a way to possess him at some other point later on?

Lex frowned as his thoughts reached this point, but then he calmed himself down. He was not exactly helpless, and even if a deity wanted to possess him it was not so easy. Even if he ignored all his other numerous benefits, just Dragons Might alone would protect him from that. Then there were his bonds, as well as the system, the sword inside his soul, and so many other things.

He suddenly imagined his soul like a bar where numerous powerful people, entities and phenomena gathered to have a drink.

Pushing away the random thoughts, he turned to look back at Cassandra.

"That's not exactly helping your case, you know," he said, still waiting for the explanation for why she had lied.

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