The Innkeeper

Lex was sitting in his lawn chair, sipping a smoothie as he surfed the system. Lately, he had begun avoiding relaxing in public to maintain his mysterious persona. But after Lex decided to be more approachable rather than mysterious, he had returned to lounging in the open. The first day he had done this, his guests avoided him, but by now they had gotten used to it. His horse sized pup was lightly snoring beside him, attracting loving gazes from many of his guests.

Lex was not paying attention to that, however, as he was currently looking up the kinds of tickets he could buy. The Golden Ticket he used previously was the most expensive one available to him, at 100,000,000 MP! The reason why it was so expensive was because not only did it have the greatest range, it resulted in the fastest connection between the system and the world, and was capable of searching for extremely powerful worlds, such as the 5 Star world Lex came across called Dunya.

The cheapest ticket available was only 100,000MP. This was incredibly cheap considering how expensive some of the things Lex purchased were, not to mention that it could still cover vast distances in space.

It had many shortcomings, but somehow ended up being perfect for Lex. First of all, it was restricted to 1 Star planets only. Secondly, Lex would have to pick one of the planets he was already connected to, and the ticket would only search within the same galaxy. Thirdly, being there were any beings too strong on the planet, it would interfere with the detection and so the ticket would be unable to detect the planet, depending on the strength of the person. Fourthly, the shortest amount of time it would take to connect the planet was about a week.

The last point was not one Lex counted in his favor, as a week was still the shortest available time for the connection to be completed. Although he was thinking of getting this ticket, he hadn't bought it yet.

Lex would not go anywhere unprepared, and he was still not ready. For one, he had only finally managed to purchase a few techniques for the Qi gathering realm. They had not come from the Guild room, but rather from John. He visited John in with his Leo persona and described exactly what kind of techniques he was looking for, and had John make them to his needs and specifications.

Lex had asked for two different attacking techniques, one defensive technique, one to improve his speed and one to hide. Until Lex learnt all techniques to a satisfactory level, he would not even think of going to another planet. This was also not considering the fact that he needed a lot of new equipment as well, some of which he had ordered from Chen and some from Will.

Done perusing the system, Lex stretched a bit, nodded to some of his nearby guests and returned to his apartment with Fenrir. He changed into the Bathrobe and entered his Meditation room.

Considering Lex had never learnt any spiritual techniques before, he expected it would be difficult. For most of them, that was true. For the defensive technique, however, a single glance was all it took for Lex to learn it to the maximum proficiency possible! Even Lex himself was dumbstruck by how easy it had been.

But, it made sense. Regal Embrace had only just begun to show its worth, and not only had Lex's defense improved, his understanding of anything related to defense had also improved.

But, practicing the defensive technique made it much easier to practice the others, as it gave him a deep understanding how these techniques actually worked.

Lex was currently at Qi training level 3. There were a total of 9 levels in the Qi training realm, and with each realm Lex would hold an increasing number of Qi in his body.

To use these techniques, he would need to manipulate the Qi in his body along certain pathways, these being the meridians, in certain patterns in very exact amounts to give birth to various phenomena.

Why these phenomena were birthed was a topic of a different study. It was like asking why a magnetic field was created by passing electricity through a wire. The why of it was completely irrelevant to someone who was an electromagnet to perform a task. This person only needed to know how to turn the magnet on and off, not the hows and whys behind it.

This was currently the situation for Lex with these techniques. He did not understand the complexities behind the techniques, but memorized the techniques themselves.

The defensive technique was called Qi Repulsor. It worked by building up charged Qi anywhere on Lex's body, and when the built up Qi encountered a sufficient force, it would release a pulse of Qi that would push back against the force.

For example, if an enemy were punching Lex, and Lex blocked it with his hand that had been charged with Qi Repulsor, the released pulse of Qi would either neutralize a lot of the punches force, or in the case that the pulse was stronger than the attack, push the enemy back.

This type was a very standard defensive technique for Qi cultivators, as they did not yet have enough Qi to launch techniques far from their bodies.

If Lex had to learn this himself, it would take him a long time, as not only did he have to run sufficient Qi strands at very specific speeds in very specific patterns near the area where he wanted to use the technique, he then had to control the built up Qi that was outside his body - something incredibly difficult for Qi training cultivators who were only just learning to control Qi within their bodies.

But by understanding and practicing such a complex technique repeatedly using his over the top proficiency in it, he eventually got the hang of how to properly manipulate Qi within his body. It was an extremely novel experience, and he loved it!