The Innkeeper

With his soul sense firmly wrapped around his own body, Lex could see his 'soul'. Only, it looked completely identical to his body. Did that mean his physical body existed on the soul plane? Wait, did that mean he could physically touch souls?

A few random thoughts flowed through Lex's brain, but he focused back on the matter at hand. Though his 'soul' looked identical to his body, the difference was he could see through it. But it was not blood or bones he saw, but a small ball of glowing golden light right in his chest.

He did not need to wonder what the glowing orb was, for he knew instinctively it was the treasure that contained his system. He did not try anything, for not only was he extremely dependent on the system, for now, he also had very poor control over his soul sense. He did, however, take his time to observe that small glowing ball.

Such a small thing had so drastically changed his life. It was hard to imagine.

While he was observing it, he also wondered if the reason he could see the system was because it was classified as a 'soul treasure' or if it had a soul of its own. It was not a simple thought, and whichever the answer was would have major insinuations. But, once again, he did not contact Mary to confirm with her. It was pointless.

For now, once he was finally done testing out his soul sense, he turned his attention to his other new abilities. These few would require him to figure out the details on his own, for their appearance was not a planned part of Regal Embrace.

His new affinity, whatever it was called, would undoubtedly be extremely significant for it had not replaced Regal affinity, but had fused with it to turn into something else. So, regardless of what effects it had, it would stay on the same scale as the Regal affinity, at the very least.

Lex could also make a few guesses about what the affinity should be. The Lotus had informed him of the changes it had made to his body and what the cause of the issue was. He did not know what 'laws' actually were, but whatever they were, it was obvious that they were far beyond his level. In essence, they were very powerful.

Since his affinity had changed due to the changes the Lotus had made to his body, he strongly suspected his new affinity would, at least in some regard, have something to do with laws. This was something he'd have to figure out, especially if he wanted to devise a new way to continue to cultivate.

As difficult as it would be, all hope was not lost. At least his intuition would be a great help in this regard.

But while he could at least speculate about his affinity, he was completely clueless about the changes that happened to his left eye. Even his intuition was silent on why his left eye had gained this new ability, though it hinted at the fact that the change had occurred, once again, due to the changes the Lotus had made to his body. So basically, this once again had something to do with laws. Most likely. Probably. Maybe.

After considering those two abilities and thinking of ways he would test them out in the future, he turned his attention to his body. Before his breakthrough, he had already had a massive increase in strength, which had only been compounded now. The good news was, even without him having to consciously practice, his brain was quickly adjusting to new strength. He would still have to fine tune his control, but the chances of him accidentally crushing someone's hand while shaking hands had dropped to an all-time low.

His thought process had sped up once again, and his capacity for multitasking had absolutely exploded. He could easily do multiple tasks at the same time without suffering any loss in his concentration.

He wondered if he had gained anything special as a result of sticking to the 'true path' as it was called in the Crystal realm, meaning cultivating spirit, soul and body at the same time. His intuition told him yes, though he could not figure out what specifically he had gained.

He tried using the techniques he had learned for the Foundation realm. The amount of strength they could display was inherently limited, meaning Lex would have to learn new techniques if he wanted to fully display the limits of his power. Still, they had become much more powerful than they were previously, and it was much easier to use them as is.

For example, the teleportation technique Lex never got an opportunity to use called the In-Law effect, which originally required him to stay stationary for 3 hours while he primed the technique, now barely took a minute for him to complete. Once he became used to his new realm, the time might even become shorter.

Evisceration, the soul attack that he barely ever used because of how difficult it was to master, seemed to be the only technique that did not suffer a limit on its strength. Not only was it able to display a much greater strength than before, unfortunately the difficulty in using it also increased.

The plus side was, since Lex had grown in his level, even if using the technique caused a backlash, he was more than strong enough to take it without suffering any real harm.

If there was one thing about his breakthrough that Lex didn't like, however, was that it more or less eliminated his hunger. He had more than enough energy in his body to keep himself running even if he didn't eat for weeks. Moreover, since his body had such high energy requirements, which were usually being met by the energy stored within his Golden core, if he wanted to be satiated, the food he would have to eat would have to be much more nutritious than before.

Lex tightened his fists and a firm look appeared in his eyes. He would never give up on eating delicious food. It seemed like it was time to hire an excellent chef. Better yet, it was time to find someone with a cooking system and hire them!