The Innkeeper

It was not just Lex whose attention was attracted towards the unusual tribulation cloud. Most of the demons who had already passed through their tribulation and survived looked over. Hundreds of beasts looked up in fear as their strong instincts were kicking up. Jotun, who was having an important meeting with his wife, was also alarmed, and quickly exited the manor and flew up into the air. The guard who had replaced the griffin looked there as well, though it did not display the same shock as the others.

Somewhere in the crowd of guests, Booty looked up into the sky. Every time he saw lightning, he felt nervous. The captain of the Iron heart pirates was about to enter the Immortal realm, but he had already seen too many fail in their tribulations. Every time he saw one more, he felt his heart tremble.

For a time, the entire Inn came to a standstill as they looked up at the ominous black lightning.

Lex, who was also watching the spectacle closely, however, did not just sit and watch. His intuition was warning him that whatever protection he had given the abode was not enough, and so silently, he began arranging more formations around Ragnar's abode.

The formations were not to protect Ragnar from the tribulations, since the man himself had opted not to enter the tribulation room. Instead, it was to contain the damage within the confines of the abode itself. But the thing was… he added one formation, then 10, then 50, but the warning from his intuition never ceased.

The level of formations available to Lex, even with the extra capabilities of the event panel, were not enough to contain the danger of this lightning.

As the sound of rolling thunder swept across the Inn, Lex suddenly began to panic. Without thinking too much, Lex directly spent 10 billion MP on smashing as many formations down as possible!

But he did not have time to evaluate if that was enough. The sound of the thunder changed, as if the heaven itself was releasing a growl aimed at Ragnar. Dozens of formations around the abode were thoroughly crushed just from the sound.

But the process was not slow as all this happened faster even than anyone, immortals and mortals alike, could understand. Then the lightning struck, a single black bolt aiming directly for Ragnar.

If he had wanted to defend, he should have done so already, for it was too late now even for him.

The black lightning bearing the wrath of heaven and hell bore down on the lone man. Existence itself seemed to fracture where the lightning passed, leaving behind a trail of miniscule cracks in space. At that moment, the air ceased to exist, and all light was destroyed. Despite the intense power and heat of the lightning, there were no flames in its aftermath, for the very existence of fire had been destroyed.

In that moment, despite the protection of the Inn, everyone, the emperor, devils and even Lex included, suffered from a hallucination. For a moment, they saw an impossible tide of darkness swallowing up the universe itself, filled with righteous fury. But in front of that darkness that swallowed everything, there was a single, miniscule speck that remained undeterred. It was not the flame of hope, nor the prayers of a trillion meditating monks, nor the blessing of some deity that remained unmoving in front of that invading abyss.

No, it was a man in a simple cotton tunic. Even as the world faded into nothingness, even as the emotions of everyone watching faded, even at the very end of things, his back did not bend.

The hallucination changed. They saw a young man standing side by side with a billion soldiers. They saw war. They saw death. They saw defeat. They saw a sea of endless demon corpses, and they saw a young recruit alive, crying because he was buried under the bodies of his comrades, who had given up everything to let him live.

The scene changed. They saw retreating spaceships. They saw bleeding soldiers. They felt the endless silence of space, and in it, they saw demons in the form of space worms chasing after them. They saw an escape vessel heading towards the demons while the other ships escaped, and a skinny, injured soldier with nothing but a blaster and a broken sword.

They saw a fight that should have been suicide. Then they saw another. Then they saw a hundred more.

They saw a skinny, fragile back slowly gain muscle and grow stronger. They saw one impossible tide of death crash against a lone soldier again and again, only to be the one to retreat itself.

Then the hallucination, which had seemed millennia long but had not even been a fraction of a second, ended. Most did not see what happened next. Even Lex's mind was not fast enough to process what happened. But due to the feedback from the Inn, the image of what happened was imprinted in his mind!

Ragnar did not flinch, nor did he look away. The black lightning struck him in the face, resulting in an explosion that completely decimated the abode around him.

Though Lex had long stopped trying to depend on luck, somehow, his luck had held that day as all the formations he had put up had been destroyed, save the very last one.

The cloud above the abode dissipated, as if it had never been there, and the ominous pressure that Lex had been feeling disappeared.

In its wake, it had left behind a site of utter destruction. There was not even a cloud of smoke covering the area, for everything in that space had been utterly destroyed, from dust to the very air molecules.

Well, it had destroyed almost everything, for Ragnar still stood there, his posture completely unchanged. There was not a single rip on his tunic, and though his face was covered in blood, there wasn't even the slightest indication of pain on his face. His eyes were so calm that he may as well have taken a stroll in the park.

After a couple of seconds, he finally reacted by cracking his neck. Then he walked out of the confines of what had been the abode, silently admiring the fact that the scope of destruction had been strictly restricted to his abode. The Innkeeper was indeed impressive.

He summoned his personal hologram and said, "please deliver my message to the Innkeeper. There was a devil who was challenging me before my tribulation. I would like to challenge him in the Murder Grounds."