The Innkeeper

"Damn it!" the major exclaimed and exited the room immediately, running upwards. Lex did not follow him, but sped up retrieving the servers as much as he could. The sound of fighting above him became more intense, and the shaking became more common.

As easy as he found it to kill the robots, he was certain of the fact that normal humans with regular guns could not harm them. The fact that there was a fight going on upstairs indicated that the facility clearly had more defensive measures prepared than just soldiers with guns. What he was concerned about was why the defense failed so suddenly. The change was too abrupt, with no time for any warning.

If more robots had arrived, thereby increasing the numbers of attackers, to overwhelm the formation, someone would still have had enough time to find the major and give a warning. It was worth investigating.

It took him a couple more minutes, but without having to hold back his speed to accommodate the major, the process was sped up considerably. Just to be safe, Lex decided to teleport back to the Inn and drop off the servers. Afterwards, he would return and see if he could help in the defense of the facility. Or, you know, if the facility was bound to get overrun, protect its resources from falling into invader hands.

Yet something unusual happened. Normally returning to the Inn was slower than normal teleportation, but it was still a relatively quick process. However, now that Lex was trying to return, the process had slowed down considerably. Even ten seconds later, he was still on earth!

"Mary, what's happening?" Lex asked grimly. This was not a laughing matter.

"I'm not entirely certain. The system is detecting unusual activity in the space around earth, making teleportation more difficult."

"Am I trapped here?"

Mary scoffed. "Of course not. The system can access anywhere in the whole universe, a little spatial distortion won't stop it. It will, however, slow it down considerably. You might need to wait a whole minute for the system to teleport you out safely.. The same will apply to anyone using golden keys."

"The timing of this can't be a coincidence," Lex noted.

"Whether this is a natural phenomenon or artificial is not something that I can check. But one thing is certain - if whoever is attacking has means advanced enough to disrupt space, then they definitely have the means to detect any teleportation taking place. If they can detect everyone who is coming and going from the Inn, then it's no wonder they started disrupting space."

Just as Mary finished speaking, Lex was finally teleported away from the basement and returned to the Inn. He unloaded all the servers, and directly teleported them to a small facility he had built in the small village being rented by the council.

"Inform Miranda that the servers have arrived. Also, send a notification to everyone from earth letting them know that teleportation to and from earth has been slowed due to interference."

Other than the crystal realm, this was the first time he encountered trouble with teleportation. He was now even more invested in figuring out who exactly these invaders were. No one messed with his business.

Although technically his work on earth was over, he decided to return to the facility. Not only did he want to help them, but he was very interested in how they overcame the defensive formation. He had a feeling that this information would be critically important.

Just as with his arrival, the teleportation back to earth took uncomfortably long. For the first time, the expression on the mask completely accurately depicted how Lex truly felt. There was no toothy grin this time, no. Instead, a closed mouth and eyes that showed increasing anger painted his mask.

If the Inn developed a poor reputation because of these delays, Lex would not take the matter lying down. Although he had said that the Inn would not take any active part in helping the council to maintain its neutrality, he was beginning to wonder if he could find any loopholes for that as well.

The moment Lex teleported back, the building trembled once again, and this time harder than ever before. He immediately spread his spirit sense to assess the situation, and surprisingly discovered that the humans were actually holding the invaders off!

Although the guns could not hurt the robots, and their technology had failed the earthlings, they were not deterred. If there was one thing humans were good at, it was war!

Much like during the Midnight games, there were several groups of cultivators using techniques that empowered one another to fight off the robots. There were a total of 7 Foundation real cultivators, and nearly a hundred Qi training cultivators holding off against the invaders.

They had what looked like riot shields large enough to cover their entire bodies, which were capable of blocking the laser attacks! Lex was genuinely impressed at the durability of those shields. He knew that those lasers weren't simple to block, and most of everything he had seen so far made it look like the robots had an overwhelming advantage. This was the first thing he saw that proved otherwise.

Once Lex got a good idea of the situation, he reluctantly decided to not safeguard the facility's resources personally. Instead, using the In-Law effect, he teleported to the ground and directly smashed the nearest robot.

He thought his sudden appearance and subsequent defeat of a robot would help moralize the troops. Instead, it was when all the robots stopped invading and started focusing solely on Lex that the soldiers felt their morale boosted - at least they weren't the ones being shot at!

Lex, however, instantly felt his mood sour. It wasn't because he was being targeted by all the robots. It was because he overheard the robots speaking.

"A.S.S. has been found at location designation 7651273. All on ground units, focus on A.S.S. Energy weapons have proven to be non-effective against target, act accordingly."