The Innkeeper

"Congratulations on emerging from the Murder grounds," said the Innkeeper as he looked down at John, though his warm voice had a hint of admonishment in it.

John smiled weakly, despite his dire situation.

"I know I should not have accepted the challenge. If I had let the Inn handle it, things would have turned out much better. But, at that time, I just didn't like the fact that any random creature off the streets could just challenge me. I guess it's also because I'd spent too much time in such a peaceful environment, and I was itching to let loose."

"And how is that itch now?" he asked, the warmth of his voice sounding ironically quite biting at that moment.

"Quite sore," John admitted.

Lex shook his head and opened the Recovery pod. He used Impervious Hands and channeled his soul sense into it, allowing his hands to gain the ability to touch souls. Gently, and ever so slowly, Lex touched John's soul to get a sense of the situation himself.

As Charles had said, the 'soul treasure' had been attacked, but his understanding of the situation was limited. Systems were far from simple, and Lex found it hard to believe that someone could target a system so directly.

Although if anyone were to do it, it made sense that this group who was specifically targeting systems would be able to. He still did not know as much about them as he would like.

As Lex traced his hands over the cracks, and could sense a very familiar aura from within. The system truly seemed broken, but as far as he knew, systems were capable of healing themselves. Absorbing other systems would speed up the process for sure, but they could rely on just spiritual energy to do the same.

"He targeted your system," the Innkeeper said plainly, though somehow the news did not cause any waves in John's heart. He had already guessed as much by now. Moreover, the Innkeeper was the strongest being he had ever met, so he long stopped trying to keep secrets from him.

"Has your interface completely vanished, or is it still there at least?"

"It gave me a quest before completely disappearing, and draining my cultivation along with it. How am I supposed to complete a quest like this?"

"What was the quest?"

"To heal the system!" John said, though he found the quest to be redundant. He would have done it anyway, or at least tried, had his cultivation not completely disappeared.

"I have said this many times, but one should not put too much trust in a system. There is too much about them that is secret. Systems are able to heal themselves using spirit energy, or you can heal them by absorbing and merging other systems. You can even make your system stronger if you do so, but that may not necessarily be a good thing. After all, systems can completely control your entire life if you do not keep up your guard.

"For example, your system likely absorbed your cultivation to fuel its own repairing process. To it, it hardly matters whether you are its host or someone else. It just wants to regain its previous state as quickly as possible."

"My cultivation was given to me by the system to begin with. I cannot really complain now that it has taken it away," John replied, depression leaking into his voice.

"You can decide what you want to do on your own," the Innkeeper said. "If you wish to repair the system, you can see if you can figure out a way. However, if you wish to be free of it, I can remove it from your body. You will likely have to cultivate again from the beginning, but I don't think you should find that too challenging."

John was silent for a time, before he weakly asked, "can I take my time with the decision?"

"It's up to you. But based on your situation, I don't think you should wait too long. How did he hurt your system like this to begin with?"

"He had many strange devices that seemed to target systems specifically. It kept interfering with all my systems functions. In the end I eventually killed him, and until then I was fine. But as it turned out, he had hidden a device inside his body as well. When his heart stopped beating, his body self-destructed. But, the strange thing was, the explosion did not harm me at all, yet was extremely damaging to my system.

"But even then I was fine since I reacted fast enough. But something unusual happened. It was as if a virus had been introduced in my system, and it began acting really strange and somehow started to harm itself. In the end, the system managed to fix itself, but by then the damage the virus had done was too severe. It gave me the quest and shut down."

Lex only nodded, and then left, giving John time to think about what he wanted to do. Lex, on the other hand, began considering precautions to take if any such people came after him. But, for some reason, he also had a feeling that dealing with his system was not nearly as easy as it was on the weaker systems he had encountered.

As he pondered on this topic, he teleported back to his office and had Mary bring the things Alexander left for him. A letter was very strange, as Alexander could have simply left a video or voice message. But his suspicions seemed to bear no fruit, as he could not discover anything special about the letter.

The only thing left to do was read it, and investigate the spatial ring he had left. After that, he would look into relocating the refugees from Polebitvy, after which he would head out to do his own things. As for the many devils who wanted to meet him, Lex would just use his projection to meet with them. He did not have the time to spare to sit through so many endless meetings.