Jack found a corpse. Or, to be more specific, he found the remains of a ravaged corpse, radiating a divine aura. It looked mostly like the exoskeleton, but there were enough leftover bits of the rest of its body to conclude that this was not the result of molting, but rather what was left of a deity after facing defeat, and possibly having been devoured by another.
The length of it suggested that its original shape was very similar to the centipedal monster Lex had faced.
The corpse was in an underground excavation site that was heavily restricted, and guarded by some of the most powerful insects in the colony.
Lex could tell by the scurrying insects that surrounded the corpse that they had been studying it, and possibly been trying to make use of it to enhance themselves. The overpowered, evil creatures that formed as a result were probably failed experiments. Or maybe even successful experiments, based on what the objective was.
Jack was not too concerned with the evil experiments of a nation of insects, though Ollie was properly terrified. No, Jack was instead more interested in what exactly ate this deity to begin with.
He still had to be careful, as he was not as adept at using this body and its specialties, but eventually he made his way to the corpse and tried to see if he could find any clues. But whether it was through checking the corpse manually or using various techniques, it yielded no results. It was as if all clues had been specifically wiped by the culprit.
Regardless, it was an interesting find. Lex had no idea that deities had already been born in this realm, since technically speaking Mythical beings didn't necessarily have to be deities. They were just extremely powerful, and that usually resulted in them being worshiped.
Eventually they moved on, since Jack was in search of ores. Ollie did insist on returning to the shadow plane briefly to report what it found, but it did not delay them long.
Back at the Midnight Inn, the Tree of Life, which had inhabited Pinophyta's corpse, was suddenly faced with an unexpected prompt. It was told to pay for its stay if it wanted to stay longer by its personally assigned AI projection. It had not been expecting this since no one had been able to detect anything amiss with Pinophyta, besides the change in appearance. But that hardly mattered.
Its aura remained identical, and so did its behavior. There was no external indication that anything was amiss at all, yet the Inn knew that it hadn't paid to stay. Technically speaking, Pinophyta had paid for a very long stay, so no one should have asked him to pay again. Yet now it was happening.
From the day it was born, the Tree had never paid for anything other than through its desire for it to be accomplished. It's will was currency enough. But the Inn required a more tangible form of payment, causing it to have to pay up for the first time in its long life. Despite how mundane the incident was, it only served to further nurture the discontent the Tree was beginning to feel towards the Inn.
But it would not act yet. No, first, it would prepare thoroughly, and when it acted, the Inn would have no chance to respond.
Lex, meanwhile, was still blindly teleporting towards the other continents. Surprisingly, finding the gigantic masses of land was considerably difficult.
Regardless of which of the two continents he found first, it did not matter. He had targets identified on both.
The largest continent, which he had named Nether because of the number of spirits living there, had many strange biomes which gave birth to valuable treasures. The second largest continent, which he had named Jabalia, was much more normal, besides being extremely mountainous, but it too had some valuable treasures just due to its size.
Compared to the two, the sea actually lacked valuable treasures, which was surprising considering it took up the most space.
Eventually, he ended up spending days searching for the continents, to the point where the Chaos Crystal was completely absorbed by the system, and contributed 0.5% to the repair percentage.
It was disappointingly little, but it was already better than using resin again. If he could continuously find more ingredients at the Heavenly Immortal level, or perhaps even at the Celestial level, he might just complete this quest with time to spare.
It took Lex an entire week of teleporting before he found one of the continents, and he could immediately tell he had found Nether. Its aura was very similar to the region of the Inn he had designed for spirits, which was not necessarily a bad thing. Strange environments gave birth to strange treasures.
But before he could figure out where on the continent he was, he stumbled onto a war. It was between armies of Griffins and massive praying mantis'. Lex's adventure senses were tingling, but unfortunately he had to ignore them and continue exploring the continent.
Distractions were aplenty, but eventually Lex figured out where he was, and then began teleporting once more, in search of the nearest potential ingredient.
Unfortunately, ten days later, when he finally found his first treasure, the system did not recognize it as an ingredient. Lex could not dwell on the disappointment, as he had no time to waste. He started to target another treasure he had shortlisted, and began to look for it.
Incidentally, by accident, he came across a small, green plant no larger than a blade of grass.
There was nothing special about the plant as far as he could tell, and he had no information about it from the dump of knowledge he had about the Inn. But apparently it was a Celestial level ingredient!
It didn't even show up under his Glyph, but if the system recognized it, who was he to complain? The issue with that though was that he could not replicate this incident at all!
One and a half months passed as he continued to search, and during this time, he only found one more Heavenly immortal level ingredient.
The Celestial ingredient contributed 1%, and the Heavenly ingredient contributed 0.5%, bringing the total up to 32.2%!
Lex felt a level of excitement at being so close, but at the same time, he could feel an anxiety growing. No matter how he searched, he could not find more ingredients, even when he went through almost all the items he listed on Nether.
There were still more, but he had already checked the most probable ones, so he could not help but feel like looking for Jabalia. Since he had found Nether once, teleporting back to it would be easy, so he then began his journey to find the final continent.
This time, he planned it better and made sure he was teleporting in the correct direction as he set off from Nether, which is why it only took him two days to reach it.
Theoretically speaking, all he had to do was teleport to it, so it shouldn't have taken much time. But he was always afraid of teleporting too far and somehow skipping the continent entirely, which is why he had to settle for relatively smaller distances between each teleportation.
But that was the end of the good news for a long time. Once Lex found Jabalia he began to search for ingredients, but two more months passed by, and yet he could not find a single one.
The anxiety he was feeling in his heart began to increase as he wondered if he should return to the Inn and ask the Rhinocentaurs if they had found any systems. But that was a bad plan, and even he knew it.
The small Celestial ingredient he found as a blade of grass gave him hope of encountering more ingredients, but how could he find something he had no way of tracking?
Back at the Midnight Inn, while Lex was desperately looking for ingredients, a strange tension had begun to build in the air. None of the workers, or even the old guests could identify why it was there, but the source was clear.
The new guests became more and more silent as the days went by, and began to avoid contact with the workers altogether. Many of them even left the Inn, which was completely normal, save for the fact that they left as if they were escaping some kind of calamity.
Gerard, though love stricken, was not so blind as to ignore such a change, and so ordered all the guards to begin searching the Inn in case there was some conspiracy afoot. But they found nothing.
Even so, Luthor stopped his training in the lava pits he had nearly turned into his home, and the others raised their guards as well. Even if no one said it, they could tell that something significant was about to happen.
Then, one day, without warning, the ground erupted.