The Innkeeper

Lex slept for over two days, consumed by his exhaustion and overexertion. When he woke up, a high pitched sound sang in his ear while a minor headache had gripped his head. It was unusual for a malady to affect him so long, so the first thing he did was to investigate.

As it turned out, the effects of the rook had not completely elapsed yet, though they were slowly fading.

The high pitched noise was not from his ears ringing, but was a wail from his sword intent which was plagued by lethargy. Although it was no longer weakened by as much as 50%, it was still taking time to return to its normal peak.

Similarly, the headache was not because he was ill, but because the digestion of the sword aura had been artificially slowed down since even his sword intent's growth speed had been artificially reduced. When it finally returned to normal, and absorbed all the additional insight he had harnessed from the sword aura, the headache would vanish.

Yet Lex felt unsatisfied with the situation. He was not afraid of that Nas himself, but the implications of the rook piece were many. Unless he himself figured out a way to place other pieces, if that was even possible, he'd be forced to use only the simple pieces which could result in a vicious attack from the rook piece. More importantly, who knew if there were other kinds of pieces as well?

That did not mean Lex was about to give up. It did, however, mean that he needed to be a lot more selective in how he placed pieces. Of the pieces he had placed, the one with the sword intent had the biggest chance of disaster happening due to the sword aura hiding within his body.

He could only assume that the opponent had some way to determine which one of the pieces hid the greatest vulnerability and targeted it. In the future every piece he placed had to be calculated lest it be used against him.

Lex pondered for a while longer and came up with a few possible traps, but the thing was, he didn't understand how to gain an advantage with the board, and how it could negatively affect his opponent.

How could he trap the enemy if he didn't know how his own moves affected him? Just like he had overanalyzed the sword, using the full extent of his mind, he began to study the Go board. Using the ability of his left eye would be useless, since the image was inside his mind, and couldn't actually be seen with his eye.

However he tried every other means available to him. He used his soul and spirit sense. Lex even used Domination on the mental image, as well as Mindmeld. He tried his hand at divination, and pondered a few paths he was unfamiliar with as well.

He even used his tenet, trying to understand what laws were being used to link him to the Go board. It was far from easy, because the laws could barely be detected at all. If he didn't already know of the board's existence, he would not even notice the anomaly in the laws around him. As it was, he barely detected that something was amiss but he couldn't read the laws clearly.

That made sense if he assumed that this was the work of a system. Systems were possibly one of the greatest, if not the greatest force in existence. Their application remained completely undetected by a majority of the universe.

Lex thought for a long while, and came up with very limited and entirely unsatisfying theories of what might work. The most obvious option was to gain a better understanding of the board and get back at him that way. He was already doing that, and intended to run a few more tests which would reveal the limits set by the board.
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All systems operated within their own rules, and as long as Lex mastered them, he could use that to his own advantage. For example, he knew that systems valued entertainment above all else.

He had to admit, having him clash against another system user definitely had some high entertainment value. He couldn't even determine if their interaction was a result of his own system, the Nas's system. Either way, he could somehow use that to his advantage, he just needed to figure out how.

The second, and much more difficult and unfeasible way that Lex had come up with was to gain an understanding of Karmic laws.

It need not be a detailed understanding. He just needed enough to know how to use it, how to hide it, and how to set a trap using it.

But learning about Karma was easier said than done.

He let out a deep sigh and got up, cracking his back as he did. He wrote a small letter on a piece of paper, folded it up like a paper airplane, and then threw it out into the air.

The letter vanished from sight, heading towards Misha.

They had not exchanged means of contact, but Misha had left him a token with her aura on it. Lex could use that to send his letters towards her by tracking her aura. Of course, if Lex tried to do something malicious by tracking her aura it would fail, for the token had its own precautionary measures embedded into it.

He had asked her out finally, requesting to meet her in the Azure field in the next few days if she was free. Now he just needed to wait for her response, and then he could organize something. Until then, Lex had something else in mind.

Part of the Expo's point was to demonstrate to the universe the culture and lifestyle of the Artica realm. This was not a random move, for without understanding the Artica realm, allies would not know what behavior was beneficial and what was frowned upon.