The Innkeeper

It was quite a sight to watch a hurricane, one that could probably swallow a highrise building like it was no problem, hesitantly enter the lake. Although the system scan told him that the hurricane was severely weakened, he could not tell based on appearances. Then again, he had never seen a living hurricane before.

To be fair, though, the Inn did have sentient hills and rivers - including one river that had a severe phobia of any living thing inside of it.

"Um, by the way, if I don't go back home soon the ocean is going to get a bit rowdy. I hope that's okay," Katrina said, almost as if she was seeking Lex's permission to leave.

If the hurricane had cheeks, Lex would want to pinch them. She was being too cute.

"It is no problem at all, Katrina. In the Midnight Inn, guests can come and go as they please. The only exception is if they break the rules of the Inn, such as attacking other guests or Inn workers, which may get the rule breaker banned. So once you feel refreshed, you can leave as you please. Though I regret not being able to serve you better. Is there anything else you need?"

Lex really hoped she would tell him something, because he had no idea what other service to make for a hurricane. His quest required him to make at least 2 new rooms for Disaster category guests.

"Um, well… the tsunami stole all my gem fragments. If you can sell me some fragments, or if you have anything that can help me get my fragments back, I'd be really appreciative."

Lex did not immediately respond. Gem fragments sounded pretty straightforward, but he had a feeling that they were not fragments of the gems he was familiar with. He was wondering if he should ask… or try to figure out the details on his own. But he didn't wait long. The whole point of appearing as himself, rather than as the Innkeeper, was so that he wouldn't have to hide his lack of knowledge.

"Please excuse my ignorance, Katrina. I'm not familiar with what you mean by gem fragments. Could you elaborate a little?"

After a few seconds where Lex imagined she was overcoming her own shyness, Katrina extended her spirit sense towards Lex, and showed him a memory.

It was her. It was Karina. Yet instead of her current height of a mile, Katrina was dozens of miles high, raging over an enormous, tumultuous ocean that reeked some kind of primal, savage energy.

The world she was in, if it even was a world, was like a preserved fragment of some prehistoric mega-disaster, where hurricanes and tsunamis were so insignificant that they actually became the stabilizing factor of the climate.

That was a lot to assume from a single glimpse of a memory, but the thing was, Lex wasn't assuming. That was just the information he concluded based on what he saw, because the gem fragments that Katrina was talking about could be seen clearly in her memories.

To be fair, they looked just like massive gems, flying within the whirling winds of the hurricane, glinting in their various colors. In reality, they were crystalized fragments of laws.

The enormity of this needed special emphasis. They were not laws, trapped within objects - much like Lex had seen before. Nor were they some natural treasures formed from laws, such as what he used to gain his space affinity back in the day. No, these were actual laws that, for reasons Lex could not entirely fathom, had turned into crystal, and broken off from wherever they originated from.

If the sight he was seeing was from some unique realm, Lex could have still understood. There were some freaky realms out there. But Katrina was from the Origin realm, which meant that wherever she came from was an incredibly unique place.

It was still believable, which was crazy. After all, the Origin realm still had not been explored in its entirety, many of its secrets left unknown even to the Henali.

Lex continued to watch the memory as a wave came into view on the horizon, its arc reaching up into the sky, its length blocking out the entire ocean. Deep within the wave, Lex could see a few gem fragments too.

Then, as the memory continued, Lex saw what could only be described as epic cinema! It was like watching an anime battle between a hurricane and a tsunami, both pushing into each other, the wave trying to crash the winds while the winds tried to cut through the wave!

Yet, as was usually the case in epic anime showdowns - not that this was actually anime - the villain cheated. From within the wave, what looked like a massive Orca leaped at the hurricane, catching it by surprise and stealing a good chunk of its fragments.

With the loss of the fragments, the hurricane suddenly lost a lot of its ferocity, giving the tsunami the edge it needed to crash down on the hurricane, drowning it within the ocean.

For a very brief moment, it seemed like that would be the end for the hurricane, yet underneath the waves it saw a golden door, shining, promising salvation.

The memory ended, and Lex was left, staring at Katrina, unsure of what to do. He could not conjure up those gem fragments, and he wasn't sure how to help Katrina get them back. Like, how was he supposed to equip a hurricane to fight better?

"Understood. While I cannot sell any fragments to you, helping you get your fragments back is not a problem at all," said Lex, contrary to what he actually felt like. "Why don't you allow yourself to recuperate over the lake while I prepare."

"Um, thank you, I guess," she said shyly, before retreating her spirit sense.

Relieved, Katrina turned to her recovery while Lex flew back a little to give her some privacy. If logic could not help him overcome this obstacle, it was time to rely on the abstract and esoteric nature of laws to come up with a perfectly reasonable but simultaneously entirely absurd solution to his problem.