The Innkeeper - Chapter 1494

Chapter 1494: The great escape
As more and more fairy dust gathered around him, the light it was giving off became so bright that it became impossible to ignore. The horde of undead shrimp that his crew had been fighting off became distracted as well, all of them turning and hissing towards Jack.

While the others responded to the light, they were responding to Purinex.

Death energy was a type of energy that was created around death. The greater the death, the more of it would accumulate. On its own, death energy was not harmful to anyone or anything. Mostly, death energy was just used to animate corpses and items, making it seem like they had come to life. Considering that some undead even seemed to have sentience, it was hard to argue that they hadn’t been granted life.

Lex, and therefore Jack, maintained the opinion that without a soul, anyone or anything wasn’t truly alive. It helped simplify the already too complicated universe for him.

Since Purinex negated Death energy, one could say it was great at killing undead, which is what drew the hostility of the numerous undead.

“Return to the ship,” Jack ordered as he twitched his nose. Unfortunately, even closing off his sense of smell could not keep away the pungent aroma that was haunting him.

No one questioned him and immediately returned, even the usually oblivious Goldilocks. Once everyone was back aboard, Jack allowed his fairy dust to fall on them as well as the ship, allowing Purinex to permeate into them.

“Hold on tight, and attack from the deck if you have to. Don’t resist the Purinex.”

Without explaining his intentions, Jack flew to the ship’s helm and channeled even more energy into it. There was one good thing about being a fairy, and that was his nearly limitless supply of spiritual energy. Even Lex did not have as much energy as Jack when he was in the Nascent realm, so Jack spent his energy without concern.

The Golden Gravity Eels up front started to push forward, their bodies emitting antigravity fields, allowing the Jolly Rancher, which was being dragged behind through chains of gold, to pick up speed.

Invisible formations that no one had detected before came to life, not only covering the eels, but the chains of gold as well as the ship. Since Nether Lily Gold reached the theoretical limit of spiritual energy conductivity, Jack had seen no reason to not make use of it.

Using all the knowledge Lex had attained, Jack silently carved out one formation after another, not only strengthening his ship, but giving it various abilities and protections.

The crew was bewildered, for they had never seen their captain so serious before. They didn’t even know that their ship had these formations, or that they were so powerful. Yet the more their usually insane captain acted steady and responsible, the more fear they felt. Was there some unspeakable danger about to befall them?

Little did they know, that was exactly it. It was just that it would take the decaying Karma hundreds of years to actually affect them through their Karma with Jack.

The Jolly Rancher smashed through all enemies without slowing down or coming to harm. The Purinex was the perfect offense against the undead, immediately harming them when they made contact, while the ship itself was plenty durable on its own, making it the perfect battering ram.

“Captain, how exactly are we going to exit the river?” Ollie asked. “The River Styx is without beginning or end, touching on all corners of the world.”

“Yes, that’s right. But we are neither seeking its beginning, nor are we seeking its end. We are simply sailing sideways across its waters, until we reach the shore of our destination.”

The owl looked at the other crew members, who either did not respond or simply shrugged.

“But captain, there is no shore on this river,” the owl emphasised.

“Don’t you worry about that. If you have nothing else to do, why don’t you go man the sails?”

Ollie left, grumbling to himself.

“The ship doesn’t need sails to fly. More importantly, we’re sailing against the wind. What am I supposed to do with the sails?”

Unfortunately, the owl got no answer. The ship, shining like a beacon in the pitch black of night, continued to ram against any undead that came in its way, and oh boy did they come.

Just as Purinex cleansed Death energy, the undead hated Purinex, and would do anything to get rid of it.

If Jack made use of it for too long, he would eventually end up attracting something far more dangerous than he could handle. Fortunately, he didn’t need to wait long.

Just like everything else in the Folklore realm, the power of the river came from its legends and stories. Jack had studied many of them, though he could not claim to have read them all, and had a basic understanding of it.

The river could be reached from anywhere in the Folklore realm, but that simultaneously meant that any part of the river could touch any part of the realm. Theoretically, he could have transferred out of the river, to his destination, the moment he reached the river. But that would not have made a good story, and would have been a disrespect to the awesome power of the river.

A journey had to be made. The distance covered was irrelevant, for the journey was more symbolic than anything. They had to overcome trials and tribulations, and properly witness the awesome power of the river, and understand how much weaker they were than it.

Otherwise, if they exited and claimed that crossing the river was easy, that would have directly challenged the legend of the river, and such a thing was not something they would have been able to tolerate.

But this was not something he could have explained to the rest of his crew. The reason this worked was because this was Jack’s understanding of the rules of the Folklore realm. Yet once he discussed the rules with his crew, they would have denied or negated some of his theories, adding their own insights into the mix, and that would have affected how the realm behaved.

Everything here was a grand story, and as characters in a story, they had to have the understanding of not trying to manipulate the story. The moment they tried, they would fail. Yet if they found a convenient loophole…

Captain Jack took off his captain’s hat and placed it against his chest, as if paying his utmost respects.

“Remember this day, ladies and gentlemen, alligators and ducks. For this is the day we sailed the mighty River Styx, braving its untold dangers and fury, fighting tooth and claw and nail for our lives, and escaped with our lives. We saw but a tiny glimpse of what the river-”

“But captain, we’ve been sailing for multiple days now, not just today,” Pebbles, the hamster, corrected, causing Jack to sigh.