The Innkeeper

"Had your fun?" Cassandra asked, her expression once again completely neutral.

If Lex himself had not seen how nervous and expressive she had been in front of the Innkeeper, he may have believed she really was just like that. Now he knew that a bunch of Golden core cultivators just weren't enough to elicit a reaction from her.

"I was just telling him what kind of training he and the others can expect," Lex said, but then paused, turned to look Cassandra in the eye, and continued, "and the kind of things they won't need to face."

Cassandra could not help but chuckle. Lex was trying to give her a silent reminder of their agreement, but now that her impression of him had changed, all she could see was a cute little baby looking up at her.

"Well, I'm glad that you've given them an idea of what to expect. But I think now it's time to focus on other matters. The Innkeeper informed me that I have to help you in returning everyone back to the Inn. I can only imagine that he meant I have to train you for the task. So, let's go. I'm going to be increasing the intensity of your training."

For some reason, Lex's body trembled. That was strange, because Lex himself planned on asking for her help. The more he grew his control over space, the easier it would be to actually pull off his task. So then, instead of being pleased, why did he suddenly feel dread at the fact that Cassandra was going to train him?

Dismissing the strange reaction, Lex bade Luthor farewell and followed Cassandra to the orb they had parked. The ride back was somehow even shorter as Lex was lost in planning his immediate future.

Even when they arrived at their destination, Lex followed Cassandra silently as he considered the timelines for various things in his mind. When Cassandra finally woke him from his reverie, he was startled to find himself sitting at a table with something that looked suspiciously similar to a croissant and a cup of hot chocolate in front of him.

"So, how exactly do you plan on returning to the Inn?" she asked, staring at him. She needed to know how to design his training and what to focus on.

Lex smiled. He was obviously not going to share the specific details, as that was a security flaw technically speaking. In fact, it was such a serious flaw that he was going to consider some options to amend it later on.

"In essence, I'm going to teleport us there. For that I need to improve my control over space and learn long distance teleportation in the next few months. I have to do it while taking along a few thousand people with me as well. What do you think? Should be easy, right?"

The question was dripping with sarcasm, because Lex was very much aware of the immensity of the task, not to mention if it was even really possible or not.

But Cassandra did not give him the feedback that he was expecting. She only smiled at him, her eyes filled with mischief.

"Yes, it shouldn't be hard at all."

Lex trembled again, and this time he began to suspect that something was amiss. But whether he suspected something or not hardly mattered. He could not skip the training that followed.

She started him off easily by drowning him in a liquid that had extremely bizarre spatial properties. That was not a figure of speech as for this training Lex really needed to drown.

The nerve-wracking, mind numbing, daunting task of taking the liquid into his lungs was one he had to purposefully perform. He also had to swallow some in his stomach, but that was also achieved without any issue.

The liquid presented a number of strange behaviors in various circumstances, and Lex had to experience each and every one of them. It affected space in such a way that it detached itself from the 'location' aspect of existing in space. In simple terms, the liquid teleported randomly, and the distance it could teleport was theoretically infinite. It could even traverse between realms. By being completely submerged and filled by the liquid, Lex experienced that teleportation as if he were the liquid.

But after 6 hours of being teleported across the temple while in a state of drowning, Cassandra informed Lex that that had just been the warm up. Their training was officially going to begin after that.

Cassandra did not focus on any other aspect of space, and solely focused on teleportation. Between being flung through space and squeezing through self created, externally contained wormholes, Lex completely lost track of time.

There was no day or night, no breakfast or dinner. He would eat when he had expended a certain amount of energy, and he would sleep when his performance dropped by more than 2%.

The minutes and hours were indistinguishable, so that Lex had no idea how much time was passing. Eventually, when Lex felt like several months must have gone by, he asked Mary how long it had been. She told him merely 6 days had passed.

That's when Cassandra informed him of how space travel messes with time perception. In essence, it messes things up.

After the first two weeks, Lex steadied himself finally. Whether he was cooked in boiling space, dragged through distorting space, pushed through a portal that had only an entrance but no exit, he no longer cared. He could overcome difficulties. Heck, on the day when Lex tried out Blink and realized that his range had grown by three times, Lex wholeheartedly threw himself into Cassandra's crazy training sessions.

After a month, Lex no longer suffered the debilitating soul nausea that would affect him if he traveled through a poorly made teleportation formation. He had overcome a number of other obstacles as well, and his control over space was increasing so fast he had trouble comprehending his own new capabilities.

When the second month began, Cassandra told him that since he had finally become desensitized to basic spatial issues, they could begin his real training.