In a way, Dragon-Lex and Axios were playing a game of chess, or Go. While Axios did that literally, by leveraging the pieces he had placed and using them to gain an advantage against Dragon-Lex while limiting him, Dragon-Lex did so by distracting Axios.
Everything, whether it was him beating up Axios, or their talks, or even Axios attacking him, all of them built karma between them. Back when Lex was at the Seraphim Resort, he'd undergone a Heavens Guidance, and through that unlocked the ability to look at karma with his eyes.
Now it wasn't an ability he used often, owing to what happened with Jack when he saw his own karma. That didn't mean he didn't use it at all.
