As soon as Lex woke up his mind was clear, without the usual grogginess that comes after a long nap. He noticed that he was not in his bathtub, the last place he remembered being. He was in the familiar white room.
A grin painted his face when he realized what had happened and jumped off the table, ready to test out his increased strength. The focus of the second procedure was his spirit, but naturally an increase in his cultivation realm would also increase his basic physical capabilities. He felt stronger, but he would need to test out his strength in the Training room to get a clear understanding of how much stronger he really was. The change that felt most obvious to him was his mind. He could not say that he had gotten smarter, but that he could do more. An easy way to explain it was that if Lex had to do a math equation mentally that would take him five seconds to solve, he could now solve it one. His mental capability had improved, but if Lex did not know how to solve that math equation in the first place no amount of improvements would change that. Although, perhaps he'd be able to learn how to solve the equation with greater ease now. He should test out the theory by going over some of his old college material. Since he'd forgotten almost all of it, it could be treated as if he was learning that stuff for the first time. It would give him a decent benchmark to test how much his learning capability had improved.
Naturally, there was more to his improvements than just that. With an increase in his spirit, he would be more resistant to spirit attacks or invasions, and would more easily be able to see through illusions. It would take time and experimentation to learn exactly what else his increased spirit allowed him to do.
"Congratulations," said Mary, appearing before him. Something that surprised Lex was that Mary had changed her clothes, and now appeared to be wearing the white Taekwondo uniform.
"Thank you, I'm relieved that the upgrade happened. I don't know how much longer I could have taken getting beaten up by those dummies.".
"Haha your training is far from over young man. After your latest increase in cultivation, your spirit is unstable. Before you can increase your cultivation again, you need to wait for your spirit to stabilize. You can speed up that process by meditating, so that'll be your next task. For some people, that's even worse than getting beaten up by a dummy."
Lex groaned, thinking about that. He had never tried meditating before, but he couldn't imagine it would be easy. He checked how much his next upgrade would be, and predictably the price had increased to 10,000MP! He needed to figure out a way to increase his income.
"Mary, how can I increase the number of guests that I receive? My income is too low, it can't keep up with my expenses."
"If you want to increase your income, your focus should be on completing quests. You haven't even started the farming quest yet, let alone the one for repeat guests. Completing quests will directly help you improve the Inn and increase your authority. The greater your authority, the more things you can do."
Lex cursed, he had completely forgotten about getting the seeds! He would return to Earth as soon as possible to figure that out. But the other quest…
"But how am I supposed to get repeat guests? The only thing I can do there is wait for them to come back."
"That's too passive. Yes, some guests will eventually come back, ultimately fulfilling the requirements for the quest, but if that's all it took then why would the Inn give you the quest. You have to be more active, and figure out how to bring those customers back. You always wait for the system or the Inn to give you things, but never take initiative to figure things out on your own.
"The Marlo quest was the only one you put any effort into at all. Be more imaginative. To be honest, this quest was so, SO easy. I don't want to give you any bad ideas, but all you needed to do was find some poor sap on Earth, give them keys and make them come back to the Inn repeatedly. In fact, you earned a decent amount of money, you could have even paid them directly to buy things from the Inn to complete the quest."
Lex frowned, realizing that he really had been too nonchalant about the quests. Mary was right, his quest that he had been treating as difficult had such an easy loophole. He pulled up his status to look at his ongoing quests.
Quests:
Having a guest come once can be an accident, only repeat guests can reflect an institution's prestige! Have 5 individual repeat guests! (Progress: ? (Repeated guest: Hugo))
Host has encountered a planet extremely suitable for finding guests. Build a connection to Dunya!
With a garden available in your backyard, it's time to improve the quality of your food. Grow spiritual vegetables for the Inns kitchen.
He was happy to see that Hugo returning counted him as a repeat guest. He was expecting Alexander to return soon, and those two teenage love birds definitely planned on using this place as a rendezvous but it was unknown when exactly they would return. He could wait a little to see if he had any repeat guests, but at the moment he was inclined towards using the loophole Mary told him of. Of course, he had to carefully plan out how to do it so that he would not be connected to the Inn. He was already surprised at the extent of surveillance he had encountered on Earth.
As for going to Dunya, forget it! The two planets he had gone to were only 1 star and yet he had nearly died on both of them. There was no way in hell he would be going to Dunya right now, even his brain tumor did not make him stupid enough to do something like that.
The easiest one for now was the vegetable one. He would complete it as soon as possible.
"By the way, while you were asleep Will recovered and has entered the Mystery trail. He has been in there for about an hour now."
"Oh interesting. Is there any way we can see what his trial is?"
"No, but you can ask him about it when he's done. I think it might not be a bad idea for you to go through the trial once as well."
"I'll think about it, but not now. I'm returning to Earth to buy some seeds, keep me updated in case he leaves the trial."
Lex exited the white room and returned directly to Earth. He took out his phone and turned it on, only to receive a dozen or so notifications. He directly ignored most of them, responding only to Moon and Larry. He told his youngest sister by telling her he'd be going on a trip for work so he'd be outside the service area so if she is unable to reach him she should not be alarmed. He messaged Larry thanking him for calling Bluebird, and then messaged him that he dropped out of Marlo's class and that he'd be leaving for a while.
He googled the closest Farmers Market and went there directly and bought a few packets of every kind of seed they had. Then he put up an ad on eBay for four people to help him make a special delivery. He only listed the payment for the ad as $50 per person. He wanted to attract the kind of people who would not ask too many questions and were desperate for cash. He would check the response on the ad tomorrow, and promptly returned to the Inn. Of course, before returning to the Inn he went to a discreet location without any cameras. He didn't want to leave behind any evidence of him appearing and disappearing – especially since he was walking around without his Bluebird token. He didn't want his location being tracked.
He returned to the Inn and teleported directly to the greenhouse. The Gardener had done some decent work, and prepared some support beams for the vines to grow on. He'd divided the area into four different sections, one for vines, one for precious herbs, one for trees and one for the vegetables that Lex would bring. So far the growth was not too prominent, but it had barely been a day. It would take some time at least for the cuttings to regain their vigor.
Lex handed over the seeds and was about to discuss the growth plan with the gardener when Velma appeared beside him, telling him that Helen was asking for him. Apparently she had an important request.Lex walked to the young lady who always seemed to be surrounded by animals. Currently Helen had a rabbit in her lap, a pigeon on her shoulder and several peacocks surrounding her. Her affinity with animals was remarkably high.
"I see you are enjoying the company of our new residents," Lex said with a smile. "I was told you had a request, what may I do for you?"
Helen, who was sitting on the grass, looked up at the mysterious Innkeeper. Although her mood had been down lately, the Innkeeper somehow always had a warm and welcoming feeling around him. Just his presence was so relaxing. 'He would make a good body pillow,' she thought to herself, before turning her attention to the matter at hand.
"It's an unusual request, I hope you don't mind," she warned hesitantly.
"Not at all. Please, let me know what's on your mind and I'll see what I can do about it."
"I noticed one of your new guests earlier, and recognized him – William Bentham, CEO of Bentham corp. I'm sure there is no reason he would recognize me, but I was worried that you may have other guests who might recognize me in the future, which might cause some problems. Is there any way for you to hide my identity? If not, can you give me a mask? I don't want to spend my time hiding in my room.".
This was an unusual request, but made Lex realize that this was another aspect of the Inn he had not anticipated. In the future, guests may come to the Inn to hide from their enemies in which case it would be important to hide their identities. Something lille wearing a mask would not fool everyone since not everyone could have the 'Clark Kent effect', he needed a better solution.
"I suggest you tell her to wait a bit. Once you unlock the Inn prestige for guests, hiding their identities will naturally be a perk for them," said Mary, who was still dressed in her Taekwondo uniform.
"Your uniform looks nice," he commented mentally, before looking towards Helen and saying, "I am working on something for that. It should be available for you by tomorrow. Until then I can ask Velma to bring you a mask, or you can rest in your room."
"Thank you," Helen responded.
After that Lex teleported to his room and looked at his system. Only a few days were left till the end of his contract with Velma and Gerard. He wanted to wait as long as he could before he changed their status to permanent, but at this point he guessed it would be better to just change it lest he miss the deadline by accident. Paying a hefty 4000 MP, Lex changed their status to permanent, leaving him with only 3316MP. He was once again feeling poor.
The Innkeeper let out a sigh before he sat cross legged on his bed and started trying to meditate. He had never done it before and had no idea how to successfully meditate, and to be honest didn't really want to try either. But he still had to do it. He wanted to upgrade his cultivation as quickly as possible, and with his life on the line he had to be a little more disciplined.
While Lex was learning the art of meditation, Will finally exited the trial. It was fair to say he had failed spectacularly. Till the end of the trial he did not learn anything about the true purpose behind the ball at all. He did however learn a lot about the different ways in which people behave. When up against an ordinary man, it was easy to read what he was thinking or feeling simply from his facial expressions and body language. Against the cream of the crop of an entire nation, however, it was much harder. They had a mastery over their body and expressions, and only showed what they wanted the other to see.
They could be smiling and laughing, but cursing you on the inside and you would never know. In fact, Will encountered a particular lady who took up most of his time in the trial. He was ashamed to admit that he had ended up spending a good amount of time flirting with the woman. The interesting thing was, when confronted or even insulted, the woman's impression of Will increased. Of course, not all insults improved her impression, and some just plain made her mad. But within a certain boundary the more aggressive Will was the more she appreciated him internally, but externally no one could tell. He also met a rather interesting fellow who, without letting Will realize, got Will to disclose a few of his own secrets – or rather the secrets of the character he was playing. When Will realized what was happening he was quite shook. It then dawned on him that while he was trying to gauge others, others were doing the same to him – perhaps with even a greater mastery than himself. It was an important lesson.
All in all, even though Will failed the trial, he found the experience very insightful. He would take some time to digest everything he had learnt and then return. With that done, he left for Earth. He was about to be a very busy man once again, and he could feel the excitement coursing through his veins.
*****
Alexander got off a space shuttle and onto the Red planet. He did not need a space suit as the atmosphere on Mars had been completely altered using arrays and technology to make it suitable for human habitation. His travel time from Earth to Mars was one of the quickest ever recorded, one because the two planets happened to be near each other in their orbit, and two because he had used hundreds of spirit stones to speed up his flight. He was normally not impatient, but this matter was important.
"Alexander, welcome home," said a well dressed man who approached him with a smile. His name was Percy, and was one of Alexander's personal assistants. "News about you is still suppressed so this is the only welcoming committee for you this time around, I'm afraid."
"It doesn't matter. Take me home directly, I need to meet with my father."
"Of course," replied Percy, and led him to his car.
Alexander was silent all the way home, something unusual Percy thought, but then this was an unusual time. Percy of course did not know that Alexander had anticipated the assassination attempt, so he thought the young man was in a bad mood because of it.
His home was surprisingly not a large mansion, but was a small, single story building surrounded by a vast forest. The Morrison family home was a very private building, and they almost never received guests. Other than a few, very old and trustworthy staff members, everyone in the building was a Morrison.
The first thing Alexander did when he got home was meet his mother, to assure her that he was unhurt from the recent incident, before quickly entering his fathers study room. Two young men who bore a strong resemblance to Alexander were sitting in the room chatting when he arrived. If anyone saw the three of them together they would assume they were brothers, but no they were son, father and grandfather. Alexander's father and grandfather both had a very high cultivation level, which drastically slowed down their aging process.
"Ah my dear Alexander, you've grown so much since I last saw you. Give your grandfather a hug." Alexander quickly and unceremoniously rejected his grandfather. Who the hell was he kidding? His grandfather was at the peak of Golden Core in body cultivation, the last time Alexander hugged him he broke a few ribs.
"I see you've gotten a new tattoo," Alexander said, looking at the crow on his grandfather's neck. Unlike the other two, Alexander's grandfather was covered in tattoos from head to toe. They came in every shape and size you could imagine. Alexander remembered that once when he was very young he played a game of tictactoe with his grandfather on one of his biceps using an ink gun. The evidence of that game was still there.
"Don't encourage him," said Rorick, Alexander's father. "Your grandmother has introduced the old man to anime. You don't know how much effort it took me to stop him from getting a ninjutsu tattooed on himself. Unfortunately, I was not able to stop him from altering some of the family spirit techniques."
Alexander's grandfather, Brandon, grinned and activated a technique to show him when Rorick was referring to. Alexander immediately dismissed the chain made of fire that appeared in Brandon's hand, his focus was on the golden, glowing aura around his grandfather as well as his suddenly spiked hair. He was both impressed and embarrassed.
Alexander shook his head in defeat and quickly took out the Tier 4 Zombie core and threw it towards his grandfather. He knew that unless he intervened, the two would keep antagonizing each other. His grandparents were both very free spirited people. They wore their hearts on their sleeve, weren't afraid to show exactly how they felt and did exactly what they wanted. His parents were the exact opposite – they were extremely formal and disciplined, and paid great attention to propriety. Other than when they talked about cultivation, they never got along with each other – mostly because it was his grandfather's passion to irritate his father.
When Brandon held the zombie core his casual smile completely disappeared, and he looked at the item in his hand with doubtful eyes.
"I think you should listen to what happened on Earth. This will affect all our plans."
Wait, so you've launched a hunt for Marlo?" asked Alexander.
"Yes, when you told us to look at Marlo's recent actions we noticed that he disappeared shortly before the assassination. We did not suspect his involvement at all until then, it's a good thing you tipped us off. We haven't started looking for him directly, but we've already hinted to a few organizations on Earth that we want to know his whereabouts. They've already begun their hunt, it won't be long before we find him."
"No no no! He was not involved at all, that's not why I told you to look for him. I already know where he is, I wanted to know about his recent actions because I wanted to know who could hurt him so badly. This is what happened…" Alexander began explaining to his family where he saw Marlo, unaware that his casual remark had inadvertently caused the mysterious Innkeeper to move out of his apartment and escape Earth.
*****
The next day Lex woke up, unrested and groggy. He was not in his room, but in the meditation room instead. Yesterday he had tried meditating, but found he could not stop himself from having random thoughts. After trying to avoid daydreaming for thirty minutes, he had accidentally fallen asleep. When he woke up Mary told him that mediating would be harder for him than others because his spirit was currently unstable, but that was exactly why it was so important that he keep trying.
After another short period with no success, it occurred to him to try the meditation room. The change was drastic, and he immediately felt much calmer once inside. Lex was not sure exactly what state constituted as meditation, as he never fully went without a few random thoughts crossing his mind, but he had a firmer grasp on his thoughts at least. Still, it got boring pretty quickly. However the young Innkeeper persevered.
At some point he had once again fallen asleep without realizing, and was only waking up now. He got up and stretched, cracking his various joints as he stood up. Sleeping whilst in a sitting pose was not comfortable at all, even with his improved physique..
He had breakfast in his room and then teleported back to Earth. It was time to complete his quest. He made his way to the particular coffeeshop he had requested as the meeting location on his eBay ad. After exchanging various messages with the people who contacted him and waiting for a few hours, he finally selected four men to help him complete his task. Three of them were older, and wore old, worn out clothes. The fourth looked like a teenager, and though he was also wearing old clothes looked very presentable.
"Your task is simple, and should not take more than twenty minutes. I'm shooting a film and you'll be helping me during a scene. You'll all wear blindfolds, and I will lead you somewhere. I'll give you all a check which you will have to hand over to someone in exchange for a bottle of 'Botlam Dew'. Once you've received the bottle I'll bring you back. We may shoot the scene a couple of times. Once I'm satisfied with the result, I'll pay you all in cash."
The four men didn't seem too bothered by his instructions and were just impatient to get started. Lex led them to a secluded area in Central Park and handed them all blindfolds and handed them signed blank checks, as well as a Golden Key each once they were wearing the blindfolds.
"Action," Lex yelled loudly while pretending to record them from his phone. He helped them activate the keys, and they were all teleported to the Inn. Lex used his control over the Inn to teleport them directly to the Gift shop, he didn't want anyone to see what was happening
Velma greeted them all, and one by one they handed over the check and asked for a bottle of Botam Dew. Once they all had their bottles, he ejected them from the Inn.
When they all returned they all received a Golden key each, for buying something from the Inn. This way Lex didn't need to buy them for them himself again, which was a hefty cost. The base price for a Golden key was 100MP, but every time he bought the key again during the same week the price would double. This double price wouldn't count if a guest would buy a key themself from the Gift shop, but for Lex buying these 4 keys had already cost him 1500MP! Fortunately, even though the checks these four people used to buy the Botlam Dew were from Lex's own account, the System did not discriminate and accepted the MP so he recovered 480MP.
With one successful transaction he told them they were going to shoot one more time and quickly repeated the process. As soon as the four returned back to Earth, he got the notification for Quest Completion.
Quest Complete! The Host's rewarded is being calculated:
– No upgrade applied
Reward Rank: D
Reward: Midnight Inn Prestige
Remarks: If you put in all your effort, work hard, and focus with all your might, somehow you might succeed at being even lazier than you are.
New Quest: Hire a permanent Employee
Quest details: Due to the system's serious doubt in the Host, no restrictions are being placed on the kind of employee. Please hire anyone who will not somehow harm the Inn, and you will be rewarded accordingly.
Quest reward: Subject to change based on performance.
Lex's lips twitched once again at the heavy criticism, but he had come to expect it now. Why was the system so much more annoying than Mary? She was so cute and adorable, the system should be more like her.
At least with that out of the way, Lex turned his attention to his 'actors'. He quickly took back the blindfolds, keys and Botlam Dews as the 'props' he had given them and paid them all $50. Some of them tried to argue for more, ready with the intention to create trouble, but Lex was a cultivator now. As soon as he frowned, his intimidating figure promptly shut them up.
The last 'actor', the teenager, didn't leave immediately after receiving his money. He kept staring at Lex for a bit, and just as Lex was ready to brush off any attempts for more money, the kid said, "Your haircut doesn't suit your face."
"Huh?" Lex said, not expecting such a remark.
"When you get your haircut and the hair is freshly cut, it may not look so bad, but once a few days pass and your hair becomes more natural the look changes. Your current haircut makes your face look round, and bigger than it is. You should try out a different style. If you want, I can cut your hair."
Lex smiled, amused at the boys' attempted hustle.
"And how much will you charge for the haircut?" he asked, not dismissing the kid immediately.
"The first time is free. If you like the haircut, and decide in the future that you want me to continue cutting your hair, you can give me a call. You should also get a shave too while you're at it, by the way. I can tell you shave using a trimmer instead of a blade. That causes your hair to be cut unevenly and doesn't give you a clean look. A close shave will improve your look and make you more presentable. I perform hot towel shaves, which will not only help you relax, it'll completely change the way you feel about shaving."
Originally Lex wanted to leave immediately as he was in a hurry to see what the prestige system did. However the prestige system had been unlocked and implemented, so whether he learnt about it immediately or a little later did not matter.
"What's your name kid?" Lex asked.
"Harry, just Harry. I used to go by Harry Styles when I started cutting hair, but I just found out that there's already some guy who goes by that name, so until I think of a better one I just go by Harry."
"Alright Harry, I could go for a haircut. Where are we doing this, right here?"
"No, I don't have my equipment with me. You'll have to follow me to my apartment, I either do house calls or do my grooming at my apartment."
Lex didn't mind, and he liked Harry's enterprising attitude so he followed him back to his apartment. Harry lived in Harlem so they had to take the subway but it did not take too long. Lex walked into the small studio to find a messy but cozy place. In the corner Harry had set a barbers chair in front of a full sized mirror. Although the place was small, it did not look like something a broke teenager should be able to afford on his own.
"This is your apartment alone?" he asked, curious if he shared the place with someone.
"Pretty much," he said, gathering his supplies.
"How do you afford the rent?"
"I cut hair for the whole building," Harry replied casually. "And some of the neighboring buildings as well. Don't underestimate my skill, trust me, you'll look like a whole other person once I'm done with you. Now, have a seat."
He dusted the chair and welcomed Lex to sit down as he filled his spray bottle with water. Lex sat, impressed by the child. Now all that was left to see how good he actually was