Lex did not immediately snap awake like the previous few times he exited the coma, but instead was slow to wake. He opened his eyes to the familiar ceiling of the Recovery pod before letting his heavy eyelids fall again, dozing back off for short intervals. A few hours later, when his initial grogginess passed, he let out a massive yawn and stretched.
The walls of the Recovery pod should have blocked his hands, but he tore open two holes in it before he realized what he had done. Startled by the noise, Lex looked over only for his face to smash a dent into the pod as well.
For a few seconds Lex froze, before he started withdrawing his hands slowly from the holes in the pod. He had been through this before, when he first started cultivating. His body had gotten much stronger, yet again, but his brain had not yet adapted to the change. Unfortunately for Lex, the scale of growth he underwent this time was so massive that he could not correctly comprehend how to act safely. As he pulled his hands back into the pod, carefully, his shoulder blades squeezed a little, as was normal, but this time, they ended up crumpling the part of the pod below him.
He froze once again when he heard the sound of the pod creaking and cracking, before letting out a sigh and directly teleporting to his house within the Inn. He appeared in his study out of habit, before he teleported again to the Meditation room.
Closing his eyes, he tried to get a feel for his body, but that yielded no results. Lex did not feel overwhelming strength coursing through his veins, or as if he had unlocked a new tear of strength. No, he felt completely normal.
He ran Regal Embrace to see if he could notice an anomaly in his cultivation, but had to stop almost immediately! He was on the verge of having a breakthrough to the next realm and had reached his limit. Even the slightest stimulation would begin the breakthrough process and he would be unable to stop it.
That was not to say that Lex wanted to avoid a breakthrough, but that he just woke up and probably had numerous things to take care of. The crazy part was that he had this uncontrollable strength even while wearing the Host Attire, which was supposed to give him perfect control over his body. He could not understand what the issue was.
Unable to come up with a quick solution, he sat down on the floor cross-legged and asked Mary for an update.
"How long was I in a coma for?" he asked.
"20 days," she replied, appearing before her. Mary's hologram was tiny, as usual, but this time she was dressed in a yellow sun dress and was wearing sunglasses.
Lex did not comment, but his raised eyebrow was enough to prompt a reaction from his holographic assistant.
"What? Just because you never change the way your host attire looks doesn't mean that I have to wear the same clothes all the time."
"I didn't say anything."
"You didn't need to say anything. By the way, there's a particular guest who wants to meet with you and I suggest you take the time to meet with him."
"Oh? Did something happen while I was asleep?"
"A few things... I think it's better if you take a look rather than me telling you."
Curious, Lex scanned the Inn and was immediately startled. There was a giant humanoid rock thing meditating in a corner of the Inn, with a giant spaceship hovering over him providing him shade. It need not be mentioned that near the giant meditating rock thing, the gardener was once again crying about his ruined landscape. Lex actually started to feel bad for the guy.
"I trust there were no issues," Lex said.
"None, but he insisted on meeting you. When he heard that you were busy, he paid the fees with various precious metal ores that were hanging off his body and decided to meditate till you return. He was informed that the Inn has a function that shrinks large beings automatically if they enter a building, so he can stay inside a house or a room if he wants. But he insisted on staying outside."
"Mhmm, and I assume that's his ship," commented Lex. He wasn't really asking, for he had already assumed he was correct. After all, when he met Abroar, his clone had formed inside the ship, so he had not seen it from the outside and did not recognize it.
"No, that was left behind by another guest, though I'm not sure why it hasn't disappeared as well. After all, the guest used the Beyond the Grave function of the Inn, and turned into a Spirit. Or, well, as some of the guests have taken to calling him a ghost."
"Is there anything urgent? Since that guest has been waiting for so many days, he won't mind a little more time right?"
"Well, nothing is urgent per se. Why, you got some plans?"
"Yeah, you could say that," Lex murmured and turned his attention towards his system. He didn't want any more screw-ups, so he had to do things properly. The first thing on his agenda was to go through the remaining notifications and see where he stood.
He had gone through most of the notifications from earlier, so only a few remained.
New Notification: New decoration (Hearth of Souls) has dramatically raised the prestige of the Inn
New Quest: Add 5 more decorative items that build the Inn's reputation
Quest Reward: Subject to Hosts performance.
New Notification: You have been Innkeeper for 1 year
Reward: Commemorative fridge magnet
New Notification: One of your guests has used Beyond the Grave and has become a fixed resident of the Inn for 13,000[abridged] years (all excess MP converted into energy to retain the spirit).
New Notification: A guest has made a net payment of over 1,000,000,000,000 MP(1 trillion MP). Unlocking token shop!
New Notification: A guest has made a payment with an item worth over 1 trillion MP. The item has been retained instead of converting to MP!
New Notification: A guest has used Beyond the Grave, but part of his payment has been retained. Please pay the retained amount before 13,000 years so that the guest can have their full spirit duration!
New Notification: A guest has become a bigger attraction than the Inn's attractions! Do not lose face!
There was genuinely a lot to unpack from all the notifications Lex got. Naturally, the first thing Lex checked was his MP. It had jumped up a lot. In fact, Lex was back in the billions with 20 billion MP! However, that did not come from the trillions of MP the system was referring to, but came from Lex's 1% of the payments Ragnar made through the Guild room for his tasks being complete. It had to be remembered that when all of Ragnar's tasks were completed, Lex would gain a total of 1 trillion MP, so this was nothing.
When Lex looked into where all the so-called 'trillions' of MP that his guest had paid disappeared to, it turned out that when a guest used Beyond the Grave, once again only 1% of the total payment went to Lex. The remaining MP was changed into energy which was used to keep the new guest alive in spirit form.
The reason why Lex didn't get the 1% in this case was that, apparently, one of the items used by the guest as payment had tremendous value, and triggered a hidden feature of the Inn. When items used for payment exceeded a certain limit, instead of converting them into MP, the system would directly take the item! So now Lex had a spaceship, apparently. At the same time, he owed that guest the MP equivalent of that ship, minus the 1% he would have gotten from the total payment!
Fortunately, Lex had a long time to pay the MP he owed, otherwise he didn't know what he would do.
Normally, Lex would have looked into the situation with the guest and the spaceship, for Lex had a habit of forgetting to check his rewards and notifications to favor things that were happening in the moment. But Lex had formed the resolution to do things properly this time, so he couldn't leave things done halfway.
Although he did not get the trillions of MP that had entered the system, he did unlock a new feature called the Token Shop because of it, so he looked into that.
Apparently, through the Token Shop, Lex could purchase some of the tokens the system gave him out as rewards. The reason only the trillion MP mark unlocked it was simple. The cheapest available tokens were all 1 trillion MP!
Despite himself, Lex let out a sigh. The system made it really hard to feel rich sometimes.
Lex did not lament for long, and instead looked into the Token shop further. Even if he couldn't afford tokens anytime soon, that did not mean he could not look at them.
As it turned out, probably due to his lacking authority, the only tokens Lex could currently see were the ones he already had: the lockdown token, service upgrade token and the 0.5 star increase token.
Their functions were pretty self explanatory. The lockdown token put the Inn into a temporary lockdown, preventing anyone from entering the Inn using golden keys or doors. The lockdown would last as long as Lex wanted, but during the lockdown he could not make exceptions to allow certain people in or not.
The service upgrade token upgraded and enhanced any service that the Inn offered and was given by the system, regardless of his authority. For example, Lex had already upgraded all his services to the maximum amount his authority would allow. But, using this token, he could upgrade one of them further. But, it was not just an upgrade, it further enhanced the service as well. How exactly it would be enhanced Lex did not know, but it did not sound bad.
The 0.5 Star increase token was the easiest to understand. It raised the star rating of the Inn by 0.5, a process Lex had experienced before. As if the increase in star rating wasn't excellent enough, the process for that increase also often allowed anyone present at the Inn to raise their cultivation or experience breakthroughs. The last couple of times this happened Lex could not schedule it, but now with the token, Lex could decide when to use it.
He could also turn it into an event, to gain more money. Yes, his inner capitalist was smiling greedily, but Lex suppressed the thoughts to focus.
The tokens were great, and gave Lex an idea of the kinds of tokens he could expect in the future. Yet the prices were nothing to scoff at. Furthermore, they indicated a change Lex could expect to see in the future.
To be more specific, while Lex had understood the minimum price of each token as 1 trillion MP, the listed price was actually MT! MT stood for Midnight Token, a new form of currency that the Inn would also use.
Lex could exchange 1 trillion MP for 1 MT, and then use it for services that had prices in MT. Lex could also deduce that in the future, if he unlocked some services that were extremely expensive, their cost would be denoted in MT.
This was a very significant matter, as it hinted at the fact that there could be other potential currencies as well when Lex reached higher levels. In a way, it made sense because the stronger a cultivator was, the greater their wealth and spending power would be. He was sure that once he raised the level of his Inn, his services would be upgraded enough to even be effective for immortals, or stronger cultivators. In that case, it would become extremely tedious to quote the high prices in MP.
There was just one thing he was curious about. Based on what he experienced, once a guest made any payment using any single item worth 1 MT or more, the item would be retained instead of giving Lex the equivalent MP or MT. If that was actually the case, Lex would end up suffering a loss for while he was getting very valuable things, his system needed MP not items. It would get in the way of the system operating properly once too much MT was replaced by items instead.
But he didn't know enough for now to guess. Perhaps once he reached a level where such transactions were common, he would unlock something to aid him with this problem.
Once he was done with the Token shop, Lex looked at the other rewards he got, the first of which was… the Commemorative fridge magnet. Even Mary, who had been hovering around his head while he checked the system leaned in to take a look.
To call the magnet impressive would be to lie. Lex could swear that if he didn't know better, if he turned it around, he would see a 'Made in China' written on it. Not that he checked the back just in case, no he was just inspecting the magnet.
The problem wasn't that the magnet was low quality. No, it was smooth to touch with considerable weight and impressive durability, considering that it remained completely unharmed in his hands even though Lex could not control his strength.
The problem was that… it was a miniature figure of Lex striking a rather… corny pose. As a resident of New York, Lex's mind kept jumping to the image of the Lady Liberty magnets that were sold to tourists all over the city. It was just too… too…
Lex sighed and put it away. The magnet literally had no other utility. It was as if the system were making fun of him!
The next reward was the Guest Registry, a reward for having the Inn get recognized by the Henali. It better be good.
Guest Registry
A book that can be signed by all guests who enter the Inn. The Registry automatically evaluates all the achievements the guests have accomplished in their lives so far and then displays the guests' names ranked according to their most momentous achievements. Actual achievements are not listed.
The top 1000 guests can use the Guest Registry as a spatial anchor. The top 100 guests can use it as a spiritual anchor. The top 10 guests can use it as a destiny anchor. Any guest who can retain the top spot can use the registry as a soul anchor for the same duration that they held the top position.
It took a while for Lex to understand the registry's utility, and even then, he didn't understand it completely. More or less, it was a way to rank the most impressive, or rather impactful, guests who had visited the Inn. Lex could not be sure how the book would rank achievements, but he knew that the term was too vague.
A person scrounging up ingredients and cooking a meal could be considered an achievement based on his wealth or circumstances, while being elected president of a country was also an achievement. Clearly, one of those was more impressive than the other, but the point was evident. 'Achievements' was too vague a term. Heck, even genocidal maniacs could consider their work as 'achievements.
Moreover, the Inn did not provide any detail or clarity on what the purpose of these 'anchors' were. Lex could venture a few guesses, but there was a more practical way of finding out. Lex summoned the registry and a large, hardback book with beautiful gold illustrations on it appeared in front of Lex. It was thick, predictably, and the pages produced a satisfying and smooth creasing sound as Lex looked through them.
Only taking a brief moment to appreciate the book, Lex quickly turned to the matter at hand and signed his name: Lex Williams.
For a moment, nothing happened. He almost thought that the book wouldn't work on him for some reason, but then the name disappeared, and the book automatically flipped to a new page where Lex's name was written in the most beautiful calligraphy he had ever seen. In front of his name was a bold '1'.
The moment Lex laid his eyes on the name, he felt a strange connection develop with the book, and then another, followed by two more. Since currently he was the top name, he qualified for all four of the anchors the book allowed. Yet even as he felt the anchors form, he did not completely understand what all of them did.
The spatial anchor was evident. Lex developed a strange sense for the location of the book, as if he could find it even with his eyes closed. Based on that, he suspected that whoever had that anchor would always be able to find the book, even if they were not in the realm. Lex knew that the system would not allow for such a blatant security flaw, so he suspected that instead of letting those with the anchors locate the Minor realm where the Inn was hidden, it would allow them to travel directly to the Inn without the use of a golden key.
The spiritual anchor was strange. When Lex closed his eyes, he could envision the book, and that provided him with some sort of comfort. Yet that seemed to be it. He was sure there was more to it, but it would be up to him to figure out the details.
The destiny anchor… forget it. Lex couldn't feel anything. He had long known that matters relating to destiny were far outside his purview for the moment.
The soul anchor, however, was extremely remarkable. So much so that Lex was tempted to never unveil the book at all, and keep its benefits to himself.
Lex gulped as he eyed the book with intense greed. This was not the kind of greed that one could shrug off, and Lex had felt it only once before when he encountered the Bangle of Narn - a bangle which had an entire galaxy within, with all of its resources available to any who wore it.
Back then, accepting the bangle would have put Lex at great risk, which caused him to hesitate in accepting it. Yet now, there weren't any risks.
But the feeling did not last long for the system, quite unprompted, provided him with a clear explanation of how the last anchor worked.
Basically, anyone who had a soul anchor in this book could find a way to continue living, even if someone murdered their body!
It was basically the same method that Harry used to survive his attack. Although his body had been destroyed beyond the point where it could allow him to live, causing his soul to scatter, bits of his soul were retained in his equipment. Using those bits, Harry had been allowed to live on, until Lex could provide him with medicine to heal and regrow his soul properly.
The only difference was, with the anchor, even if the body was completely destroyed, it would allow the person to fully retain their consciousness for as long as the anchor lasted. He wasn't sure what could be done in that situation to keep oneself from dying, but it was better than nothing. It could give them time to come up with a plan, or allow them to share their last wishes or information about how they died.
Honestly, no matter how many guests it would attract, Lex saw no reason why he would put this book in public instead of using it for himself. Well, that is until he saw the latest notification.
New Notification: In the event of the Innkeeper's death, the Inn and all its services will cease to work, including the Guest Registry. The Guest Registry will, therefore, be unable to revive the Innkeeper.
A bucket of cold water doused all of Lex's heated emotions, but it was to be expected. From day 1, the system had done its best to make sure it would not help Lex directly as much as possible. While it was less successful now in doing that due to the variety of services the Inn offered, it still tried to do the same.
Lex was so disappointed, in fact, that he directly teleported the book to the Midnight manor and told Mary to have it put out in front. He did not even open up a special place for it, nor did he advertise its effects. He knew he should do that as it would only benefit him, but he was slightly bitter.
Once the depression of having a 'get out of death free' card taken away from him dwindled, Lex would properly do something about the registry. Until then, he had other things to do.
The next reward was the 'Wish'. The system was automatically absorbing all divinity that belonged to the so-called 'Butter Knife God' and using it to power the wish. Once it reached 100%, Lex could literally make a wish and it would come true.
He did not know what limitations the wish had, but that was impressive no matter what. He could already think of a few different things he would want to wish for. Well, more than a few. It was a good thing he had plenty of time to narrow down what to use it for.
Now that he was finally done reading the notifications and rewards, it was time to see if he could use any of them. The guest registry was automatically excluded, and the magnet had been teleported to the fridge in his apartment, despite his wish to bury it somewhere. The lockdown token was of no use to Lex at the moment, so that only left the other two tokens behind.
Lex already knew what he was going to do with the 0.5 star increase token. He was going to do a full event based around it, so that only left the service upgrade token.
He could potentially leave it alone until he encountered a situation where he really needed it, but to do that, he would first have to evaluate whether or not he could massively benefit from it right now.
The token could upgrade any service which had been provided directly by the system, and there were quite a few of them. If Lex were to list them...
The list was long, but it included: Basic and Advanced accommodations(various rooms etc.), Beyond the Grave, Boulder Shrine, Chamber of Secrets, the Fishing well, the Greenhouse, the Guest Registry, the Guild Room, the Hot tub room, the Inheritance lounge, the Meditation room, the Midnight News building, the Murder Ground, the Mystery Trial, the ORR (Organic Reconstruction room), the Pro bono wing, the Recovery pod, the Recovery room, the Rumor room, the Training room and the Wine cellar, among others.
If the Security room counted as a service, Lex would have picked it in a heartbeat, but like many other things it counted only as a feature of the Inn, not a service, so it was not upgradable.
That left him with a few various options. Meditation room was a no-brainer, for it would help in cultivation. One of the recovery services would also be a good upgrade option, as that was always a popular feature of the Inn. Boulder shrine was a good option for Lex could directly benefit if the divine essence improved.
To be honest, quite a few of the services had great possibilities with an upgrade. But at the same time, there was one specific one which could not receive an upgrade normally: the Mystery trial.
Although Lex himself never got around to trying it out, the Mystery trial was one of the most popular attractions at the Inn. But regardless of how popular it was, Lex could not create multiple, nor could he upgrade it as it came as a reward from the system. Technically, there were a few other services that could not be upgraded through normal means, such as Beyond the Grave, which would benefit from this token immensely.
Yet for some reason, Lex felt greatly attracted to the idea of upgrading the Mystery trial. It was a gamble, but his instincts had not led him astray so far. Without giving himself the opportunity to come to his senses, Lex used the token on the trial.
There was no flashy display and nothing special happened. Lex simply got a notification saying that the Mystery trial would shut down as soon as the guest currently using it would exit, and the upgrade would take a short while.
Lex shrugged and turned his attention to the next token, the 0.5 star increase token. This fella here would be his main attraction to a festival Lex was planning. He checked his MP and saw that he had a little over 20 billion of it, so he could begin his planning.
He opened up the event panel and began creating the event. Basically, Lex was planning a big party and interesting events for a long duration of time. Although his intentions were to genuinely create this event and hoped that it would be successful, that was not his main goal.
Lex had decided that until his own workers became strong enough to guard the Inn, he would perpetually have events happening at the Inn so he could hire external security. After all, he couldn't hire security without creating an event first.
Moreover, it wasn't as if this event was destined to not be interesting. Lex's original intention was to host an event based around the Fishing Well, and have a long competition where guests tried to fish from various worlds, and even the Crystal realm. Now he had even more options. The star rank upgrade would only be one of the events of the festival, though Lex intended to focus most of his marketing on the aid that event would give to cultivation. Moreover, there was one more thing happening at the Inn he learnt from his notification: many small realms were fusing with the Inns realm. The progress had reached 96% so it would be completed soon.
𝒍𝒊𝒃𝓻𝒆𝓪𝙙.𝒄𝙤𝒎
Lex looked into it and learnt that the fusion would not expand the size of the original realm, but instead create a series of entrances dotted throughout the realm from which those other minor realms could be accessed. As for what was in them, that remained to be seen. Yet Lex planned to integrate those realms into his festival somehow.
He also had a giant spaceship now. He could definitely find use for that. Furthermore, even if Lex ran out of all other activities and ideas, he'd make the festival about card games, whether it was stuff like poker or pookmonster. Since his real purpose was the security the event provided, he could be as wild with his ideas as he wanted.
He straight out spent 1 billion MP on the event, and made it 3 months long, starting one week later. Half the allocated budget was for security, while he would use the remaining half to plan the other festivities. He planned on using the star upgrade token in 2 weeks, so he'd get plenty of time to advertise for that as well.
Logically, he should have waited even longer to use it to further capitalize on any guests he could attract using the boost in cultivation, but he himself did not want to wait too long before his breakthrough, and he wanted to use the opportunity provided by the star level increase to do so.ραпdα `n?ν?| сom
The moment he started working on the event, ideas started flowing to him. He investigated the spaceship, and its capabilities so that he could know what he could do with it.
Unfortunately, while he had the ship, its power source had been converted into MP. If Lex wanted to use it he would have to power it with MP. Furthermore, that was only a solution inside the Inn. If he took it out, he would need a power source. In fact, while it looked like the ship was currently flying, it was in fact being kept in the air using the Inn's powers. Lex would need to spend 1 million MP a month just to have the ship fly and have its basic functions operating.
But other than mindlessly swallowing Lex's MP, the ship did many interesting things as well. It had remarkable medical facilities, though using them would be far from simple. Unlike the Inn's services, which could cater to any species, these needed to be operated manually and supplied with the appropriate supplies. Moreover, how successful a treatment would be would depend on the doctors knowledge and skill of these equipment. In summary, they seemed to be able to cater to cultivators far stronger than the one the Inns services could heal, but they required proper care instead of letting the system do the work blindly.
Other than that,the ship had phenomenal life support functions, completely self-sufficient farms and gardens, immensely powerful weapons, the ability to travel in space, the - eh, wait!
Lex's eyes gleamed! Weapons! He... he couldn't believe it! Since the ship was an item that had been processed through the system, it was providing Lex with an accurate list of all the ship's functions, and there were definitely weapons in it! The strength and capacity of those weapons was to be determined, and like the medical equipment, would require trained personnel to use them. But it was still better than nothing.
Various ideas ran through Lex's head. Using the weapons also required proper ammunition, so it wasn't as if they could be used immediately, but this would serve him well. He made a mental note to find the new spirit that had become a resident of the Inn and ask him in detail about the ship - using his Leo identity, of course.
But he could not be distracted by random thoughts, he was focusing on the festival for now. Speaking of which, he thought of the perfect use of the ship during the festival. There was a sharp gleam that ran through Lex's eyes as he compiled his plans for this upcoming event.
He would not do anything half-heartedly anymore. Even if his intentions for this event were just security, he would make sure that this would be something to remember.
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