Hey Mary, isn't there any reasonable way I can convert MP into some other kind of currency? I'm rich as long as I'm inside the Inn, but as soon as I exit it, I'm dirt poor."
The suited Mary appeared in front of him looking slightly guilty as she scratched her head.
"This is a good question, and your authority is high enough to get most of the answer. The truth is, usually, each system has a progression path. Which means it will not give quests that are too difficult early on while most of the system functions are locked. As you complete the relatively easy quests, not only do you as the user grow stronger, but the system's functions expand in a systematic and cohesive way. But… as you already know, the system you got was badly damaged when you got it.
"As a result of interference from the damage, as well as the mismatch between the level of the original system, the proper level of the system in its damaged state as well as your own power as the user, you followed a very unusual path. What the system should have done was give you quests and rewards promoting you to spread the Inn only on your own planet first. Only when your growth potential was tapped out depending only on the resources of your own planet should it have spread to another one, and so on and so forth.
"So, originally, you should have been much better prepared by the time you actually had to deal with so many different planets, races, and all their associated intrigue."
"You didn't actually answer my question," said Lex, not bothering to focus on how he was ripped off. To begin with, the system was something he lucked out upon, not something he arduously worked for. Anything it gave him was a bonus he was never meant to originally have.
Besides, he always felt that the kind of quests he got were suicidal. To this day, he did not even dare to look at the quest that told him to make a connection to a 5 star planet called Dunya. The highest star rating he ever connected to was 2 stars, and it was the crystal realm! It had earth immortals in it. He did not even dare imagine what a 5 star world entailed. Would he see Dao lords around every corner?
Most importantly, the system itself was damaged. If it had been screwing with him on purpose, which he for so long suspected it was, then he would have been pissed. But if the system was so severely damaged, he couldn't really blame it.
Not to mention, he had long decided that his focus should be on getting stronger himself. No matter how useful or useless the system was, if he himself was strong then he would be able to face any and all challenges it threw his way. This was important, because based on all the remarks it gave him, a part of him still believed the system was just screwing with him.
"The answer is, most likely, but I cannot say for certain. All I can say is you're doing a good job. Keep getting stronger, and keep completing quests. That's the best way to unlock new features."
"So basically, there's a chance I won't always be poor. Got it."
Mary had assumed that Lex would have a bigger reaction to the news that the system had increased the difficulty he was facing due to its damaged state. After all, instead of giving him golden tickets that took him to other worlds in his starter pack, it could have given him other rewards that helped him develop the Inn only on earth first. That way he never would have had to fight zombies, or be chased by wolves, and encounter all the problems he had to face. So much could have gone differently.
But what she did not consider was that the way Lex saw it, he was having a much harder time now, sure. But because the system was on such a high level, it was much harder to get discovered by others. That was worth the trouble. After all, even a Dao lord was not able to discover the system in his soul even at close range. Sure, he had not scanned Lex, but that was good enough.
Or maybe Lex had just learned to stop complaining and make use of whatever his situation dictated.
𝑙𝑖𝘣𝓇𝑒𝒶𝘥.𝑐ℴ𝑚
He walked into the Guild room and spared no expense. He bought the best armor available, and then bought 10 more sets of it. After all, he could just store them in his storage bangle.
He bought emergency first aid kids, a few dozen guns, swords, spears, some goggles, gloves and honestly anything else that caught his fancy.
He had MP to spare, and his bangle had plenty of space. There was no harm in filling it up with anything useful that he might need. Basically, he just never wanted to end up nude in front of other people again.
Due to how strong his body was, it was inevitable that if he encountered strong attacks, his armor would be destroyed but he would be fine. Basically, he needed armor with the best defense - to keep him from ending up naked!
Lex was sitting on a wooden bench atop Midnight mountain, looking out at the Inn. He was playing with an extremely deadly weapon laced with the most lethal poisons available on the market in his hand. Its original name was quite intimidating, but Lex himself decided to call it the 'Fidget spinner of doom' because, well, in Lex's extremely difficult to cut hands, it was naught more than a fidget spinner.
If anyone else were to try the same, their fingers would get sliced off! The only safe way to even use the weapon was using a secondary device that came with the fidget spinner of doom that both held it and propelled it forward like a sling.
He had already finished all his shopping, and now was just waiting for Miranda to give him the locator. Since he had a bit of spare time, he took a seat on this bench and allowed himself to reminisce. Sure, he could get some work done during this brief time, but he was only human. Right now, he didn't feel like working. So he did nothing and allowed his thoughts to wander.
His thoughts wandered to his parents. They were weird, that was for sure. But they had never been bad parents. Sure, they homeschooled him and took him around with them as they traveled for work, and became way too clingy during his teenage years when he wanted to explore with his friends. But wasn't that normal parents' stuff? They never mistreated him or made him feel left out, which is why learning that they might have been keeping secrets from him felt like such a betrayal.
Then his thoughts went to his sisters. Belle was a brute who liked nothing more than bullying others and wrestling. She was extremely intimidating and did not hesitate to pick a fight with anyone, their parents included. But at the same time, she never allowed her siblings to be bullied either.
It was one of the reasons Lex took so long to develop his sense of protectiveness towards his own workers. It was because he had never felt the need to be protective of his sisters, for who on god's green earth would pick a fight with that maniac of a sister that he had?
Then came Liz. Like Lex, she too had been named by Belle.
He paused for a moment when he realized even the youngest, Moon, had been named by Belle. Had his parents even done anything?
Shaking his head, his thoughts drifted back to Liz. Out of all the siblings, she was the most introverted. People assumed it was because she was shy, but that wasn't it. Lex did not pretend to understand her reasoning, but she was the most selective of whom she spent her time with. Other than the siblings, there was barely anyone she was comfortable with - their parents included!
Then came Moon. She was the youngest, the most spoiled, loved, and extroverted of them all. She had more friends than Lex had acquaintances, and she found it impossible to sit still.
He wondered what they would think if they saw the Inn? Lex had no plans of divulging his identity as the Innkeeper, even to them. But even still, he couldn't help but wonder what they would think.
Belle would scoff and call it pedantic. Liz would find herself a hut somewhere far away from the crowds. Moon, well, the crowd would be around her wherever she went.
For all the irritation Lex felt at them, in that moment, he couldn't help but smile.
A short while later, his hologram popped up. Miranda had the locator ready.
He put on his Clark Kent glasses and teleported to the meeting room. Miranda looked somewhat better, with her arm in a makeshift cast, but it was clear from her haphazard clothes that she hadn't spent much time doing much of anything else.
𝓵𝒊𝓫𝓻𝓮𝓪𝒅.𝓬𝓸𝙢
"This is it," she said, handing him a device that looked like a clock.
"It runs on spirit energy so you'll have to power it yourself. I didn't have time to fashion a working battery. But that should locate the facility. Once there, whoever you're sending will have to find someone called Major Gilbert - he's in charge of the facility."
She slid forward a letter on the table.
"You'll have to give him this letter to get him to cooperate. If you don't have the letter, he won't acknowledge you, and chances are he'll resist. But, once he's been convinced, he'll lead you to the servers. The facility is large, and there are a lot of servers. There's also no way of knowing which one the relevant information is stored on, so you'll have to bring all of them back"
"Got it," said Leo, receiving the letter and the locator. The letter vanished inside his bangle, which he had covered by his shirt. He could really have people recognizing that, so he always kept it hidden from sight. The locator he simply grabbed, and would strap on later.
"Can you tell me now how the Inn will help us?" Although the woman had initially tried to put up a strong front, she was barely holding on now. Fortunately, Lex had no plans to dangle the information any longer.
"It's simple, really. Do you remember the Midnight Games? How the Inn was able to turn parts of the battlefield on Vegus Minima into an event?"
Realization dawned on Miranda, and she suddenly couldn't believe that she hadn't recalled the matter sooner!
"Is the Inn going to do that again?" she asked, barely able to suppress the excitement in her voice.
"No!" said Leo firmly. "That was a one-time event. The Inn will not do anything of the sort again. However, that does not mean that you can't host such an event yourself. It will take some work as you'll have to designate a battlefield or many, and you'll have to think of an incentive to get others to fight the battles. But I'm sure you can figure something out."
"Wait, that's it? You've basically done nothing other than tell me about this! We need help!"
Leo's relatively relaxed expression turned solemn as he looked Miranda in the eyes. He understood that she was desperate. Deep inside, he even felt a little guilty. But this was a decision he had to abide by. Helping out even this much was attracting trouble towards the Inn.
He was lucky that the devils hadn't appeared to hold a grudge against the Inn, but he couldn't say so for others if the Inn kept interfering. As much as Lex wanted to help, he had his Inn and his workers to look out for.
𝘭𝘪𝑏𝑟ℯ𝒶𝑑.𝘤𝑜𝘮
Of course, he wasn't about to explain that to her.
"I made it absolutely clear that the Inn wouldn't be helping you, just providing you with a way to help yourself. Besides, have you done anything worthy of such help anyway? All I asked was for you to find three people. Let alone those people, you can't even get the information on them without my help."
The sudden admonishment woke Miranda up from her desperate stupor. Immediately she knew she had messed up. As someone trained in managing relations, she should have known better than to have such an emotional reaction. Besides, Leo was right. They hadn't really done anything worthy of the Inn intervening on their behalf. She had built up that hope on her own, and had acted out when it was crushed.
She was about to apologize, but Leo already teleported out of the room. She felt concerned for a moment, wondering if her outburst would affect whether the Inn allowed them to host such an event. But wondering wouldn't get her anywhere. She hurried out of the room to go inform the council. If they needed to incentivize others for help, they would need planning.
*****
Lex was not genuinely angry at Miranda. To be more specific, he couldn't be bothered with her. The moment they were done, and he had everything, he decided to teleport away. The quicker this was done, the better.
He strapped the locator onto his wrist, and used a technique called Notorious Anonymity. This was also a 'defensive technique' that he had picked up, and was actually one of Lex's favorites at the moment.
Unlike his other techniques, this one did not create a shield or strengthen his body or anything of the sort. Instead, it covered his face with a very prominent looking mask, and only 'defended' his identity.
That meant the mask wasn't able to stop any attacks, but no one would be able to see his face or scan his identity in any way while he wore it. After he upgraded it, the mask even gained the ability to change its appearance from time to time, alongside the ability to block more types of surveillance which was also an important aspect of the technique. The only drawback was that the mask would never look discreet.
For example, when he used the technique now, a black mask enveloped his face with large, white fangs indented into it right below a massive pair of eyes. It sounded bizarre, but it looked incredibly creepy. Lex could imagine himself as the antagonist in an anime with the way he looked right now.
He changed into his armor and, just for safety, wrapped the protector in a layer of Impervious Shield.
After making sure he was prepared, Lex teleported to earth. It was best not to waste time.
But the moment he teleported, his intuition warned him of something, but he was too close to dodge. A beam of something hot hit his back, nearly burning his synthetic armor! Faintly, Lex felt some warmth on his back.
The fact that it was warm enough to allow Lex to feel something meant it was hot enough to kill others.
Not wasting a moment, he spread his spirit sense around him, gaining an understanding of the situation, which made his expression fall.
His face hidden behind the mask, Lex didn't feel the need to hide his emotions. What he didn't know was that the mask reacted, changing from a mad grin to that of a predator.
It was dark, not only because night had fallen, but also because of the massive ship blocking all star and moon light. Yet one did not need to look at the evil mask to feel the pressure Lex was radiating right now.
Somewhere in front of him were a pair of men, running away. Looking at their clothes, they looked like office workers, and judging by their appearance, they were around Lex's age. They had no idea that in the darkness behind them, a machine had tried to kill them.
Lex also did not need to turn around to identify the machine. Though its body did not look metallic, or like any stereotypical earthly design of robots, Lex knew it was a machine underneath its synthetic skin that looked like it was made of glass.
There was no sound, it did not speak, yet Lex's universal translator picked up what it was saying through the radio frequency waves it was emitting.
"For the war crime of interfering with the execution of resisting slaves, you are hereby sentenced to death!"
The nearly see-through machine started gathering up more energy to kill Lex with another laser beam when something unexpected happened. The organic lifeform replied to it!
"For the war crime of pissing me off, die!"
The pavement under Lex's feet could not contain the force with which he rushed towards the machine, leaving cracks in the ground in a spider web formation.
The glass machine detected his approach, but could not move fast enough to dodge. The last thing it saw before Lex's fist wearing iron knuckles smashed into its body was a demonic face staring deep into its soul! It was also the last image it sent back to the mothership.
The machine was unable to survive Lex's strength, and broke into countless tiny shards as his fist went through its body.
Lex stood there, looking at the ground, covered in the countless remains of his enemy. Despite his victory, he was not satisfied.
In truth, the mask had not looked so creepy for no reason. Lex truly was looking into the machine's soul with his soul sense. Or at least, a wisp of its soul.
Whether it was the fact that a machine had a soul, or that it only a wisp of its soul in its body were both things Lex had never encountered before.
Lex recalled everything he had heard at the Inn about the 'alien invaders'. A lot of people who faced them called the aliens, while a lot of people claimed to have fought some kind of robots. The assumption he had made was that the invaders consisted of a race that also used a lot of robots.
That was a concept that was easy for him to understand. But this robot having a wisp of a soul inside of it confounded him. Especially because… he was the one calling it a wisp of soul. In fact, he had no idea what it was.
Looking at it, his intuition told him that it was a sort of mirage of an actual soul, but the soul was not present in the robot's body. Instead, it was somewhere else, and was using the wisp to remotely control the robot.
Of course that was only a guess and could not be confirmed, but Lex more or less trusted his intuition.
Based on that, Lex guessed earth was dealing with a highly advanced race that could use robotic soldiers instead of fighting in person. It was an important piece of information to note, and maybe he'd need it in the future. For now, he had other things to do.
He channeled some spirit energy into the locator strapped onto his wrist and waited for it to turn on. The interface wasn't complicated. It was like a compass, but instead of pointing north, it pointed towards the facility he needed to reach.
Lex summoned Fenrir and got atop it, before guiding it in the right direction. He knew that if ever Fenrir was recognized from the Inn, it would make him hiding his identity redundant. But it didn't matter because he kept linking his identity as Lex to Leo.
He was purposefully leaving behind clues, though an ordinary person would not pick them up. Only someone incredibly astute, with enough reach to gather all the clues, would be able to see the connection.
The point was, it was a lot more believable that Leo or Lex were running around on earth with Fenrir, than the mighty Innkeeper. A lot of people at the Inn had already seen the Innkeepers power, so no one would assume that he was actually Lex.
𝓵𝒊𝓫𝓻𝓮𝓪𝒅.𝓬𝓸𝙢
After all, someone that powerful didn't really need to hide that identity, is what most people would assume.
Another important factor was that Fenrir was supposed to be the protector of the Inn. He had gotten a taste for hunting in the Crystal realm. In fact, Lex still sent him there from time to time to hunt.
But the more dangerous situations he faced, the more experience he would gain. Also, Lex wouldn't have to run a huge distance in case the facility was far. But that was completely and totally not the real reason Lex summoned him, and was only a convenient truth.
But Lex barely covered any distance when he encountered another group of robots. They were fighting against what looked like local police who had barricaded themselves, as well as a group of civilians underground.
Technically, Lex could avoid them. He didn't need to get involved. But it was much easier to dismiss helping someone when they weren't being attacked right in front of your eyes. He knew that if he didn't help, they wouldn't have a chance.
"I bet Belle would have no problem ditching them," Lex mumbled as he instructed Fenrir to move closer.
*****
Deep in space, there was a massive war being fought on a rogue planet, traveling through the expanse without anything to leash it. A majority of the planet was occupied by human forces while only a small portion of it was left under Fuegan control. Yet that did not mean the remaining fight was easy, or close to victory, for that matter.
Above the planet, in space, was the venue for another battle. This battle was not being fought by mortal soldiers, but by those nobles who had reached the immortal realm! Even if those immortals happened to be soldiers, by the definition of the empire, they would still be called nobles.
As such, this battlefield which often appeared in space to limit the damage was called the noble battlefront!
On this noble battlefront, there was one warrior in particular who especially radiated an aura that was both noble and domineering. She was clad in the signature armor of the Williams family. Her weapon was a double-ended scythe, and with it she had already reaped the life of an opposing Fuegan.
That was not an insignificant feat, for the death of an immortal was a rare occurrence regardless of what kind of battle it was. Yet she was not satisfied, and attacked aggressively!
But if all it took to defeat a Fuegan was aggression, this war would have been long won.
"There is news from the family head," a voice spoke to her in her mind. In the vacuum of space, spirit sense was the only way to communicate. Of course, masks with inbuilt communicators were also an option, but they never survived the kinds of fights they were exposed to.
"What does he want?" she asked, with no hint of politeness in her voice when talking about her own family head.
"It's good news. The ancestor has shown signs of returning, and even signs retaking the helm of the family to bring it to new heights!" The voice was tinged with excitement, but the woman did not share the feeling.
She took off her mask, revealing her beautiful, yet angry face. If Lex saw that face, he would instant hide, for he knew what it was like when his maniacal sister got angry.
"Tell that old geezer to get lost. I'm the next leader of the Williams family. We didn't need him before and we don't need him now!"
"Belle, you can't-" the man trying to rebuke her was never able to finish the sentence, for Bello kicked him hard enough to send him hurtling towards the rogue planet.
She looked at the next person who happened to be standing nearby and said, "convey my message to the family head. If he tries to give my position away, I'll kill him!"