The Innkeeper

Once Lex returned to his apartment at the Inn, he automatically exited his state of 'flow' and breathed a sigh of relief. Although he had planned to retreat at the first sign of trouble, and had various defensive treasures, facing an uncertain situation still weighed heavily on him. Fortunately, everything went well. He could only hope that Teena and Teema managed to get far enough away.

"I'd like to see you 'track me down'," Lex murmured once he finally relaxed, and chuckled. At worst, he would just not return to that planet, or even that star system. How would they ever find him?

Fenrir, who had also returned to the Inn as Lex dismissed his summoning, came and rubbed his massive face against Lex's body. Part of it was over his worry for Lex, and part of him was still reeling from his first experience with danger. Regardless of his size and heritage, he was still a pup of only a few weeks in age.

After consoling him, Lex turned his attention to all things he had brought with him to the Inn. After a week of rest, he had a lot of work to do, and that was not considering catching up with anything that had happened at the Inn while he was gone.

He directly sent the fertilizer meant for the Delinquent Vine, as well as the hundreds of seeds and saplings he bought directly to the turtle. He told the turtle to plan the more important ones in the greenhouse, and the rest all over the Inn. He wasn't going to turn the entire Inn into a farm, but if a wandering guest encountered a fruit tree and wanted to pick and eat some fruit, they would soon be able to.

He had no use for the various ores and technology he bought for the Emporium, so he added a storeroom to his apartment and placed all the stuff he didn't currently need there. He also stashed all the spirit stones he bought there, as not only did he not know what to spend them on, he himself could not use them for cultivation yet.

Spirit stones, as with everything else in the universe, it seemed, had different levels as well. The ones available at the Emporium were low, medium level, and very few high leveled ones. Since Lex actually had a lot of credit at the store, and didn't want to leave it there, Lex had a massive amount of spirit stones of low and medium level. It was to the extent that if the Emporium had not employed some kind of shrinking technique and stuffed them all in a special kind of chest that would prevent their aura from leaking, Lex would have been crushed to death just by the spirit stones when he used the key to teleport all his belongings to him from the locker.

Lex took the various files of information he bought and neatly placed them on a shelf in his study room. These were important, and he would go over them when he had the time. Then, Lex turned his attention to the mysterious locket he had bought that even the Emporium could not identify. On a surface level, the only special thing about this locket was that it was indestructible. Yet Lex did not believe it was so simple. Or at least, he hoped not.

Lex had an amazing way of figuring out the locket's speciality. He put it in the gift shop, then read its description.

Dragonburn Locket

A locket that was forged in the fires of a master dragon's firebreath. A dragon can study the locket to gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of breathing fire.

Lex raised an eyebrow. The locket was not useful to him personally, but it was not a bad item to leave in the gift shop. The only question was…

"Hey Mary, any idea on how I should price this item? Its description does not mention any realms at all, so I don't know what realm of dragons it's useful for."

"I'm checking your authority, and it seems, yes, you can learn something about dragons from the system, maybe that'll help you. Dragons are a very strong, very proud, and very individualistic race. They do not focus on growing as a civilization, and instead focus more on personal growth, or at most, the growth of their individual clans. On a universal scale, their threat is greatly diminished due to their lack of unity, but on a one-to-one scale, few species exist that can match, let alone supersede, the might of a pureblooded dragon. Dragons are greatly loved by the laws of the universe, and often, natural treasures will bloom near them. The natural accumulation of treasures around dragons, over time, gave birth to the misconception that dragons love treasures."

"Well, it tells me that dragons are usually rich, but I still don't know how to price the item."

"Well, if you don't know, just pick a random price. It's not like you're suffering any losses either way."

Lex pondered for a moment. Since even the system thought they were rich, or at least had many treasures, it would be alright if overcharged a bit, right? Unsure of what exactly constitutes rich on a universal scale, Lex decided to price the item 10 million MP! If, after a long time, no one bought it, maybe he'd reduce the price.

With that done, Lex turned his attention towards the Inn, finally.

"Alright Mary, give me the updates on what's been happening while I was gone."

"Well, since you connected all the planets from the three star systems, we've had a lot more guests coming in from the golden doors. Some of them decided to stay, most of them left immediately. It seems you might need to improve the welcome message delivered by the holographic assistant. Finally, some of the beasts from the planets around Nibiru have caused trouble. Although the higher cultivation ones seem to already know about the Inn, and haven't caused any trouble, those at lower levels have caused problems a few times."

"Were you able to resolve the problems?"

"For now, yes. But not only do you need to invest in growing the Vine more, you need to look into other forms of security as well. As more and more races come to the Inn, the harder it will be to control them all by simply using the Vine. After all, each race has its own strengths and weaknesses. All it will take is someone good at controlling fire, and the Vine will suffer great damage."

"Yes, I know. I've been thinking of other ways to improve security, you don't need to remind me. That's why I'm only focused on connecting to low-level planets for now, to avoid the chance of stronger guests till we're ready. What else has happened at the Inn?"

"Some people with the skills you were looking for at the Inn showed up. Though they've already left the Inn, you can still look at their information."

"That reminds me, I have a few candidates in mind for certain jobs. Is there any way I can hire them without having to go to them personally?"

"If you'd managed to hire Marlo as a valet, finding people on the various planets was a job that could have been left to him. Currently, you still don't have the ability to reach out to specific people on various planets using the system unless it's through the event panel. As your authority increases, you'll be able to eventually do it. For now, I guess the first person you should consider hiring is someone you can trust with tasks that require visiting the various planets."

Lex had guessed as much, and then took a deep sigh of regret. He had already thought of someone he wanted to hire for the job of collecting news, but to hire him, Lex would have to travel to Vegus Maxima, one of the three inhabited planets in the Vegus system. The situation there should be a lot better with the presence of the Jotun Forces, yet Lex still didn't want to risk it. He'd already seen immortal zombies and extremely strong devils, so he wanted to stay as far away from those planets as possible.

"Anything else I should know about?"

"Oh yeah, Marlo's son finally woke up while you were gone."

That attracted Lex's attention. It need not be said that Marlo was one of the most prominent guests Lex had, and he suspected that this would not change any time soon.

Lex scanned the Inn to find that Marlo, Sophia and Rafael were outside the Recovery room while Rafael was in the ORR, receiving treatment. When Rafael had been brought to the Inn, he was seriously injured, and was not only amputated, he was missing several organs as well. Now, at least his face had fully recovered while the rest of his body was still undergoing treatment. Although Rafael's eyes were open, they were vacant, with no signs of intelligence behind them. Lex expected as much, since his soul was gravely injured. Marlo should still be working on getting something to heal the soul…

Lex paused, because when he checked Rafael's status, he saw something extremely unusual. Once again, feeling like he owed it to Marlo to let him know what was happening due to their relationship, he wore his Host Attire and teleported directly to them.

"I was checking up on the patient, and thought I'd update you," he said with a smile to the couple. "This time, though, I only have good news."