The Innkeeper

Lex observed the centaur for a moment, for he had yet to see one before. He fit the build of every cartoon or animation of a centaur he had ever seen, except that he never realized how big they would end up being.

F'ther Blaze had long, red hair falling down his human back - their fiery color perhaps the inspiration for the Blaze in his name. The centaur, of course, could not see Lex, as he had just made his complaint to his personal assistant and was waiting for a response.

"What's the issue?" Lex asked as he inspected the guest. His hands were clenched tight and his jaw was squeezing hard, showing the veins running down his neck.

"The guest… needs to… use the restroom, but the toilet… is designed for humans…" Mary could not look Lex in the eyes as she gave her report, and Lex was not drinking anything but he felt like he just sprayed out something, anyway.

Remembering the deathly look in the centaurs' eyes, Lex felt a tide of sympathy for the guest and quickly looked at the system and found an upgrade for his toilets! For a measly 4000 MP, he bought an upgrade for all his toilets so that they would automatically adjust themselves according to the guest that rented the room or wanted to use them!

Too embarrassed to focus on the topic any longer, Lex didn't ask Mary why they'd never run into a situation like this before. If he had, the answer would have been very predictable. As cultivators grew in strength, their body's ability to absorb and process food - or anything else absorbed - grew to levels where they hardly needed to relieve themselves anymore. However, certain races, such as centaurs, had a more complex biological structure and, well, long story short, their need for restrooms would never disappear.

With the matter taken care of, Lex put away his thoughts about the Inn, and finally feeling no anxiety over security for the Inn, and being safe himself, felt himself relax in a way he hadn't in a long time. Originally, he was planning on cultivating a bit, but he decided to sleep instead. It wasn't the best idea to cultivate in public places, anyway.

The following day he was discharged, and after some friendly banter with Honey, he finally left. He only had a few things on his agenda for the day and finding out about his so-called 'reward' was first on the list.

He had forgotten about how massive the academy was, and once again, taking public transport that took forever was starting to annoy him after the novelty wore off. There had to be a better way to get around.

When he reached his destination, he walked into an office building and towards Instructor Vernan's room. During his time at the academy, he had learnt a lot about the 'special forces' Vernan had once told him about, and had learnt about Vernan as well.

The crystal realm was anything but simple, and the Hum Nation, representing one of the 7 major races of the realm, was not so simple either. The division of power was also complicated, and while as a whole the entire nation was focused on warring with the Kraven, maintaining that cohesion was also a monumental task.

While the royal family, other noble families, national and county level armies and a plethora of private entities had established a complicated and interlinked power distribution, there was only 1 entity focused on keeping the peace within the nation itself: the academy.

It may seem unusual for an educational institute to take care of policing a nation, the truth of the matter was the academy was much more than an educational facility. The most direct example was that the academy directly took in all survivors from Gristol to provide them basic amenities and a new direction in life.

On surface level, it may seem like the academy was using these people with nothing to lose for all their worth, but an observation at a deeper level would note that people who went through such deeply traumatic experiences would, to a degree, become unstable themselves. By bringing them to the academy, they were put into a controlled environment where not only could they get medical and psychological help, the academy would help them cope by keeping them incredibly busy! If they were too busy to think, they were too busy to wallow and regret.

Similarly, the academy took care of numerous issues plaguing the nation that weren't directly related to the Kraven, and somehow, in the process of dealing with them, did not forget to propagate their narrative about the war. These were not things anyone told Lex, these were conclusions he made on his own. This was because the 'special forces' designation was a general term, and both the military and the academy had their own special forces that dealt with various issues.

Lex naturally did not know that Vernan had already pegged Lex to enter the special operations group called Red Hands. In his opinion, Vernan wanted to guide Lex into the kind of special forces that would deal with high risk human targets within the nation. In a way, Lex's evaluation of what Vernan wanted was actually safer than what was actually planned.

Still, Lex had no intentions of getting dragged by the maniac into his schemes. He just wanted the reward, and that's it.

Putting on his passive, emotionless face, Lex knocked on Vernan's door and entered when he heard an excited 'come in'.

The office looked… quite mundane, very unsuited for the unstable man who occupied it. Steading comfortably behind a desk, Vernan was holding a physical file with the name Lex printed out in bold in one corner.

Other than Vernan's immediate surroundings, the office looked too neat and clean. It was to the point where Lex could not detect any dust in the room, regardless of what surface he looked at. Immediately, he got the impression that this office was almost never used, and was more of a staging area.

Not bothering to say anything, he stood there silently until the man who was posing became impatient. He put down the file and acted surprised to see who had come into his room.

"Oh you, I remember you. You're the kid whose assessment started in Fernain village."

Ignoring his comment, Lex said, "I was told to come see you for some reward."

"Reward? Oh wait, don't tell me, were you the kid who, while in the Qi training realm, surrounded by Golden core and Nascents cultivators, found a Spirit well, went underground to locate it, marked the location and then returned to camp while saving a higher leveled cultivator?"

Lex continued to look at the man impassively, and did not respond to him in any way. The more you reacted to people like this, the more you would encourage their behavior.

Vernan, despite his original script, chuckled and threw the file away. He stopped acting, for he wasn't too good at it anyway, and looked at Lex in the eyes. Since Lex had been in the academy for so long, his psychological evaluation had been updated, and Vernan now knew exactly how he should deal with Lex. Leading him by the nose would only cause him to resist, in which case…

"You have a talent for survival, kid. Even more than I expected. And you have drive, you have ambition. I don't know if it's revenge against the Kraven you're after, or something else. But the way you forced yourself to work in your first month here, I know you're after something. As it so happens, so am I.

"So let's not beat around the bush, kid, let's just get down to it. Tell me what you want, what you need. The assessment program in the academy is focused on squeezing out the potential of average students, but for people like you, who have the drive to squeeze out their own potential, it's just a distraction. That's where people like me come in. I can change your classes, change your designation, do whatever I want, as long as it furthers your cause. So don't be shy, let's talk like adults, kid."

Despite his resolution to not give in to Vernan's antics, the bait he threw was too tempting. If Lex could really choose his own classes, and his own direction for growth, it would help him tremendously. But, that was not enough to get Lex to lower his guard. He would not bet his life away to play into someone else's hands.

"And what do you get from that?" he asked, looking Vernan in the eyes.

"What do I get? Kid, you have tremendous potential, but right now, you're not even qualified to even dream of being useful to me. So, I want to help you grow. To nurture you. To strengthen you into the finest blade and the strongest shield. Because what I want is not something as simple as killing Kraven, we have soldiers for that kind of stuff. I want to create a living nightmare that will haunt the Kraven from their dreams to their reality! So don't worry about me, kid. As long as you keep showing the potential to grow more, then all I want from you… is to keep on growing."