The Innkeeper

Lex's second worker for the tavern had to be good at repair work, carpentry, have modicum expertise at gardening and should have some knowledge of various fields. He entered all the relevant information and summoned his latest worker.

Soon, a man walked out of the kitchen door and presented himself before Lex. Lex immediately compared him to Roan, who had a mature and suave air about him, with the dress and demeanor somewhat similar to that of a gentleman - as strange as a sight that was in a tavern. The new man, Rick, as he introduced himself, instead was dressed very casually, with a shirt much too large for him, and had somewhat of a belly. His hands and face were covered in dirt, and it looked like he had just come from hard labor.

Despite his languid appearance, as an employee of the tavern, he would fulfill his duties perfectly.

"Clean up the front of the building," Lex said to Rick. "The weeds need to be removed, the tiles need to be uncovered from the dirt and cleaned, and the porch probably needs some repair work as well. You can judge what needs to be done with that on your own."

Rick only grunted in reply before he headed out. Lex glanced at the three guests who were chatting loudly, before he turned his attention back to the backyard. He needed to spruce the place up, add the facilities he was planning, as well as finally create his own living space. After that, he planned on exploring Babylon a bit to spread the word about the tavern. Furthermore, he needed to hire a few locals as well. A couple of barmaids, a few people to man the kitchen, a few more to maintain the rooms and complete minor chores such as laundry, room service and such, and finally, he needed one or two bouncers.

While Lex had very lax requirements for the other positions, who the bouncer would be would reflect on the authority and security of the tavern. The bouncer would need to develop or have an existing reputation, and he could not be easily replaced. As such, Lex's initial plan was to make whomever he chose as a bouncer a permanent employee of the system, rather than just a temporary one.

For all of that, first he would need to get acquainted with the locals and then hold interviews for any interested applicants. But for now, the backyard.

He checked the new building options that had been unlocked in the system due to the tavern, and one by one, read through their introductions.

First was the Wine cellar. Despite its name, the cellar wasn't dedicated only for wines. Instead, all spirit drinks could be stored there, as the room had a special function. It would age, develop, and even enhance all drinks placed in the room. Some drinks, for example, served medical purposes, but needed time to mature into the appropriate properties, and leaving such a drink here would speed up that process.

Second was the Secret room. Its entrance could be as inconspicuous as Lex wanted, and led to a room equipped with a makeshift bed, a bathroom and, most importantly, isolating properties that would prevent tracking from common forms of tracing. Of course, it wasn't as effective as the Destiny protection the Inn afforded, but that wasn't something Lex could casually buy, either.

The third room was a peculiar one called the Rumor room. Any rumors circulating in the vicinity of the tavern that were repeated with great frequency would automatically be listed there. There was no indication of the veracity of the rumors, or how they originated. Lex felt that one was for him, mostly. After all, in many novels he'd read, people came to the barkeep to hear the latest news.

Lastly, there was the Hot tub room. The hot tub was not massive, as he could have expected, and instead could at most comfortably accommodate 6 people. It did, however, come with various benefits. The hot tub served as a disinfectant, but it was not just germs or disease it was ridding you of, but any unnatural entity latched onto your body. This included but was not limited to minor curses, minor to mediocre poisons, most tracking techniques, artificially inflicted bad luck, etc. It also served to relax the users mental state in case they were inordinately stressed and helped the body recover in case of unusual exertion.

Without hesitation, Lex added all these rooms to the backyard, except the Security room which he created an entrance for right behind the bar.

Moreover, he also added a meditation room, recovery room, recovery pod, and a training room. Each room was separate, and unlike the wooden exterior of the tavern, were built from the most exquisite marble.

He created one more room, of a similar design to the Hot tub room, but changed the size of the hot tub to only accommodate one person. Then, in a small cage at the bottom of the hot tub, inserted the green pebble that produced the magical water.

He still did not fully understand the pebble, and so currently did not plan on letting this room become open to the public. For the time being, only Lex would use the room. After all, he did not know if the water produced by the pebble was limited.

Next, he turned his attention to the Wine cellar. Much in the way that the Gift shop had its selection of items Lex could buy, the Wine cellar had a selection of drinks on its own. But, unlike the Gift shop, the selection for the Wine cellar was massive. He suspected it had to do with his increased authority.

The drinks started all the way from 1 MP, and went well into tens of millions of MP. He strongly suspected that the most expensive drinks were meant only for immortals. He would study the list in detail at a later date, but for now, he bought a dozen drinks in the 100 - 10,000 MP range. Each drink, other than just its name, gave a small description of their effects. These dozen drinks that Lex bought all helped solidify and speed up the cultivation for those in the Foundation realm.

Heh, he was biased to his needs. Who could fault him?

In the spirit of celebrating his new tavern, and the satisfaction of being able to use his system again, he bought a single bottle of wine for 1 million MP. Although he could afford to splurge, there were other things he had in mind for that.

"Hey Mary, now that I have a tavern, as well as a private space, can I just use a spirit energy formation to gather the energy the system requires?"

"Yes, it's completely possible. But to have any significant effect on your energy accumulation, you would need a formation designed for immortals. To purchase such a formation, you would need to spend 20% energy as well as 5 billion MP."

Lex paused, as looked towards his MP. Currently he had 2.2 billion MP! In fact, considering how long Lady Cosmos had been going on, he should have had a lot more!

But despite his best efforts, he ran out of spiritual food to serve his guests. While his increased authority allowed him to directly buy spiritual food, it was expensive, which meant he was selling it at a loss, since he didn't want to randomly increase the food price.

All he could do was increase the size of his greenhouse by another 3000 acres, and give the turtle all kinds of new seeds to plant. He didn't want to expand too much, since he fully expected demand to go back down after Lady Cosmos ended, and he wanted sustainable growth.

Speaking of Lady Cosmos, it was actually in its final stages. There were only 100 contestants left, last time he checked. One of these days, he would take some time out to actually watch the show.

"Another thing," Mary said, interrupting Lex's thoughts. "Since you now have a tavern as well as an Inn, the system's energy consumption has increased. This means, every 3 months, your accumulated energy will drop by 1%. If it reaches 0%, the system will have to shut down some essential functions of both places to continue operating. I highly recommend you don't let that happen."

"Got it," Lex said, suddenly feeling the urge to jump into that hot tub and let his stress melt away!

But his situation was not as bad as it seemed. He had already turned his attention from seeking random pockets of accumulated energy towards those crystals he absorbed in the bank. Moreover, he had not selected the location of the tavern randomly.

It might not seem like much, since at a glance the technological level of the town was vastly below that of the academy, but what did technology have to do with resources? When he was selecting a place on the map, his current location was bathed in gold - the color he decided for treasures and resources. He was literally in one of the richest places in the whole realm!