The Innkeeper

Once the auction ended, Lex received an additional 500 billion MP, bringing his new total to 1.384 trillion PM. That would be enough to buy a single MT while still leaving him with some MP for his regular expenses. Moreover, he also received a bunch of items with laws inside of them.

Hopefully, he would have accumulated enough items with laws to progress without needing to achieve a SSS+ reward, but his gut said otherwise. After all, if it was so simple, then the mysterious man would have directly told him to get items with laws instead of succeeding in the quest like that.

Of course, all of those were considerations for later. When Lex woke up from his nap, he was disappointed to learn that the system still had not upgraded. That was fine. He mustered up some courage, ate a lot of food to replenish his… his body, for energy was no longer the problem at this point.

After mentally preparing himself, this time he took a massive gulp of the elixir instead of a sip. It was not that he had become resistant to the elixir, but that its potency was quickly disappearing.

He immediately ran to the restroom and readied himself for the usual barrage, but it did not come. Instead, a soft yet cool sensation filled his body, reinvigorating him instead of exhausting him. To his great surprise, he developed a nosebleed.

But he quickly discovered that the blood would quickly coagulate after leaving his body, and turn dark. Strange and unusual occurrences kept happening for a short time, before the elixir lost its effect much quicker than ever before.

Still not tired, Lex took another gulp and the process restarted. This time, instead of a nosebleed, he began sweating all over his body. But the sweat would quickly evaporate, leaving small black granules on his skin. The third time, his hair started falling out and new hair began to quickly grow in its place.

Since then Lex discovered that the effect of the elixir was greatly reduced, but not completely eliminated. This was both a result of the diminished potency of the elixir as well as his body having gained the most it could from the elixir.

In the end, he could continue to drink it endlessly, but chose not to do that. Even if selling more of it would reduce the price overall, he would rather sell more of it to the emporium and gather more supplies.

So then came the waiting game. Fortunately, it did not last long, as on the fourth day, he heard a very familiar sound.

New notification:

System upgrade complete! System status updated:

System: Midnight Inn

System Grade: Divine (broken ~ SSS - B+)

System Owner: Lex Williams

System functionality: 18%

System self repair time: 31,760 billion years

New feature unlocked:

Midnight tailor

New notification:

Quest partial completion: Accelerate the system's recovery by absorbing more systems!

Quest reward: 1 Maximum grade level reward (not applicable)

Partial completion reward: 1 free feature upgrade token

A smile adorned Lex's face when he finally received the notification. It wasn't that he was so addicted to the system that even a few days without it were a trial. Instead, it was that he was on a time limit. He immediately scanned the Inn, as well as the tavern, to ensure nothing required his attention. He was pleasantly surprised to discover his new MP balance, as well as the host of items he had received in the auction. He teleported them to his room, still packed in their containers, and then turned his attention elsewhere.

The employee banquet would be in two days, and he needed to prepare for that. He also had to sell the remaining elixir as quickly as possible.

But first, he checked out the upgrades he got on his system.

At first glance, it did not appear that much had changed. Even the upgrade to the Inn only included 1 new service. But it was only after he looked into the Midnight tailor that he discovered why it was that all the upgrades from an entire system were compressed into one shop.

Unlike other times, where Lex himself established a restriction on usage of some services by prestige, this shop on its own had a restriction. Only guests with level 2 prestige could access it. Moreover, each item sold by the shop was custom made, and would require some time to deliver. As such each item also had a different price.

Next, his attention went to his quest. Naturally, the quest itself would only be complete when the system was fully recovered, and that would be when Lex would be eligible for the reward, which would be of maximum grade. This meant that it would be similar to the fully powered Butter Knife that he used.

Unfortunately, he was only eligible for the partial reward, which is what he would receive every time the system recovered by 5%.

But the free feature upgrade was quite useful. In fact, it fit Lex's plan perfectly. Unlike the token from the Token shop, which could only upgrade a service, this could directly upgrade any feature offered by the system.

It was no secret that Lex had long wanted to start an armory at the Inn. He had thought about it multiple times. But he was waiting because there was no real rush for him to build one, and he wanted to recruit someone for that job rather than just purchase another worker. In the end, he decided he would build one anyway, upgrade it to the maximum, and then use a token to upgrade it, then supply his workers with excellent armor.

Now… Lex could buy a service upgrade token, and already had a feature upgrade token.

For his new plan, he first had to set up the Midnight tailor shop. The shop came with special requirements, and it had to be established alone. Not only could it not be placed near other shops, it could not be near any other buildings. Besides the requirement on seclusion, the building would be relatively massive, as if it were a mansion. Lastly, there would only be one tailor shop per 100 million square miles (260 million square kilometers). Suffice to say, there would only be one shop at the Inn for a long time.

Since Lex could not continue his tradition of setting up the first store on Main street, Lex pulled out a road from main street that led to the tailor shop, which Lex had more or less designed as a smaller version of Midnight manor.

Another unique thing about the shop was that it came with its own worker, and that Lex did not need to assign the duty to anyone. The worker was a relatively young, light skinned man called Geeves.

With the tailor shop established, Lex immediately changed 1 trillion MP into 1 MT, leaving himself with a meager 384 billion MP. He opened up the token shop and looked at his options.

The only tokens for sale were:

Feature upgrade token

Lockdown token

Service upgrade token

Star increase token

Of those, only the service upgrade token cost 1 MT. The feature upgrade token cost 4 MT, the lockdown token cost 6 MT, and the 0.5 star rank increase cost a considerable 10 MT! Moreover, the star rank increase token had an asterisk on it, leading to a small note which mentioned that the price of each star rank increase token would increase depending on the star rank of the Inn.

Not bothering to look at the shop for much longer, Lex once again checked the details of the tailor to make sure he hadn't made a mistake in understanding it. Once he was sure, he immediately used the newly acquired token on it.

Unlike the Mystery trial which took some time to upgrade, the tailor shop upgraded almost immediately. The requirements of the shop were also upgraded, where only prestige level 3 guests and above could use its services. Lex put on his Host Attire and assumed his Innkeeper identity, before teleporting over.

Despite its appearance as a massive mansion, the shop was actually quite cramped. The entrance was a lobby which led to several private measuring rooms as well as private fitting rooms. At the back of the mansion was the actual several story large sweatshop, where the work was done. The rest of the shop was filled with rolls of fabric, leather, metals and other materials which had been put on display for the client to peruse.

"Geeves," the Innkeeper said, as soon as he teleported over. "I have a rather large order for you, and only a few days to fulfill the order."

The young chap, who looked like he had just returned from galavanting across the English countryside, suddenly stood at attention and listened in as the Innkeeper spoke.

"I have one thousand orders, each with a budget of 100 million MP. I need them in four days."

Geeves, who had come into existence mere moments ago, suddenly started to sweat. This… wasn't this a little too much?