The Innkeeper

The moment Lex returned to the Inn, he teleported away to his room. He placed the teacup aside, somewhere where he wouldn't accidentally use it to drink something from, and began perusing the method to induce the affinity.

It was complicated, to say the least. Firstly, the method would work best on someone who was building the foundation. That made sense, since if the foundation could be influenced, then when the golden core is formed the affinity would become more evident. During the foundation realm the affinity would merely begin to show its influence.

Secondly, the process was nowhere near as seamless as it was for him. For Lex, his affinity seemed to be able to change easily, but that was a result of Regal Embrace. For anyone not cultivating a technique capable of surpassing the strength of their very universe, it was tad harder. Other than the elixir, which would play the role of the main ingredient, numerous supporting ingredients would be necessary. A lot of medicine and healing items would also be required, because during the process the body would literally start failing to function properly.

In this instance, even the Recovery pod would not be helpful. Since the premise of the pod was to rely on the body's base healing ability, and enhance it exponentially, the pod would not work at all if the body became incapable of healing. That was also the reason why it could not heal golden cores, since the body could not heal it to begin with.

Fortunately, alongside the method itself, Powell had provided him with one set of necessary ingredients for the process. That meant Lex could successfully carry it out on one person, at least. He would, in the meantime, gather the resources himself via the guild to use the process on as many workers as possible.

"Send me a list of everyone who has volunteered so far," said Lex to Mary, who sent him a list immediately. He didn't know if he should be surprised, or if he should have expected the outcome.

As of late, the Inn had a minimum of 5 to 8 million guests at any time, minimum. Based on the festival going on, there could be many more. This was excluding the refugees, who had already started moving into their new realm, which they took from him on lease. They would be paying for it for the next 50 years, at the very least.

One would think that Lex would similarly need millions of workers to keep things running smoothly, but that was not the case. Lex had a little less than 400,000 employees! The number made him sigh, as it was massive. Yet it seemed inadequate to cater to millions of guests. But the truth was, with the system automating so many things, the employees workload was drastically reduced.

Still, most of those employees were very new, from being less than a week old to at most a few months. Sure many of them were cultivating quickly, and had gained the benefits of the Inn's star upgrade, but that didn't miraculously turn them into high leveled cultivators. They still had to cultivate one step at a time.

So, as a result, most of the foundation realm cultivators he had were some of his oldest ones. Every single one of them had volunteered, so the list that Lex got was not 1000 workers who volunteered, but only the first 1000 to volunteer.

The rest were kept on a reserve list. No one wanted to miss an opportunity to contribute to the Inn. While Lex may have been thinking of them as workers and employees, to them, the Midnight Inn was their life!

In the end, all he could do was sigh - and give them unreasonably overwhelming advantages over their opponents. Besides, if there was one thing he had learnt it was that humans seemed to be disadvantaged against other races in the universe. Although all the Inn workers had the potential to awaken an amazing bloodline and grow incredibly powerful, they suffered from the inherent disadvantage of being human. He had to make up for that.

He closed his eyes and pointed at a name randomly, selecting the lucky volunteer who would be the first to go through the procedure to develop space affinity.

When he opened his eyes, he discovered that it was a very familiar name. It was none other than the big brother of the Inn, Z! Clearly, he was both extremely lucky, and extremely unlucky.

For this next part… he donned his Clark Kent glasses and teleported over to little Z, who was, for once, sitting in his little cubicle and watching an anime. When Lex teleported over, he saw Z taking notes. In the cubicle besides him, Lex could see a number of bluetooth speakers, as well as some treasures which were… also speakers. There was also a music player with various playlists with names like 'for fighting scrubs', 'hero saves the damsel', 'the power of friendship', 'screaming to release more power', and 'this isn't even my final form'.

"Hey kid," Leo said, patting Z on the shoulder. Z, who was completely focused on the anime, was startled and jumped out of his seat. When he turned and saw his boss, Leo, he cursed his luck. He would have rather faced an assassination.

"What do you want? I've already opened up all the extra stores you wanted, and now I have a special task from the Innkeeper so I can't do your work!"

Leo chuckled and said, "I know kid, that's why I'm here. The Innkeeper is quite pleased with your performance so far, so he's selected you to be the first to receive a special kind of upgrade. But I'm here to ask you if you're up for it. I must warn you, it's not a simple process, and it'll hurt a lot."

"I am not afraid of pain!" he exclaimed, putting up a brave face. "If the Innkeeper has selected me for it, you can't keep it from me."

"That's what I thought," said Leo, and put his hand over Z's shoulder. The two of them teleported away, this time to a private recovery room. Leo summoned a nurse, and began giving her instructions. Moreover, he had also summoned Luthor, who would be learning the process so he could administer it to as many workers as possible in the near future.

"Prepare yourself. Once the process starts, it can't be stopped. Moreover, you have to keep on cultivating the entire time. If you stop, the process will be interrupted, which will result in you becoming crippled or even killed."

In truth the circumstances were not so dire, or else Lex would not have elected to use it. But if a person failed once, they could not undergo a second procedure. So he used the pressure of death to motivate them.

Z simply nodded, his expression calm and collected, like a protagonist from a shounen manga. Pain could not scare him, death could not deter him. After all, he had already experienced the tribulations of customer service. What could be worse?

Leo summoned all the necessary items, and began working. Z was made to ingest various tablets, potions, powders, herbs and spices, which made his entire body turn red. The medicinal power was too strong for his body, and he was on the verge of bursting.

That's when the difficult part of the process actually began.

"Start cultivating," Leo said calmly, as he made an incision in Z's right arm and attached a drip directly to the bone. Similar drips were attached to various other bones all across Z's body, resulting in a bloody and miserable sight, yet the young lad didn't make a single sound, and only focused on his cultivation.

He had been fighting for his coworkers' honor in the arena day and night. He was no stranger to bleeding, or even grotesque injuries.

Lex kept poking and prodding the young lad's body with various injections over the next few hours, until finally the time arrived to add the elixir.

One thing had to be said about Z's luck. Since he was the first one to undergo this process, the elixir he would get would be the most potent. By the time the others were able to undergo the same process, the elixir's potency would have dropped by another few grades.

As a result, this process would be much harder for him than anyone else. But when it finished, if he managed to survive, his affinity would also be much higher than the rest.

Suppressing his emotions, Leo poured an entire cup's worth of elixir down the child's throat, and then took a step back. If all the previous steps were skipped, exposure to a single drop of elixir would have killed Z let alone a whole cup. Now… now he would live, but he would only suffer some extreme discomfort.

No one spoke as they watched Z's body undergo horrifying changes. Z finally released a sound, not because he was unable to suppress himself from grunting, but because his body was literally making noises!

They all watched, and made sure to keep giving him the required medicine to ensure his body kept healing. Leo especially burned the memory deep in his heart. He could have left, but he wanted to watch.

He did not consider it a failure, that he had to resort to the help of his workers to survive this difficult period. But he did not forget that it was his responsibility to take care of them, not the other way around. One day, he would make it up to them.

Until then, he would lock everything in his heart.