The Innkeeper

Lex had to wait a few minutes before his bodyguard finally showed up. Emerging from a bright light, Lex saw a handsome man walk out. He had long, silky blonde hair and sunkissed skin. At first glance Lex assumed the bodyguard was human, but after looking at him for a while something started to feel off. While he had the appearance of a human, something about him told Lex that the being in front of him absolutely wasn't human. What Lex did not know was that he was being protected by the natural aura emitted by the bodyguard. If he could have felt the aura, he would have been even more assured of his guess.

"Welcome, you can call me the Innkeeper," Lex finally said.

While Lex had been observing the bodyguard, the bodyguard had similarly been observing the Innkeeper. He was unable to determine the Innkeeper's cultivation, and was surprised that the Innkeeper remained unaffected by his natural aura. This had nothing to do with cultivation - his natural aura suppressed others on a biological level so even those with a higher cultivation than himself would be affected. The only exception the bodyguard had seen was when he suppressed his own aura consciously to prevent it from affecting others.

Lex took this time while they observed one another to check the bodyguards status and was surprised by what he saw.

Name: *&%error%&*

Age: *&%error%&*

Sex: *&%error%&*

Cultivation Details: *&%error%&*

Species: *&%error%&*

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: 1

His status was almost identical to John's, which was unusual. Lex had to figure out what exactly it was that caused these errors in his status, it didn't feel good being left out of the loop.

Finally the bodyguard nodded in acknowledgment, but did not say anything. After that the bodyguard disappeared, as if he had teleported somewhere but Lex knew he was still closeby. The system had informed him of the bodyguards duties. The bodyguard would protect him anytime anyone took action against Lex with malicious or hostile intent, but was under no obligation to listen to Lex's orders. To assure Lex, the system also told him that the bodyguard was incredibly powerful and had a strong incentive to protect Lex otherwise he would suffer a strong punishment for failure. If only Lex knew what that punishment was, he would not have been so assured.

With that out of the way, Lex returned to his preparations. A little something that irked him was that Marlo was still in the meditation room. Despite his inner voice telling him to save his MP at the moment, Lex spent 10,000 MP to upgrade the Meditation room so that whatever Marlo was trying to achieve would be done sooner.

Something worth nothing was that he eventually managed to contact Larry on Earth, but Larry was behaving strangely. Lex assumed it might have something to do with Marlo's disappearance so he really wanted the old geezer to return.

Lex started changing the appearance of the Inn a bit, putting up lights and adding sky lanterns in the sky so that the Inn would look more festive. He even spent 10 MP to buy a suit that could be worn by Little Blue. Despite his large size, the baby whale looked adorable in the new costume.

It was during this time that Lex started receiving some guests. Naturally it wasn't the guests invited for the event, but those that already had Golden keys. It was Chen and Lily, who arrived with several bags in tow. Literally they were covered from head to toe with bags, and as soon as they arrived at the Inn they collapsed, dropping the bags on the ground. Various cores, papers and other gadgets fell out of their bags but the duo quickly started cleaning up.

"Please, allow me," Lex said as he summoned Gerard and his subordinates who loaded all the stuff onto their golf carts. "That's quite a lot of luggage. Are you planning on having a longer trip?"

"Thank you for your assistance," said Lily, handing her bags to the staff. "These are not actually our luggage but some things for your guests from Earth that we met last time - Rorick and his party. We agreed to trade a few things."

"In that case, you should have them bring your stuff to the Guild room. You can explore it yourself as well in the meantime, I think it will serve you well."

"Thank you, we will," she said as she sat in the golf cart and allowed Gerard to take them away.

Lex was curious about why the duo came without Blane this time around as he had always accompanied Chen, but they weren't talking about it so spying on them would not change anything.

He took a backseat on things and watched as his staff handled the two guests, to see if there was something he would need to correct. Having a well trained staff that didn't always require his supervision was extremely important. And now that those two had arrived, he expected more guests would start arriving shortly as well.

He was correct, though he could not have guessed who his next guest was. It was Ayesha, one of the few guests that Lex had completely missed. She arrived at the Inn, looking a little forlorn. Lex was quite curious about this guest of his. Not only did she leave a surplus of 10,855 MP at the Inn, she and her counterpart were probably the ones who enjoyed the Inn the most.

Lex had watched a playback of them flying around the Inn, enjoying themselves. Such youthful spirit was something Lex greatly appreciated.

He checked her status once before approaching her.

Name: Ayesha Shehzad

Age: 15

Sex: Female

Cultivation Details: None

Species: Human

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: 1

"Welcome guest, to the Midnight Inn. I am the Innkeeper, owner of this humble establishment. I greatly regret missing your previous arrival, I hope you found our services to be adequate."

Ayesha was surprised to see the Innkeeper, and for a moment forgot about her worries. So this was the mystery man behind this mysterious dating spot.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," she replied politely. "Your services were excellent, and I was very happy that someone appreciates the universe's needs for romantic getaways."

Lex chuckled at Ayesha's strange focus. He had seen how Ayesha called the Inn a dating spot last time she came. It seemed the teenager's mind was completely focused on romance.

"Alas, even with such romantic places to visit, the heart is left cold and hollow without his warm embrace," Ayesha said as dramatically as she could manage. She even turned away from Lex, as if to hide tears in her eyes. The act would have been quite convincing if Ayesha hadn't caught sight of Little Blue, swimming slowly across the sky. The turtle was using Little Blue's tie as a leash to walk…swim, no fly? The turtle was using the leash to lead the Whale across the sky and anyone would be stuck in a daze at such a sight.

"That's Little Black, our gardener, and Little Blue, its pet. Why don't I introduce you," Lex said, leading the young girl towards the two animals wearing a smug smile.

Lex had forgotten that he was being silently observed by his bodyguard, who was taking everything in with a lot of interest. He did not understand what this place was, or what the Innkeepers purpose was. Was he just playing around?

But the Innkeeper did not seem like a simple person, there had to be a deeper meaning behind his actions. From what he could tell, he was running some kind of hotel. Maybe this was a kind of cultivation? Or maybe it was some kind of organization? But what was the goal? So far, he had only seen the Innkeeper interact with low leveled cultivators.

Admittedly, the bodyguard was surprised when he saw the Galactic Sovereign turtle, but it was still young and weak. It would be tens of thousands of years before the turtle had any kind of real strength.

"System, scan the Inn for anomalies," the bodyguard said in his mind.

"Sorry host, for the duration of the quest, to maintain the clients privacy, the systems scan capabilities have been sealed."

"Interesting," the bodyguard said once again. He scanned the Inn himself with his spiritual sense, but found nothing out of the ordinary except the Mystery Trial. For some reason, he felt a slight attraction to the Trial, but the attraction was so slight that it clearly meant it had no significant impact on his strength or cultivation.

Intrigued, the bodyguard continued to keep watch over his new client. The bodyguard was patient, and didn't mind waiting to learn more secrets. Afterall, since the quest would forcefully erase his memory that meant that at some point the bodyguard would be exposed to great secrets. He was very curious to see what those secrets were, and if they were worth having a half a bad hair day over.