The Innkeeper

Lex was sitting in his room, casually sipping a cappuccino, observing his Inn. Setting up the three bases had cost him 30,000 MP, and he deposited another 220,000 MP in setting the stage for the remainder of the games. That 250,000 MP expenditure wiped out most of the accumulation over the past few days, but fortunately, the truth was quite different.

This was a direct result of the many soldiers and beasts at the Inn. Even though Lex had notified the Jotun leaders that the zombies would likely participate, they did not bother to send back their soldiers. Those 10,000, along with the eventual 10,000 beasts that eventually arrived, made his Inn tremendously crowded. Earth had only summoned 5000 of the Foundation soldiers that would participate in the games, as they absolutely could not afford to bring so many Golden Core cultivators and have them simply wait.

Even though they had their individual bases, they did not stay there all the time. At this point, the Inn's lack of growth in size became an issue, as there was no place that remained free of guests. Even the forest surrounding the greenhouse was full of crowds by now. They mistook the formation surrounding the forest for some kind of puzzle or game, keeping in theme with the rest of points of interest at the Inn. The sloth and the devils had been unable to reach the middle, fortunately, and Ragnar had not tried, so Lex's farm was safe.

The farm, ironically, became Lex's main source of income during this period. His services were not made to handle such a load of guests and were thus always at capacity, and so limited his daily income. But his spirit food, at the cost of 10 MP a meal, could simultaneously feed many.

Just counting the soldiers, the 25,000 soldiers and their meals three times a day earned him a whopping 750,000 MP! But there were not only these few, as most of the guests who had participated during the first portion of the games also came and went at varying frequencies. He also managed to sell five more of his MI suits.

This resulted in him making a total of 810,000 MP in the last 1 day. Naturally, with his spirit food literally being his cash crop, he was especially concerned with not running low on supply. He had stored as much as he could leading up to the event, and using the Liger as fertilizer had greatly helped in boosting production, though he had no idea why that would accelerate production speed instead of affecting yield quality. Still, the area of his farm was limited and so could only produce a limited amount at a time.

While Lex could do nothing about increasing the size of the farm, at least at the moment, he spent 100,000 MP upgrading the greenhouse to the maximum amount his authority would allow. That upgrade, along with the tremendous aid provided by the Sovereign Galactic turtle, ensured that he would be able to barely meet the demand. For now.

As much as Lex enjoyed the feeling of sitting on a pile of MP, he used another 500,000 MP as the deposit for setting up gambling through the event panel. He would get the deposit back along with whatever profit he made once the event was over, so it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

Lex let out a sigh as he rubbed his head. Managing an event with thousands of people, even with the help of the system, was a great hassle. He had decided, after this event was over, he would take a break and maybe go on a vacation himself.

He was constantly on crisis control. As it turned out, while he was enjoying the cultural show, Gerard, under the command of Mary, had been working nonstop. Although there were no upfront fights anymore, there were more than a few minor altercations between humans and beasts.

This was mainly a result of beasts still thinking of humans beneath them, and not realizing their actions or words were offensive. More than once, one of the giant beasts had almost stepped on a human, and was only stopped in time by his guards. Another series of incidents that happened with embarrassing frequency was Earthling cultivators getting high and not being able to handle it.

They were too used to the kind of substances produced on Earth, which barely had any effect on them once they cultivated. Yet many of the guests from Minima Vegus, who were mostly locals of the planet who had been accepted into one of the cities built by the empire, brought a supply that the Earthlings just could not handle. These did not end up in fights or arguments, but Lex did not like having intoxicated guests lying around. Eventually, he had to make an announcement limiting such substances to their rooms only.

There was still another group who were causing Lex problems that left feeling severe, crippling fear because more than once he had reacted similarly to how his parents used to react to him when he was young.

This was a group of over 100 students from Troy academy, the school that Alexander was technically still a student of as well. These students, naturally being connected to the crème de la crème of Earthen society, were given the opportunity to come here when enough of their parents visited the Inn and discovered how amazing it was, especially for cultivation.

The dean of the school, as a man of great influence, happened to be one of the earliest humans to be invited by the five families when they were still recruiting people for the cultural show.

Once he had seen everything for himself, and was assured by the five families that the Inn was safe, immediately coordinated with the parents he was able to meet at the Inn and organized a field trip. These students were only the first batch to arrive. More would join later.

Truth be told, Lex did not mind the kids. In fact, he thought many of them were pretty clever and fun. But when they kept inadvertently leading Gerard into racing with the other chauffeurs, kept trying to climb Little Blue to ride, kept flirting with Velma, and more than once tried to convince the girls to go skinny dip in the tiny lake, as the person responsible for everything Lex had to deal with the situations.

He needed to find permanent, nonaggressive solutions, as he could not keep following the kids repeating 'no'. The skinny dipping incident especially nearly gave him a heart attack. They were all underage! Lex did not want to go to moral jail!

Rubbing his forehead, Lex cast a look towards the Gamer's den. The bright side in all of this was that Z had seemed to find a friend. At least, he thought they were friends. There was a girl with an appearance similar to Z's age sitting with him, watching an anime called Full Wooden Alchemist, both of them struggling to hold back their tears. He wished them both the best.

Just as Lex was watching a group of kids who had discovered Icarus' wings, just trying to imagine what kind of trouble they were about to cause, something happened to divert his attention.

The devil's army had finally arrived at the Minima Vegus camp in a predictably sinister fashion. They did not have the discipline of the human armies, nor did they have the naturally aggressive aura of predators that reeked off the beasts. But hundreds of partially rotting corpses astride various sized zombie beasts that were rotting as well made them intimidating in a way that could not be replicated. Just their presence was an assault of nauseating smells.

But that was not all. The army of zombies was not being led by a devil, as Lex had expected. Standing at the forefront was a seven feet tall massive humanoid being covered in an armor that looked more like a collection of scales of various animals than anything forged. Since the requisite to join the games were that they had to be from the planet, Lex assumed that this must be another kind of demon that the devils had assigned on the planet to lead the zombies.

He was only partially correct, as while this demon did lead the zombie armies, it was born and raised on Minima Vegus. The devils had merely discovered and used it, not sent it to the planet.

Curiosity got the best of Lex and he checked its status.

Name: Pramod

Age: 17

Sex: Male

Cultivation Details: Peak Foundation realm

Species: Nightmare/Heart Demon

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: 1

Bloodline: Human

Remarks: Do not invite him over for dinner, lest he eat you up!

Lex frowned. Pramods species was clearly indicated as a demon, yet its bloodline was stated as human. Could humans turn into demons? Or was this one of those instances where two species procreated and gave birth to a being with a unique bloodline?