The Innkeeper

Rafael was sitting in his wheelchair, sunbathing. Since he had woken up, he barely returned to Earth for a few days before returning to the Inn. Not only was the Inn safer, considering Earth's volatile political situation, it was better for his recovery as well. Not to mention, he had thoroughly confirmed that most of his information about the future in the near future was useless now. Only events further out in the future, or events unrelated to the situation on Earth itself, were still relevant. This meant he had to spend a lot of time figuring out what he needed to do.

Just as his internal monologue was going on, two ugly, leathery rat monsters appeared in front of him. No, wait, that was insensitive. Rat aliens appeared in front of him. They took a look around to get an understanding of the situation, and then their sight landed on Rafael.

As an experienced war veteran, he immediately recognized the look in their eyes, but instead of being alarmed, he raised an eyebrow in curiosity?

Really? They were going to attack him? The answer was yes.

The closest ugly, skinny, leathery rat monster immediately lunged at him with a frail-looking spear, aiming towards his skull. Given his current condition there wasn't much he could do anyway, but Rafael did not as much as flinch as he watched the spear closing in on him with a smirk.

From the initial distance of a few feet, the spear closed in on him in a flash. As it drew close, aiming somewhere towards the middle of his face, he even took the time to observe the craftsmanship of the spear. It was made of some kind of white material and he could not tell if it was something synthetic or a kind of material he'd never seen before. It had green colored lines running up and down its body, as if the odd material had some kind of disgusting veins sticking out of its body.

Even as the spear was a few inches from his face, he did not move. Even as the squeaky battle cry of the rat monster hit him, his smirk did not disappear. The tip of the spear was but a few centimeters from his face.

Then it hit him. That is, the gust of wind carried by the spear hit him, but the spear itself was held firmly in place by a vine that suddenly emerged from the ground. To be clear, the vine had wrapped itself not only around the spear, but the ugly, stinky, disgusting rat monster as well as its counterpart.

For a moment everything was still, as the monsters tried to struggle within the vines, but could not. Then the vine pulled the two into the ground, the grass quickly covering up the area the vine had come from, as if nothing ever happened.

*****

Crystal realm, Karom Forest, Lex's tent

Lex had been sitting on the ground, chatting with Mary about the Inn and the Crystal realm, when suddenly he received the loudest system notification to date.

He did not need to go and check the notification because, for the first time, in a robotic yet disgruntled voice, the system directly read the notification out to him.

Quest: MIDNIGHT INN IS BEING INVADED! WARD OFF THE INVASION WITHOUT ALLOWING THE GUESTS TO SUFFER HARM

Quest time limit: IMMEDIATELY

Quest Reward: Gamblers coin

Quest failure punishment: REDUCTION IN AUTHORITY!

For a time that seemed to stretch to eternity, Lex was frozen as he suddenly panicked! This was exactly what he had been fearing! Not only was the Inn under attack, he was far away and could not do anything.

But Lex was not inexperienced anymore! He managed to recover from his panic and his mind went into overdrive!

From the moment of the system's announcement, to him panicking, to his eventual recovery, exactly one second had passed. The system had given the quest before the Raskals even appeared, but by the time Lex had recovered, they were already in the Inn.

Working faster than his mind had ever done before, he scanned the entire Inn with his mind, identifying the various locations of the invaders. Whether it was fortunate or unfortunate, most of the invaders appeared in three different places.

Most of them, around 300, appeared near the gate built into the boundary wall of the Inn. This was a common place for new guests to appear, but as there was no attraction near it, it was fortunately empty of guests. The second place a lot of them appeared was on Main street, near Avallon. Around 100 well equipped Raskals had just appeared, and unfortunately, it was a crowded spot. The third place they appeared in a large group was in front of Midnight manor, a couple dozen or so of them. This place also had guests around, though not as many as Main street.

The remainder appeared in random locations throughout the Inn. Once Lex understood their locations, he scanned them for their strengths. The strongest Raskals' status was:

Name: K-789465

Age: 110

Sex: Male

Cultivation Details: Nascent realm middle

Species: Raskal

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: -

Remarks: He's cannon fodder for the universe, and a boss for you.

He immediately understood the division in power levels. 400 of them were at various levels in the foundation realm, 80 of them were in the Golden core and 20 of them were in the Nascent realm.

This was an army that could decimate the Inn! He didn't have any workers in those realms and the vine was only in the Initial Golden Core realm. What could he do? If the husband and wife duo had managed to pass their tests by now, he could have used them, but currently they were both away, conducting their respective tests. There had to be a solution.

Another second passed.

He had to think of solutions fast, and he had to protect his guests and workers as well! He had over 4 million MP at his disposal, as well as 0.1% energy accumulated. If this wasn't enough to eradicate his enemies from the face of this universe, then as the Innkeeper he should just retire.

Lex's overworking mind suddenly entered a state of flow and he began doing multiple things at once. He immediately identified the Raskals that were near guests and workers, other than the ones on Main street.

There were 12 such situations, including the ones near Rafael. Of these 12 situations, most guests were faced with foundation Raskals, one guest was faced with a Golden Core Raskal and the last one was Gerard and Velma, who faced a Nascent realm Raskal!

'Mary, control the Vine and stop these Raskal immediately!' Lex said as he mentally sent her the image of the locations as well as the Raskals that needed to be stopped. He was not aware if she would be able to multitask and control the Vine in so many places at once, so he sent her images in decreasing order of urgency. The first image was of the Raskal closest to harming someone, then one slightly further off and so forth.

In the meantime, he spent 100,000MP to create a teleportation circle on Main street and teleported all the Raskals away, directly to the front gate with the rest of the Raskals. Unfortunately, this was not targeted teleportation, as he was able to do when he himself was at the Inn, so anyone within was also teleported along, Raskal or not.

He quickly scanned the Inn again, to understand what was the most pressing situation, expecting it to be Gerard and Velma but, beyond anything he could have expected, the situation was under control. In fact, the circumstances of those two and the Raskal were so peculiar Lex actually lost 0.4 second in shock, despite the state of flow!

But he moved on. The situation was far from handled, as a couple of fights had already broken out! Fortunately, the two fights involved John and Fenrir. He should have been worried for Fenrir, but in the single second he had not been observing the dog, it had already killed all the Raskal near it. John, on the other hand, was... eating darts?

Not wasting any more time, he bought a formation for the sole purpose of trapping an army for 1.5 million MP and then started buying smaller, targeted teleportation circles to teleport his guests out of the formation one by one. Despite being smaller, each circle cost him 10,000 MP, but he couldn't be picky right now.

Another second passed. By now John had taken care of his Raskal and Rafael had been rescued. But some guests were still being attacked. Fortunately, a couple of the guests, being warriors themselves, didn't wait for a rescue and directly retaliated as soon as they were threatened.

As another second passed, the most immediate threat had been handled, but the battle had not yet even begun.