The Innkeeper

Lex did not immediately snap awake like the previous few times he exited the coma, but instead was slow to wake. He opened his eyes to the familiar ceiling of the Recovery pod before letting his heavy eyelids fall again, dozing back off for short intervals. A few hours later, when his initial grogginess passed, he let out a massive yawn and stretched.

The walls of the Recovery pod should have blocked his hands, but he tore open two holes in it before he realized what he had done. Startled by the noise, Lex looked over only for his face to smash a dent into the pod as well.

For a few seconds Lex froze, before he started withdrawing his hands slowly from the holes in the pod. He had been through this before, when he first started cultivating. His body had gotten much stronger, yet again, but his brain had not yet adapted to the change. Unfortunately for Lex, the scale of growth he underwent this time was so massive that he could not correctly comprehend how to act safely. As he pulled his hands back into the pod, carefully, his shoulder blades squeezed a little, as was normal, but this time, they ended up crumpling the part of the pod below him.

He froze once again when he heard the sound of the pod creaking and cracking, before letting out a sigh and directly teleporting to his house within the Inn. He appeared in his study out of habit, before he teleported again to the Meditation room.

Closing his eyes, he tried to get a feel for his body, but that yielded no results. Lex did not feel overwhelming strength coursing through his veins, or as if he had unlocked a new tear of strength. No, he felt completely normal.

He ran Regal Embrace to see if he could notice an anomaly in his cultivation, but had to stop almost immediately! He was on the verge of having a breakthrough to the next realm and had reached his limit. Even the slightest stimulation would begin the breakthrough process and he would be unable to stop it.

That was not to say that Lex wanted to avoid a breakthrough, but that he just woke up and probably had numerous things to take care of. The crazy part was that he had this uncontrollable strength even while wearing the Host Attire, which was supposed to give him perfect control over his body. He could not understand what the issue was.

Unable to come up with a quick solution, he sat down on the floor cross-legged and asked Mary for an update.

"How long was I in a coma for?" he asked.

"20 days," she replied, appearing before her. Mary's hologram was tiny, as usual, but this time she was dressed in a yellow sun dress and was wearing sunglasses.

Lex did not comment, but his raised eyebrow was enough to prompt a reaction from his holographic assistant.

"What? Just because you never change the way your host attire looks doesn't mean that I have to wear the same clothes all the time."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't need to say anything. By the way, there's a particular guest who wants to meet with you and I suggest you take the time to meet with him."

"Oh? Did something happen while I was asleep?"

"A few things... I think it's better if you take a look rather than me telling you."

Curious, Lex scanned the Inn and was immediately startled. There was a giant humanoid rock thing meditating in a corner of the Inn, with a giant spaceship hovering over him providing him shade. It need not be mentioned that near the giant meditating rock thing, the gardener was once again crying about his ruined landscape. Lex actually started to feel bad for the guy.

"I trust there were no issues," Lex said.

"None, but he insisted on meeting you. When he heard that you were busy, he paid the fees with various precious metal ores that were hanging off his body and decided to meditate till you return. He was informed that the Inn has a function that shrinks large beings automatically if they enter a building, so he can stay inside a house or a room if he wants. But he insisted on staying outside."

"Mhmm, and I assume that's his ship," commented Lex. He wasn't really asking, for he had already assumed he was correct. After all, when he met Abroar, his clone had formed inside the ship, so he had not seen it from the outside and did not recognize it.

"No, that was left behind by another guest, though I'm not sure why it hasn't disappeared as well. After all, the guest used the Beyond the Grave function of the Inn, and turned into a Spirit. Or, well, as some of the guests have taken to calling him a ghost."

"Is there anything urgent? Since that guest has been waiting for so many days, he won't mind a little more time right?"

"Well, nothing is urgent per se. Why, you got some plans?"

"Yeah, you could say that," Lex murmured and turned his attention towards his system. He didn't want any more screw-ups, so he had to do things properly. The first thing on his agenda was to go through the remaining notifications and see where he stood.

He had gone through most of the notifications from earlier, so only a few remained.

New Notification: New decoration (Hearth of Souls) has dramatically raised the prestige of the Inn

New Quest: Add 5 more decorative items that build the Inn's reputation

Quest Reward: Subject to Hosts performance.

New Notification: You have been Innkeeper for 1 year

Reward: Commemorative fridge magnet

New Notification: One of your guests has used Beyond the Grave and has become a fixed resident of the Inn for 13,000[abridged] years (all excess MP converted into energy to retain the spirit).

New Notification: A guest has made a net payment of over 1,000,000,000,000 MP(1 trillion MP). Unlocking token shop!

New Notification: A guest has made a payment with an item worth over 1 trillion MP. The item has been retained instead of converting to MP!

New Notification: A guest has used Beyond the Grave, but part of his payment has been retained. Please pay the retained amount before 13,000 years so that the guest can have their full spirit duration!

New Notification: A guest has become a bigger attraction than the Inn's attractions! Do not lose face!

There was genuinely a lot to unpack from all the notifications Lex got. Naturally, the first thing Lex checked was his MP. It had jumped up a lot. In fact, Lex was back in the billions with 20 billion MP! However, that did not come from the trillions of MP the system was referring to, but came from Lex's 1% of the payments Ragnar made through the Guild room for his tasks being complete. It had to be remembered that when all of Ragnar's tasks were completed, Lex would gain a total of 1 trillion MP, so this was nothing.

When Lex looked into where all the so-called 'trillions' of MP that his guest had paid disappeared to, it turned out that when a guest used Beyond the Grave, once again only 1% of the total payment went to Lex. The remaining MP was changed into energy which was used to keep the new guest alive in spirit form.

The reason why Lex didn't get the 1% in this case was that, apparently, one of the items used by the guest as payment had tremendous value, and triggered a hidden feature of the Inn. When items used for payment exceeded a certain limit, instead of converting them into MP, the system would directly take the item! So now Lex had a spaceship, apparently. At the same time, he owed that guest the MP equivalent of that ship, minus the 1% he would have gotten from the total payment!

Fortunately, Lex had a long time to pay the MP he owed, otherwise he didn't know what he would do.

Normally, Lex would have looked into the situation with the guest and the spaceship, for Lex had a habit of forgetting to check his rewards and notifications to favor things that were happening in the moment. But Lex had formed the resolution to do things properly this time, so he couldn't leave things done halfway.

Although he did not get the trillions of MP that had entered the system, he did unlock a new feature called the Token Shop because of it, so he looked into that.

Apparently, through the Token Shop, Lex could purchase some of the tokens the system gave him out as rewards. The reason only the trillion MP mark unlocked it was simple. The cheapest available tokens were all 1 trillion MP!

Despite himself, Lex let out a sigh. The system made it really hard to feel rich sometimes.