The Innkeeper



Lex felt like he was meeting Geeves for the first time, and he quite liked it. Even if his prior meeting had not been extremely brief, how could Geeves show off his sadistic side in front of the Innkeeper? He had been on his best behavior. But now, in front of Leo, in his extremely sleep deprived state, Geeves has thoroughly lost all inhibition, and so let his true self show.

What Lex didn't realize was that his true self was not a sadist as he made it seem like, no. His true self was an artist, and he exhibited his art through his suits. The appearance of the suit was just the surface of the art. The functionality of the suit is what gave his art depth.

"I like the idea," confirmed Lex. "What are the limits of what you can do with the suit?"

"Currently, the shop has a limit on the kinds of materials I can access. The materials I can access are on the nascent realm level, at most. If you can bring me better materials from outside, I can improve the suit further, but until then you would have to make do. Having said that, even at the nascent realm, the kinds of materials I have access to are numerous.

"How many things you want to add to the suit play a great role in how I can use the materials. For example, with my previous suits, although they may seem impressive to you, I was actually severely limited in what I could do. It was not budgetary constraints that stopped me, nor was it the material. Instead, it was the physical strength and power level of those who were going to wear it.

"Just because it looks like a suit does not mean that it has to be light. The more leeway I have, the more I can be liberal with the kinds of materials I can use. You'll understand more in a moment. Come, let me take your measurements."

Geeves took off his coat and folded it over his arm as he led Lex deeper into the mansion. Each room and corridor had walls lined with various fabrics in a seemingly infinite number of colors. The truth was, the number of colors the tailor shop was catering to far exceeded the spectral range humans could see, which is why there was such a need for such a vast collection. The true, genuinely valuable materials weren't even stored here. They were in a basement, stored in isolated, temperature controlled rooms. The materials were so volatile, they needed to undergo various kinds of treatments before they could be added into suits.

"You said I can bring materials from outside. What kind of materials do you mean? Should I be looking for some alien sheep producing celestial cotton or something?"

"My young, ignorant lad, if you can get your hands on celestial cotton, or better yet an animal capable of producing celestial cotton, you'll become an instant multibillionaire. Every inch of it is worth several hundred million MP, and that's in its unrefined form. Heck, I don't even have the facilities to process it, so better not waste your time daydreaming about that. No, a more realistic expectation would be to get your hands on precious ores, woods and other natural materials which have unique qualities. Turning them into fabric will be my task."

The two continued to casually chat for a while until they reached a small room filled with strips of fabric, multiple mannequins and various kinds of inch tapes!

"Stand here please," Geeves said as he pointed to a small, circular pedestal. He put his coat aside, rolled up his sleeves and grabbed a yellow measuring tape before hanging it around his neck like a doctor with a stethoscope. He put on a pair of glasses that hung delicately on his nose and stood at the ready to start measuring Lex.

Lex hadn't really had a personalized suit made before so he did not know what the measuring process would entail, but it definitely did not include the extreme raise in gravity that he experienced as soon as he stepped on the pedestal.

If Lex had to guess, the gravity was at least twice or thrice that of earth, yet it kept increasing exponentially. Of course, such an increase posed no burden to Lex for the moment, as his body was extremely strong. But the pedestal wasn't trying to test his physical limits, so it never pushed him to the maximum of what he could manage. Instead, it was trying to determine his comfort range. At the exact moment he felt even the slightest bit of strain due to the increased gravity, the pedestal immediately returned to normal.

Geeves started writing something down in his notes as he walked around Lex with a clipboard.

After a couple of moments, the temperature around Lex began increasing. Similar to what happened with the gravity, it stopped the moment Lex's body displayed even the hint of becoming uncomfortable.

Then, after returning to normal, the temperature started to drop.

"Raise your hands, please," Geeves said, prompting Leo to raise them to his sides. He was standing like a massive 'T' but Geeves still did not approach him to measure the length of his arms. Instead, two parrots, one red and one blue, appeared and sat on his palms. An unusual energy was channeled through their claws into Lex's body, or at least tried to. Piercing his skin and entering his body turned out to be a greater challenge than Geeves expected. The man was actually surprised when there was no result for a couple of minutes, but eventually the energies managed to enter Lex's body.

They were not harming him in any way. Instead, it appeared as if they were mapping Lex's meridians that covered the surface of his body.

"Understanding how your body interacts with energy, and where your body's channels are, is crucial to designing a suit," Geeves explained while the process continued. "Even if I'm making the ultimate defensive suit, I cannot forget to augment your body's basic functions as best as possible."

The process was painfully slow, and took almost 20 minutes, but Geevs did not seem irritated at the slow progress. Instead, he was very pleased. Such a high quality body would be able to don an extremely high quality, yet equally taxing suit.

A glass tube appeared around the pedestal and sealed Lex in, before water began to fill it. Once the tube was completely filled, the pressure the water exerted on Lex's body began increasing. At the same time, millions of tiny fish swam out, and began measuring each and every hair on Lex's body. That… genuinely made him awkward. The system had once accused him of having a hairy back, which wasn't exactly false but he felt like the system greatly exaggerated. Lex would not shy away from taking his shirt off in public. But when each individual hair was being measured…

Of course, none of the fish came near Lex's private parts - mostly because he kept it blocked with a thick and dangerous layer of his spirit sense.

After the water, Lex was subjected to multiple other strange and unexpected tests that measured his body's performance and capabilities. There was even one that detected the level of body odor he produced!

When the process finally ended Lex sighed in relief. These measurements were really too intense.

"Would you like to read your results?" Geeves asked, as he continued to note stuff down. "Guests often become curious."

"Sure, why not?" said Lex as he walked up to him and glanced at the clipboard. Two measurements in particular genuinely surprised Lex!

The first was his height. He had reached six feet three inches (190 cm). His height had increased. Granted the increase was not massive, but he hadn't even noticed the small change. He wondered if it was a result of his cultivation, or the multiple refinements his body underwent. There was no way of knowing.

But what really surprised, and in fact devastated him, was his weight! The last time he checked his weight, or at least what he remembered, he was 185 pounds (83 kgs). That was quite a lot for his height, which meant that he was a little fat. Or that he had a lot of muscle. It was totally the second one. But now… now he was a massive and unfathomable 712 pounds (325 kgs)!

With his mouth hung open, Lex looked down at his muscular and chiseled body. He couldn't claim to be fat, but it wasn't as if he was bulging out muscles either! What was up with that weight?

In the end… he could only reluctantly accept the fact that all the materials he had absorbed into his body had increased his weight, substantially.

It was fortunate that he wasn't weight conscious at all, or else he would have been crying over these results. He totally wasn't doing that right now. His eyes were just shining and glistening due to how clear and beautiful they were.