The Innkeeper

Lex groaned. Of course nothing was ever easy. He focused on the details to learn more. The lower his guest satisfaction rating, the more expensive things would be to buy using MP! It was a very straightforward relationship, and yet extremely effective.

"What's the point of this? It wasn't as if I was not looking after my guests' experiences," he lamented, but there was no one to give him an answer. Well, he did just kick out and ban a bunch of guests because they irritated him. But in his defense, they were planning on acting against the Inn!

Just for a comparison, he checked the price of a regular room. Ordinarily, it cost him 500 MP to buy it, but with his current satisfaction rating it cost 806 MP.

It was not too bad, but he could see how, when applied across hundreds or thousands of purchases, even a price increase of 1 MP could cost him an immense amount. This added a new hurdle to manage, but it wasn't so bad. He was confident he could quickly raise the satisfaction rating, not to mention that if the cumulative satisfaction rating was about 95% he would gain access to special perks.

Next, he turned his attention to the upgrades to the Host Attire. For one, it no longer needed to be an entire ensemble, but rather a single clothing item. That did not seem like much of an upgrade, until Lex saw that the attire now had an active and passive mode.

In active mode the attire would take on its normal appearance, and Lex would look like the Innkeeper to any who saw him. But in the inactive mode, Lex would still look like Lex, but with the added benefit that he could still completely and thoroughly control the Inn, like he could while wearing the attire. This included when he was not actually inside the Inn!

But outside the Inn, the attire would only remain in its inactive mode, and so Lex could not pretend to be the Innkeeper. It was a nice upgrade, considering that it would keep him connected to the Inn basically all the time now. Mostly, it was just a replacement for the fact that the system was supposed to fuse with his soul by now.

Much more interesting than the first two was the third new feature, which was Realm law replication. Basically, just like how the Inn had various different biomes to support various different guests, such as lakes for aquatic guests, temples for divine guests and so on, the realm could now replicate the laws of certain realms to accommodate guests who could only survive in very specific conditions.

One example of unusual laws was the place Lex visited just a few months ago, where he turned into a 2D character. Although it was technically still this realm, the laws within that small region were completely different.

One of the primary reasons for that was that the Midnight realm itself was brand new, and far from stabilizing, so the laws that governed the realm had not been fully established. That meant there was a certain possibility that the laws that turned the world 2D might actually take over the realm!

Although, more realistically, chances were high that those laws would slowly be corrected.

But the system could not replicate those laws out of nothing. Just as he had to spend a certain amount of time on planets to connect them to the system, he had to spend a certain amount of time in realms with special laws for the system to be able to replicate them.

This was extremely interesting. Lex hadn't experienced going to any realms with unique laws yet, but then again, how many realms had he even been to? According to what he understood, even the Origin realm, which was the largest and strongest realm he had ever been to, was not a completely mature realm, let alone the Crystal realm or Midnight realm.

But he had no doubt that sooner or later he would get a chance to visit some of these realms. If that was the case, being able to replicate their unique laws not only enabled him to host more guests, it provided new attractions for guests as well. He could totally see a family taking a vacation and heading into a 2D world for a while. Who knew what other strange realms there were out there?

He would definitely try to capture the laws of that 2D place before it disappeared, if it was possible. Since they weren't the laws of an entire realm he wasn't sure if it would work.

The next was the Branch Management functionality. To an extent, it already existed. After all, he had established the tavern long ago. But Lex felt like the appearance of the tavern hadn't been so much because he taunted the system, but because it was a pre-existing feature that was released since he theoretically had full authority at the time, and asked for it.

The Branch Management functionality refined some of the features he already had access to, such as the rumor room which was something he only had in the tavern, but more importantly it brought one new incredibly amazing feature to the tavern!

No longer was the tavern fixed in one location! He could teleport it to any realm or planet connected to the Inn, and if he bought special tickets, he could even teleport it to unconnected planets!

More importantly, even while he kept the Inn sealed, he could continue to operate the tavern, which meant he could technically complete all his quests while keeping the Inn sealed!

Much like the system said, instead of waiting for guests to come to him, it was time to take his tavern to various guests!

The notion was actually quite exciting. He could already imagine all the various adventures he could have in the traveling Inn. Heh, this is his reward from holding himself back from adventuring when he was looking for ingredients.

The next feature, the Inn level division, was actually one that made a lot of sense and he had been wondering about for a while. At the moment, the spiritual energy concentration in the Inn was quite pure and high, which was beneficial to everyone. But that was also because everyone here were either locals, or suitably powerful.

Such a high energy concentration would actually be quite dangerous for weaker guests. That is where the level division would come in. It was great that he got a lot more land, because now he would need to develop more of the Inn.

Starting from level 0, which basically had the same amount of spirit energy as Earth, if only a little purer, all the way to level 5, which matched his authority level, the Inn would be divided into various levels.

The spiritual energy in each level would be different, but at the same time, so would be the cost of living there. For example, 1 MP is equal to $1000 from back on Earth, which effectively meant that most humans on earth would never be able to actually afford living here.

But now, on level one, the price would be drastically reduced, so that normal guests could also afford it. Of course, guests who had high cultivation levels but were on a budget could also choose to reside in a lower level. Basically, the Inn was now accommodating all price ranges, which meant a lot more guests could actually come here.

These were just the newest features that had been added. Various existing services had been improved, though he did not know the details, and some of the loopholes he depended on had been fixed. This included the issue with teleportation.

Previously, many guests would sneak into the Inn from places they weren't supposed to be in, and then teleport back when they needed to do something devious. Many robberies had been committed like this, not to mention assassinations and other crimes. Being complicit to such criminal activities was not really the best for the Inns image, so Lex addressed the issue, but it was far from ideal.

Now the system fixed it on its own. Anyone could teleport to the Inn from anywhere, that was still true, so technically criminals could still use it to escape. But if guests tried to teleport back, they would not be sent exactly back to the same location, unless they had permission or were supposed to be there. If they did not have permission to return to the place they teleported from originally, they would just be sent to a public spot nearby.

That was still similar to the change that Lex made, but what was different was that guests could now purchase a permanent teleportation point. That meant that they could choose to return to that permanent spot instead of where they arrived from!

This was not a perfect solution, and actually made it easier for criminals to get away, but Lex guessed the system wasn't thinking about that when it added the feature.