The Innkeeper

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Since all the services around had sizeable crowds and long queues, Ragnar instead decided to walk around the Inn and observe everything for himself. He investigated the Mystery trial as well, but it could only accommodate one person at a time and was already in use.

He saw some people sitting and eating in the garden. Some of them were eating spirit food - a huge surprise for Earthlings but nothing special for Ragnar. He walked to the Meditation room as well as the Recovery room and saw first hand their capabilities. Although he could not be sure about the effectiveness of the Meditation room, judging from the level of all the other services he could garner a guess.

The more he saw, the more he believed that the Inn was designed to cater to low leveled cultivators, and really only served the purpose of a vacation spot. Naturally the services were a great boon for Earthlings and Beasts from Nibiru even, but anyone with a certain amount of standing in a Star class civilization or greater could receive the same benefits through spending money.

All in all, the Inn seemed unique enough to attract attention, but was generic enough not to step on any high leveled toes. Perhaps the Innkeeper did not have any hidden, ulterior motives, and was only fulfilling a whim of his to run an inn. Who knew what these ancient, powerful beings did to pass the time?

Since he had to pass the time waiting for the humans to conclude their meeting, he decided to try out their food. Thorough reconnaissance required every part of the Inn to be investigated.

*****

In a private room in the coliseum, the five human Nascent cultivators were sitting along with the observer sent by the lady in the hologram, and Audery, of course. Who said ancestor level cultivators can't be simps?

The observer, Adrian, did not contribute much to their discussion, much to the frustration of the others. They were hoping he would provide some insight about the forces of the universe, but he told them nothing.

All Adrian said was, "My role on this mission is to only record everything down so I can report it later. I don't have the qualifications or the authority to share information with you freely, as it may affect plans that I am not aware of. All I can say is, you do not need to worry too much. The Jotun Empire is a friendly force, and not our enemy. Having said that, you should maintain the facade that you have no contact with anyone outside of your galaxy."

"What about the Devils?" the fat man asked. Out of everyone here, he was the only one who had little to no combat experience. Even with his strength, the stigma of Devils affected him.

Adrian let out an exasperated sigh. "I keep telling you, I am just a clerk. I don't know these things, I am only here to observe! Before this, I didn't even know that Devils were a race! Instead of asking me, you should ask the soldiers from the empire these questions. They will have answers for you."

"How long are we going to drill him on useless things?" Brandon asked in annoyance, before anyone could question Adrian some more. "Let's focus on what really matters. How has there been no progress on those rebels? My grandson suffered an assassination attempt just so that we could get a few leads. Several families on Earth and the Moon were implicated, not to mention an ICPA. We had the entire country of Egypt on lockdown, yet still we got nothing besides a few deadends."

Brandons question caused everyone to grimace. This really was a conundrum. Many years ago, the five families had noticed a certain force manipulating people and events to harm their interests. For a while, the force tried to sow discord between the families - something that could have worked if they weren't all actually secretly working together.

Losses, scandals, assassinations and more threatened to bring the families to war. Yet, for reasons unknown to the rest, they never worked against one another. At a certain point it became evident that such a strategy would not work, which suppressed that mysterious forces movements - but did not completely finish them. Slowly and steadily the force kept working in the shadows, slowly chipping away at the families' influence and strength. Yet that was also meaningless since the foundation of their strength were the Nascent cultivators and there were few that could threaten them.

At one point, those forces instigated Beasts to act out so that the Nascants would be forced to act. That was actually the incident in which Marlo had also been caught, the time he was in Australia. Yet that yielded no results either. The five families did not actually feel threatened by the force, they were just concerned that they may become desperate and do something that would harm the masses.

Yet despite their best efforts for years, they were not able to learn the details regarding whoever was behind it all. They did not even know the name of the organization or entity, choosing to call them 'rebels' for simplicity.

"It was handled too cleanly, as if they were already expecting to be traced. The entire Sigmund family has been implicated, but we have not been able to find any actual proof of their involvement in the matter. It seems as if they themselves were duped. It's the same with every other lead we have."

"Then I think it's about time we ask the hard questions. Why do they always know what steps we are going to take? Why are they familiar with our forces and how we are going to act?" Brandon's last question caused the rest to grimace even more.

"Are you saying some of our families are involved?"

"No," Brandon said, shaking his head. "I'm saying at least one person from EACH family is involved. And not just any random person, someone with influence and knowledge of how the family operates."

Silence filled the room, but no one chose to refute him. At this point, even if no one said it out loud, they had all been thinking about the possibility.

"I think the Midnight Games will be an opportunity. It's impossible for them not to know that we would be going, even if they weren't involved with the families. They must be planning to make a few big moves during the games. If we're still not able to trace them, then we need to start planning on how to investigate the families themselves. Meeting at the Inn will be the most convenient, as we can teleport here directly with no one aware of when we'll be meeting."

Everyone eventually came to a consensus, though what they were actually thinking could only be speculated. How easy was it to suspect one's own family?

With their dirty laundry handled, it was now time to meet with the Jotun soldiers. The Queen had one of her followers let the empire's soldiers know they were ready to meet. At the same time, Marlo was also brought into the meeting.

Marlo, in fact, was not too popular. Other than the Morrison family, the other families all had a bad impression of him, or at least wanted to keep some distance. But he had interacted with both the zombies and a soldier of the empire before, so his input could serve to be useful.

After a short wait, Ragnar entered the room followed by Slag and Anthony. Marlo flashed Slag a grin, but did nothing else. Despite his boisterous behavior he was a shrewd man, and knew when to behave.

"Greetings, I am General Ragnar Asulf of the Jotun Empire. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me."

"Not at all General. I think we both have much to gain from this meeting" spoke Sam somewhat directly. "My name is Sam, and this is Elizabeth," he said, pointing towards the Queen. "This is Fateh," he said, pointing towards the fat man. "This is Richard, and this is Brandon. We have been looking forward to meeting with you."

"Indeed, it can be quite productive for us both. I've heard a little about Earth from my subordinate," he said, pointing towards Slag. "And I'm sure you've heard a little about the Empire as well. We can spend more time getting to know one another, but I think the first and foremost thing on everyone's mind is how we can benefit one another."

Compared to the Beasts, he was more direct with the humans. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, he was sure that of the three planets, Earth was the weakest in terms of military strength. And secondly, in the entire universe, the Jotun Empire was the biggest backer for humans. So whether the Earthlings realized it or not, they were already in the same camp. And if they were in the same camp, they were already Ragnar's subordinates. He just had to make them aware of that fact, with some tact of course.