The Innkeeper

When Lex finally opened his eyes, he was so shocked he barely understood what was happening. He had only just entered the Qi Training realm, and yet a couple of days later he had a spontaneous, repeated breakthrough and entered Qi training level 3! A part of him wanted to believe that Lex was just an unprecedented genius of epic proportions when it came to cultivation, but knew that that was probably not the truth.

"Mary, what just happened?" Lex asked as he quickly started to munch on his burritos. He did not expect that raising your cultivation was hungry work, but he was starving!

"Your Inn's Star ranking was upgraded. The Midnight Inn is now equivalent to a 2 Star ranked planet and is now the ideal destination for higher leveled cultivators. Every time there is an upgrade in the Star ranking, the Inn undergoes a qualitative change. The initial burst of spirit energy during that qualitative change is extremely useful to all cultivators, but is not something that can be easily sought out.

"It is almost impossible to find spiritual energy of that concentration and purity, which is simultaneously very docile in nature. This is why, whenever a cultivator encounters such a wave, their body will naturally absorb it and strengthen their cultivation based on how much they are able to absorb. In fact, if you recall, Bastet and Falak also left shortly after one of your upgrades. I've always strongly suspected that the surge in spiritual energy is what prompted them to leave, for whatever reason. If you look out to the rest of the Inn, you'll notice that there aren't just a few of your guests undergoing a breakthrough."

Lex scanned the Inn, and he was flabbergasted. Almost all of his guests were sitting on the ground, cross-legged, and were cultivating wherever they happened to be. As amazing as it was, it was also incredibly dangerous! Just the Qi training stage was so dangerous it could cause ruptures in the meridians if not done properly, so one can only imagine how much more difficult it was in a higher realm. Yet all of them seemed to be completely fine. In fact, some were more than fine.

Lex immediately noticed not only Rorick but also Audrey Morrison breaking through to the Nascent realm, along with various other Earthlings making great progress in the Golden Core realms.

Lex let out a sigh. As great as it was that these cultivators were growing, Earth was currently too unstable. Their breakthroughs, albeit great for them individually, might destabilize the situation once again.

But while the growth of the Earthlings might be problematic down the road, his various AIs that were undergoing a breakthrough were nothing but great assets! In fact, Lex was astonished that any of them had reached the Qi training stage at all, but a quick glance let him know that at least a dozen of them had done so. Gerard, Velma, the gardener and nurse Jubilation were only a few amongst the many who had surprised him like this. And here Lex was feeling great about his own quick breakthrough, but had already been surpassed by his workers. He needed to start paying more attention to them.

Lex quickly moved on from that thought, as he had many things to do. He also noticed, during his scan, that the area of the Inn had expanded greatly! Furthermore, unlike when he purposefully expanded the edges, this natural growth happened differently. The land literally doubled, which meant the distance between any two points was twice what it used to be. For example, the distance from Midnight Manor to Main street had doubled.

This was not necessarily a bad thing, as he felt that these two areas had extremely different vibes, and needed some distance from each other. Yet now, more desperately than before, Lex needed to figure out a way to fill in all that empty space. Landscaping was an option, but even that could only do so much. What Lex needed was a YouTube tutorial on city planning and rural development. And a vineyard.

Lex looked at his notification and read through it properly this time. While his reward had been increased for several feats he had accomplished, ultimately raising the reward ranking from SSS+ to Destiny rank, whatever that meant, Lex noticed that his quest rank had also suffered some demerits. One was because he allowed guests to die during his event, and another because he purposefully targeted zombies, and subsequently devils, which the system did not approve of.

Still, his rewards were plentiful. His authority had been raised once again, which came with the usual upgrades he could perform on his various buildings and a few new ones. The size of the Inn was also increased. The Inns Star ranking had been raised as well, which would definitely serve to attract more guests in the future. He received 1 million MP, which was always nice - who didn't like free money? But after this was when the new and interesting rewards began.

He looked at his inventory and saw the SSS Rank Protector recruitment token. He summoned the token that was in the usual gold color associated with the Inn, but was in the shape of a shield. The token that filled his hand also filled him with a sense of security, and put his mind at ease.

"Is this why you didn't want me to get security yet? Because you knew I would be getting something like this." Lex asked Mary, who was sitting on his shoulder.

"Yes, but not exactly. Though it may seem random to you, there is a method to the quest given out by the system, as well as the rewards. Ultimately, the goal is to help you grow the Inn. The quests you receive will progressively get harder as you complete them, but still, you managed to perform well over the expected level on this quest.

"Normally, you would have only received something to help you beef up security, but would require your supervision or control. Ultimately, the security would still depend on how you handle the situation. But this token is much higher ranked and falls into a completely different category of rewards.

"Similar to the unique opportunity token you used to get the Regal Embrace, when you use this token, the system will scan the entire universe for a suitable protector for the Inn who will be completely loyal to the Inn. But you still have to be careful when you make your choice. Suitable can mean many things, and you may not end up with what you want if you aren't careful."

Lex nodded. It was basically pretty much what Lex himself expected. Even when he was receiving the Regal Embrace, some of the rewards seemed questionable to him.

Then he turned his attention to the next reward. Apparently, he had received a Destiny Protection upgrade for the Inn, but got no description of what that meant. He could speculate on his own, but his understanding of the universe was too shallow, so he asked Mary once again.

"What does this Destiny Protection upgrade do?"

Lex expected to receive either a straightforward answer, or to be told he did not have the authority to know. Mary's answer, however, completely took him by surprise.