The Innkeeper

The battle arena was much smaller than the coliseum that used to host massive crowds, even the few hundred guests and workers now had their vision blocked. The few existing seats were filled to beyond their capacity, with many people sitting on each other's laps.

Lex, who was watching the scene with his arms folded, standing midair, let loose a sigh as he had no choice but to make the arena and its stands bigger.

He really wanted to avoid spending his MP on nonessential things, but in the end quality of life improvements did count as essential for an Inn. With a wave of his hand, and 30,000 MP from his balance, the arena spontaneously turned into an open-air stadium.

The crowd that was standing suddenly found themselves sitting. The nearby food stall was naturally incorporated into the stadium, and some of the workers found themselves holding a tray with a strap round their neck, full of hot dogs, fries, and a few foreign dishes from the other planets the Inn was attached to.

Ragnar, who had been floating in the air right beside the Innkeeper, was impressed as usual. The Innkeeper had a certain flair in doing seemingly impossible tasks with casual effort.

Xeon, who also suddenly found himself sitting down, was fairly impressed, but more inspired! This Inn was just lovely! He was too used to being able to predict things, which affected his creativity, but now he was bursting with ideas. He really wanted to go ask the Innkeeper if he created this out of thin air, or summoned a pre-existing building from somewhere else. The answer would guide him in his next invention.

On stage, Z stood casually with his arms still folded, looking indifferently towards Heidi. From time to time, his armor would crack and his cool expression would momentarily shift to an awkward smile, but he always regained his cool quick enough for anyone to notice. He hoped.

On the other end stood Heidi and Sean, along with four of his friends. To be honest, his friends did not want to get involved in this, they were just having some fun earlier by teasing the waitress. But they didn't even have time to process what happened when Z challenged them, and Heidi accepted on their behalf.

Even after she accepted, they tried to get out of it, but the crowds were too big, and they were under too much pressure. Anyway they saw it, it looked like they were bullying a little kid. They were hoping to get Z to take back his challenge by pressuring him until someone told them that it wasn't an unfair fight. After all, Z was an employee for the Innkeeper. How could he be judged by normal standards?

Maybe if they were able to fight him, or even beat him, they might be able to earn the opportunity to impress the Innkeeper and get hired by him. The logic of being rewarded by the Innkeeper for beating his own employee was extremely flawed, but from the point of view of these kids whose lives only revolved around their own needs, it made perfect sense.

Everyone was split on who they thought would win, some anticipating the Inns employee to wipe the floor with these kids, while others thinking he would be overpowered due to their numbers. Lex was among the people who were undecided. Z, albeit his introverted personality, was not stupid so he should know what he can handle. At the same time, Lex had never seen any of his workers fight so he really didn't know what to expect. He hadn't even given them any techniques, only providing them with cultivation methods, so what could he really achieve?

Just as the tension was slowly building up, and Heidi was furiously whispering to Sean, telling him how to attack, the Innkeeper finally spoke.

"I would like to give a reminder to stop the fight in a timely manner in case the opponent is unable to continue. I also do not want anyone attacking to kill."

His voice was placid, as if he already knew the result, but was only speaking for the formality of it.

As Lex did not like giving long speeches or dramatic build ups, he directly said, "begin."

The group of teenagers from Troy academy as well as Z were taken by surprise by the sudden start, but Z recovered first.

True to his words, Z folded his left arm behind himself and extended his right arm forward and flicked his fingers, as if indicating them to come attack him.

As if that wasn't provocation enough for the extremely prideful teenagers, music started playing catching the audience by surprise. Then someone noticed that there was a bluetooth speaker hanging from one of Z's belt loops which was the source of the music.

"What do you think you're doing?" Heidi asked, her body trembling from fury. Let alone being insulted as such, she felt like the level of disregard being shown to her was monumental. This kid was totally taking this fight as a joke!

"It's my theme music," Z answered very seriously. "I'm still working on it, but all the heroes have background music when they fight right? This is just an electronic copy of the music from Attack on Tetanus, but it's all I had right now."

Unable to process what Z was saying she let out a frustrated scream, before yelling at her partners.

"What are you waiting for? Can't you see he's humiliating you? Hurry up and end this!"

Sean was a typical bully and liked to take advantage of people when no one was watching. Being under the scrutiny of hundreds of people made him hesitant, but his ego and pride prevented him from backing down.

"Let's go," he said to his friends, as he slowly started walking towards Z, trying to look cool. 5 second later, when he was still walking and had not even covered a third of the distance, he suddenly became hyper-aware of the hundreds of eyes on him, and how long it would take to reach Z at this rate. Suddenly getting flustered, he let out an angry yell, and bolted towards him.

Despite what Heidi thought, Z was taking this fight very seriously from the beginning. Seeing his opponents rush at him, Z's eyes suddenly shone with a silver light as he activated Regalia Bloom, the bloodline all the Inn's workers seemed to share.

From his pocket emerged a trading card of an anime Z liked to watch, covered in a silver light as well. A lot of the guests watching assumed it was some kind of weapon, the higher realm cultivators recognized it as some kind of card, and only some very few cultural connoisseurs from Earth recognized what it really was - after all, the figure of a small flaming lizard on it was unmistakable.

Z waited till his foes were closer and, timing it perfectly with the beat drop, launched his attack! The silver card flew too fast for the kids to follow and so Sean was caught completely unprepared when he felt the flat of the card smack him on the face so hard that he lost balance and tripped!

While the attack itself had not been too hard, Z did not accidentally want to kill him so he controlled his strength, the sound of the smack was like a clap of thunder that rang across the stadium.

The crowd erupted in cheer and Lex secretly breathed a sigh of relief, but the four boys behind Sean panicked! The sound was loud enough to scare them, and the way Sean had fallen over made them assume it was a devastating blow.

Feeling a mix of anxiousness, fear, anger, hesitation and confusion, they did the only thing they could think of, and attacked Z blindly!

The man of the hour, Z, did not bother to move from his stance as his eyes followed the four boys who were trying to attack him from all sides.

With a blinding silver glow, the card streaked through the air, smacking faces before anyone could get close.

Since the attacks weren't strong enough to actually knock them unconscious, Sean and the boys picked themselves back up, thinking themselves hardened warriors who could resist a lethal blow.

Battle cries drowned Z's music, and various techniques flashed through the air, but the symphony of slapping faces never paused, and Z had played his music on repeat so it didn't matter if he missed any of the good parts.

It was bitter fight and a testament to Z's endless will that he never flattered under the relentless onslaught. After all, standing still in the sunlight for so long had caused him to start sweating, and he had forgotten to wear deodorant! It was only a slight absolution from his plight that every time he hurled an opponent with a face slap worth of a shounen MC, their bodies would blow a gentle wind that somewhat cooled him.

In the stands, the Troy academy principal didn't know whether to be relieved whether his students did not harm the Innkeepers worker, or embarrassed at their predicament. Any positive image Alexander had created for the academy during the Midnight Games had been wasted by these fools.

In the end, all he could do was console himself by saying that it was an honor to lose to someone from the Midnight Inn. Yes, that was it. For all he knew, Z might even be the Innkeepers personal disciple. Yes, it was completely honorable to lose to such a fighter.

On stage, Z finally used up 4% of his bloodline power. These were formidable enemies indeed.