The Innkeeper

It was not just Lex who was awestruck by the massive beast, nay, dragon that had appeared in a vast, open area of the Inn. Longtime guests, and especially all the workers, had become accustomed to the unannounced expansions the Inn occasionally went through. They would all come outside and admire the buildings appearing out of thin air, and the Inn spontaneously becoming bigger. It was a good reminder of the power wielded by the mysterious Innkeeper.

But the number of guests who were seeing this for the first time outnumbered those who knew what was happening. Even after they were assured this was a normal occurrence, they were curious. They had heard about the Innkeeper, but it had been months since he was gone, and since the number of guests coming had only increased recently, most had never met him, or even actually know about him. After all, how frequently would one bump into the owner of any establishment?

So when these first timers were basking in the changes, and a massive, deadly looking dragon appeared surrounded by what looked like an army, many of them instantly froze. An air of tension and uncertainty filled the air. They were unsure if they should be screaming or running, or if this was just another occurrence at the Inn.

But the tension lasted only a moment, for Mary announced the identity of the new arrivals, and everyone disbursed. While they were only temporary guards, they were guards nonetheless and so all came under Gerards command. For all other than the Immortals and the dragon, he started passing out instructions and began explaining their plans for security during the event. While it may seem that a few thousand guards were too few to manage millions of people, when considering the average person in the universe, a golden core cultivator was already much stronger than them.

But, even if they weren't enough, Immortals were absolutely rare. Under normal circumstances, a leisure-based event such as this would not usually attract the attention of anyone at that level. The only reason, in fact, that the Midnight Games managed to attract so many high-level cultivators was because it directly interfered with the interests of various powerful entities. Even then, it was the silent deterrence of the Celestial, Lex's bodyguard at the time, that managed to dissuade the devils from causing problems. Otherwise, there was no telling what kind of mess they would have caused.

Lex finally finished admiring the dragon, and then turned his attention to his current remaining MP of 1,050,000. He had to stop spending now to handle any emergencies that rose up, but the income from the event should start pouring in soon.

Just to be sure, however, he instructed Mary to, in passing, show the dragon the Dragonburn Locket. It was an item he had gotten from the Emporium back on X-142 and had priced it at 10,000,000 MP. It could help dragons gain a deeper understanding of the intricacies of breathing fire.

Lex did not have a complete understanding of Dragons and how valuable their fire breathing powers were, so he originally felt like a price of 10 million was very hefty. Now though, when he considered how vast the universe really was, and the fact that he could earn millions from a single planet, if, by chance, dragons were really as esteemed as myths on Earth, that price may be too low.

After deliberating a bit, he altered the price to 50 million. If it was too high a price, he would change it eventually, and if it was too low a price, he would treat it as a learning experience. Either way, he was done for now.

Over the next five days, Lex kept a close eye on the Inn while he went about his daily routine. The number of guests coming in had jumped drastically, and about 400,000 guests had already come into the Inn.

All the permanent rooms were eventually booked out, and the temporary rooms that Lex had paid for that didn't really occupy any space started to take in the rest of the guests.

Even if each guest only took a normal room, which most did not, with the price being 50 MP a night, and there being 400,000 guests, Lex would have been earning 20 million MP a night. The actual figure currently was around 31 million MP last night, just from rooms! And this figure was rising each day, for more and more guests started to arrive. The total MP he accumulated in these five days, with rental and food and services all included was 145,000,000 MP! Well, actually it was a bit more than that, but for the sanity of the OCD prone, he quickly spent the extra MP rounding it off to a nice number.

The official event hadn't even started yet and Lex was practically drowning in MP! The absolute ecstasy of his wealth was only matched by the overwhelming effort it took to manage such a crowd!

He had to take more days off from training as well as classes, causing Cwenhild to become slightly concerned, but Lex assured her that everything was under control.

In fact, everything was not under control! From Main street to the manor, to the lake and the lazy river, to Midnight Mountain, there was a massive crowd of people.

In the end, Lex had to do something drastic since he didn't want to destroy the careful atmosphere he had been nurturing in the Inn! Spending a no longer significant 30,000,000 MP, he added 3000 acres of land to the Inn.

Up until now, whenever he expanded the Inn, he ensured to maintain a round shape for the Inn. The latest expansion, however, was not balanced, and instead stretched the Inn behind Midnight Mountain, letting the lone mountain stand as a sort of border between the two sides of the Inn.

In the new area, he decided to create a party village. That was a bad name, he hadn't decided what to officially call it yet, but the concept was that this was the part of the Inn where all future large events would take place from now on. This way, the main area could remain relatively uncrowded for those guests who just wanted to visit the Inn. For those that wanted a more happening scene, the village was the destination.

Since he currently had an abundance of MP, he decided to make permanent additions instead of temporary ones to design the village. Furthermore, he really let his creativity flow this time around.

Starting out with a few big attractions, in the center of the village was a very traditional-looking colosseum that could easily seat 1 million guests - nothing too extravagant. Then, just for good measure, he added a massive, floating orb of water above the colosseum, inspired by something he saw in a game called Final Fanta X. What was the purpose of a giant ball of water, how could it be used, what would people think? These were all questions he decided to let his guests answer themselves. Of course, the orb was high enough that it would not obstruct any activities happening in the colosseum grounds themselves.

Next, he created a 1000 story pagoda in another corner of the village. Its purpose? To be determined. Next, for good measure, he built 50, 100 story highrises filled with rentable rooms, all interconnected with bridges built on different levels in a corner of the village. Of course, he was no architect, so making the bridges look nice was somewhat of a challenge, so he decided to turn all the bridges into parks as well, with grass and bushes and trees, connecting each of the buildings.

In another corner of the village, he added a small, crystal clear lake. It wasn't too big, only 20 acres large and built a few hundred houses, added pathways, replaced what could have been parks with coral reefs, and of course, did not forget to designate a portion as an underwater combat arena.

Over another portion of the village that he populated with various kinds of large auditoriums, music halls, palaces, and the likes, was the aerial part of the village. 100 buildings ranging from small to medium, floating at a certain point in the air, all connected thin walkways.

Clouds floated through the city, and many birds visited this unique paradise that one could reach either by flying, or taking one of the many elevator platforms. Hot air balloons surrounded the floating village, adding bright colors to the otherwise mostly silver site.

Of course, Lex also had to take care of transport between the village and the main portion of the Inn.

Several trails existed for those who wanted to walk, going around, and some even over the mountain. For those that did not want to walk, he provided many options that could be taken from a few terminals he placed around the Inn. There was naturally the option for horse, rhino, and golf cart riding. A lazy river was also an option, this time with the option of gondolas as well as the floating plastic doughnuts.

But it was when Lex was designing a train route when he was struck by another brilliant idea - if he did say so himself.