The Innkeeper

Lex did not dismiss his projection after he was done with Joseph and Mario. Instead, he went to Aegis, who had been sitting at the tavern, once again conversing with Roland.

Lex was slightly curious about what the duo talked about, but not enough to eavesdrop. He only signaled Aegis to meet him in the private room so they could talk.

The crown prince responded immediately, leaving Roland with only a plate of fries to keep him company for the moment.

When he entered the room, Lex did not waste any time and presented him with two keys, one platinum and one gold.

Originally, Lex considered not giving Aegis with a key of his own unless he got Zagan to use the platinum one, but he decided not to be so restrictive. Not only would this give Aegis a better impression, but it would also account for the fact that the crystal realm was now linked to the system, and golden doors could spontaneously appear anywhere.

Using them, Aegis could accidentally arrive at the Inn at any time, so he would rather provide him with a golden key first. If he wanted the platinum key, however, he would need to complete the task.

Of course, the chances that Aegis would encounter a golden door were too small, but Lex no longer trusted luck.

There was also a considerable drawback to providing him with the golden key, which is that considering his wealthy status, there wasn't much he could go from working at the Inn that he couldn't just buy himself. This made him consider the fact that he needed to improve his worker benefits. This was yet another thing he would add to his ever-growing list of things to do.

"This is a golden key, and can take you to the Midnight Inn. You can begin your search for greater opportunities from there as a guest whenever you want. But, if you want to join the Midnight Inn, you have to prove yourself by having Zagan use the platinum key."

Carefully, Aegis took the keys from Lex's hand, his expression extremely ominous. He did not think he'd get access to the Inn so easily.

But, at the same time, he did not even consider reneging on their deal and avoiding Zagan. Whether he joined the Inn or not, it would be best not to start their relationship with a bad experience.

"Feel free to use the golden key once before you try to find Zagan. It'll be good to know what you're fighting for."

Aegis caught his breath, as he was severely tempted to do just that even before Lex said so. Now that he had permission…

Before he could decide on what to do, Lex dismissed his projection, disappearing from in front of Aegis, scaring the hell out of him! It was not easy to get the drop on an immortal, but Lex kept doing it!

As for Lex himself, he was in a meeting with the planning division. They had proposed many changes and alterations to the existing setup of the Inn, including Main street which was originally where all the main attractions of the Inn used to be.

Now, with the addition of the party village, a majority of the crowd was attracted there while the Main street and the rest of the Inn became welcome places for the guests who were just visiting.

In fact, since the development of the party village, something remarkable happened that Lex had looked over for a very long time. When Earth won the cultural portion of the Midnight Games, they won the award to have their top performers summoned to the Inn to perform for free. In fact, they would actually get paid for their performances.

But as the Inn lacked proper venues to host such events, that aspect of their award was never triggered. Now, finally, various performers from all over Earth found themselves performing live in front of the universe.

If nothing else, it had kick-started Earth's economy, as well as cultivation. There were over 100 Nascent realm cultivators on the planet now, but almost all of them lived virtually permanently at the Inn due to the better environment.

Setting all that aside, Lex had been overlooking plans for renovations to Main street when he saw a proposal for the addition to a very gothic looking cathedral. He had long since understood that the workers in the planning division all had unique personalities, and their personalities were often reflected in their work.

He had no issue with the gothic nature of the cathedral at all, but simply wanted to avoid building religious buildings for he did not want to involve himself in matters of religion. Earth alone was chalk full of religions and religious zealots, let alone the rest of the universe. So this was one controversial entity with which he wanted a clear distance.

Yet the moment he selected the cathedral to remove it from the proposals, he triggered a hidden quest!

Hidden quest: Different guests require different environments to survive. Establish 5 unique environmental biomes to cater to different kinds of guests from all over the universe, including divine guests!

Quest progress: ⅗ complete!

- Stable Terrestrial biome (low chaos)

- Aquatic biome

- Stable Fossorial biome (underground)

He had to pause, not only because of the unique way in which the biomes had been decided, but because of the fact that he could almost immediately complete this quest. This was because as soon as he built the cathedral, supposedly, he would gain another biome. It would be a biome that would allow divine beings to exist.

Basically, of his existing biomes, on land, in the water, and underground, all counted as unique biomes, but for whatever reason the open air did not count. Or maybe it was a part of the on land biome. So then, what else would he have to do to get another biome? After all, on top of Midnight mountain he had a snowy terrain, yet the change in weather was not counter as another biome.

He theorized that the environment was not drastically different enough to count. He would need to run a few experiments to find out.

Also, did he have guests who'd been living underground all this time? He had to look into that, for he would have to figure out how to serve them.