The Innkeeper

The four Gilati's paid no attention to any other guests, and only focused on Jill. Jill, on the other hand, was too afraid to think. Her mind had frozen out of fear, otherwise it would have occurred to her that she could teleport out of the Inn as well.

But as if the aura of four immortals suppressing her while she was only in the Golden core herself, one of them choking her further shut down her thoughts.

"You should have just obediently returned last time. Now we're going to make you pay for each extra day you've kept us waiting."

Tears started to run down Jill's face and she wanted to cry out that she did not know them, and had not run away from them, but her body was not responding to her wishes.

By now the Inn staff had also begun to recover from their shock and their minds raced as they began to think of what to do. Even Mary was looking for Qawain in a panic, while at the same time she was pleading in Lex's ear asking him to wake up. But Lex was still dormant, his body and mind completely unresponsive to any external stimulation.

There was only one person on the scene who was not reacting out of fear and shock - John. The situation had deteriorated too quickly for him to do anything, and honestly he wasn't the type to stand out against tyrants to help out a stranger. But when Harry was blown away... something unusual happened.

John's extremely experienced mind immediately judged that Harry was dead, for a mere Foundation realm human could not survive a direct blow from an immortal no matter the circumstances. His entire skeleton would have been crushed to bits and his brain turned into a Jackson Pollen painting by getting smashed against the mountain side.

There was a pretty good chance that his body's situation was even worse than what John had described, for he only accounted for the physical force behind an immortals' attack. If the immortal had used any other kind of force or technique, then perhaps there wasn't even a body to smash into the mountain.

Then he considered the value of each of Harry's haircuts. Considering that during his haircut, he would nourish and relax, and sometimes even reinvigorate the soul, his haircuts were not cheap. Then he considered how long they had known each other.

It was hard to determine, since John had not been keeping count of the exact number of weeks, but let's say they had known each other for 45 weeks. That 45 haircuts, each one worth a lot.

After some mental arithmetic, his valuation for the haircuts, when rounded off, came out to be exactly worth 4 immortal bodies.

"Payment accepted, initiate task!" said John, though for some reason no one heard his voice. Yet in his eyes, the time seemed to slow down, and the four immortals surrounding Jill were targeted in red.

Since his system was an assassination system it, of course, helped him immensely in carrying out assassinations. Creating the most efficient strategy for him was but one of its many abilities. Raising his cultivation whenever he assassinated someone with a higher cultivation level than him was another.

One of his favorite ways in which the system helped, though, was when it taught him incredible attacks. The cultivation world, at least for immortals, was quite different from lower levels. Things such as techniques and weapons, while helpful, took a supplementary role while the main source of an immortal's strength were an immortal's own tenets.

The attacks an immortal could use were also based on those tenets. John, though, as a system wielder, had a bit of a hack which was that the system could automatically teach him incredibly powerful attacks that had nothing to do with his own tenets. This was incredibly helpful, for having rare or powerful tenets was not actually a good thing for cultivation, and instead was often a disability. But for John, he could have all the benefits without any of the drawbacks for those rare tenets.

One such tenet that he had access to, only through the system, was the tenet of agony.

"Harrowing pierce," he whispered, as his body dissolved in the wind. No one seemed to notice his words, or even that he disappeared, the immortals included!

The next second though, something erupted out of the neck of the Gilati that held up Jill. It looked like a bone, still covered in blood and sinew, erupting from its body and extending impossibly high into the air. The strangest thing was, however, that the Gilati did not seem to notice. It did not scream or flinch. In fact, it had not even loosened its grip on Jill. Everyone around him too, continued to ignore it.

As if that wasn't harrowing enough, its blood kept oozing out of its neck, spilling endlessly on the ground. But that was far from the end of things. Another Gilati had a similar looking bone strike out of its body, but this time not from its neck but directly from its back. The third one soon had a similar bone sticking out of its eye.

But while three of them each had a single bone sticking out of their bodies, causing them to bleed endlessly onto the ground, the final one... the one that had struck Harry... it was like a pincushion. It could neither move nor think, for 800 bones were sticking out of its miserable body, causing him to be unable to move at all.

The scene was scarier than any horror movie for even in such a condition, none seemed to notice what was happening. After all, John was not done with them yet.

Immortal? Earth Immortal? A higher realm than even that? Since when did such things matter to an assassin? The life of an assassin was always filled with incredibly strong, incredibly skilled and incredibly hard to kill beings. After all, if it were easy to kill them, no one would hire an assassin in the first place. So an assassin, well at least a true assassin, never looked at such things. An assassin only looked at the opponents weakness, and these Gilati had way too many.

John, who had spent countless years imprisoned, suffering from a bleak future and a cage that suffocated not just his body, but also his heart, and who had also just witnessed someone he could barely call... a friend die... well he was in no mood to let them go so easily.

"Madeline's chambers," he whispered again, and this time pink soft ribbons rose from the ground and wrapped themselves around the four slugs, before they all disappeared. This time, everyone noticed, though they still were not sure what they saw.

One moment the four beings were dominating everything, the next moment they disappeared leaving a relatively unharmed Jill behind.

"I'll interrogate them for their purpose," said John out loud, suddenly attracting everyone's attention. But before anyone could ask any questions, he disappeared also.

There was a momentary stunned silence, before Hailey cried out, "Harry!" Trembling, she fell to her knees, unsure and unaware of what to do. What was going on? She couldn't understand.

One moment, it was the happiest day of her life. The next, everything had been ruined. The culprits had also somehow disappeared, though there was a vague premonition in her mind that they would very much regret their actions, but she did not care about that. She only wanted Harry back! Where had he disappeared to?

Due to her limited level, she did not understand that he had been attacked, only that he had disappeared.

Mary, who quickly regained her focus after seeing John act, immediately summoned Gerard and told him to teleport Harry to the Recovery room.

Gerard, who had just teleported to the scene of the crime, quickly teleported away again. Before anyone could see what happened to him, the old man put his hand on what looked like a meat bag and teleported away.

In a very rare occurrence, the Recovery room began operating the Recovery pod and the Organic Reconstruction Room at the same time, immediately beginning to reconstruct Harry's body.

The fact that this was being done, despite all odds, meant that Harry was somehow still alive - though no one could yet understand how or why.

The situation seemed to deteriorate and resolve itself in the matter of seconds. In fact, everything that happened had not even taken 20 seconds. Yet the fact that an Inn staff member was successfully attacked... and that no one had been able to prevent it... well, the news was like a domino.

The news spread like wildfire, and suddenly the fire of greed was lit in a lot of eyes. The method for the Midnight Inn's instantaneous teleportation from any planet ever... it was too valuable, and many began to have a few ideas.

It did not take long, in fact. Only a few hours later, in the main arena inside the village, the champion, loudly and proudly challenged the Innkeeper to a fight. That is... if the Innkeeper was not afraid.

At the same time, for the first time ever, elsewhere in the Inn, someone was trying to kidnap one of the Inn employees.