The Innkeeper

Lex, with his weary mind, was stunned by what had just happened. His eyes followed the visage of Vera walking away as he tried to understand what the point of that was. It was only a couple of minutes later that he came up with an answer.

Vera was an oracle herself. That not only provided her with great insight into the profession, it also guided her actions. She had once appeared quite timely to help him assess John's abilities before hiring him. As such, there was no reason to believe that her current actions, while bizarre, weren't guided by prophecy as well.

Lex groaned. His headache was really affecting him, and his exhausted state made it hard to even think. It had been much too long since he was in such a poor condition.

He reached for a plate of french fries and snacked on them as he continued to challenge his brain.

Vera did nothing without reason, so now he had to discover the reason behind this. She came to him unprompted and provided him with a lot of information about prophecy. Then, just as abruptly as she arrived, she left.

For a few seconds, he recalled everything she told him. Prophecy was actually probability… the greater the scale, the more likely the prophecy would be accurate… prophecies exacted a price which could be fatal… those talented in such arts could get away with only a headache…

Suddenly, he paused. Even in his current state, he was not so obtuse as to not connect certain dots. He had been sleeping for three weeks, during which time he had some crazy dreams. When he woke up, he was incredibly mentally drained and feeling very weak.

Had he somehow seen the future? Or the past? Did he… predict something? And if he did, what the hell was it?

He had to pause, as the emotional excitement and increased mental strain were putting a massive burden on him. With his fries finished, he bit into his hot dog and let his thoughts simply wander for a while.

When he felt a little better, the first thing he did was decide to reward Vera. He didn't know her motives, but she had clearly helped him out. MP should serve as a decent reward? How much should he pay her?

Unwilling to think too much, he ended up paying her 500,000 MP. Whether that was too much or too little; he did not have the brain capacity to think on it at the moment.

He picked up the plate of mantu and gobbled them down as he continued to try to recall his dreams and understand what they meant.

He recalled… he recalled never utilizing one of the Inn's rewards. Without hesitation, he pulled up the system and discovered that, indeed, he had a patisserie that had long been waiting for him to place.

Lex scratched his head and continued to think. But while he could still somewhat recall his memories, in the end, he gave up. His condition was much too poor. Although his bones had been healed, his brain had been majorly messed up.

He teleported to the Hot tub room and spent some time recuperating there before putting on his bathroom set and finding a place to relax a bit. Eventually, he dozed off in the lawn chair he was sitting in.

With a full belly, and his hibernation kicking in, Lex slept for another two days before waking up.

Unfortunately, even when he woke up this time, his headache and weakness remained. But he was still much better than before. At least he could think a little clearly without straining himself.

Once again, he tried to recall his dreams. Some of the dreams could not be his future. Instead, they were like possible alternate lives he could have lived. Those dreams were the first few. He particularly liked one in which he became extremely rich, moved to Dubai and lived like a Sheikh.

But slowly the dreams changed from potential lives he could have lived if things had played out differently in the past, to potential futures he could still have. For example, the rampage that he went on hunting system users. He could not recall exactly what happened in that dream, but he recalled enough to know that the dream ended very abruptly and poorly. It was entirely possible that while hunting system users he attracted too much attention which led to his demise.

The dream in which he identified as a banana was extremely vivid. He teleported to a world that was extremely unusual. Instead of animals, the planet was populated by living, sentient fruits. The mangoes ruled the planets, and as a banana, Lex was only a mere commoner.

Suddenly, he sat up straight. There was a dream he had in which the Inn was destroyed. Fire rained from the sky destroying everything, and Lex was powerless to stop it.

That dream was perhaps just as scary as the one where he was being hunted by the yellow eyed creature.

He started a list, and wrote down each dream with as much detail as he could clearly recall. 47 dreams filled his pages, but in the end, the remaining dreams were too unusual and fragmented for him to make out anything.

Once he was done, he tried to see if any of the dreams were possibly connected, or just happened at different times. Unfortunately, he could not figure it out. This would require some research on his part, as well as possible consultations with experts. He might even once again take Vera's aid. Especially if he wanted to accurately understand the meaning of those dreams.

But while he did not clearly make sense of all the dreams, he could gauge why he was so tired. While he was asleep, his brain was being used like a computer, calculating endless and random futures and pasts. As if that was not exhausting enough, the price he paid for the dreams left him incredibly vulnerable. Not that he could blame anyone. Who would be crazy enough to perform over 50 predictions of the future in such a short amount of time.

Compared to the potentially fatal consequences of looking into the future, being severely drained was not so bad. The issue now was, how to control this ability so he doesn't randomly look into the future again? Or, possibly, how to look into the future if he so wished.

"Where did this even come from?" Lex muttered as he ignored his throbbing head. There was no indication of him being able to look into the future before, nor had he encountered any upgrade which allowed as such.

The only possibility Lex could think of was the mention of how access to certain laws is what allowed people to calculate the probability of the future.

Lex took one last look at his list, before having a cup of Midnight Signature coffee brew. Feeling somewhat invigorated, Lex teleported to his office. Although he had numerous things to take care of, such as an ever-increasing number of refugees which had nearly completely overburdened the Inns capability to supply food, emperor Jotun had been waiting for him for weeks. He should really find out what that's about.

*****

The ship that had been hovering right above the earth had now moved farther away. The distance had to be kept not because of earth technologies, which were now back in working condition, but because of the intervention of deities.

Unlike what Mary had heard, deities were not omnipotent and couldn't traverse the origin realm as they pleased. But planets that had their religion were always within their domain. While Amana had an actual presence on earth, Adamas' access to the planet was a surprise even to the deity himself. In the vastness of space, diamonds were not so rare and so most large civilizations didn't treat them so significantly. Only on earth were they considered a woman's best friend. As such, the 'zealous' warriors of the diamond religion were mainly rich women who were previously mere housewives. Now they could be seen garbed in diamond plated armor, brandishing fierce weapons and clashing against robots across the globe.

No matter what anyone thought of them before the war, no one could doubt their resolve to step up when it was needed from them. On earth, at least, the domain of war no longer solely belonged to men.

But despite their working technology, no one on earth noticed a sleek silver ship approaching the planet at fast speeds. In fact, even the aliens, despite their superior technology, hadn't noticed it. That was simply because while the robots had the best technology, they couldn't always outfit each ship with every possible machine and scanner.

So, silently, the ship landed in an untouched part of India, before revealing a small opening through which a few humans jumped out. The group of 5 had perfectly concealed their identities using the most advanced stealth armor available to them, in case they had to engage in combat.

"Proceed with objective A and begin extraction of the VIP," commanded a cold yet scrambled voice. "I will engage in objective B."

With that, the leader of the group disappeared, leaving a young Alexander wondering… what the hell was objective B? He had only been briefed on the extraction!