The Innkeeper



Lex cleared his mind as he walked up to Alexander. Various random thoughts were floating in his mind, from the system he had to take from the invader, to the wedding preparations, to the probable deployment of the Inn's staff to battlefields. There was a lot of stuff he needed to get done, but stressing over them would be more wasteful than helpful. He had to take things in his stride.

When Lex approached Alexander, he found the teenager grimacing as he looked into the distance. He also looked a little worn out. It was clear that Lex had not had any time to rest lately, and whatever tasks he was busy with were quite strenuous.

"You don't look so good," Lex said frankly as he walked up to him.

Alexander turned to look at Lex and inspected his appearance. Lex was dressed quite casually, but due to his extremely fit body he still looked good. That wasn't what Alexander was looking at, however. Instead, he was paying attention to the fact that Lex looked quite relaxed.

"You look pretty good for someone whose planet is at war," he said passive aggressively.

Lex did not take his tone to heart. The fact that Alexander looked weary at all meant that he had likely been through some harrowing experiences. If only Lex knew that Alexander had been taking orders from Belle, he would truly sympathize with how tough his life as of late had been.

"The whole universe is at war," Lex said casually as he took a seat opposite to Alexander. "Besides, it's not like I alone can stop the war. Or change things for that matter. Not to mention, I've long left earth behind. I've heard you've done the same."

Though Lex said that, the Inn had probably paid the greatest role in altering the course of the war than anyone else. The deities would never have arrived on the planet, and the robots invasion would not have subdued without the deterrence of the Innkeeper, and there would be no refugees. Objectively, Lex had helped a lot already. But personally, he had contributed only very little.

Alexander sighed, but controlled himself. He realized that he was venting unnecessarily on Lex. He enveloped himself and Lex in an isolation bubble so that they could have a conversation in private.

"The situation on earth is more complicated than it seems. Who knew I would leave earth to join the Jotun empire, only to be sent back to earth?"

Lex raised an eyebrow, but did not speak. He was truly curious about what secrets the situation on earth could have that he didn't already know. He was also curious about why Alexander was even telling him.

"How could it be more complicated than alien robots invading the entire planet with the intention of enslaving everyone?"

"The war… the war has already transcended what it started out as. While that's good for earthlings, because at least for now they can survive, I fear that soon we will forever lose the solar system to greater forces."

"Even mars?" Lex asked in surprise?

"Several forces have already approached my family with propositions to either sell the planet or enter into a partnership. All of them have some degree of interest in the war. Although for now my family has not accepted the sale, it is only a matter of time before they accept a deal."

Lex frowned for a moment, but recovered quickly. No matter what, the solar system was a part of the empire, so they would not completely ignore it, right?

Before Lex could think further on the topic, Alexander continued.

"No, it's not the war alone that is the cause of complications. Do you know why the robots invaded?"

"Why?" Lex asked without trying to show off his knowledge. He was still interested in why Alexander was freely sharing information with him, so he wanted to see what he had to tell.

"A terrorist…" Alexander said, allowing an exhausted sigh to escape.

"It's common knowledge that I've joined the army, but even among them, due to my excellent performance, I've been assigned to a special operations unit called Valkyrie unit. We've been looking into why earth was suddenly invaded, and we've discovered that this was a plot of an intergalactic terrorist called Jeffery.

"You may think that inciting a full on war on earth was bad, but the scale of his activities has escalated greatly since leaving the planet. It appears… it appears as though he is a part of a massive terrorist organization which is utilizing various alien influences to spread chaos amongst human influences.

"The use of the A.I. nation against a planet is a major incident, but not easily replicable. Yet the number of demon invasions, plagues, civil wars, and worse since he escaped earth is off the charts."

"Considering the size of the empire, I would be surprised if they don't have a team qualified enough to hunt this Jeffery down. I don't see why you're concerned about it."

"Like I said, the matter is far from simple. As far as the whole organization is concerned, someone else will take care of it. But the team I'm a part of will be specifically hunting down Jeffery."

"What do I have to do with all this?" Lex asked. In truth, he did not mind patiently waiting till Alexander revealed it on his own, but he could tell that the other was waiting for Lex to ask specifically this.

"Well, other than the fact that I thought you might be interested in hunting down the guy who single handedly put earth to destruction? Due to the special nature of the team that I'm in, I have the right to recruit anyone I deem helpful temporarily, or even permanently, as a soldier of the empire. Moreover, I'm going on an infiltration mission soon, and I think that I might need your help."

"You're showing an awful lot of trust, telling me all this. We aren't even in the chamber of secrets. Aren't you worried I won't accept your offer, and then spread the news."

"Not really," Alexander said, showing an incomparably confident expression. "Take it as a gut feeling. I don't think you'll betray me, and I definitely think you'll be interested in this mission."

"Don't you think you're evaluating me a little too high if you want me to take on a terrorist organization willy nilly?"

"You don't understand. I'm not asking you to take on a terrorist organization. This is not about acting out of the goodness of your heart. I'm asking you to help me out."

Lex raised an eyebrow.

*****

Since Luthor was currently busy, Lex had to summon Jotun to his office himself, though that was no real issue. The emperor entered the room, silently grateful that he didn't need to wait for weeks on end for the Innkeeper to receive him.

Although their last meeting had been incredibly tense, for Jotun at least, true to his word the Innkeeper maintained full civility - towards him at least. He was not exactly completely privy to what the Innkeeper had written in his epistle previously, but it had caused an enormous reaction between their ranks.

Even as merely one of their agents, Jotun was able to sense the reverberations amongst their ranks. Although Jotun tried not to speculate, he could not help but come to the conclusion that the Innkeeper had an extremely massive and influential background to affect the Henali like that.

How was he supposed to know that, in truth, Lex's attempts to avoid the 'payment' he was due had caused massive misunderstandings amongst them? He had asked them to prove that he had entered the Origin realm from the outside, which they were unable to do. His obvious power level, yet mysterious background and origin, alongside the inability to trace his entry into the Origin realm created an unsolvable mystery.

Perhaps if he hadn't almost destroyed a deity with a single move earlier, some might have doubted that he was a Daolord. Now that he had proved his identity, his bold claims led to only one single possible conclusion: the Origin realm hid a massive secret that surpassed even the Henali's understanding.

For the first time in a long, long time, the mysterious race was getting ready to deploy themselves across the realm to search out its secrets.

It was with all this happening in the background that the Innkeeper took from Jotun one more missive, secretly hoping for a favorable message. If the Henali insisted he pay…

Fortunately, no such thing happened. The message only contained two things. One was a self-deployable teleportation formation, the other item was a small letter, listing out the details of the deployment of the Inn's workers.

Since most of the Innkeeper's workers were low levelled, they were assigned an appropriate battlefield in the galaxy Suerra. There were a few conditions for their deployment listed out, but the Innkeeper had paused reading. His eyes were fixed on the name of the galaxy.

Wasn't that where a huge secret lay waiting for him to discover? This was much too convenient.