The Innkeeper



The Recovery pod worked whether one was asleep or awake, so Lex did not really need to doze off. Theoretically, he could have stayed awake in the Recovery pod while it healed him, and continued to run the Inn remotely as he had done so often.

But things were not so straightforward. Although his advancement had made Lex much more resilient to injury, it also then took much more effort for him to recover. That meant that if previously a broken bone would take him one day to heal in the Recovery pod, now it would take him a week. Moreover, it had to be remembered that any injury Lex sustained reflected not only in his physical state, but his soul and spirit as well. An injury to his spirit affected his decision making skills, which meant that if he controlled the Inn remotely while in an injured state, he might not do much better than if he had just waited to begin with.

The last, and most significant matter to take into account, was that many bones in Lex's body were completely crushed. While such an injury would have killed a common man, and crippled other cultivators, it proved only an inconvenience to him - at least physically. Spiritually speaking, Lex did not dare trust himself to make any necessary decisions. While he himself felt like he was still in his right state of mind, such a thing did not mean he would risk it.

The best thing to do was sleep, which would allow him to feel like time was passing by faster. But the issue was, as a Golden core cultivator, he did not need to sleep much originally. But his current state itself was a remedy for such a situation.

Through vague sensations and hints, his intuition let him know that sleeping while injured would put his body into a sort of hibernation state. It would not only speed up healing, it would passively absorb spiritual energy into his body to replenish his energy needs and fuel his recovery. Naturally, sleeping in an area with higher concentration of spiritual energy was better. He did not need to make special preparations for that. The ambient energy within the Midnight Inn was enough.

So, for once, Lex fell asleep for a long, long time. Time passed by in a blur, and Lex had many dreams. In one dream, Lex received a prize from the Inn, in the form of a Patisserie, which he never ended up availing, depriving himself of its amazing offerings.

In another dream, he continued to live a normal life, and never received the system. His life seemed to continue to deteriorate as he got more and more depressed, until eventually one day he passed out while at work. When his tumor was discovered, it was revealed that it was pressing against his frontal lobe thus affecting his emotions. A surgery to remove it would be extremely dangerous, and would not guarantee that the tumor would not regrow. Eventually, he shared the news with his family. The dream ended after that.

In another dream, he never escaped the Crystal realm. He stayed there for years, and almost every time he was injured, nurse Honey would take care of him. Eventually, they developed a relationship and started a family. A few hundred years later, Lex finally broke into the Earth Immortal realm, which allowed the system to let him return. The dream ended after that.

In one other dream, he found himself hiding in a small crevice inside a dark canyon on a massive asteroid. He was being hunted by something that could harm him, and it was extremely dangerous. He needed to reach a specific destination before time ran out, so he couldn't even escape to the Inn. The dream ended when a massive yellow eye appeared in the darkness staring at him.

He saw a dream in which he identified as a banana…

He saw a dream in which hellfire rained down on the Inn, and Lex could do nothing to stop it…

The dreams were endless, and plagued his weary mind till they all seemed to blend into one, unending dream.

When he woke up, finally, for the first time in a long time, Lex did not feel well rested. In fact, he felt completely disoriented and drained. It reminded him of when he was a mortal, and he would take a nap that lasted too long. Instead of waking up refreshed, he would wake up feeling lightheaded and worn.

Lex groaned as he tried to move, but found that his body actually felt really weak. This was extremely unusual, for Lex had felt better even before he got in the RP to heal. He checked his body's condition using his spirit sense, and found that he had been completely healed. There was not even a sore muscle in his body, let alone a broken bone. He should have been feeling great instead of like this.

"Mary, how long was I out?" he asked, as he picked himself out of the pod.

"A little over three weeks," she replied.

"What? Three weeks! Why didn't you wake me up? What happened on earth? Did they never ask for an event?"

"No, as it turned out, no matter who they approached for help in blocking the invading robots, none accepted. Finally, the Jotun empire helped them out by organizing a meeting between the earthlings and some deities. They met in the Fire temple, and worked out a deal. As it turns out, deities have incredibly unusual powers, and they did not need the Inn to travel to earth.

"Currently, the earth has become the domain of the Deity of Water, Amana, alongside the Deity of Diamonds, Adamas. Any who believe in their religions are gaining incredibly potent powers to use against the robots. As of now, earth has become a massive battlefield. The casualties…" Mary paused for a moment.

"We have over 100 million refugees at the Inn at the moment, and more coming continuously. These are numbers we cannot maintain, especially as things are. The refugee camp has already become cramped."

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