The Innkeeper

There was a sudden, invisible change that occurred throughout the Origin realm. It was not a shift in the energies of the realm, nor a change in the major powers that existed within. It was a change in destiny.

Such things were actually a frequent occurrence, for the future was in a constant state of flux. Destiny, too, was flexible - at least in how it occurred, even if the ultimate final outcome was a little less flexible.

There were countless such subtle laws that flowed and guided the direction of existence towards what it should be. Some felt that this manipulation was a guidance of powerful forces, while others simply thought this was a large-scale application of simple, fundamental forces such as the diffusion of heat, which always sought to balance out.

While the underlying cause for such things was open to debate, the fact that they existed, and were measurable and comprehensible was a fact. Which is why as soon as the change occurred, a mysterious force which seemed to be waiting for it covered the change, so that it was imperceptible.

The change, and the veil appearing to hide the change happened at almost exactly the same time. No one would notice - at least for another few minutes. Even after they noticed, they would not understand what happened for a little while longer.

Hundreds of people appeared across the realm, and then disappeared. Armies started moving out, and then vanished. At the same time, Inn workers teleported to hundreds of new planets and silently connected them to the Midnight Games, without anyone noticing. For now, no new armies arrived on those planets.

Yet in the Midnight Inn, the countless guests who were watching the games suddenly noticed a new screen pop up. It was small, so that it would not intrude on anyone's viewing experience, and one could turn it off if they wished. Yet the fact that it appeared so suddenly surprised them.

When they enlarged the screen to see what it held, their breath caught. This was no new competing world, nor was this a planet at war, being invaded by insects. This was the Midnight Inn!

An army stood in front of them thousands, no, tens of thousands strong, all wearing the vaunted suit of the Midnight Battalion. Lex watched the screen as well. The first time that he had sent out the battalion, he had unlocked the Battalion panel which gave him access to formations that the battalion could use together. That is how the Midnight mech was born.

But he could do nothing else for every other aspect of the panel was grayed out. Mary had told him he probably needed to recover system functionality to 20 or 25% before getting more functions. Now that he was at 40%, he had unlocked two more functions.

One was Augmentations, of which Lex had unlocked a few. Only one could be active at a time, so for this time, he selected the Mirror Image augmentations.

As soon as he selected it, another army, exactly as strong, appeared right beside the first one. They looked completely identical to the first one, and gave off the exact same aura.

With a single selection, Lex had doubled his army in size, though the strength of the mirror image army was only 50% of the real one.

It was tragic, but that didn't change the fact that Lex had created a new fighting force out of this air. More importantly, they could still use the other functions of the battalion panel.

The third function he unlocked was a simple one, an effective one, but also one that cost 1 MT to use. It was called Bargain, and gave the battalion a 20% discount.

What that meant was that the battalion would spend 20% less spiritual energy, take 20% less damage, suffer 20% less exhaustion and so on. Most common negative influences on their combat ability would be 20% weaker - for the next one week. After that, he would have to pay another MT.

This was also limited to 1 million battalion soldiers, so if for example the Midnight Battalion contained one million and one soldiers, the cost would become 2 MT.

Lex wasn't concerned about the cost though - even though he was practically bleeding MT to host the Midnight Games. If the viewers tipped the battalion, he would naturally make his money back!

A hush fell upon the Inn as all the guests tried to understand what was about to happen. They felt like there was about to be a big change in the games, but why had there been no announcements about this?

"How long do you think you'll need?" Lex asked Pel Jr. who had activated the effect of his suit.

"Ten minutes, give or take," Pel Jr. answered. Ten minutes within the Inn meant that it would be around 3 minutes in the Origin realm. He could make it work.

"Don't be late then," Lex said as he prepared to leave.

"Don't forget to connect the planet as soon as possible."

Lex nodded.

"Hey Mary," Lex called as he disappeared from his meditation room, appearing on a random planet the Inn was connected to.

"Now that the system has recovered a lot of its functionality, shouldn't it be easier to connect to new planets?"

"Actually, there have been some changes. Within a realm already connected to the Inn, as long as you approach any celestial body, you can purchase a ticket for it. How long the Inn takes to connect to it depends on the star rating of the place, but in general the speed has decreased drastically. Now, instead, you have to purchase higher level tickets to connect to new realms - though establishing a connection to any new realm should take a year at minimum. The year is according to the flow of time of the realm you are connecting to."

Lex nodded, then looked at the coordinates of the place where Gerard was supposed to be. Traveling across galaxies was not something an Earth Immortal should have been able to do easily. But Lex did not care about what should or should not be easy.

A moment later, he disappeared once more.

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