The Innkeeper

Lex could scarcely believe what he was seeing! Dragons. Actual, living dragons! For a few moments, Lex’s imagination went wild as he thought of every fantasy movie he had ever seen, and envisioned the massive, powerful behemoths they depicted. When he finally woke from his fantasies, Lex quickly read the description.

Dragons:

Massive, reptilian beings with immense power. No actual Dragons have been reported in the X-14 star system, but various species of Drakes – dragons with impure lineage – were original inhabitants of the system, leading to the belief that Dragons may have once lived here. Drakes still reside on multiple planets in the X-14 star system, and are renown jewelers.

Alongside the description was an image of a lizard like being the size of a Rhino. It was covered in brown scales and had large claws. Lex had no idea how a being with claws made jewelry, but he didn’t want to sound racist so he just accepted the description.

While going over the list, he discovered that the beings Lex assumed were cat-men and women were just a subspecies of humans called Neko, and were just one of the many human subspecies that existed.

The list was surprisingly long, and also included Atila-Morpher, the race that Remy belonged to.

Atila-Morpher:

New species formed from a mutation of the human subspecies: Atila’s. They are able to shapeshift to assume the appearance of any humanoid species, and are born with the ability to traverse space. Atila-Morphers are known to be highly aggressive in nature, and own many businesses in the X-14 star system.

That was a curious description and caused Lex to wonder why they were listed as a separate race from humans, while so many others were listed as subspecies. Lex noticed a common trend of new species being born from preexisting ones from the list. He would probably need an in-depth study or report to learn the difference between a subspecies and new species, and how they were identified. For now, he just manually went over the list so that he had some notion of the various races, and made sure that the Fancy Monocle recorded them all.

After that Lex tried to use the computer so that he could comfortably look up more information, but when he could not figure it out after 20 minutes decided to simply learn the old-fashioned way – walking around and investigating himself.

With no specific idea of where to go, he asked the bartender for directions to the tournament, and then started to stroll in its direction. He took his time and often stopped to listen in on the conversations people were having around him. He didn’t want to seem shady, but it was the best way to learn whatever was most relevant at the moment.

Most conversations seemed to be focused on the upcoming harvest season. Apparently, the Gugu fruit was one of the major cash crops of this planet, with an incredibly high demand for it. Not only was it an incredible spirit fruit, it had many applications in medicine, pill making, alchemy, and many more fields which Lex had no idea about. Most importantly, it was a favorite snack of a type of mount that was very popular among high level cultivators.

As he listened in on conversations, he could not help but imagine what life must be like for a family that used entire planets as farms. Of course, devils were the same, but the Dimitri family consisted of humans, so Lex could relate to them somewhat. It also let him know that his Inn wasn’t unique or interesting enough for these kinds of guests. Maybe they would come due to the prestige he had built as the Innkeeper, but the Inn itself was lacking.

Eventually, Lex climbed aboard what looked like a tram because reaching his destination was taking too long. Originally, he thought he might get lost, but it seemed a majority of people were heading to the same place.

The venue was a massive, square building with endless crowds streaming in. It really bewildered Lex from the popularity this harvesting tournament had, but since most people’s livelihoods on the planet were connected to it in some way, it made sense.

The entry ticket was a steep, 8 spirit coins. Lex almost immediately decided to skip it, but just as he was turning around, he noticed something. He stood perfectly still as he blatantly listened to a conversation some people were having.

‘No,’ Lex thought to himself. ‘This can’t be. It’s impossible.’

To make sure, Lex walked around outside the venue for a good thirty minutes, and slowly his expression turned from disbelief, to shock, to excitement, then back to disbelief. This was… it was impossible. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. It… it just couldn’t be. But it was.

Lex hesitated for a moment, then decided to take a risk. Anyway, he had already paid for his stay for a week, so if he fell short on money, he would have time to make it back.

As Lex paid for the cheapest possible entry ticket, his mind wandered back to when he last read a very popular cultivation novel, “Ultimate King Emperor: All the Gods call me Daddy”.

It was the novel Lex read where the MC’s adopted sister was a Saintess who was kidnapped by celestial beings and who then killed the MC by destroying his entire planet, but the MC actually reincarnated.

Lex had already read the next 1000 chapters after that, which firmly concluded the first arc, and allowed the MC to finally leave the planet he reincarnated on with a harem of 9 women who were all strong, independent women who were originally stronger than the MC, but somehow lost their will, goals, and personalities once they fell in love and spent their days planting flowers in a garden, waiting for him endlessly, because that’s how harems work. Of course, most of those women felt bitter and slight resentment towards the MC, not because he had too many women, but because of his noble and pure heart, which caused him to reject many women. They were upset because he rejected them.

Anyway, Lex usually skipped those parts, so that wasn’t what he was focused on. During one of the mini-arcs, the MC enters a tournament. Lex remembered that he had to read 17 chapters straight that just consisted of all the viewers simply insulting the MC for no particular reason. Honestly, Lex would have skipped those 17 chapters, but the insults were just so creative that he couldn’t stop himself from reading. In the 18th chapter, it was finally revealed that everyone was just sucking up to some bigshot who, by happenstance, had only slightly indicated that they had a minor conflict with the MC.

Naturally, that minor conflict resulted in a fight that destroyed not only the antagonists’ entire family, but several other organizations. He recalled vaguely the original fight being that the MC wore the same color clothes as the antagonist, or something mundane like that.

Lex was getting sidetracked in his thoughts again. The main point was, while the MC participated in that tournament, he was the underdog and the tournament, for reasons unknown, started gambling with 10,000 times the return if the MC won. Such a stake in itself was stupid, but the point was the MC finally won and earned a lot of money by betting on himself.

The reason Lex was bewildered currently was… word for word, Lex could hear the surrounding people insulting someone called Tetsuya Seigan with the same insults. Furthermore, Lex learnt that Tetsuya had only entered the Foundation realm, the minimum requirement to participate, mere minutes before the deadline to enter the tournament. As if that wasn’t enough, the rumor was that Tetsuya had a rivalry against the son of the owner of the academy he studied at, who stole Tetsuya’s girlfriend. To top it all off, the gambling stakes for Tetsuya were a ten times return, something Lex actually thought was crazy high.

As a sane person, cognizant of the fact that this was reality and not a cultivation novel, Lex did not believe for a second that the cliche scenario from cultivation novels was going to play out in front of him.

But that could not stop him from betting his last spirit coin on Tetsuya, and finding his way to his seat in a daze. The surrounding people made fun of him too for betting on Tetsuya – how they knew who he bet on was another mystery. But it was too surreal. Everything was happening like in the novel.

What Lex didn’t realize was that since everything was following such an established cliche trend, in a private room a second generation brat who was staring at Tetsuya’s picture with eyes filled with hate and ridicule was just informed that someone had just placed a bet on Tetsuya.

He frowned. How dare someone not follow his exact wishes and actually take advantage of the great odds he himself had personally put up against the brat?

“Remember him,” the spoiled brat said. “I’ll personally take care of him after the tournament.”

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