The Innkeeper

"SAVE ME!" roared a bunny, but it was of no avail. It was each rabbit for itself right now. Deputy commander Captain Jimmy was having trouble holding onto the rabbit he had begun to ride, but he was, after all, not ordinary. He had built up the Peacock warriors side by side with Princess Layla and had conquered many beasts.

Only the ever elusive flying whale had remained safe from him - not even the miniboss of the Inn, the giant turtle, had been able to avoid being his mount. Though to be fair the turtle never tried to resist to begin with. Still, Jimmy was a relentless child. He had affixed himself onto the large rabbits back by clamping his thighs shut, and he was holding onto its ears like a harness. It could jump around was much as it wanted, but he would never let go.

Or so he thought.

"Jimmy, it's time to go," called his mother who casually walked through the chaos of the child zone, informally now known as no-man's land. When all the children in all the Inn, human, beast or otherwise, all gathered together in one area there was bound to be chaos.

In fact, egged on by the antics of their counterparts, a few gangs had already formed in the No-man to compete against the Peacock warriors.

Furthermore, whoever was running the child care area was extremely sharp minded. Instead of dispersing the gangs, they organized small friendly games to build competition between the gangs. They went from hide and seek, tag, puzzle solving, cooking, crafting and more. Each competition would net the winning team some points, and at the end of each week the winning team would have their name put up on a recognition board and win small prizes in a ceremony.

Moreover, the competitions were short and were formatted in such a way that the entire gang did not need to participate all the time. Whenever someone from Peacock warriors was available, they could take part in any competitions going on at the time.

"Just a minute mom!" Jimmy yelled back as he maintained his tight grip on the rabbit's body. A few seconds of crazed hoping later, an alarm ran announcing the end of the competition, allowing Jimmy to finally relax his grip.

The rabbit and the boy both fell to the ground in exhaustion, but the difference was that while the rabbit was mourning the fuzzing of its fur, Jimmy had a wide grin. He had yet to lose a single competition.

"Jimmy lets go," said his mother once again, picking the boy up from the ground. "You have to complete your homework before your bedtime. Mrs. Evilteacher has been complaining about your work lately."

"No mom, noooooooooo," he wailed, his good mood ruined. But alas, it was to no avail as his mother took his hand before both of them disappeared.

In the distance stood Rafael, who had been watching the entire competition. His eyes were filled with strange emotions. In his past life, he had known Jimmy as a silent but hard man. He was a warrior like no other, and though he was not strong, he had distinguished himself from the rest due to his sheer grit.

Watching him now, like this, enjoying games with friends and going to school like an ordinary kid, Rafael could not imagine this was the same person. He did not know what had happened in his life to turn him from this normal, happy child to such a dark and grim person. Whatever it was, Rafael swore he would not let it happen again. Jimmy had not been the closest friend he had in the future, and his achievements on the larger scale of things were unremarkable.

Still, whatever he had was worth protecting. After all, there would be no point in his return to the past, or maybe his visions of the future, if he didn't change the future. Even if it was a small change that would only affect or protect one child, he would do it. This was merely his beginning. In the future, he would change everything.

*****

Joseph and Bertram were left feeling slightly awkward. Lex had asked for extremely precious resources, but in exchange, had offered vague payments. Saying stuff like he could procure 'precious or rare' materials or treasures sounded more like a scam than anything else. Plus, whatever it would be would have to be equal in value, and then something they actually needed. After all, there was no point in gathering something valuable, but completely useless.

Fortunately, Lex was not asking for delivery first and instead requested that they submit a list of items for him to locate first. If he insisted that they provide the crystals first, they would start to think that he was trying to blackmail them.

Regardless, since Lex had requested that they provide him a list of items, Joseph quickly prepared one. The Noel family's speciality, publicly, was their treasure manufacturing. For certain items their production was halted or slowed due to the absence of some rare materials. It was not a matter of the Noel family being unable to pay for them, but rather of the items not being available in the market all the time.

The list he gave Lex only had items that were either not available on the market frequently, or were so rare it would take decades for it to appear at all.

Lex perused the list casually before putting it away. He would put down these items and their descriptions in the Guild room. Hopefully, he would get a response quickly.

With their initial business concluded, the Noel family left to go oversee and help with the citizen rescue.

Lex was left nearly alone in the tavern, with only Rick, Roan, the sleeping Pvarti and the children that had been put to sleep to keep him company. All others had gone in search of their friends or relatives.

He knew for a fact that most of them were about to be met with disappointment. Even if they had survived the darkness, the killer and the monsters, the destruction of Zagan's battle was thorough. Unless one was hiding underground, Lex did not think they would have any hope of surviving. And even then, it was only a hope and not a certainty.

But, of all of them, he hoped that at least the triplets and Dino's families were alright. Only time would tell now.

With that done, Lex retreated to the meditation room and put on his thinking cap. With everything that had been happening the past few days, Lex hadn't had time to properly reflect on all that had happened.

By nature, Lex liked to have a plan to follow, and liked to think things out. It was not necessary to follow the plan to the letter, but at least the plan gave him direction. If he started from the beginning of recent events, the first was that he had been pulled into the killer's Death Bubble without any forewarning whatsoever.

It was the first time his instincts had failed him entirely. He always knew that his instincts couldn't be entirely perfect, but he always assumed that it would be someone with a much higher cultivation level than him that would beat him. Instead, it was someone with a system.

That revealed to him that, most likely, in all things related to systems, his instincts would likely not work. This theory needed further testing, but it made sense. The systems were something beyond common understanding after all.

The next matter was that he was teleported out completely without any protection. Even though the tavern wasn't exactly as secure and in sync with the system as the Inn, he had safety measures in place but he was still at the mercy of the system.

According to Mary, only a system was another system's weakness, so if he wanted to be protected all the time, he should never leave the Inn - although he wasn't so sure he wanted to do that either.

The next point of concern was that his new battle style using arrays was more or less a success. What he needed to do now was increase his implementation speed and thinking speed. Implementation could be sped up with practice, but increasing his thinking speed would likely require him to train in some kind of mental technique.

That led to his next issue. He needed a reliable source of cultivation techniques. He could, theoretically, return to the Hum nation and go back to the academy and search for techniques there, but he'd rather not risk it. He didn't know what danger had driven him away from there and he was in no mood to find out.

He had John who could design techniques, but how long would that be a viable solution? He needed a new venue for techniques.

The next issue was that he needed to up his practice with Evisceration. If he had completely mastered the technique, even Lex was curious to see what kind of coincidence could have saved the killer from him.

With these few, relatively simple points addressed, he now had to think about systems, and system users.

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