The Innkeeper

Lex lay on his bed trying to go to sleep, but his arms were in too much pain and kept him awake. He’d practiced a lot at the shooting range and his aim and accuracy improved considerably. The price, other than the actual price, was that all the muscles in his arms were incredibly sore and his joints hurt. He wanted to try and heal normally as he couldn’t afford to pay in MP at the moment, especially since he had to upgrade the Recovery room for Marlo.

“Oh my beloved MP, where art thou?” Lex whispered, clearly suffering from sleep deprivation. But his drowsy musings were cut short by Mary who appeared to tell him Marlo had already completed the trial! It hadn’t even been a full day!

Lex jumped out of bed and prepared himself mentally to face the giant, but when he returned to the Inn what greeted him was a very average sized, unconscious man. Other than the fact that his height had been reduced to around six feet – yes, reduced – and his massive bulging fortress of a body had changed to a toned one, and that somehow the man’s appearance was younger, Marlo seemed fine. To be honest, those few changes themselves seemed so drastic that he would never have recognized him as Marlo if the system didn’t tell him._.

“Externally he does not seem hurt, but internally his body seems to be digesting itself. He’s in a state of severe energy exhaustion, you need to put him in a Recovery Pod immediately!” said Mary, seeming alarmed.

Lex didn’t waste any time and spent 1000MP to upgrade the Recovery Room and sent Marlo to the Recovery Pod, which cost him another 150MP! He was left with only 291MP, the lowest he’d ever had! But he couldn’t focus on that for now, ultimately this would be worth it in the long term. After ensuring that the giant was safely put into the Recovery Pod and that it was working, Lex turned his attention to what he had gained from the Trial. The conditions for the trial were 10,000 Tier 1, 1000 Tier 2, 100 Tier 3 and 10 Tier 4 Zombie cores which Marlo had successfully submitted, but along with that the man had also submitted a Tier 5 zombie core! That was a level above Marlo’s own cultivation, it was incredible. Lex wondered how he had done it.

Unfortunately, Lex could not keep the Tier 5 core, as he would need to provide Marlo with a likewise additional reward but at the moment he had nothing to give. When Marlo woke up, he would return the core to him. For now he entered the Gift Shop and placed one of each core on the shelf and priced them. Using these cores helped Body Cultivators further their cultivation without any negative effects. Tier 1 cores helped Body Tempering, and Lex priced them at 200 MP. Tier 2 helped Qi Tempering, which he priced at 500 MP, Tier 3 helped Foundation which he priced at 1500 MP and Tier 4 helped Golden Bones which he priced at 5000 MP.

He only needed to sell a few of these and we would already be in profit. Now all he had to do was wait for more guests. There were a few keys in circulation now, not to mention the chance of random people encountering doors. Hopefully he would receive some guests soon as he could no longer afford anymore upgrades or expenses.

With that done he returned to Earth and tried to sleep, eventually succeeding. He spent the following day surfing the Bluebird portal. His arms hurt too much to practice shooting so he thought he’d acquaint himself more with the cultivation world. He made an account on Tempest, the twitter equivalent of the cultivation world, and browsed to see what was happening in the world.

The most common thing he saw was fights and tournaments between Qi Training cultivators! Most recently a family had resurged in India, claiming to be descendants of ancient Mughal Kings. After they had lost some wars that nearly drove their family to extinction they had escaped into a hidden minor realm they possessed. Minor realms were realms that existed like miniature worlds, isolated from the greater world around them. They only had a few entrances or exits, sometimes even only one, or none at all until the realm destabilized. After this family grew back in strength they returned to Earth, and since their return had sent their younger generation to participate in various Qi Training tournaments to collect resources. Over the past six months they had won every tournament they had entered, and had suddenly become a massive presence in the cultivation world.

One such member of the younger generation from the Mughal family, named Babur, was extremely active on Tempest and had a lot of popularity. But his sudden popularity had drawn a lot of negative attention, and had been challenged to a fight by a user called RussianPrincess77. When he arrived for the challenge, it turned out to be a trap and he was beaten mercilessly by Foundation realm cultivators, which had in turn fostered a lot of tension between all families that had lost something to the new Mughal family as no one can discover the identity of the attackers on their purpose. Since Babur wasn’t actually killed, the authorities weren’t treating the matter too seriously.

Many such dramatic incidents were taking place all over the world, and Lex found himself spending hours embroiled in the drama on Tempest. Something interesting he learnt was that although there was a lot of fighting and competition, it was rare for any cultivator to die in cities. Most deaths seemed to be in remote places or in newly discovered minor realms. The few instances where deaths occurred in cities or towns, the organizations responsible for monitoring cultivator activity took swift and serious action. Apparently, if the number of unclosed cases ever exceeds 5% of registered cases the organization would be very seriously penalized.

Lex found this slightly strange: he was all for increased security, but all these organizations seemed a little too desperate to maintain the peace on Earth, while on the Moon and Mars everyone was responsible for their own security. And who exactly would penalize an organization that failed to meet the mark? There were a lot of obvious holes in the information, but none of it mattered to Lex. He only needed to care about how to get more guests. Somehow getting a popular Tempest user as a guest might not be a bad idea. He just had to pick his target now. He followed a few celebrities so that he could stay up to date on what was happening. While he was randomly surfing, he found a Tempest account that he found shocking. It was the account for the owner of Fight Fortress, who turned out to be the wife of…

“Marlo is awake,” Mary said, appearing before him. “I think he broke his brain, he’s just been laughing since he woke up.”

“No no, that’s how you know he’s still normal,” replied Lex as he closed the portal and prepared to meet his first ever trial taker.

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