The Innkeeper

Suffice to say, Lex’s first month in the academy was extremely busy. Between his various classes, doing his own research for the impending field test, and cultivating when able, he barely had any free time.

That limited free time that he had was often spent in the company of Amelia and a few of her friends. Truth be told, she was as helpful, if not more, in bridging the gap between Lex’s knowledge and common sense in the Crystal realm than many of his classes.

For example, the device that looked like a watch he was wearing today was called PT (personal terminal) which, for all intents and purposes, was like a mobile phone but with more features, given to him by Amelia. He was also better able to get accustomed to the day/night cycle here, as well as understand how the calendar in the crystal realm worked.

Each day was 25 hours long, with five days in a week and six weeks in a month. Since Sol-light did not have a fixed pattern, the plants, the people and the civilizations had adjusted to it accordingly. Not all, but many of the plants as well as insects were luminescent, and many animals had developed extra senses to accommodate for the long periods of time without light.

The humans here, in general, had much better eyesight than Lex, as well as a small degree of night vision. But for academy students, that wasn’t an issue, as apparently the academy had its own dedicated Sol birds. Apparently, the dean had a flock of them as pets, so at least in the academy it was never dark.

Other than that, Amelia also helped him get accustomed to the social norms. As his geography class proceeded, and he began to understand how vast the area controlled by humans really was, he truly began to wonder why everyone suffered from such a sense of crisis when after hundreds of years of war, the Kraven had barely taken over 1% of their land.

The answer, once again, was Cornelius II. As a farsighted man, as well as one of the strongest, if not the strongest, human, he understood the threat of the Kraven early on. After that, well, it was merely a matter of might being right. He forcibly converged all the strength and resources of the humans, created the Hum nation, and organized a unified effort to defend against the Kraven.

Time had proved him right, as only with such a strong and dedicated approach were the humans able to prevent the Kraven from completely destroying them the way they had done to the Poliods. Eventually, human society became accustomed to such a ruthless style of existence – mostly because they had no other option.

This was because King Cornelius II had a personal motto which, as dean of the academy, he implemented here as well.

The motto was simply ‘I don’t give a shit’. You don’t want to fight? No one cared. You don’t like the style of government? No one cared. You think the world is round instead of a flat, endless mass of land? No one cared. The only way to get people to care was to first fulfill your minimum responsibility to the war efforts, one way or another. Then your opinion became relevant, to a degree.

Slowly, and steadily, that motto as well as the singular mentality of doing everything to defeat the Kraven had seeped into the minds and habits of everyone. So long as you cooperated with the system, it was fine, but the moment you stopped cooperating… well, Lex finally understood why no one cared at all about the village that had been destroyed during his assessment. He suddenly realized how dangerous his rant to Vernan about not joining special forces had been.

Even the generally compassionate and understanding Amelia showed no reaction when he mentioned the destroyed village to her, nor did her friends. It chilled Lex at how normal death was here.

During this time, he also focused on managing the Inn when he could. Surprisingly, the husband and wife duo still had not finished their test to join the Inn. But, in a way, it made sense. Since they were the strongest to join to date, they had the toughest test. The one issue he was unable to solve was getting access to more worlds for the incoming expo hosted by Earth. There were some options he could use if push came to shove, but those would be last-minute options. Furthermore, he would also need to use some accumulated energy by the system to access the more advanced features.

He had also given his all to his part-time job, even if he could not understand the forging methods his boss employed.

With all that on his plate, despite Lex managing to deal with his stress, he had an increasing urge to smoke. Unfortunately, smoking did not seem to be a common practice here, and without anything to smoke, Lex could only make do. That did trigger an old habit of his, of playing with something in his fingers.

Since he had no cigarettes, nor pens to play with, without realizing it, Lex had begun to play around with the Inns golden key in his fingers. He was passing it from finger to finger, twisting and turning it around his hand, while not really paying any attention to it. That is, until one day, it occurred to him… to try to use the key to go back to the Inn!

Unfortunately, since this realm had not been anchored to the Inn, the teleportation didn’t work. Furthermore, as the Innkeeper, the system restricted him from using the key himself. Since he had increased authority, Lex asked why there was such a stupid restriction. The only reply Mary was able to give was that it would make things ‘too easy’.

Unable to understand, Lex put it behind him. He had long since made it his goal to become stronger than the system, and though such a goal could not be achieved any time soon, it allowed him to detach from the system mentally.

All this led him to where he was now, once again in the mess hall with Amelia and her friends. As the month was almost over, they were all already focusing on what their new classes would be next month, mostly a higher level of the same classes. Only Lex had not registered yet, for his field test would take him away from the academy.

“You’re so lucky,” said Miscellaneous Friend A as she looked at Lex with envy. “A vacation after a single month, while we have to work our butts off.”

“It’s not a vacation,” Amelia very seriously corrected her friend. “He’s going on an expedition. It could be dangerous.”

“What danger? There’s no Kraven in the inner-territories. At most, he’ll run into some wild beasts, or maybe encounter some uncivilized tribes that have never been outside their own regions. Can they even be considered a threat? The way I see it, it’s a vacation with seniors from the academy. Maybe there will be some beautiful seniors who would like to play with their juniors,” she said, and winked.

Although technically Lex was the most junior here, that was only in terms of classes. In age, his seniors would at most be his peers.

“Well, in that case, I shouldn’t keep those seniors waiting,” Lex said with a chuckle, before he said his farewell and left. The group of friends watched him leave, and the moment he left the room, they started whispering in hushed tones.

“Amelia, do you think THAT rumor is true?” asked one of the friends.

“I… don’t think so,” she said hesitantly. She didn’t like gossiping about Lex now that he was her friend. “His age is too high and cultivation too low. It wouldn’t make sense.”

“Who cares about cultivation? He faced off an immortal! The way I see it, he’s definitely from ‘that’ family. Not to mention, you’ve seen how hard he works. He’s too focused for someone with no background. The way I see it, you should make your move on him before someone else does.”

Amelia kept looking towards where Lex left, feeling confused. Originally, after the rumors about Lex spread, they disappeared just as quickly. Lex himself didn’t think anything of it, because he was familiar with the concept of 15 minutes of fame. His reputation was unearned, so it was natural that it would vanish. What he didn’t know was that, in truth, an even wilder rumor started spreading about him after he developed a reputation as a good student and hard worker. One that was so… scandalous, that people only whispered about it, and only discussed it amongst themselves. And so, as Lex left to meet his seniors for the first time, he had no idea what his real reputation was.

*****

Origin Realm, Somewhere in the Milky Way

A man stepped out of one spaceship and into another, taking in a deep breath as if smelling freedom for the first time in a long time. He was escorted by the crew to his private room, where a few people were waiting for him.

“Mr. Jeckal, everything went according to your plan. The Williams family had no idea about your worth, and just a few decades of waiting ended up using you to trade for some minor benefits. If they had any idea of who you really are, things could have gotten tricky.”

“It’s basic psychology,” Jeckal said, as he sat down on one of the sofas, making himself comfortable. “If you ignore something, everyone will assume it’s worthless. But, now that I’ve escaped their clutches, let’s make sure nothing like this happens again.”

Although Jeckal was smiling, everyone else in the room shivered.

“Take me out of the Galaxy and back home where I can be safe. And, while you’re at it, but some bounties out for some of the Williams family kids, I want them to feel uncomfortable. Also, I had to leave one of my daughters, Heidi, back in that infernal prison alive because she got mixed up with some unknown entity called Midnight Inn. Look into it, and if their background isn’t an issue, I want you to make them uncomfortable as well. I had to leave a loose end because of them, and if my wife finds out I had kids, it’ll be a problem.”

“Right away,” answered one of the people. They were used to this kind of behavior. This Jeckal was a calamity for countless people, but he was useful and he knew it, so he knew exactly how to take advantage of his situation.

The name Midnight Inn was just one of many he put on a list to cause trouble for, and who would honestly take the trouble of researching all of them? Usually, all these people had to do was pass the name along, and the organization or people on that list would vanish. So, for better or for worse, they did the same for this list, and a certain powerful organization started killing anyone who used the name Midnight Inn. After all, who would stop them?