The Innkeeper

Chapter 1785: Sharknado III

Lex had to keep his lip from twitching as he heard Katrina’s one complaint. Yes, compared to her size, and how big she could grow, the lake truly was small. In Lex’s defense, he hadn’t considered that it might be small, because the lake was already massive by ordinary standards.

"You should have said so. We would have enlarged the lake for your convenience. Next time, I assure you, that you will find the lake adequately sized," Lex said, defending the Inn’s reputation.

"Um, it’s not a problem. This was already very nice," Katrina said.

Lex shook his head, but did not dwell on the topic.

"Well hopefully our next service will satisfy you. Please, follow me," said Lex, as he led the even larger hurricane to the Disaster Relief Foundation. Naturally, considering the clientele for this specific shop, he could not be in a building. He had to get a little creative with the design and customer interface, but he was satisfied with what he made.

Lex brought Katrina to a large, flat, open area with hard tiles covering the ground in a circle with a diameter of 300 miles (482 km). That was easily enough to contain Katrina even at her full size, let alone her meager size now. Any other natural disaster would also be able to fit in there easily - hopefully.

But nothing else filled that area. It was completely clear of all things. Katrina was slightly confused as she followed Lex onto the tile - at least until she was on it all the way.

A spirit interface reached out to her, and once she allowed it to connect to her mind, she saw a massive inventory list with all the items they had available, their effects, and their cost.

"Um, is this a... bakery?" she asked, hesitantly.

"Well, yes, technically some of the items here are baked, so it could also be called a bakery," said Lex. "But the items themselves are just a means to an end - unless of course you’re a foodie. In which case, everything tastes delicious. But, here, look at this shark shaped cookie. Read its effects."

Yes, the idea that Lex came up with was delivering extremely potent augmentations to his customers through food. Disasters couldn’t wear clothes, nor could their souls be strengthened because there was only one of Harry, and there was only so much he could do. He couldn’t sell them spiritual techniques because, honestly, Lex was absolutely certain that the way they used spiritual energy was so vastly different from biological beings that it would take decades if not centuries of study to understand it.

He couldn’t sell weapons because although the Inn sold a few low level things here and there, it hardly had anything worthy of threatening immortals - let alone disasters that were immortals.

So what was the solution? The strength had to come from the customer themselves. All the Inn could do was augment it in very specific ways and bring about certain results.

"Here, have a sample shark cookie, so that you can get a sense for what these items can do," said Lex, and purchased the cookie directly ignoring the 500 million MP cost. He’d made more than that from Katrina anyway, and if she liked it, she would surely buy more than one so he’d make back his investment.

"Um, you don’t have to do that," Katrina tried to refuse, but Lex had gotten the cookie anyway. Since the target audience was a disaster, the cookie was appropriately sized. It was exactly 2,047,188 pizza boxes large, or roughly around 2 million pizza boxes. Suffice to say, it was big enough to pack enough of a punch to affect even immortal disasters.

Yes, one other reason why the cookie was so large was because of the valuable resources that went into making it - resources that the system sourced itself, but told Lex the cost of when he was designing the room.

Katrina felt slightly awkward, but now that Lex had bought the cookie, she didn’t want to refuse him. She hovered over the cookie, lifting it into the air and breaking it into millions of tiny pieces as it was absorbed into her raging winds.

At first Katrina was doubtful, because how could cookies be better than fresh sushi that she caught herself. Then the doubt faded. It wasn’t about the flavor, although as the cookies crumbled in her roaring winds, it delivered a well balanced punch of sugary goodness, instead it was about the effects.

She could feel the essence of her winds changing, the water she carried morphing, infusing her with a sense of power that was far beyond what she wielded normally. It wasn’t general, directionless strength. No, she could feel that this strength was designed specifically and only for offense.

A soft, white glow appeared within her winds, and then another, and then more. One by one, the breadth of her body was filled with white lights which began to morph, suddenly taking on the shape of countless sharks.

As soon as they were formed, the sharks came to life - or at least seemed like they had. They began to swim around and around, searching through her body for enemies to hunt. She could feel their aggression - their hunger. It was incredible. It was like she had gained limbs, and each of them carried an enormous amount of strength.

It didn’t matter who the opponent was, whether it was that damned tsunami or even an underwater volcano. The sharks would devour them all!

With this, not only could she get back her gem fragments, she could get her revenge!

"I want 10!" she suddenly exclaimed. "And show me that King Kong Creppe as well. Oh, and a Godzilla pie. Wait, give me two of the pies, and give me one Brain Freeze Brandy."

Lex smiled, and ordered everything that Katrina wanted. She could have done it all herself, but in her excitement, she had forgotten. Lex was not about to disturb this customer of his, so he was more than happy to be the one ordering on her behalf.