The Innkeeper

Chapter 2001: Summon Hiran

Quest Completed: Host a Heavens Puppet inside the Midnight Inn as a guest!

Quest Reward: 1 Permanent Butter Knife Upgrade Token!

Remarks: Never say I never did anything for you!

New Notification: Special event triggered!

New Notification: Heaven’s Puppet detected within the Inn.

New Notification: Due to the Inn’s protective formation, the puppets connection to Arch-Heaven has been severed.

New Quest: An empty vessel lies within the Inn, a former puppet of the Heavens. A forbidden secret, a hidden history, or a powerful weapon. Choose what to do with the puppet.

Additional Information: Through circumstance or by design, a Heavens Puppet is at the Host’s disposal. The puppet hides a forbidden secret of Arch-Heaven, contains traces of a history wiped in the Primordial Age, and can serve as a powerful, one-time use weapon. The Host can choose which one of these three to focus on, but cannot choose all three.

The moment that the puppet is used for either purpose, it will trigger a hidden response embedded within by Arch-Heaven, destroying it.

Depending on the Host’s choice, this quest has the potential to evolve into a Joint or Chain Quest.

Quest Reward: Depends on the Hosts choices.

Remarks: Is the vessel really empty? Is the puppet really a puppet? Is the host really fat? It seems some questions have no answers.

Lex finally read the notifications once he returned to the Inn, and paused. This... was not what he had expected. This was an interesting quest, for not only was there no time limit, he actually had a choice on how to proceed. Furthermore, there was no pressure from the system on what to choose.

Based on his understanding of the system, he could guess what it wanted. The systems seemed to be extremely interested in the lost history of the Primordial Age. But what would serve him best? He did not know yet.

He was also surprised that he got an upgrade token instead of a direct upgrade to the Butter Knife. He could not help but recall how Mary had suggested that he should complete this upgrade before he completes the taverns. Perhaps the token would be especially useful once he completed the tavern quest.

Speaking of which, the time limit he had on that quest was actually quite small. Originally he had 6 months, but now he had only a few days left. If he failed the quest, the system would shut down for 3 years, but that wasn’t going to happen.

In fact, all the taverns were almost complete. They only required the finishing touches, and for those, Orin had waited for Lex before putting them in. After all, Lex and Orin had incredible synergy.

Lex smiled, rolled up his sleeves, and teleported to the dwarf to help him complete the taverns.

Meanwhile, using Remote Presence, a projection of the Innkeeper appeared within his office. He made his way to his table without an ounce of urgency, and looked at all the Letters of Intent placed there neatly, waiting for him to read through.

To be honest, Lex was absolutely sure that if he tried to read so many letters, his brain would explode. Fortunately, all those who delivered the letter first talked with Wu Kong and Mary, sharing their actual intentions with them. Unless the letters contained a secret or a hidden message they did not wish to disclose easily, he already knew what all those Dao Lords wanted. More or less, they were all representatives of various forces, trying to understand, or maybe even recruit the Innkeeper.

Now, ordinarily, faced with over a dozen letters from Dao Lords, Lex would be just a teenie tiny bit stressed about how to respond. Ordinarily.

In this instance, though, Lex had just the solution he needed, in the form of the Innkeeper’s Reading glasses. That was the solution as to how to skim through them. As for how to respond, he had an idea for that too.

Innkeeper’s Reading Glasses

A fashionable accessory that blocks Dao aura while reading a document within the Inn territory. The glasses also censor confidential information from which the aura cannot be removed, preventing the Host from being inadvertently affected by reading something dangerous.

Putting on his glasses, Lex skimmed through the letters, noticing that many of them were just a simple request for a meeting, though a few of them did have content that the glasses censored.

Once he was done reading, he slipped all the letters into his top drawer, alongside the other Letters of Intent he had.

Then he pulled out the Midnight Inn Letterhead, the Innkeeper’s pen, and the Ink Well. All three of them were system features he’d received a long time ago.

The letterhead was considered official Midnight Inn stationary, and was used to carry the Innkeepers official word, and was thus naturally tinged with his aura.

The pen then further added the Innkeepers aura to every word written by it, while the Ink Well ensured that the Innkeepers intentions were conveyed perfectly, without any room for misconstruing or misunderstanding his intentions.

All of this was extremely official, which was good, because it was the first step in Lex’s scam- eh, no, in his entrepreneurial endeavors.

Slowly, and with the utmost grace, Lex began to leave random scribbles on the letterhead, as if practicing the most profound and exquisite calligraphy. Of course, no matter how many scribbles he left on the page, even if it was just one line, his message would be delivered perfectly, so the only thing that dictated how much he wrote was his whim.

In fact, ordinarily, Lex would write as little as possible. This time, however, he filled the whole page. Every line was written with a casual, yet deliberate hand, as if depicting his relaxed state of mind while conveying the message. It was important that the reader understand that for the Innkeeper, this was no big deal. It was something he decided to do on a whim, something casual.

Once he was done, he folded the letter perfectly, and sealed it within an envelope.

"Luthor," the Innkeeper spoke, his voice reaching the man’s ears even across the Inn. "Summon Jotun from the Origin realm. Tell him he must deliver a letter from me to Hiran."

The name was spoken directly and carelessly, yet when Luthor heard it, it felt like he had been struck by thunder. The power of a Dao Lord’s mere name was often enough to bring one to their knees, if it did not entirely destroy their being that is.

Since the Innkeeper spoke it casually, and Hiran held no malice towards the Innkeeper, there was no strong reaction, and so Luthor survived it. In fact, within the Origin realm, Hiran had already realized that the Innkeeper had spoken his name, yet he did not rush to the Inn for a meeting just yet.

Among Dao Lords, formality and ceremony were of the utmost importance. When dealing with beings so powerful, there could not be the slightest hint of carelessness or misunderstanding.

Luthor was busy with his own projects, but he did not hesitate at all to drop them. It had been a long time since the Innkeeper had addressed him by name. He had a feeling that... something big was about to happen.

He left the Inn, not wasting a single second.