The Innkeeper

Chapter 2012: 1%

Powell shook his head, and then sat down on a chair, unable to continue standing. If it were any other guest, he would have had to find a way to force himself to stay up right, but with Lex literally being one of their best, if not their actual best customer, not to mention friendly one, Powell could afford to be informal in front of him.

"Unfortunately, due to our current conditions, we’ve had to reevaluate our prices, as well as our stock of goods as well. Lower level, bulk orders are still things we can manage easily, but our stock of rarer, more valuable resources has almost been depleted. A lot of it was transferred to the other realm when we opened the new branch, and so we’ve lost all of it.

"Now, because of certain commitments we made, not only do we need to re-open a branch in that same realm soon, we need to recover as well. I’m telling you, war is not good for business if you don’t position yourself in advance to benefit from that war."

The more Powell spoke, the more depressed he seemed, while Lex was busy reading between the lines. From what he could tell, if the Emporium was a system, then Powell had probably accepted some kind of quest and the consequence of failing that quest was too severe for him to tolerate.

Lex was slightly torn. He could see two different ways in which he could approach this. If he were a ruthless capitalist he would...

But Powell was somewhat of a friend, so Lex didn’t want to be ruthless. He also couldn’t stand to lose out on a good deal...

"War is only good for war profiteers," Lex said, sounding absolutely disgusted, as if Jack wasn’t doing just that in his spare time. "It’s brought me a lot of issues as well, though not as great as yours."

Powell nodded.

"Yeah, I know. I heard your inn is harboring someone on the Culling Ledger - that must be a pain in the behind to deal with," said Powell, as he pulled out a list and showed Lex.

Lex, who was about to use the topic to allude towards a possible joint venture between the Inn and the emporium, paused. This... was something he hadn’t known about.

The Ledger he obviously knew about, since Jack was caught right in the middle of the war, and was relatively up to date with public knowledge. The Midnight Inn newsroom was also operating well, acquiring relatively sensitive information from across the universe - at least the parts it had access to. Then, he also had Obsidian members selling him information regularly, although since they were all low leveled cultivators, their information was relatively low levelled.

No, the thing Lex didn’t know about was having someone inside his Inn who was on the ledger.

He looked at the red flier, with a rectangular, golden border in the design of a thorned vine, and saw a bunch of names. He seemed to recognize none of the names or their descriptions until he came across a very surprising one.

Name: Lorelei Kinari

Rank: 771,889,123,111

Race Affiliation: Humanoid Alliance

Bounty: 0.25 Sanctuary Credits

Location: Midnight Inn

Details: The Midnight Inn is a Multi-Dao Lord level organisation with a strict adherence to self imposed laws. Interference from beings touching Dao will elicit a direct Dao level response, and is unadvised.

Bounty Status: Active

Lex blinked once, twice and then picked up the list to see if he was reading the paper correctly.

"Why the hell is her name up on this list?" he asked, finding the situation unbelievable.

"Do you want me to find out?" Powell asked. "I probably can, it’ll just take a bit of time. Although we’ve suffered in other areas, at least our information network within the Origin realm is still active and strong."

"Yes, please," said Lex, as he read through the other names in the list. Since this was a very small segment of the list, it only took him a single glance to go through and he noticed that there were actually a few names affiliated with the Humanoid Alliance on there. "While you’re at it, can you check if my name is on the list?"

"Yours isn’t," Powell confirmed. "Although your bounty has also risen drastically recently, it’s not yet high enough to be on the Ledger. I got a copy of that as well. I guessed you might be interested in it."

Powell slid a small, black notebook towards Lex.

"That’s your current bounty, as well as all the forces who contributed to the bounty - at least the ones I could look up on my own. There are some dangerous names in there."

Lex raised an eyebrow, but didn’t rush to open the notebook just yet. There was something terribly wrong.

Lex was a pro at provoking trouble, and had quite a few enemies, and yet even his name had not entered the Ledger yet, whereas Lorelei’s had. He wasn’t jealous of the attention she was getting - instead he was trying to understand what it was about her that made her such a huge target.

But then, he simply issued a quest to the Midnight newsroom and in Obsidian. He couldn’t be bothered to think about these things himself. It was better to relegate the task to others.

He had half a mind to send Lorelei into the Temple of Fasting. That would be the ideal place for her to hide, and it would allow her to grow as well. But he needed to understand more about the situation first.

"I really didn’t even know about that," said Lex, putting the flier away and turning his attention towards Powell. "The reason I was saying that I was having trouble because of the war was the massive influx of those trying to escape the war. We can handle it, but it’s just so much work, and it involves handling so many resources. Such a pain."

Powell was nodding along, as if he understood Lex’s pain, when suddenly he paused, as if he had been struck by an idea.

"I can imagine," Powell said, trying to sound sympathetic. "Just so that I have an idea, how many people would you say that is?"

Lex shrugged.

"It’s not like I can get live intel on what’s happening inside the Inn wherever I am. But if I had to guess, I’d say that right now we have about 600 billion guests, with no signs of the number of guests decreasing. At this rate, it’s only a matter of months, if not weeks before we hit a trillion guests."

Literally, though, the only reason the Inn was even able to cater to so many guests was because of how massive the Midnight Realm was, and then how big the Inn’s territory within that realm was, allowing them to have plenty of land and resources to use. The systems automation of many tasks also provided a tremendous amount of help.

"Say, have you ever considered..."

"Through the Guild room," Lex answered directly. "Many people set up their businesses inside the Inn through the Guild room. The Inn takes a fixed 1% of revenue generated through the Inn, and as long as you follow the rules, you’ll have no problems."

Powell was stunned. Why... why didn’t he know about this? If he had known sooner, wouldn’t he have tried to break into that market sooner?

Then again, the main Powell was only a Celestial Immortal, so he had to be careful in his endeavors.

"Here, this is from me, to you," said Lex, handing Powell a closed box. "Inside you can find a key to the Midnight Inn. You can explore it in your own time whenever you want. But now I think it’s time we talk about some business. With your supply lines compromised, will you be able to provide me with high value resources? I need to power... let’s say a couple of really energy intensive items. One designed for peak Celestial use, and one designed for peak Heaven Immortals. They consume a lot of energy, so I need an energy source of the highest order."

Powell broke free from his stupor, and looked at Lex like he was an angel that descended from heaven! Well, technically Lex had descended from Arch-Heaven, and he did control divine energy, so that description could be considered accurate.

"Our supply lines aren’t compromised, it’ll just take us a bit longer to get our hands on things than usual. A high level power source fit for peak Celestials will take some months to get our hands on, but I have the perfect thing in mind. As for a Heaven Immortal treasure, I can have the items ready for you in two weeks tops!"

Internally, Lex commented that it wouldn’t be quick enough, but he didn’t let his disappointment show. After all, from now on, things will be much easier. It was likely that henceforth, he’d be able to pay Powell in MP or maybe even MT! Regardless, he had a second option in mind for where to acquire resources from.

Lex chatted with Powell for a bit longer before departing.

The sleep deprived, even wounded storekeeper waited till Lex left to open the box Lex had handed him. Oddly enough, besides a golden key, there was a black key inside the box as well.