The Innkeeper

Chapter 2484: Autumn Rain

Lex read through these notifications. There were quite a few more, but they were all unimportant. They were notifications alerting him that dormancy had ended, that prolonged loss of contact between a host and system can cause the system to treat the host as if dead and start afresh, looking for a new host, and so on.

But the duration for that loss of contact to trigger a reset was around one Dao cycle, which is why Lex didn’t take it seriously at all.

There were too many notifications. Thousands of them, most of them old ones warning him about his system absorbing Primordial energy. Strangely, no such notifications showed up lately even though he allowed the system to retain 30% Primordial energy. Later, when he was done with the panel, he would lower that to 10% just to be safe.

While scrolling through the notifications, though, he eventually found two more worthy of notice.

New Notification: System functionality up to 97%! Unlocked 2 rewards!

New Notification: System functionality crossed 81%! The Law management panel is now operational!

More rewards. Good. The Law management panel was also interesting, but rewards took priority.

Lex first cashed in the two rewards he got for improving his systems functionality. Although his expectations for it were not high, it couldn’t hurt.

Bell of the Ball

An item that can be used during Inn events, it creates a dancefloor which improves the dancing skills of anyone who dances on it by 10,000% and makes it much easier to permanently improve dancing skills. If two guests fall in love with each other after meeting each other for the first time while dancing on the dance floor, the bell will ring, causing a random surprise celebration.

Rezil Dojo

A dojo where guests can be hired as instructors. While instructing others on any specific technique or art, the instructor’s insight into the specific technique or art increases between 50 - 2000%!

Lex had to admit, while neither of the rewards were as shocking as some of his previous rewards, with examples like the Back of Atlas or Regal Embrace, they brought real value to his Inn.

Between all that had been happening he had no time to focus on the Inn. It felt like he had only focused on the Inn or really developed it himself in the early days, whereas lately he was just running around putting out fires, getting revenge and rescuing kidnapped members of the Inn.

So now, getting his hands on two rewards that were features which could improve the experience of guests staying at the Inn, he wasn’t actually disappointed. Rather than getting another reward that couldn’t keep up with his rapid pace of development, this was more useful.

Lex immediately deployed both. Since these were unique, and there could only be one of them across the Inn, he placed both of them in different parts of the Inn.

Then Lex activated the opportunity to redeem his Life rank reward. Basically, back when he hosted the tea party, the rewards he was owed were so high level that the system could not give them all to him at that time.

Since the reward was just another Life rank opportunity, he didn’t know why he couldn’t just pick between the options given to him last time, but he wasn’t complaining. In truth, he also didn’t want to pick more than one of the options given to him because they all felt like they would bring him great trouble.

Yet he was not ready for what he saw when he activated the opportunity this time.

Just like last time, he was given the option to select his reward from a list of items. The problem was... that there was only one item on that list!

Autumn Rain

A devastatingly potent healing elixir with an area of effect which can cure anything besides death in beings below Dao level within the specific area. At the Dao level, Autumn Rain holds the potential to partially heal a fractured Major Dao, or entirely heal a fractured Minor Dao. Effectiveness of Unique Dao injuries cannot be quantified, and depends on the complexity of the Dao. Not effective above the Dao realm.

It can also heal ruptured realm laws in damaged Major realms within the area of effect,

Lex... felt complicated. Autumn Rain was amazing. In fact, this was exactly the kind of healing item that would be perfect to have on him at all times, considering the kind of problems he got into.

But... it was a one-time use item. Compared to things like the back of Atlas...

Lex sighed, and selected the item, pushing away any emotions related to regret. This was an incredible item to have because it was obvious that he couldn’t rely on his phoenix abilities to save him. He should just be grateful that he got something like this. He couldn’t always expect to find a system quest reward that would conveniently resolve whatever issue he was facing at the moment.

Moreover, Lex suspected that he did not fully comprehend how amazing this item actually was because he had no context for how easy or difficult it was to heal Dao fractures or wounds.

The elixir appeared in his hand, in the shape of an orb within which a kind of rain was trapped. He felt like the way to use it would be to shatter the orb. Once he did that, the rain would be released from its prison and heal whoever or whatever it touched.

He put the orb away - within his own Sovereign realm, to make sure he didn’t accidentally lose it - then made sure to click no on doing Sanctum Quests. He had no idea what they were, and he had no interest in finding out - at least not before this unusual period in the universe ends.

Lex opened his Midnight Realm Management Panel and began to look through it, specifically searching for barriers or means that could hide his realm. To be clear, he was also searching other parts of his panel for a solution - for example a really powerful formation. But while there were many such options available - options that could hide the Inn from Dao Lord detection, that was about it.

Neither the Realm Management Panel, nor the other options across the system interface had any option available to him that directly hid the realm, or his Inn from the universe’s detection. Even the ones that did hide the realm as much as possible were too expensive for him to afford. The worst part wasn’t that they were expensive, but that they were ineffective for his purpose despite being expensive!

His gaze could not help but fall on the quest he’d gotten. The very fact that the system had so blatantly exposed the existence of other systems and given out a quest with such an incredible reward easily revealed just how difficult this task would be.

Yet Lex was not demoralised by the first failure. He had witnessed the impossible happen. He had seen, with his own eyes, how Eclipse manipulated two beings above the Dao Lord realm, and how she literally turned back time to save a single person.

The one constant that had always existed since he stepped onto the path of cultivation was to not mess with time, and yet she held the universe hostage for countless years and multiple ages just so she could do that. After all, if the universe matured, it would become a lot harder to do just that.

Thus, Lex did not believe for an instant that this task was impossible. He just realized that it would be harder than he anticipated.

Since there was no direct option to hide the realm from universal detection, he would aim for a mutation. He would aim to create multiple changes that would synergize with each other to have the same effect. While he himself was not really an expert in things related to realm nurturing, he happened to have an incredible journal on hand which could teach him about it.

Lex looked towards taro’s journal and was about to head towards it when he got another system notification.

Quest Update: First method for marked systems to avoid detection submitted. Reward for subsequent quest completion has been set to Spirit rank opportunity token.

Lex was surprised, and not in a bad way. If someone else found a way to hide systems, maybe his own system would give him a way to copy that method. Yet no more notifications came, nor was there any update in his system interface for available options.

Either the method submitted could not be easily replicated, or the systems never had any intention of disseminating the methods to begin with, instead using them to protect the system network hub most likely.

Lex pursed his lips and quickly jumped towards Taro’s journal. Instead of hoping that someone else would come and save him, it would be best to come up with a way to save himself.