The Innkeeper

Chapter 2511: Precious loot

Lex decided to address the notifications in order. First was the miniscule amount of improvement the S rank system gave his own. That was a very small improvement and, unfortunately, one that Lex had predicted.

His system was incredibly close to being repaired completely, reverting it to the Divine rank. Compared to that, an S rank system was around three ranks below it! The fact that it could repair even 0.8% of the system was a pretty good deal. Even that 0.8% came mostly from the actual hardware of the system, which his own system absorbed to use for itself.

In the future, if he wanted to push his system to 100%, it would require some immense contributions on his part. The closer it became to being repaired, the harder it would get to actually do so.

The second notification was the addition of a new service called Seasonal Credit. Lex read through the details of the service to get his bearings regarding it to figure out what it was.

From the day it started, the Midnight Inn always took money upfront for any and all services, so it made sense that it wasn’t easy to make it start accepting credit.

Basically, there were a lot of restrictions regarding credit, and they weren’t just linked to privilege level. Instead, only in certain circumstances for certain services could credit be used. For example, no credit could be used for betting or gambling, nor could it be used to pay for rooms.

Instead, during special events that fit the criteria, certain guests would be allowed to use credit for services related to that event alone. The system was incredibly thorough in ensuring that the credit could not be misused, and Lex actually admired it for that.

On Lex’s end, there was no restriction. He could make every event support credit as long as he could fulfil its requirements.

In terms of customer experience, Lex wasn’t yet sure how this would contribute to his Inn. In truth, he had only wanted credit because he wanted to use it to track some people. Sure, he couldn’t forcefully add debt to someone like Belle, who had never visited the Inn to begin with. But if he had been able to establish credit, his plan was to charge them in advance for a service, like taking a booking, and make the payment using credit.

However, due to the immensely long and comprehensive arrangement of his system, the way in which the credit could be used was incredibly safe and reliable - just what he’d expect from the Midnight Inn. In short, he couldn’t use that as a loophole. He missed when his system was still mostly broken and repeatedly did dumb stuff.

The next notification addressed what to do if the credit used could not be paid off so straightforwardly. This ability was actually quite scary, depending on how heavy the debt was. Lex was actually impressed that the system was willing to tolerate anything less than perfect praise in terms of reputation.

If the debt hit the highest limit levels, which was upwards of 100 million MP, and the system allowed for indentured labor! Basically, that ’guest’ would no longer be classified as a guest, and would have to work off his debt. There were no restrictions on the type of work such a person could be made to do, as long as it was within Inn territory, didn’t break any Inn rules, and didn’t actually end up killing him.

Lower levels of debt had multiple ways in which it could be financed. All in all, it was a somewhat useful couple of services.

It was important to note that someone who took on a debt would not be allowed to leave the Inn without placing some kind of collateral. That included, but was not limited to, parents, siblings, spouse, friends, personal treasures, land deeds recognized by a power of a certain ability and so on.

Now that the more straightforward notifications were dealt with, Lex looked at the notification about the Murderer feature. He had to admit, he was curious what it could be about. He was half certain it had to do with Daekol, and that in itself was quite exciting.

Lex was quite disappointed when he figured out that he wouldn’t be able to use the Sovereign’s body as fertilizer. He had almost thought that Daekol had somehow escaped him. But no, he later confirmed that the Sovereign was pretty much dead, his body most likely thoroughly destroyed. If that wasn’t the case, he never would have relied on the puppet to escape.

He should have known when to quit - at least that way his body would have been preserved for Lex to make use of later. He was such an insensitive opponent.

Without waiting any further, he manually activated the Murderer feature and was stunned by what he saw.

Mush. He saw mush, and that shocked Lex. After all, it wasn’t mush itself that shocked Lex, but what that mush used to be. It used to be Daekol!

The system had been dormant - cut off from Lex - but it seemed like some features were probably running in the background because there was no other explanation for why the feature Murderer had Daekol’s body... or, as it should now be called, Daekol-mush.

He had only removed the blockage between himself and the system after his Primordial Dao tribulation, while searching for any signs of Daekol. He then killed Daekol afterwards. So how did his system - more specifically, the Murderer feature - get Daekol’s body?

After all, Lex technically killed him after that.

That question bugged him quite a bit, so Lex actually ignored the Sovereign mush and began to try to find the answer. He did that by studying the system, but also his own body, as well as by trying to divine an answer.

It turned out... the answer was no big secret at all. He didn’t even need to put in any extra effort, simply investigating his own body and soul gave him the answer. Daekol had purified Lex’s body, cleaning it of all sorts of curses and abnormalities, while slowly exposing Lex’s system to Daekol’s own body’s aura so that it would not try to reject him when he ultimately controlled it via Lex’s body.

That had formed a connection that hadn’t dissipated so easily, after all the system was actively searching for its host, so it recorded all aura it was exposed to. Thus, when the body was turned to mush, and Daekol escaped it, the system automatically took it in as a part of its regular function since Daekol was no longer there to resist.

In a way... Daekol had gone out of his way to ensure that Lex didn’t miss out on this precious loot.