The Innkeeper
chapter-1171

The meeting went just about as lex expected. The mercenary group was, as they stated, quite a popular one, even if they were expensive. As long as they were paid, they would do as asked.

Lex was extremely wealthy, with all the resources of the Midnight realm at his disposal but that didn't mean he would be wasteful with it. By handing over looting rights he could reduce the cost of hiring them, and besides that he intended to recoup all his investments by taking from his enemies.

The devil and angel were, by comparison, not the most influential nor the most powerful among their race. But according to Velma's research, they were the ones that Lex could most easily come to an agreement with.

With all the homework done for him, it was fairly simple to land the deal. Lex was now beginning to consider that instead of a programmer, he should have been a salesman.

There were more things to do. There were so many things to do. But at this point, Lex had to stop doing everything himself and relegate the rest to the other Inn workers.

His focus had to be on kicking off the Midnight Games, and making sure it was progressing smoothly before he himself entered the tourney.

There was a reason why Lex was not concerned about the timing of the tourney and the Midnight Games overlapping, and it was because the format of both was different, as well as the scale.

Despite the fact that the Midnight Games would be much larger than last time, and would probably include multiple galaxies, it was not on the level of the tourney. Lex had purposefully made sure that the games did not become too big, and that the marketing for it was extremely specific.

This was because even though the Inn would not be the venue for the games, it would attract a lot of attention. Though they had grown, the Midnight inn was not ready for billions if not trillions of guests.

The last few hours passed by in a blur as Lex prepared everything. Even though the Inn was not ready for the masses, there were already over 600 million guests inside the Inn at that moment.

Besides his few main cities, Lex built fifty more cities, spending 900 million MP just on infrastructure alone.

But though this seemed like immense work, the Inn level division made it much easier. This basically meant that, other than a few common areas, most places inside the Inn were divided based on the cultivation level they were focused towards.

Based on that, the cost of the living facilities and services cost different MP. Obviously, then, the performance was also scaled to that level.

This did not create hard divides segregating the various groups. Anyone could enter any other level if they wanted. But to go from one level to a level higher than one's own cultivation level required a small MP cost.

It was not a significant cost, but it was enough to deter excessive mixing and discourage roaming. This cost also scaled based on the level one was trying to enter.

There was no cost to go into a lower level, but the fact that each level had a significantly different spirit energy concentration in the environment, made it naturally less comfortable than the level they were supposed to be in.

These were simple tricks, but it was enough to keep the levels divided effectively, since no one was really missing out. Each level was designed to perfectly cater to the guests of that area, and included all main services.

As a result, even though Lex had 600 million guests, a little over 500 million of them were in the Golden core and under, and so did not require as much manpower. Of course, hundreds of millions of guests still did require workers.

Fortunately, Lex had come up with an organic way to get more workers than just simply getting more from the system. The first was the most obvious, which was to accept interested guests as workers.

But for that Lex would be very selective. Although the system itself filtered all the applicants, selecting only those worthy, Lex was not sure what the system's criteria was, or if it fit his own.

So far, despite having countless workers, he'd avoided internal conflict. That was because most workers were bought directly from the system, and usually had amenable personalities. But as more people joined, conflicts were inevitable. As such, he was very careful in who he selected.

One such example was the tribe of elves who worshiped technology. They had spent years inside the Inn as a tribe, the entire time just wanting to be able to work with the large spaceship.

Considering it was an entire tribe, and that he had studied their behavior over a large period of time, he allowed the tribe to apply for a job.

Similarly, guests who frequented the Inn and had somewhat of a reputation were allowed to apply to be workers.

But the majority of the workers came from the local populace of the realm, and the Midnight portal was a huge help in sifting through them and finding those worthy of the opportunity.

Even after fifteen years, most living in the realm did not know where the Midnight Inn was, and the memory of the Innkeeper's words had already begun to fade.

That is why the Midnight portal, or as most knew of it as only the online portal, appeared, most did not connect the two.

They simply marveled at its amazing capabilities, allowing them not only to communicate and trade across the realm, but send deliveries as well. Though, admittedly, the deliveries were being managed by certain users of the platform rather than Lex.

But hey, if the Shadow Talons found a useful and productive way to use their ability to travel the entire realm in secret, then who was he to stop them?

What truly mattered was that over the past few years, Lex had experimented with various social media platforms, and online tournaments, which is how he formed the outline of what he wanted the Midnight games to be like.

Most importantly, by delivering privacy to all the users, Lex allowed them to behave as they wished online, which allowed him to study who they were and what they were like, picking out only the best to deliver an opportunity for becoming a worker at the Inn.

After years of this, the population of workers at the Inn had grown by the millions, though of course all the training and management of the new staff was still managed by the older, more experienced workers.