The Innkeeper
chapter-290-30041322

The burden the Inn was about to be placed under was immense. The most guests it had had at its peak was a few tens of thousands. Going from that to a few million was a massive jump, and the Inn lacked the infrastructure to manage such demand. A lot of temporary solutions would be available in the event management panel, but the foundation of the Inn itself would also require an upgrade.

First things first, Lex had to upgrade his supply for spiritual food, which would require an upgrade of the greenhouse. Speaking of which, it had been many months now since the greenhouse had been completely overhauled, and the gardeners 'art' was really beginning to show.

The way the plants grow, the way the bushes create outlines, the shading of the various kinds of grass as well as the growing vegetables, all came together to form an image of Little Blue when seen from above. But even so, the image was not fully formed. Suddenly, Lex felt like he really had been wasting the gardener's talents.

After thinking on it for a moment, Lex bought 10 more permanent workers and put the gardener incharge of them. Instead of taking care of the greenhouse, Lex let him take care of the greenery around the Midnight Manor. Having him take care of the entire Inn would require too many workers.

The workers cost him 35,000 MP and setting aside their salary for the next three months cost him another 16,000 MP. Being given a job where he only needed to care for the aesthetics and presentation dramatically improved the gardeners mood.

After that, Lex spent another 100,000 MP on increasing the size of the greenhouse by 10 acres. The turtle would remain in charge of growing food and now, without the gardener focusing on using the plants to supplement his art, he would be able to focus on maximum sustainable productivity.

Now, he turned his attention to the Inn. Quite frankly, with the current size of the Inn, it was impossible to fit several million people here, let alone tens of millions, without severely crowding the entire place.

He turned his attention to Main street. As much as he wanted to avoid this initially, it was inevitable. He created a street branching off, henceforth known as Avalon street for that was the first building in it, and created 4 more high rises of similar size. Since the Avalon had cost him 300,000 MP, adding 4 more took up 1.2 million MP.

He created more branches off Main street, and added another Battle tower, full of Training rooms. On another street, he created a temple similar to the Blue Mosque in design, and filled it with Meditation rooms. He had to create several more restaurants as well, and overall expanded Main street several times its size. All of these expenses took up another 200,000 MP, and hiring all the relevant staff, which was about another 100 workers, cost him a devastating 510,000 MP which included hiring them, giving them living quarters and setting aside their pay for the next three months.

He spent another 2 million MP on increasing the size of the Inn by another 200 acres, and filled the area with countless small, lone cabins as well as smaller settlements. Previously, the biggest rental room he could build was a courtyard, which had 4 individual rooms.

Now, taking advantage of his increased authority, he could also build small houses, large houses, mansions and a small village! These were not the houses and villages Lex built on his own, but rather rental units backed by the system, meaning they could only be rented by a single person or group.

The small house charged 600 MP a night, and had five bedrooms, each with their own restroom, a lounge, a living room, a small store room and a kitchen.

The large house charged 2000 MP a night, and had eight bedrooms,a lounge, two living rooms, an empty basement, a large kitchen, a single meditation room and a small swimming pool. Though the meditation room was a part of the house, to use it would cost its usual daily fee of 100 MP a day.

A mansion... was about half the size of the Midnight Manor, had 12 rooms, a conference room, a lounge, a couple of living rooms, a basement, 2 kitchens, 3 meditation rooms, 3 training rooms, 1 recovery room, a massive swimming pool, a massive backyard and a dedicated butler. Lex decided to keep the rent for the mansion at 5000 MP a night. It need not be said that the mansion, as well as the houses, afforded total privacy and no one would be able to peek in, even if you were in the backyard.

The small village consisted of 5 courtyards, 3 small houses, 2 large houses and a single mansion, its own restaurant, its own team of dedicated workers, a massive open ground and a small monument in the center of the village. Since Lex could customize the monument, he decided to shape it after the Galactic Sovereign turtle. Again, it needed to be mentioned that, despite its size and capacity, this village could not be rented by the house or courtyard, but had to be rented collectively by a person or group. Lex decided to set the rent of the small village at 15,000 MP a night.

This was technically, not actually the limit of what he could build, as there were still options after a small village, but at this point they were getting too expensive for him to place as he still needed to save MP for the actual event management itself. In the end, he ended up spending 500,000 MP on placing the various rooms, courtyards, houses and villages.

This left him with 2,750,000 MP remaining. To be honest, he had not even come close to making enough arrangements for dealing with millions of people, but that would have to wait for when he started earning money from this event. Since the Inn was a part in organizing the event as well, instead of only hosting it, all further payments for the event that Brandon was supposed to make were deferred and instead, a percentage of the income generated from the event itself would go towards the Inn.

To be clear, this did not count any profit the Inn made by renting out rooms or giving out services. Only the income generated from aspects directly related to the event would count as earnings from the event, and Mary had negotiated a hefty 80% share in the Inns favor for the income. In her words, she had been very generous even leaving them with 20% of the profits.

Whether it was generous or not, when Lex saw the various ways in which they expected to earn from the event he was extremely satisfied.

He spent another 200,000 MP on enlarging the venue. If this was a permanent building, it would cost much more, but since it was only temporary, this was more than enough to enlarge the building enough to seat 500,000 people. He could continue to enlarge the building, but after a certain point it just became ridiculous to expand further. He told Mary to think of ways in which they could comfortably seat more people.

Then, he spent 1,500,000 MP on event security! The last time, he had spent 450,000 MP and had gotten 10 Earth Immortals guards and a few hundred below that level. This time, he was looking forward to what he got.

Still, Mary told him not to expect too much. The reason his bodyguard has been so powerful last time was because he had spent all that money on one individual. Since this time the amount was spread amongst various guards, they likely wouldn't be at that level.

As it turned out, she was right. 2000 Golden Core peak guards, 200 Nascent peak guards, 30 Peak Earth Immortals guards, and 1 guard at the realm above Earth Immortal were summoned from a flash of golden light. Lex found it interesting that even with his increased authority, he could not see above the Earth immortal realm. Yet what he found even more interesting was that he recognized many of these guards!

They were the same ones he had summoned last time during the Midnight Games. It seemed like the system was getting these guards from a specific place. That was something Lex needed to remember, for it was another clue into understanding the system and how it worked. It was also important to note that, up until Earth Immortal, all guards were humans, but the guard above it was not.

As for the species of the strongest guard? With brown scales as smooth as polished metal covering its reptilian body, four wings that spanned a hundred feet (30 meters) each, claws that could rip through a moon and a maw as rugged as it was malevolent, Lex did not even need to scan to recognize a dragon. The first he had ever seen.