The Innkeeper
chapter-86

Externally Lex looked as calm as still water, as immovable as a mountain. Internally he was screaming like a diehard fan of a sports team that had their first win in years! Alexander had literally bought EVERY Zombie core they had in the shop! He thought it would take months for him to sell all of them, and his income would be spread out. Who knew that happiness came like a tidal wave and swept him off his feet!

Each Tier 1 Zombie core was for 200MP, Tier 2 Zombie core for 500MP, Tier 3 Zombie core for 1500MP and Tier 4 Zombie core for 5000MP! When Alexander bought them all, he spent a total of 2,686,000MP! That's two million six hundred and eighty thousand Midnight Points! That, combined with the puny 2026MP Lex already had, he now had a total of 2,688,026MP!

The euphoria he was feeling was similar to when he first sold his video game and suddenly became rich. Only this time, it was much greater!

He was struggling to contain himself. He needed to spend some MP to relieve some of his excitement, but this stupid John person was taking too long in designing his technique! Lex cursed him a hundred times in his head, then started looking through the Midnight Market for things to buy. Later, when he calmed down, he would spend his newly earned MP more strategically, but for now he must taste the lifestyle of a nouveau riche!

The first thing he ended up doing was buy an A.I. dedicated to the Recovery room. The name of the new staff member was Nurse Jubilation. Lex completely did not name her that because it was the first synonym that came up based on the name of another very famous and beloved nurse (if you know, you know). What else should he buy?

After a moment of contemplation, he decided to upgrade the Recovery room again for a whopping 20,000MP. This was because he was sick of keeping Marlo here while having to pay his medical fees, and wanted him to recover already. He had quite conveniently forgotten that Marlo was the one who procured those Zombie Cores for him.

After a couple big expenditures Lex felt much better, but he needed to vent some more. He directly bought the permanent universal translator for 100,000MP! But that was not enough, just a little more careless shopping before he should rein himself in. But what should he buy? He looked at Gerard, who was standing dutifully on the side, and an idea occurred to him. He used to treat his A.I. staff like robots, but it seemed to him that they were very lifelike and had personalities. In that case, he hadn't been really treating them well and had them working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He should do something about that. With a cost of 1500MP per room, he bought 4 employee residences for his A.I. staff. There was no physical manifestation this time, they were wholly in a separate space but their residences had windows that allowed them to see the Inn as if from inside the manor. The A.I. would be able to directly teleport there when they wished.

With that Lex breathed a sigh of relief as he felt much better. After this he would continue to spend MP, but in a planned manner to systematically improve the Inn. He turned his attention back to John who still seemed to be working, but it was only fair. He couldn't expect him to rush such a thing.

He started planning his expansion in his mind as he stood there silently, not paying attention at all to what was happening right in front of him. Around an hour later, John finally completed his task. He quickly explained the technique to Vera, who implemented it directly. It was not an attack or something visually impressive. Instead, Lex suddenly felt Vera's sense of existence diminish. In fact, if he didn't have the Host Attire to tune him into everything and everyone at the Inn, he would directly ignore the girl standing right in front of her. Even her mother, who had been paying close attention to her, started looking elsewhere as if she completely forgot about her daughter at all. Only John and Lex managed to keep looking at her directly.

"It's wonderful," she exclaimed as she stopped using her technique. Although she had a bombastic personality, she was not ignorant. She knew how to hide herself, and even when she secretly roamed the Earth and played pranks on various cultivators, she made sure to hide her identity. She knew better than anyone else the kind of trouble her family had gotten in because of her identity, so she wanted to make sure that no one would be able to discover her secrets again. It was also due to that desire that she asked for a technique to help her side, but instead of a technique that would aid her in evasion or erasing her trace, John created a technique to hide her sense of existence.

"Very well then John, you passed the test. Come with me, I will show you where you will be working. Vera, Kristine, I would like to thank you for your participation. Do stick around for a while, I'm preparing a little something that I think you would be interested in."

The mother and daughter assured the Innkeeper that they would not leave before they saw what the Innkeeper had to show them.

He led John to the street with the Training room and barbershop, and directly spent 5000MP to create a building that had a ground plus one floor, similar to the barber shop. The front of the building was undecorated for now, but the interior was very straight forward. The entrance was a small waiting room with a reception and door that led to the back. The room at the back consisted of a few different chairs and sofas, including a reclining sofa he imagined psychologists had in their offices. This was for the customers to sit and relax while they communicated the technique they wanted and then waited for John to finish. There was also another door that led to a staircase that went to the first floor which would serve as John's residence. This was not like employee residences that were in separate spaces, but was an actual room.

"This will be your shop while you work here," Lex said, completely ignoring everyone's wonder at him manifesting a building with a wave of your hand. "You can live on the top floor. You can charge customers according to their cultivation levels as I'm sure it's tougher to create a technique for higher cultivations. This is Doe," Lex said, purchasing another A.I. he named Doe. "He will carry out the transactions with your customers as well as pay you your share of the fee, so you don't need to worry about any of that. Think of a name for your shop and let Doe know. I've given him authority to create your banner directly in front."

With that said, the impatient Lex directly disappeared leaving John and Doe to get acquainted with one another. Lex couldn't wait to get started on his expansion plan, but first he was going to prepare his event. He wanted to let all his guests know of its details before anyone left so he could get maximum participation. But he didn't really have a place to host events and it didn't feel right to create an auditorium or something. The location for his event had to be a little grander than that.

He went into the event manager panel and started exploring his options. Other than the venue he also wanted to see what kind of events he could host. He tried asking Mary for advice on this, but she told him directly that he needed to complete this quest on his own. Eventually, he decided on everything and appeared behind the manor. Visualizing what he wanted, he summoned a giant building with a wave of his hand. Well, to be more accurate he summoned a coliseum. He was renting this building from the event management panel as buying such a massive building would cost him a lot of MP that he didn't want to spend right now. But he would not be embarrassed if he held events in such a venue, and it directly suited his taste.

A few guests immediately noticed the giant addition to the Inn - a building that dwarfed the manor in front of it was hard to miss. Lex made sure one more time if everything was in order, confirmed his plan of action one more time, then made an announcement directly in the mind of all of his guests.

"Dear guests, please make your way to the coliseum in one hours time. The Midnight Inn is preparing a special event, and I'd like all of you to be the first to know the details."