The Innkeeper

Lex walked to the young lady who always seemed to be surrounded by animals. Currently Helen had a rabbit in her lap, a pigeon on her shoulder and several peacocks surrounding her. Her affinity with animals was remarkably high.

“I see you are enjoying the company of our new residents,” Lex said with a smile. “I was told you had a request, what may I do for you?”

Helen, who was sitting on the grass, looked up at the mysterious Innkeeper. Although her mood had been down lately, the Innkeeper somehow always had a warm and welcoming feeling around him. Just his presence was so relaxing. ‘He would make a good body pillow,’ she thought to herself, before turning her attention to the matter at hand.

“It’s an unusual request, I hope you don’t mind,” she warned hesitantly.

“Not at all. Please, let me know what’s on your mind and I’ll see what I can do about it.”

“I noticed one of your new guests earlier, and recognized him – William Bentham, CEO of Bentham corp. I’m sure there is no reason he would recognize me, but I was worried that you may have other guests who might recognize me in the future, which might cause some problems. Is there any way for you to hide my identity? If not, can you give me a mask? I don’t want to spend my time hiding in my room.”_.

This was an unusual request, but made Lex realize that this was another aspect of the Inn he had not anticipated. In the future, guests may come to the Inn to hide from their enemies in which case it would be important to hide their identities. Something lille wearing a mask would not fool everyone since not everyone could have the ‘Clark Kent effect’, he needed a better solution.

“I suggest you tell her to wait a bit. Once you unlock the Inn prestige for guests, hiding their identities will naturally be a perk for them,” said Mary, who was still dressed in her Taekwondo uniform.

“Your uniform looks nice,” he commented mentally, before looking towards Helen and saying, “I am working on something for that. It should be available for you by tomorrow. Until then I can ask Velma to bring you a mask, or you can rest in your room.”

“Thank you,” Helen responded.

After that Lex teleported to his room and looked at his system. Only a few days were left till the end of his contract with Velma and Gerard. He wanted to wait as long as he could before he changed their status to permanent, but at this point he guessed it would be better to just change it lest he miss the deadline by accident. Paying a hefty 4000 MP, Lex changed their status to permanent, leaving him with only 3316MP. He was once again feeling poor.

The Innkeeper let out a sigh before he sat cross legged on his bed and started trying to meditate. He had never done it before and had no idea how to successfully meditate, and to be honest didn’t really want to try either. But he still had to do it. He wanted to upgrade his cultivation as quickly as possible, and with his life on the line he had to be a little more disciplined.

While Lex was learning the art of meditation, Will finally exited the trial. It was fair to say he had failed spectacularly. Till the end of the trial he did not learn anything about the true purpose behind the ball at all. He did however learn a lot about the different ways in which people behave. When up against an ordinary man, it was easy to read what he was thinking or feeling simply from his facial expressions and body language. Against the cream of the crop of an entire nation, however, it was much harder. They had a mastery over their body and expressions, and only showed what they wanted the other to see.

They could be smiling and laughing, but cursing you on the inside and you would never know. In fact, Will encountered a particular lady who took up most of his time in the trial. He was ashamed to admit that he had ended up spending a good amount of time flirting with the woman. The interesting thing was, when confronted or even insulted, the woman’s impression of Will increased. Of course, not all insults improved her impression, and some just plain made her mad. But within a certain boundary the more aggressive Will was the more she appreciated him internally, but externally no one could tell. He also met a rather interesting fellow who, without letting Will realize, got Will to disclose a few of his own secrets – or rather the secrets of the character he was playing. When Will realized what was happening he was quite shook. It then dawned on him that while he was trying to gauge others, others were doing the same to him – perhaps with even a greater mastery than himself. It was an important lesson.

All in all, even though Will failed the trial, he found the experience very insightful. He would take some time to digest everything he had learnt and then return. With that done, he left for Earth. He was about to be a very busy man once again, and he could feel the excitement coursing through his veins.

*****

Alexander got off a space shuttle and onto the Red planet. He did not need a space suit as the atmosphere on Mars had been completely altered using arrays and technology to make it suitable for human habitation. His travel time from Earth to Mars was one of the quickest ever recorded, one because the two planets happened to be near each other in their orbit, and two because he had used hundreds of spirit stones to speed up his flight. He was normally not impatient, but this matter was important.

“Alexander, welcome home,” said a well dressed man who approached him with a smile. His name was Percy, and was one of Alexander’s personal assistants. “News about you is still suppressed so this is the only welcoming committee for you this time around, I’m afraid.”

“It doesn’t matter. Take me home directly, I need to meet with my father.”

“Of course,” replied Percy, and led him to his car.

Alexander was silent all the way home, something unusual Percy thought, but then this was an unusual time. Percy of course did not know that Alexander had anticipated the assassination attempt, so he thought the young man was in a bad mood because of it.

His home was surprisingly not a large mansion, but was a small, single story building surrounded by a vast forest. The Morrison family home was a very private building, and they almost never received guests. Other than a few, very old and trustworthy staff members, everyone in the building was a Morrison.

The first thing Alexander did when he got home was meet his mother, to assure her that he was unhurt from the recent incident, before quickly entering his fathers study room. Two young men who bore a strong resemblance to Alexander were sitting in the room chatting when he arrived. If anyone saw the three of them together they would assume they were brothers, but no they were son, father and grandfather. Alexander’s father and grandfather both had a very high cultivation level, which drastically slowed down their aging process.

“Ah my dear Alexander, you’ve grown so much since I last saw you. Give your grandfather a hug.” Alexander quickly and unceremoniously rejected his grandfather. Who the hell was he kidding? His grandfather was at the peak of Golden Core in body cultivation, the last time Alexander hugged him he broke a few ribs.

“I see you’ve gotten a new tattoo,” Alexander said, looking at the crow on his grandfather’s neck. Unlike the other two, Alexander’s grandfather was covered in tattoos from head to toe. They came in every shape and size you could imagine. Alexander remembered that once when he was very young he played a game of tictactoe with his grandfather on one of his biceps using an ink gun. The evidence of that game was still there.

“Don’t encourage him,” said Rorick, Alexander’s father. “Your grandmother has introduced the old man to anime. You don’t know how much effort it took me to stop him from getting a ninjutsu tattooed on himself. Unfortunately, I was not able to stop him from altering some of the family spirit techniques.”

Alexander’s grandfather, Brandon, grinned and activated a technique to show him when Rorick was referring to. Alexander immediately dismissed the chain made of fire that appeared in Brandon’s hand, his focus was on the golden, glowing aura around his grandfather as well as his suddenly spiked hair. He was both impressed and embarrassed.

Alexander shook his head in defeat and quickly took out the Tier 4 Zombie core and threw it towards his grandfather. He knew that unless he intervened, the two would keep antagonizing each other. His grandparents were both very free spirited people. They wore their hearts on their sleeve, weren’t afraid to show exactly how they felt and did exactly what they wanted. His parents were the exact opposite – they were extremely formal and disciplined, and paid great attention to propriety. Other than when they talked about cultivation, they never got along with each other – mostly because it was his grandfather’s passion to irritate his father.

When Brandon held the zombie core his casual smile completely disappeared, and he looked at the item in his hand with doubtful eyes.

“I think you should listen to what happened on Earth. This will affect all our plans.”

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