The Innkeeper

Chapter 1406  New upper management

The meeting went longer than just a few minutes. There was more to discuss than just making shops available, and sending some guests into the dungeons.

Lex made some plans of his own, but consulted Hera who had proven herself a master of management and logistics in the past few years. In truth, she had numerous ideas about how to expand the Inns business, but as the Inn wasn't a regular business, she had no idea who to approach, and how to implement changes.

As soon as she said that, Lex almost went ahead and told her that he would take care of things, but he hesitated. Lately, he was entering the limelight more and more often, and was beginning to take up a lot of the Inns responsibility.

So far, that was not too suspicious, because Gerard and Velma also wielded massive amounts of authority within the Inn, not to mention Luthor. But the false identities he had once prepared for himself to hide the truth had all been revealed, and now it was up to him to take new precautions.

For the first time, Lex very seriously considered that it was about time he worked on Mary's projection capabilities. He was sure that creating a real body for her, strong enough to rival the real strength of a Celestial if not surpass it, would take countless years.

Truthfully, it might take centuries or even many millenia. That is why, at least making her projection visible to guests would alleviate suspicion from him. He could make her the scapegoat, and have her start giving commands and make her a point of contact in case the workers needed to reach the Innkeeper but couldn't.

Actually, the workers already knew about Mary. But the extent of their knowledge of her was extremely limited, since she did not interact with others too often.

With that plan decided, Lex began his preliminary work to set Mary up as a second in command at the Inn by telling Hera that he would consult Mary over the changes she wanted to implement.

Naturally, Lex was in contact with her the entire time with his mind, so when Mary appeared in front of them, she responded exactly as Lex requested of her.

Thus began the planning for how to improve the Inns earning capabilities in a sustainable way. Their plans went not just one or two decades into the future, but thousands or even tens of thousands of years into the future.

After all, Hera had been silently working on her plan for a while. Even though she had not experienced it personally yet, she comprehended that she would likely become an immortal, and so she planned accordingly.

The first thing she wanted to utilize was the Inns' access to numerous realms. If, instead of using the Midnight Realms own resources, but the Inn workers went into other realms and mined or farmed their resources and bring them back to the Inn, to sell or use or process, not only would it not burden the realm, it would actually increase the materials in the realm over the years.

Of course, at its current scale the Inn could not use up all the materials inside the Midnight Inn even in the next million years. But who said that the Inns scale would never change? Even if the Inn continued to grow, why put a burden on it to begin with? Of course, they could make use of the special materials of the Midnight Realm themselves when they needed to, but it should not be a primary focus.

Just like it was profitable to sell resources from one portion of a realm to another where they were scarce, it would be even more profitable to sell resources from one realm to another! The taverns, if they increased, could become key points of trade between the realms.

Hera also wanted to officially partner up with, or at least hire some of the corporations within the Origin realm to help the Midnight Inn overcome a few hurdles that they had.

For example, the Inns staff was traveling through the Origin realm freely, but they either had to use Lex's personal space ships, or hire local transport. Why shouldn't the Inn have its own fleets?

Lex could even buy a few ships from the system interface directly, but it would not be cost effective to use MP that way. Exchanging actual, physical resources would be better since Lex currently had a huge requirement for MP.

At its current growth rate, with the Inn workers training in the Temple of Fasting, with Lex growing stronger, it would only be a matter of time before he was completely confident in opening up the Inn entirely to the Crystal realm.

If during his trip to the Expo he could learn about other realms where the strength was limited to Earth immortal or less, and begin connecting to those, he could also increase his income while staying safe. n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

None of that had to do with the people they had called over for the meeting, however. Instead, Hera slowly unveiled the preliminary part of her plan to them, where they had to scout out various markets for materials that were of high value but in low demand.

They were also told about numerous incentive programs for introducing the Inn to talented people in various fields. For example, if someone introduced a cook who was able to become a permanent member of the Inn as a cook, they would be able to get benefits.

Lex tuned out the conversation as he very seriously thought about something he did not want to. If he wanted to maintain a minimum expenditure of 1 MT a day and more, then they would have to increase the number of guests they were hosting.

Lex had purposefully been avoiding letting the number of guests renting rooms enter into the billions, but now it seemed almost inevitable. Moreover, they had to start targeting non-humanoid races properly.

Once the meeting ended, Lex immediately delved into the next matter, increasing the stakes for gambling.

He wanted to increase his income at the moment to 100 MT a week. If he could do that, after expenses, he would be able to save anywhere between 10 to 15 MT. That was before the cost of sustaining the Void Aegis was included.

But it was also risky, because higher stakes meant that he would need to pay out if he lost the bet.

After a long period of consideration, instead of focusing on gambling, Lex decided to take advantage of the large number of guests inside the Inn and held a concurrent event! Since the event was inside the Inn, the costs were low and the high number of participants meant that he could easily generate funds.

One by one, the days went by until they turned into weeks. Lex was barely managing to keep a surplus of MT while managing everything else, when finally he heard the news he had been waiting for.

If it took much longer, he might have left for the Expo. But now, it seemed there was just enough time for him to venture out of the Inn one more time.

When Lex asked Mary about how he could help her unlock her projection properly, she joked about him not catering to other sentient projections. The thing was… Lex didn't think she was joking, so he began searching for signs and traces of just such a race.

Surprisingly enough, it wasn't the Emporium that found the clues he had been searching for. Instead, it was a group of random guests at the Inn, talking over lunch at a diner. The moment they mentioned living holograms, Lex's subconscious, which was always monitoring the Inn, brought his attention to it.

"I think you mean ghosts," said a particularly healthy lady, right before ripping a large chunk out of a drum stick. "People you can see through, but are alive and can talk to you are ghosts. Except the living part. They're dead."

"Obviously I know that Trunchbull," the man answered as he rolled his eyes. "But they weren't ghosts. I confirmed as much. They could even appear in daylight, and weren't afraid of touching the Holy Symbol!"

As if to emphasize what he said, the man held up his necklace, at the end of which hung a pendant in the shape of a dumpling.

"Don't be ridiculous. Ghosts are ghosts, they don't care about this stuff."

"No, you're wrong. Ghosts can't touch holy light and…"

"Excuse me, I don't mean to interrupt," said Lex, who suddenly appeared beside them. The moment he realized that the conversation was deviating towards ghosts, he decided to go and ask them himself about what he wanted to know. Hopefully, they were friendly people.

"I could not help but overhear you talking about living projections," he said. "If you do not mind, could you tell me a little more about them? I have been searching for them myself for a long time to settle a bet about whether they're projections or ghosts. I've bet on projections."

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