The Innkeeper

A million thoughts ran through Mary's mind as she concluded that someone was orchestrating an attack at the Inn, and after concluding that the Inn was in a weakened state, they had increased the severity of their attacks.

Even worse was the fact that they could not conclude how they were able to circumvent the system's maliciousness detector, or who exactly was even behind the attack. This was because everyone involved in breaking the system's rules or attracting the workers' attention seemed to have nothing in common, race included.

Was it some kind of mind control? If that was the case, they had to have been mind controlled before they even entered the Inn, for if someone attempted such a thing while being here the system would detect it. Yet the guests who were acting out had all been here for various lengths of time, some even for a few months already.

If that was the case, the schemer must have been planning things for a while now. In that case, why would they begin now? Was it coincidental, did they notice the slight difference in how Mary was giving out orders due to her mental stress, or did they know something about the Innkeepers actions or whereabouts?

These were all things that Mary could not make conclusions about. It wasn't as if she couldn't think of ways to react to the ongoing situation either, but she had no authority over the system so only Lex could effectively resolve this situation. But Lex was currently completely out of commission, and it was unknown how long it would take for him to recover. The only hope they had was to somehow come up with a way to wake him up. Otherwise, the situation would continue to get worse.

It had only been a few seconds, yet all three situations that occurred had already been resolved. The guest who was stabbed had been admitted into a Recovery Pod while the assailant was ganged up on by numerous guards from the security team, taking him down.

The leopard that had tried to kidnap the worker was... well, Mary would have preferred if it had been captured alive, but the security team was already extremely tense. Watching one of their own being attacked like that, well... let's just say not enough of the leopard was left even for fertilizer.

Ironically, right before its death, the leopard tried to use Beyond the Grave to give up its entire wealth and continue to live at the Inn as a spirit. Unfortunately, the moment it broke the rules, all services had been suspended for it.

The Midnight manor had been dealt with by Qawain. With its aura alone, it eradicated the smoke itself and crippled the person who set off the bomb! The security team rushed to the manor quickly to send everyone into Recovery pods. The fact that guests were getting hurt was already bad enough for the Inn's reputation, but if they allowed a guest to die... although in the grand scheme of things, it would still not hurt the Inn too much, it would seriously affect the Innkeeper, for he really cared about such things.

There was a momentary respite, but by now Mary knew that this was not the end of things. The only way to really deal with this matter would be to wake Lex up.

Her mind raced as she thought of ways to wake him up. For that, it was first important to understand what exactly happened to him. While Mary was merged with the system,and sometimes knew more than Lex about matters related to the system, it was only because the system itself shared such information with her. Without the system volunteering the information, she had no way of discovering things on her own. For example, she could not use the status panel that Lex often used.

If she did, she would have been able to view Lex's status to determine what his actual diagnosis was. Without it, however, she could only speculate based on what she knew.

Lex had fallen into a coma when he sent his consciousness clone away to the Henali assembly. Theoretically, Lex should not have been exhausted at all by the use of the clone since the energy required to keep the clone running was provided by the system, and by the ambient spiritual energy it absorbed.

The only part of Lex that was, in any way, tied to the clone was his consciousness. That should have made it so that Lex would remain safe no matter what happened to his clone. Even if it was destroyed, Lex would, at most, be slightly injured. This was because normally he would suffer from soul damage, but with his unique cultivation, it would bring him no real harm. He would heal from it eventually.

But whatever happened to him had affected him greatly. She had no way of knowing that it was not his soul that suffered damage, but that his spirit was drained so much beyond what he could tolerate, it ended up weakening his body and soul as well. His heartbeat slowed and his brain activity dropped, right up until he was barely a feather's touch away from death.

It was not actual harm he suffered, but that he was just really drained. One might think that a solution to this was just to pump him full of energy, and that would take care of everything. But that was not true, for not only did he need to regain energy, his body needed to digest it, and distribute it to all parts equally.

It was like saying an exhausted mortal should be fed 10,000 calories and that would rejuvenate him. Not only was that not accurate, for his body could only absorb so much food and energy at a given time, alongside which he needed rest to recover, but doing so would probably harm him as well.

Of course, the cultivation world was far from simple. There was no doubt that there were various forms of energy available, some so nourishing that Lex would be able to absorb and digest them immediately.

But for that to happen, Mary would have to first properly diagnose Lex, before making the appropriate arrangements. Unfortunately, even after spending so much time, she was unable to say what was wrong with Lex confidently. She did, however, think of a possible solution that might work. No, it would definitely work - after all, Lex's cultivation level was very low. That made it easy for him to get harmed, yes, but it also made it relatively easy to heal him.

She swept her mind through the Inn and, unfortunately, noticed 7 more issues that had cropped up in the time she was thinking. Unfortunately, they were getting worse. More and more guests were being harmed.

As dire as the situation was, she had to pull Gerard away from his duties, as he was the only one who could go to Lex at the moment.

Gerard, who had previously lost the appearance of an old man due to his evolved bloodline, had regained signs of age just in the past few days. As if the stress of knowing the Innkeeper was incapacitated was not enough, the Inn itself had been going through its darkest time. He was sure that if any of this happened at any other time, the Innkeeper would have solved it in an instant. But now that they had to take care of the Inn while the Innkeeper himself was not around, they were failing miserably.

It was Mary's oversight to leave him like this, for if she herself had not been so stressed she would have come up with a believable explanation for the Innkeepers condition. Still, the damage that had been done could be remedied later. For now, she had him return to his Recovery pod room.

Gerard trembled slightly as he looked, once again, at the sleeping Innkeeper. He was still dressed in his suit, as remarkable as ever, and seemed to be only sleeping. It was as if the lightest call of his name would rouse him from his slumber, but it was not meant to be.

Or at least, that's what Gerard thought originally. When he heard Mary's instructions he became confused, as that went contrary to what he had originally thought was happening. But...

Gerard reached out and tapped the glass surrounding the Recovery pod a couple of times, before saying, "Excuse me, Mr. World Seed Lotus, I hate to be a bother but there are a few important matters that require the Innkeeper's attention. But, unfortunately, the Innkeeper is taking a nap and I would hate to wake him up prematurely. Would it be possible for you to rejuvenate him, even if only for a short while? I'm sure the Innkeeper would be appreciative once he deals with his tasks."

Gerard held his breath after he finished speaking, waiting for something to happen. The room, however, remained completely silent.

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