The Innkeeper

It did not take long after the orders were passed for the mercenary army to gather up, once again ready for combat, nor did it take long for the tavern workers to pack up everything and ready for the castle to pack up.

But even once everything was ready, they did not depart immediately. It would be idiotic not to take advantage of the natural defense that the castle provided.

Instead, two small mercenary teams were sent out, each with a different task. The first team was meant to go check out the properties of the purple liquid that surrounded the island they were on, while the other team went and collected raw materials from the island.

Fenrir blessed both teams with his stealth abilities, so that they could easily avoid the army surrounding the castle, though for some reason Fenrir was acting very strangely. He seemed to be acting as if he had been captured by Little Blue, and quite a few mercenaries cheered to see him acting that way.

Lex, meanwhile, began thinking of ways he could speed up the completion of the quest. The most important thing was to find a way to locate the chalice, and then reach it. The strange way in which Abaddon teleported them around the lands, or maybe moved the lands around them, made it difficult for them to navigate the area and make any actual progress on finding anything.

Despite the many tools that the Inn gave him, he could not think of one that would help him in his given. He even considered maybe using the Innkeepers business cards to summon projections of the Innkeeper, but dared not take the risk. There was no guarantee that there weren’t any Dao Lord abominations within Abaddon, so summoning a projection would be suicide. After all, each creature only went for something on their own level, and didn’t seem to have much intelligence. Intimidation wouldn’t work on them, and his projections didn’t actually have any real strength.

So… he had to get a little extra creative with his ideas.

There were things he couldn’t do as the Innkeeper, and usually he did them with his identity as Lex. However, Lex was preoccupied, and he needed someone else at the Inn who could do some minor tasks for him without asking questions.

It would be perfect if Mary had a body, for she could have helped him out. Unfortunately, he’d have to rely on Mary simply passing out orders to someone else.

“Mary, I need you to talk to John for me,” Lex said as he watched the two mercenary groups sneak out of the castle. “I need him to coordinate with the two Rhinocentaurs for me.”

“Got it,” she said, and listened closely to his instructions.

*****

John was meditating in a Meditation room, cycling through his cultivation technique. It was quite odd, needing to cultivate actively. Even after all these years without a system, he still couldn’t get over the feeling that his cultivation should just rise on its own after a good assassination.

Every day, he got the feeling like something was missing from his experience. It was like a nagging feeling in the back of his mind that he just couldn’t ignore. But he had to ignore it. He was a different person now, and lived a different life now.

Suddenly, a projection of a small, floating redhead appeared in front of John.

“Hey John, how’s the recovery going? Still have the phantom feeling of missing growth?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s not really going away,” he groaned, and then turned to look at her.

This was Mary. John had no idea who Mary was, or what her actual role in the Inn was. All he knew was that only the workers of the Inn could see her, and that everyone referred to her as 2nd boss.

Although he never said it out loud – mostly because the other workers were much too simple minded about such things and he wasn’t sure how they’d react to gossip about the Innkeeper – but he suspected that she was the Innkeeper’s wife or girlfriend or something like that. Mrs. Innkeeper, if you will. Of course, he would never say that out loud. But it made sense, right?

She passed out the Innkeepers orders even when no one could meet him, knew all his secrets, and basically oversaw the running of the Inn more than anyone else.

Of course, a much more reasonable, much less scandalous conjecture, was that she was the Innkeepers student – just as how everyone suspected Lex was the Innkeepers student.

Also, she gave really good advice sometimes, and knew all the workers by name and had a personal relationship with them. Just like a good housewife overseeing her husband’s estate.

“Have you ever considered taking that feeling and trying to create a technique that personifies that feeling? You’re really good at creating spiritual techniques, so why not try and create a cultivation technique?”

For a moment John was stunned. He’d never even thought of creating his own cultivation technique.

“Yeah, maybe I’ll try that.”

“Let me know how that works out for you. But right now, we have some work to do.”

John stood up straight, as if ready to receive his orders, and tried to ignore the amused expression on Mary’s face.

“You need to go to the Rhinocentaurs and ask them to see if they can acquire the best, most effective scouting or mapping equipment or treasures. Lex is on a very… precarious mission, so I’ll be communicating between him and you, and you’ll have to communicate with the Rhinocentaurs on his behalf. The situation is a little complex, so we can’t be certain what exactly we’ll need.”

John nodded and quickly geared up before leaving his home above the Battle Ax. Yet the very moment he left, the device given to him by the Rhinocentaurs to detect systems began to vibrate.

He took out what looked like a phone and saw the notifications piling up on it. The number of systems detected within his vicinity were… 99+

John suddenly paled, and looked around. What the hell was going on?

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