The Innkeeper

For a moment the crowd hushed as everyone whispered to one another. They waited for a while, but when nothing else happened the Beasts finally relaxed. The Beasts slowly formed into small clusters, gathering with those they knew and were on good terms with. They whispered amongst themselves, discussing what they thought was happening. Some of them were gravely intimidated by the 6 Beasts getting suppressed, as they themselves were weaker than them. Others smugly gloated over their stupidity.

A very few of them silently observed the gathering. In the history of Nibiru there had never been an incident where so many top tiered cultivators gathered together. This was not only because the planet was divided into multiple continents that were kept apart by the ocean, it was also because Beasts were generally territorial. This meant that not only would they stay in their own lands to protect them if other powerful Beasts entered their territory, even if only to travel, they would view it with hostility.

Eventually the clusters started breaking apart, as some of the Beasts headed towards the Coliseum while others roamed about to explore the Inn. Noticing this, and realizing the variable sizes of the Beasts, Lex quickly opened the Event management panel and quickly rented the Size Regulator for 20,000 MP! With this, once any Beast tries to approach any building their size would automatically be reduced to a maximum of 7 feet without affecting their strength of abilities. This feature was actually quite expensive to buy, fortunately to rent for a single event it was relatively cheap. This left Lex with 125,106 MP in total.

This was cutting his budget a little close, as he wanted to spend a lot of souvenirs for his new guests to buy. Basic souvenirs would be cheap, less than 10,000 MP for enough to last the whole event in fact, but Lex wanted ones that had some use or ability. After a moment's consideration, Lex decided to take a risk. He wanted to save MP in case of emergencies, but retail was an excellent way to earn back some of what he spent. Lex spent 50,000 MP to purchase commemorative golden coins.

On one side of the coin was an image of the Midnight manor, with the initials M.I. on it. On the other side was a giant number 1. The initials as well as the number weren't written in English, but were written using a special crafting technique so that they would change so that whoever viewed the coin would always see and understand those initials and number. The coin served no purpose, but simply acted as a commemorative souvenir to celebrate the first ever Midnight Games. Another thing to note, the coin was golden in color but was not made of actual gold. It was made from a much tougher, much rarer metal and more durable metal. The engravings would not fade as a result of time and the coin was extremely resistant to any kind of damage. Maybe, after a long time once the Inn became more popular, these coins would be worth a lot to collectors.

Each coin could be purchased for 500 MP, from either the gift shop or through the assistants, for now. If he made enough MP and he could add more stuff to sell, he would place stalls near the coliseum.

Lex had stopped viewing the statuses for his guests as they were just too many coming in now. There were already over 500 Beasts, and more coming.

Alexander, Helen, Will, Hera, Jimmy, Chen and Lily all watched the gathering from the lobby of Midnight manor. Even knowing that the Inn would protect them, looking at the massive Beasts roaming around some of them felt intimidated.

Since Lex had stopped viewing statuses, he missed out on a single sloth that stood alone in the crowd. It had no followers, and no one interacted with it. The sloth simply stood amongst the crowd, looking around with interest. The world did not seem to distort under its gaze, and even if it moved around the ground would not crack. A small, innocent smile grew out on the sloth's face. Slowly, as slowly as it could physically manage, the sloth moved a single claw on its foot and its position changed. The sloth was no longer in the crowd, but in a strange little building. It looked at a human who had been startled by its appearance, and its smile grew even wider. The human did not die under its gaze. The rules of this world protected the human. The human, who finally gathered himself, smiled and said, "Welcome to Harry's barber shop. Would you like a makeover?"

To be clear, the rules of the Inn weren't protecting Harry from an attack by the sloth. The sloth naturally released an aura that was harmful to those around it if they were not of a certain cultivation level. Since this was not an active act, the system deemed it acceptable to curb the aura so that others would not be affected by it. This was similar to how Chen and Blane were unaffected by Falak's natural aura when they were talking to him, whereas should they have tried on Earth without Falak actively withdrawing his aura, they would have immediately died. The difference here was that the sloth was incapable of withdrawing its aura.

"Go ahead," the sloth answered, amused by the human.

"Please, take a seat," Harry instructed as he turned the chair for the sloth. He had no idea of the sloths' cultivation and normally should not know how to groom a Beast. But his Sorcery heritage was extremely thorough, and the species of his target was irrelevant as he was not grooming the physical body, but the soul and spirit directly. The physical changes that appeared after his grooming were an indirect result of that.

Once the sloth was seated Harry's eyes started to glow purple again and a pair of flying scissors appeared beside him. After careful consideration of what to do, Harry proceeded to cut the sloth's hair.

That is when something unexpected happened. After a single cut, Harry collapsed on the floor, fainting due to exhaustion. The scissors that he used had also snapped. On the sloth's body, the top 1 mm of a single hair had changed color from its natural light brown to a much deeper brown.

The sloth was not alarmed by this, but in fact marveled at the change it felt in its single hair. It was the most pleasant sensation it had felt in a long, long time. A holographic sloth appeared before it and said, "Don't forget to pay when you leave. You can pay me directly, and I will transfer the money."

The sloth smiled and summoned a single, glowing spirit stone. "Keep the change and tip the little human. I enjoyed the 'makeover' very much."

The spirit stone disappeared from its hand, along with the hologram. The sloth was now very curious about the Inn. It moved another claw and suddenly appeared in a forest. Once it entered, the sloth got completely lost and was unable to exit at all. Eventually it decided to climb one of the trees and take a nap. Someone would wake it up once the meeting started.

*****

As Lex was overlooking his some 700 + guests, Mary informed him that Harry had collapsed due to overconsumption of his soul power, and Mary had transferred him to the Recovery room. Harry would fully recover, but it was unlikely that he would wake up today. After making sure that Harry had not been attacked, Lex turned his attention back to his guests. Despite his earlier warning, the newer Beasts who entered had no prior knowledge of it and so a few more fights broke out.

Fortunately all the fights were handled quickly and safely, without anyone getting hurt. Since none of the offenders were repeat offenders, Lex could not ban them from the Inn for violating his rules since they did not know them. To fix this issue he made a little change. He arranged his 10 most powerful guards, who he had decided to call his Tier 7 guards since he did not know their cultivation level, at the entrance and had them blast their spirit senses in full. All new guests would undergo a single, quick wave of pressure from his guards before a hologram would appear and tell them the no combat rule of the Inn. This seemed to solve the issue.

As for why the guards were called Tier 7? He numbered it according to the cultivation realm. Mortals was Tier 1, Body Tempering was Tier 2, Qi Training was Tier 3, Foundation was Tier 4, Golden Core was Tier 5, Nascent was Tier 6 and the unknown was Tier 7. This division also intimidated Lex a bit. He never thought about it so he never realized how far he really was in terms of cultivation levels, but dividing it in terms of numbers made it a lot more obvious. Yet he put that thought out of his mind. Just because he was not there yet did not mean he would not get there eventually. His focus returned to the Inn.

It had been exactly 3 minutes since a new Beast entered the Inn, and at a total of 798 Beasts, it seemed that would most likely be all the guests he would get from Nibiru. Soon, guests from Earth would start to arrive. Having humans and Beasts mix together might cause some problems initially so he needed to be focused to solve them.

Speaking of which, Blood Fang had just made its way to the Midnight manor and was about to encounter his other guests. He silently transferred some guards nearby to handle any potential issues.