The Innkeeper

Lex spent a good while reading the Henali conventions, and then even longer pondering over what each convention meant, and the reasoning behind it.

Beside a brief introduction of the Henali race, as well as the Origin realm, right at the beginning, the rest was just a list of rules. Lex had to extrapolate a lot of information from the rules and make a lot of guesses, not to mention that these were the conventions that only applied to entities that touched upon the Dao.

There were actually only very few rules for such entities, but Lex estimated that for empires and lower-level people, there would be more rules.

The first and foremost rule was that beings that had touched upon the Dao realm were expressly forbidden from directly interfering, meaning using their own abilities in any way, with any civilization in the entire realm, regardless of how strong or weak they were.

The second rule was that, should they need to conduct a private battle, they had to stabilize the Origin realm around themselves first, by themselves. If any tear is detected in the realm because of them, they will be heavily fined.

Everything seemed fine and dandy so far, as the focus seemed to be on protecting the realm, but the conventions after this were what let Lex know that nothing was ever as simple as it seemed.

Any entity that touched upon the Dao, affiliated or unaffiliated, was to immediately report the presence of any so-called 'Fuegan invaders' and, in some cases, take direct action to eliminate them!

Though there was no explanation for what the Fuegan invaders were, upon reading a few more rules, Lex concluded that... there was a realm wide war going on in the Origin realm as well!

Unlike in the Crystal realm, where the origin of the Kraven was questionable, and the local leaders even took some actions to ensure they were not defeated too quickly, in the Origin realm the Fuegan invaders had to dealt with on sight, and had been established as invaders from another realm!

Anyone who associates with the Fuegan invaders would immediately be identified and treated as an enemy by the Henali, and in the case of Daolords they would be expelled from the realm.

This rang alarm bells for Lex, for what would he do if a Fuegan arrived at the Inn as a guest? He did not know what a Fuegan was, so there was no reason to believe they would even be interested in being a guest, but that did not change the fact that one could end up being a guest.

He needed to understand more about the Fuegan and, more importantly, he needed to get his hand on the reward for discovering the anomaly in the Crystal realm. The reward was a realm seed, and would allow the Inn's space to form into its own realm. That way, they would technically no longer be within the Origin realm, so even if he had a Fuegan as a guest, he did not need to worry about being 'expelled' from the Origin realm.

This was because when it came to beings powerful enough to own and control multiple realms, he did not think for even a second that they would have a tough time locating the Inn, regardless of how easily the system hid it.

After all, the system had already shown that it was not perfect at hiding.

Lex kept reading, but the many conventions after seemed to slowly start getting extremely abstract, and beyond Lex's understanding. The few more that Lex was able to understand were fairly simple. Mass genocide was disallowed when taking control of a new planet, soul farming was forbidden, bloodline farming was forbidden, and no one was allowed to attempt a breakthrough into the Daolord realm within the Origin realm.

In summary, the Origin realm was the private property of some race known as Henali. Though they were owners, their interference within the realm was mostly limited, and the races of the realm were allowed to propagate and spread according to the natural order of things.

There were very few crimes they actually policed, such as mass extinction for colonial purposes, and for the most part did not care about who did what. They were in contact with most races or organizations that reached a certain level, and provided protection against these Fuegan invaders should their threat cross a certain threshold.

Lex finally leaned back and considered his next actions carefully. He only had 4 days to decide.

Before that, though, he turned his attention to the wooden chest and swiped it with his letter opener. Much like the other items left behind by the Henali representatives, the treasure chest unfurled itself, revealing some kind of mechanical orb.

Lex had only just wondered what the orb was, and was thinking of scanning it, when the system spoke.

New Notification: Upgradable material found! Should the system upgrade for free? Upgrade details: provide the Inn access to the Henali portal for free permanently! Using the portal from the Inn will keep the location and all other user data hidden unless specifically otherwise stated. The portal cannot be used to track or locate the Inn.

Lex raised an eyebrow, and then laughed when he understood what happened. He had been given the interstellar equivalent of an internet router. He had heard of the Henali portal before, and had planned on checking it out on his travels, but never got the opportunity, and now, the opportunity had presented itself to him.

He did not hesitate and selected the upgrade, causing the mechanical orb in front of him to vanish. Unlike most upgrades to the Inn, this one was not instantaneous, which was convenient for Lex could catch up on his other tasks.

As it happened, an entire day had passed, and Velma had appeared again, this time with another binder. Lex rubbed his forehead as he wrapped his head around the fact that an entire day had passed. He had been so busy that he had not noticed the time at all.

Still, Lex made time for her since her last briefing had turned out to contain so much valuable information.

This binder was on Nibiru, and all the changes that had been happening to the planet. In a unique phenomenon that no one fully understood, the planet had actually increased in size. The sloth known as Golden Hair that was supposedly supposed to look after the planet had once again disappeared, leaving the world to descend into chaos.

Since so many beats were undergoing mutations and gaining sudden strength, not everyone was as convinced of their roles, and everyone kept challenging the order of things. The entire planet had descended into chaos more or less after that.

There were a few beasts in particular that had gained great fame during this period, one of which was Havval El'Yun, a serpent who had proclaimed all the sea's of Nibiru as his own territory. There was vehement opposition, but none were able to stop his rapid ascent.

Moreover, a large number of humans had revolted after gaining unique bloodlines of their own. Not to mention Tiffany, the girl Lex had met back on that planet, had been spreading cultivation techniques for humans across the globe with her own efforts.

In fact, Tiffany was being heralded as the new leader of humans on the planet, and a number of beasts wanted to pursue her, but none were able to capture or kill her.

As if that was not enough, there had been official meetings between high-ranking members of the Jotun Empire and several beasts on Nibiru. The Empire had shown extreme interest in reports of mermaids on the planet.

Unfortunately, while there seemed to be some proof of their prior existence, no one was able to find a living mermaid.

Regardless, the Empire put up several rewards for the location of a mermaid, though they were very careful to also specify that they did not want the mermaid harmed even in the slightest!

Just as Lex was pondering over why the EMpire valued mermaids so much, Velma elaborated.

Apparently, mermaids could transform into humans. Though that wasn't relevant. What was more important was that a child of a human and a mermaid would always be human, but sometimes with the bloodline of the mermaid. The details were unclear even to her, but she was able to gather that the Empire was unbelievably attracted to a certain bloodline ability owned by mermaids, but in all the galaxies that the Empire controlled, they had never been able to locate it.

Still, they were determined to get their hands on it one way or another.

Lex listened with great interest as he expanded his understanding of the universe, even if it was only one planet at a time for now.

Once he was done, Lex took the binder with information on Earth from her and, after a long time, appeared at the Inn as Lex Williams. It was time to meet some old friends.