The Innkeeper

The Sovereign Galactic turtle carefully carried a man sized parcel wrapped in leaves to the Recovery room and casually strolled in. Without needing any guidance, it entered the Innkeeper's room and, without any hesitation, opened the Innkeepers pod.

Very simply, as if there was nothing unusual about what it was doing, it opened the parcel and let some special, red colored dirt fall into the pod and bury Lex. It paused for a minute, as if unsatisfied with the size of the pod, as it could not fit all the required dirt. Shaking its head, the turtle created a pod of its own made of giant leaves surrounding Lex, and dropped the remaining dirt in it. Then it left.

In truth, the turtle was not pulling off some kind of prank. Through methods unknown, the Lotus had informed the turtle that it required some dirt with extremely specific properties. The turtle was the one who gave Lex the Lotus, so it was already familiar with the plant. Moreover, it never paid too much attention to what the Innkeeper was doing, so it didn't care all that much what the dirt was for.

It was only slightly annoyed, for the dirt had not been easy to make. The turtle had to shred some of the most valuable plants and trees to make fertilizer - along with some of its highest grade normal fertilizer (enemies of the Inn) - and spent a good deal of its own energy to aid the soil in absorbing it.

There were a few more steps involved, but ultimately the turtle only succeeded in making the lowest grade soil that the Lotus asked for, but with its current resources this was all it could manage.

Still, even though this was the bare minimum of the Lotus' requirements, the fact that it met the mark meant it was enough for the Lotus to use.

Inside Lex's leafy pod, the dirt was slowly being absorbed into Lex's body, as the Lotus was using it to nourish, revitalize and strengthen Lex's body. As amazing as the Lotus was, it could only do so much in its infant state. Fortunately for Lex, strengthening Lex's foundation was still within its capabilities.

A few hours later, all the soil had been completely absorbed into Lex's body, leaving no trace that it had ever buried the Innkeeper entirely. A few moments later, Lex opened his eyes.

At first he was disoriented, with no recollection of where he was and what happened. Slowly, as his brain got used to his new body, he started to feel better and his memories returned to him.

But, unfortunately, the return of his memories also brought back memories of the visions he saw, restarting his hallucinations. Somehow, though, the effect they were having was greatly subdued. In fact, so long as he focused, he could somewhat even ignore the effect of the hallucinations without going into his Overdrive state.

With a groan, Lex got off the table, and slowly started recollecting what had happened. He was… attending the Henali assembly? Then what happened? He couldn't remember. Wait… something happened to the Inn.

It was difficult, but eventually Lex recalled the state the Inn was in, and paled considerably. The reason Lex had nearly lost his mind from anger was that, unfortunately, more than one of his workers had died in the attack. It was a harrowing thing to think about, especially since he had put so much effort into securing the Inn. But now, in hindsight, it became evident that he had not done nearly enough.

He would always just rely on hiring security using his event panel and using that as a solution, instead of fixing the inherent problem, which was that his own security was thoroughly lacking.

Lex wasn't one to beat himself up, but now that his attention was brought onto the matter, quite forcefully at that, it seemed that Lex had barely run the Inn at all lately. He would just make a few major decisions, and leave the rest for Mary to handle.

The Inn had expanded much too quickly for him to keep up with, and as a result, he was always running off somewhere to deal with other matters while actually taking care of the Inn was left to someone else.

How many things did the Inn develop lately that he had not thoroughly utilized? The divine temple, the inheritance lounge, the fishing well and so much more. He was reminded that he was the Innkeeper, and the very name simply meant that he had to manage the Inn, not go running around the universe, connecting planets.

So what if people caught onto the fact that the Inn was actually only connected to a handful of planets? He could always continue to expand slowly later.

Lex's mood was already low due to the severe headache, and the tragedy of all that had happened didn't exactly help improve his mood. Lex took a defeated sigh and first checked on his MP.

He had spent all of it on that formation to trap his enemies souls, so in reality he should not have even been able to pay the rent for his own Recovery pod. It was fortunate, however, that with several hundred thousand guests, his MP was always rolling in. Moreover, the income from the Guild room was starting to become significant.

He currently had a mere 35,000 MP. It left a bitter taste in his mouth after having been a billionaire such a short while ago, but he knew he would quickly gain more anyway. Even this 35,000 was reduced, for the moment he woke up Mary asked him for some MP to make a few payments for peoples recovery and Lex approved it.

Even now, it wasn't as if there weren't a million things for him to do, but Mary didn't bother him for anything that wasn't too urgent. Lex too was not in a rush to start, despite knowing that he won't be able to remain awake too long before succumbing to a coma similar to the ones he had been suffering.

The reason was very simple, and since Lex had sat on his seat back at his office he knew already, but…

Lex teleported away, and reappeared before a specific Recovery pod. The room had only one other person besides the patient, a beautiful young human woman with wings on her back. It was Hailey, Harry's wife.

In front of her, in the pod, slept Harry. Though his body had been completely rebuilt, he showed no signs of waking up. Lex already knew the painful reason, but he wouldn't help but look one more time, in the hope that something had changed.

Name: Harry Styles

Age: 18

Sex: Male

Cultivation Details: Glamor Sorcerer (dormant)

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: 1

Condition: A majority of the patient's soul has been crushed! Only a few remnants of the patient's soul which were buried in his Glamor sorcery tools survived. Without a treasure to regrow the soul, the patient will never recover, and the remaining bits of his soul will slowly diminish.

Remarks: Laughter is the best medicine for the soul, but it probably won't work on him.