The Innkeeper

When Brandon finished giving his explanation, the woman stared in silence as she contemplated his words. It did not take long, however, before she reached a decision. "Increase surveillance on the guests I've sent to Earth. Make sure they're comfortable, but don't limit them. Try to keep them from going to the Inn, but if you can't then just report to me. Regarding the Inn and the Midnight games, you may do as you see fit so long as it does not compromise the safety of Earth. Before the gathering in a week, I'll send someone over to join you and observe."

With those instructions given, the woman's hologram disappeared and the people in the room breathed a sigh of relief. With that out of the way, they now needed to decide their own actions.

"Brandon, you're the one who's been there. How do you suggest we prepare for the upcoming games?"

"I've already put a considerable amount of thought into this. I'll let you know how I plan on deploying my family's resources. What you decide to do is up to you…" The meeting continued for the better part of the day, and by the time they dispersed it was well into the night. Silently, all five families started preparing for the upcoming Midnight Games, but what they did not know was that shortly after their own meeting finished another one was held in a bunker deep underneath the Sahara desert.

"Our opportunity has arrived," said one of the people sitting in the bunker. "It's a lot earlier than expected, but we'll never get another chance like this again. Ready our forces, and start moving our assets into place. A revolution is on the horizon."

*****

When Lex woke up the next morning, not only was he feeling extremely refreshed, he also felt extremely motivated. Today he needed to do some research on how events were held and what format to keep the combat portion of the games in.

The original reason he wanted to avoid having a combat portion was because he did not want the death of multiple people on his conscience. When he kept getting interrupted and lost his temper he spontaneously decided to fight against the zombies, but even so he didn't want to host an upfront war scenario as that would result in many deaths and he would feel responsible since the only reason they died was because they participated in his event.

But what exactly was the format going to be? He did not know yet, and that's where the research aspect came in. After having a hearty breakfast and scanning the Inn once to make sure everything was in order, he promptly returned to Earth. After turning his phone back on and responding to his family's text, he found his way to the nearest public library.

He hopped onto a computer and started looking up every famous competition in history. He checked out everything from the Olympics and CommonWealth games to World Championships and municipal tournaments. He looked at high school and college events to small cultural ceremonies and competitions in various third world countries. While he was researching, he got a notification for Quest completion and checked to find out that he had completed his quest to grow spiritual vegetables! He received three seeds for rare plants and directly transferred them to the gardener and had him plant them, along with instructions to plant a lot more vegetables as he was expecting a lot of guests in a couple of weeks.

Lex returned to his research, treating the interaction as an ordinary interlude, but what he did not realize was how important those seeds would be to him. When they were titled as rare, they were not rare on a continental or planetary basis, but instead they were rare in the whole universe. He would later learn that, in fact, he would not even have been able to successfully plant them without the aid of the Galactic Sovereign turtle.

He stayed there until one of the librarians came to tell him that the library is getting ready to close. Lex exited, but before he returned to the Inn he sent Larry a text asking if he was okay. Lex was expecting to have messages from him waiting when he turned on his phone, but there was nothing. The silence was unusual and Lex was slightly concerned, especially considering the circumstances when he left. When Lex did not receive a reply after a short while, he decided to return to the Inn and check again tomorrow morning. If he still didn't hear anything, he would consider what to do. Maybe he would kick Marlo out of the Inn to go clean up his mess.

When he returned to the Inn, he was surprised to find that at some point Helen had left. It was worth noticing that Hugo's booked room had also been freed up recently, so after a lnn time the Inn was once again without any guests. If it weren't for Harry who was practicing his sorcery in his shop and John who was actually playing video games in the Gamer's Den.

Intrigued, Lex checked up on him to find him playing the AAA game called Hitmale, about a man who was raised his entire life as an assassin carrying out multiple missions.

Lex himself had never played the game, but it was popular for how broken the game was. Yet as long as people found it entertaining, who cared? Lex was tempted to don the Leo persona and go interact a little with John, but he had work to do. Lex returned to the study in his own residence and started working on the event. He started determining the distinctions between each stage, how guests would come, where they would stay between stages. He had to make a distinction between participants and viewers.

He also needed to prepare for the announcement meeting he had called. For that meeting the invitations had gone out to all the various leaders on the three planets. Such a meeting could not be taken lightly, and he needed to have all his preparations done by then.

After working for a few hours, Lex retreated to the meditation room before eventually heading to bed. The next few days went by in a similar, peaceful manner. Without any unexpected surprises or interruptions, Lex slowly felt his state of mind improving. His fast progress was surprising not only to himself but to Mary as well, though she did not tell him that. At the current pace, he would undergo the procedure right before the Midnight Games started.

Finally, three days before the meeting took place a new guest entered the Inn via the Pro Bono program, alerting Lex. If that's all there was to it, Lex may not have been concerned at all since he had a well trained staff and system now. What really threw him for a loop was the notification from the System that he did not have adequate facilities to cater to the guest.

Confused, Lex scanned the Inn to investigate the situation and was alarmed by what he discovered. In the small lake he had built next to the Recovery room a baby whale was swimming in circles, full of confusion and alarm!

The lake was too small for the baby whale, and it kept getting trapped as soon as it swam even slightly close to the edge.

"Mary, what can I do?" Lex asked as he looked at the calf. "Would I have to expand the lake?"

"Expanding the lake and establishing a different biome for other types of guests is definitely a good idea, but that way you'll have to duplicate all the buildings in each biome. There's an easier solution. You can buy the Multi-Environmental Subsistence facility. Buying one for all environment types may be out of your budget, but you can definitely buy focused ones for water based guests."

Without hesitation Lex went to the Midnight market, searched for the Multi-Environmental Subsistence facility and bought it for 300,000MP! It must be noted, this facility was focused and would only allow marine based guests to survive in the open.

The change was immediate. A thin layer of water surrounded the baby whale and allowed it to swim directly out of the lake. The water followed the whale wherever it went, giving rise to the unique sight of a baby whale flying around the Inn surrounded by a kitty pool worth of water.

The whale was freed from its immediate conundrum of being constricted to a tiny body of water, but it was not relieved yet. It was apparent to Lex from the way the whale flew around frantically that it was still confused or scared, maybe even both.

"I guess it's time for me to go to work," Lex said to Mary with a smile, and disappeared.

Lex reappeared right in the whale path, as if he was standing on thin air. "Please guest, be at ease. You are safe here, no one will harm you."

Lex's voice carried with it a calming effect, soothing the distressed whale. The whale did not question why it could understand Lex, but once it understood that it was safe it stopped swimming haphazardly. Then it started crying.