The Innkeeper

"I was told you have Booty," the leader said, his expression deadly serious.

Lex, on the other hand, almost broke character.

"Excuse me?" he said, unsure of how exactly to respond to that statement.

Before the man could repeat himself, though, a golf cart approached them with a relatively short and bulky man hanging out the side.

"Captain, you're finally here," the man yelled with a massive grin.

Looking at the telling man, the leader's expression softened a bit, and he simply waited for him to catch up with them.

"Booty, why the hell did you not return to the ship?" the leader asked when Booty approached.

"Haha captain, smell the fresh air. Who would want to return to that tin can and breathe in recycled air when you can spend time here, relaxing?"

The captain did not respond, and only glared at Booty.

"Alright, alright, it's because I knew there was no other way to get you to visit this place yourself. It's incredible! I've spent some time here, and look, I even had a breakthrough!"

Booty then displayed his Mid Golden core aura to his fellow pirates with pride.

"And, most importantly, we can even unload stuff here! Captain, you have to check out the Guild room, it's so much more convenient than that shop on Beneroof, and we can just teleport here whenever we want. This is a great place!"

Booty was in a great mood, and the rest of the crew was indeed surprised by his sudden breakthrough. The Captain, though, did not seem pleased. He was a firm believer in if things were too good to be true, they usually weren't.

Lex, who had only been observing so far, chimed in, "Well, it seems you have found your companion. Feel free to take a tour of the place on your own, or if you need any help, don't hesitate to ask. The Midnight Inn welcomes everyone… as long as they follow rules."

With that said, Lex disappeared, not giving them any time to respond. But though he had disappeared, his attention was still focused on the pirates.

If they made any trouble, Lex would need to solve it immediately. The good news was, most of these pirates were in the Foundation realm, and could easily be resolved using the Fruit knife if they made trouble. The bad news was… the captain wasn't. Lex scanned the space pirate captain.

Name: Captain Hooker

Age: 86

Sex: Male

Cultivation Details: Nascent initial

Species: Human

Midnight Inn Prestige Level: 1

Bloodline: Orc

Condition: The body is in a state of starvation.

Remarks: Space pirates are either very rich or very poor. They look poor.

Firstly, he was surprised by the realms of these space pirates. He expected pirates to be stronger, though it was a good thing they weren't. What Lex didn't know was, space pirates could get away with being weaker, because as long as they destroyed or disabled an enemy ship, their raid was practically complete. Space fighting was extremely dangerous, as well as difficult. A good enough spaceship was a million times better than having stronger pirates by your side. Of course, this was dependent on what kind of enemies you targeted, but it was true for the majority.

While Booty was convincing the Captain to explore the Inn, and Lex was listening in, Mary appeared to tell him that Marlo was requesting to speak with him.

Lex raised his eyebrow in curiosity, but complied. Lex teleported to the lakeside, the most popular spot in his Inn at the moment, and greeted Marlo who was busy eating endlessly.

"It has been a while, 'King Marlo'," Lex said with schadenfreude in his voice.

Marlo instantly burst into a fit of laughter, which forced him to finally stop eating.

"It is just a title, it doesn't matter much," Marlo said in false humility as the massive grin on his face told Lex. "But I have been good nonetheless. I had an important question I wanted to ask you about something very serious."

"Go ahead."

"Before the Midnight Games started, you said there was a combat arena that had been temporarily shut down. Can I use it now? I'm itching to have a go with that old geezer Brandon."

Of course, fighting is what this maniac wanted to do.

"Sure, I'll open the arena. But I hope you know when to stop on your own."

"Yes, yes, of course. It'll just be a friendly spar."

'I hope so,' Lex said internally, because if it wasn't a friendly spar he would have no way to intervene. But the timing also wasn't bad. If he could have them fight where the pirates could see, it would intimidate them enough to not cause trouble.

Lex thought about where to place the arena, and then decided near the Recovery room was a good idea. A few hundred feet away from the Recovery room, Lex built an open-air arena around 5000 square feet in size. He reinforced the ground a few times so it wouldn't break, and then purchased a small array to cover the arena to stop their attacks from exiting. Even then, such a small array with a defensive purpose cost him 100,000 MP.

On the topic of arrays, one might wonder why Lex never purchased a defence array for the Inn if he was so concerned about security. The truth was, of the security options available to him, arrays were one of the options. But to cover the space of the entire Inn would cost a few billion MP. That, too, was only a defensive array. To stop the assailants from attacking further, or to control them, would cost several times more.

So, for now, this would have to do. He built a few seating stands for anyone who wanted to view the match, as well as a broadcasting upgrade for 10,000MP. This would broadcast any matches in the Inn like what happened during the games, so that if anyone wanted to watch from the comfort of their room, they could.

"It's done," he transmitted to Marlo, and sent him the location.