The Innkeeper-Novel

While Lex had told Velma that he would let her run the news service as she wished, he still inquired about what her plans were and what kind of help she needed. Despite the short duration of Velma's designation, she had already come up with an extensive plan for what she wanted to do.

While it was a news service, it was based out of the Midnight Inn so whatever news they published would be based around the Inn. In fact, she was not planning on doing a full newspaper, anyway. Velma had planned on releasing a single page newsletter once a day detailing events and incidents, as well as stories featuring prominent guests and Inn workers.

There would, naturally, be a special events section that would mention if anything significant was happening on any worlds related to the Inn. That, naturally, did not mean that she would not collect information about other worlds, just that if anyone wanted something more specific, they would need to come to the Midnight News building and purchase whatever they had available.

Obviously, Velma was not omnipotent, so it would not be possible for her to always know everything. But the more time she spent doing this, the better she would become. Besides, all the information she had on the binders could directly be added into the agency repository. But at that point, Lex realized that if all the news was spread equally, it could cause problems. After all, some information was sensitive.

In this case, he told her to divide information into two categories, and the more sensitive information was reserved only for Inn employees, such as himself or potentially others who would be interested in it. Of course, even they would have to pay though they would get a discount.

But naturally, collecting news casually and actively collecting news was different, so Velma would need help. But, contrary to what Lex expected, she did not ask for any new employees. Instead, she said she would only require the help of Anita, the pregnant lich that had become an Inn employee.

Lex didn't ask in too much detail how she planned on collecting news and information, she was clearly an expert. He did, instead, ask about what she intended for the advice column since she seemed a little too excited for that.

The advice column, as the name suggested, would be a column in the newsletter where guests at the Inn could ask for advice regarding any problem they were having, and Velma vehemently hoped they were romantic problems, and she would answer under the column heading called 'Ask Rachel'.

Anyone could submit questions through their personal holograms, and then Velma would filter through them and answer as she liked.

It seemed... very ordinary to Lex, but then again, he had a lifetime of experiences behind him while Velma was on the verge of turning one year old. Speaking of which, for a long time now, Lex had a little something planned for the Inn's as well as Velma's and Gerards first birthday, and he could finally start working on it.

Feeling quite pleased with the enthusiasm Velma was showing for her new position, Lex disappeared from the News building. He was on a roll for crossing things that had long been waiting to be done off his to do list, so naturally he wanted to keep that steak going.

The next thing he did was retrieve a small pebble from the Midnight tavern. This was no ordinary pebble, for it produced water that drastically raised Lex's strength. He was planning on submitting it into the Gift shop for a moment so he could read the system's description of it, but something unexpected happened the moment he retrieved it. He got a system notification regarding the tiny rock!

New Notification: A unique treasure worthy of being an Inn attraction has been discovered! Generating a new room to maximize use of treasure!

Unique Treasure: Dead core of a divine boulder!

Remarks: In an era older than most can remember, even the mundane was worshiped. But in this era, even something as grand as the Inn has no worshipers. Such a useless era.

New Room unlocked!

New Room: Boulder shrine!

Boulder shrine: A shrine that collects divine energy and channels it into the dead core, causing it to produce the divine essence of a boulder in abundance. Those who are not immediately poisoned to death by the divine boulder essence gain many of its divine attributes!

At first Lex was extremely impressed at what he was reading, but when he read the part about immediately being poisoned to death, he trembled! He had taken a huge risk by absorbing that water, or divine essence, as he now knew it was called. But then again, Lex was being guided by his instincts into absorbing it, so on some level, his body clearly knew it was good for him.

"Mary, is there any way to prevent this poisoning?" he asked, as he tried to look deeper into the building's specifications.

"Maybe if you upgrade it further, but at the moment, there are none. Moreover, there's no guarantee that the Recovery pod will even be able to heal such a poisoning, as the only way to be really sure is to find someone suffering from it and scan them."

"Is this really something we can add to the Inn then?" Lex asked with concern. He knew for a fact that the system judged him negatively if a guest who had not violated any rules died at the Inn.

"Hmm, since this is a building provided by the Inn in the first place, there should be no problem. We'll just have to make sure that everyone who tries to use it is aware of the risks first, and that the Inn takes no responsibility should an accident occur."

Still hesitant, Lex looked into what he needed to upgrade the room. After all, he was a rich man now, so he could surely afford to directly upgrade the Boulder Shrine a few times. Unfortunately, that was not how the room worked.

To upgrade unique rooms such as this, Lex not only needed to pay in MP, he needed to provide some unique materials as well. In the case of this room, he needed to provide material that was compatible with the dead divine boulder core, and he had no idea where he could go looking for it.

He thought for a moment, but then decided to add the shrine. He would make sure anyone who took it was adequately warned. Also, he wanted to see if the divine essence produced by the shrine could continue to help him improve his body.

He placed the shrine right next to the Inheritance lounge and teleported in before anyone else had a chance.

Instead of a room, the shrine consisted of four pillars placed in such a way that they were forming a square, connected only by leafy vines that went from the peak of each pillar to the next, drooping in the middle. The vines formed a natural curtain with only one entrance, allowing anyone to enter. In the middle of the shrine was a small bird bath, in the middle of which lay the dead core of a divine.

The difference now, though, was that while the rock barely produced any moisture previously, even after a while, the pebble sized core was already producing essence now.

It was not fast enough to quickly fill up the birdbath, but it was much faster than before. Without hesitation, Lex dipped his finger in again to check if anything happened, yet it was not to be. It seemed that this level of divine essence was no longer useful to him.

Next up, he had to think of a price for this. It was not hard if he did things normally, but Lex while Lex was thinking of what he could offer to Aegis, he realized there were truly too few incentives to be an employee when he could gain everything as a guest. So now, the prices of things, especially unique opportunities, would no longer be simple.

To use the divine essence, a guest would have to pay 10,000 MP for 10 milliliters, but at the same time, the guest also had to be at prestige level 3 minimum! This was a kind of division he could have always had, but he never bothered to do so.

Now, however, he was going to put it to use. After all, the more exclusive an item was, the more its value increased. In fact, he even changed the qualification of using the Inheritance lounge, keeping the price at 100,000 MP per attempt but setting the requirements as minimum level 4 prestige.

Of course, employees did not need to care about prestige and could use all facilities directly so long as they paid.

This may seem like the difference created was not huge, but it was. It would just take time for it to become evident. After all, the first few levels of prestige could be unlocked with money, but not the later ones.