The Innkeeper-Novel



As Lex followed the major, he compiled all the information he had gathered about the robots and sent it to Mary. He informed her to give everything to Velma and have her add it to the information the Midnight newsroom sells privately.

Although he had already done a lot to paint the Innkeeper as biased towards humans, he began to change that perception by slowly doing these small things. Eventually, over time, other races would also get similar benefits which would erase the perception of bias.

Lex already had a vague idea of doing this, but lately his intuition began warning him that he was heading towards trouble if he kept up such behavior. In hindsight, it did seem like he was overly favoring humans, even though as of now, his most common guests were devils.

One would think that the devils, with their various unusual features usually sticking out of their humanoid form, such as wings, horns, tails and such, would cause some kind of racial division with the second most common race at the Inn, humans. In fact, Lex had long expected this and was ready to tackle it as soon as an issue arose. Instead, not only were there no issues, the humans from earth embraced the devils by participating in cosplay. It went so far that he had actually even seen at least a dozen human-devil couples.

Considering the fact that the empire considered the devils as humans' worst enemies, and the devils regularly used humans to farm their demons, Lex thought it was a horrible idea. But at least so far, on the Inn premises at least, nothing untowards had happened.

Putting all of that aside, Lex was not worried that by sending his news to the newsroom the council or anyone would miss out on it. They had actually assigned a person to constantly check for any potential updates.

The way Lex saw it, inviting others to fight the invaders on earth could be beneficial, but only as a delaying tactic. The only chance that earth had was if someone managed to get in touch with Fernanda, and that somehow she was able to bring in reinforcements of her own. Otherwise, based on Lex's analysis of the robots, earth was doomed to fall.

"It's through here," the major said, wiping off the sweat from his brow. It wasn't really hot, but the man was still exhausted from the battle earlier. That, combined with the threat of knowing that more enemies could show up at any moment, had led the major to descend the staircase faster than ever before.

"What's all the fuss?" Lex asked as he touched the gray wall in front of him. It was only now, that he was in front of it, that he realized that whatever material this wall was made from blocked out not only his spirit sense, but every other sense as well!

Earlier, his intuition had told him that there was nothing in the basement valuable to him. But now, faced with the wall, about to cross it, his intuition was telling him that the building ended here. There was nothing further ahead!

"I don't understand the details too well, but there's a small rock deposit here. Apparently the rocks have some unique properties. Even this wall is made from the same rocks. The deposit is too small to be used in mass, but there's apparently very high demand for it."

Lex did not pass any comments, for he didn't know what to say. Any material that could hide things even from his intuition would be extremely valuable.

This was not him being conceited. He was aware of just how unique his experiences had been. So for some rocks to be able to block him off, it was not simple at all. In fact, Lex had a sneaking suspicion for why such a material would be found on earth, though he had no proof for it.

He suspected someone, or something, might have purposefully hidden something here, using this special kind of rock to hide all traces of it. That sounded like a conspiracy theory, and one he had no proof for. Even his intuition had nothing to do with the theory. Instead, it was his inner capitalist who so dearly wanted it to be true!

With gleaming eyes, Lex walked through the door that the major finally managed to pry open using some special equipment and looked at a few containers that were stacked there. Behind them was a small tunnel that dug deep into the earth.

So the stone, whatever it was, was mined and stored here. With his left eye he looked into the hole to see if he could discover something special, but could not find anything.

"Mary, how much are these containers and their contents worth in MP?" Lex asked as he turned to look at them. Even if he was greedy, he was not stupid. Now was not the time to delve on such things.

"A total of 8 containers are worth 300 million MP."

Lex whistled in his mind. If that's what the system said, then that's what those stones were worth. The council definitely didn't know their value. But regardless of how greedy he was, he wouldn't shortchange them. The reputation of the Inn was the most important thing, he wouldn't compromise it on a few rocks. Even if paying the full amount hinted at them of the value of these rocks, he didn't mind.

"Perfect major. Here's your golden key. Crush it to go to the Inn. Once you're there, you'll find the amount for these containers already deposited to your name. After that, feel free to purchase more keys, and come back to retrieve your men."

The major did not wait and crushed the key. A minute later, he disappeared. Lex looked around the room one more time, before he too disappeared. He didn't hand the containers off to the system though, no. He took them himself and paid the relevant amount on his own. Until the system gave him a proper way to earn funds other than MP, he would have to rely on cheating it like this.