The Innkeeper

Chapter 1402  Let's make money

After thinking about it, Lex couldn't exactly claim that the cost for hiding the Midnight Realm was expensive - and yes, there really was a price he had to pay. It seems the difference between something the system did itself, and something he did, was who paid for it.

Objectively speaking, the worth of the Midnight Realm was inestimable. No amount of MP he earned could cover even a fraction of the true worth of the Midnight realm, and keeping it safe and secure was one of his top priorities.

Seen from that lens, the cost of keeping the Void Aegis running at a measly 1 MT a day was not so bad. Except, that he couldn't afford that! Not ordinarily of course.

Technically speaking, the primary source of income for the Inn was renting rooms. It was an Inn after all. The secondary source of income should have been food, although he still wasn't satisfied with the quality of food that the Inn provided. It was pretty good, it was just that he knew it could be better.

Then, it should have been all the additional services that the Inn offered, not to mention the Guild room.

But the actual setup was totally skewed. His primary source of income was gambling at the Midnight Games, followed by the Guild room, only after which came the actual services that the Inn offered.

At the moment, the Inn's income could be measured in the tens of MT on a weekly basis, but Lex was spending that MT just as quickly as it was coming in to keep the event running. He could reduce his spending enough to afford the daily cost of 1 MT for now, although that would make his budget tight. But that was only a temporary measure, and could only be continued until the Midnight Games lasted.

He had until then to resolve the issue and fix his income issue. Despite the immense pressure it added onto his shoulders, Lex actually wasn't so worried.

He was no longer the inexperienced Lex, reliant on the system for everything. Even without guidance from the system, he could resolve this issue.

Speaking of the system, one of the quests pending for him to do was to visit the Seraphim Resort. When he got the quest, he had the time limit of a year, so he had a few more months left.

He could not tell how much time that would take, so he built a mental timetable for himself. In the next few months he would make the Inn more efficient, improving its ability to generate more income and sustain the expense of 1MT a day, as well as generate enough of it to act as a reserve in case of emergencies.

Then, he would go to the New Age Expo. He really did want that exposure that Ripley was talking about, not to mention that he wanted to get a better understanding of what was happening in the universe.

Jack, despite being in a Major realm now somehow, had not managed to collect any information at all that might help Lex. In fact, the only thing that Jack had managed to confirm was that the flow of time in a Major realm was even slower than that of the Origin realm.

If the Midnight Realm was three times faster than the Origin realm, then it was about six times faster than the Folklore realm. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Regardless, he wanted to learn about the extent and severity of the realm wars while at the Expo, meet some of the other universal powers, make a few friends hopefully, and then from there he would head onto the resort.

At the resort, he'd need to pick up 3 things that the resort has that the Inn does not, and then implement them at the Inn.

But considering the fact that he could not be certain how long the Expo would be, or how much time he would spend at the Resort, it would be best to conclude this little overhaul before then.

Before that, he naturally paid the inhumane price of 1 MT and activated the Void Aegis. For a few moments he just stood there, as if waiting for something to happen. Unfortunately, there was no perceptible change, except a small notification from his system.

New Notification: You have acted according to your designation as the Innkeeper, and proactively made the Inn safer. How unusual.

Of course, Lex was familiar with the fact that the system used notifications and remarks to talk to him, so he ignored the sarcasm in the message and simply took it as a confirmation that the Aegis was working.

Lex teleported back to his office, and turned his gaze towards the system interface. He had more than a few ideas for how to increase his income, but one of the first things involved upgrading all his existing rooms as much as his authority would allow, or improving them somehow.

Now, he'd already done the basics. For example, the Gift shop was already upgraded as much as the system would allow.

So while the Gift shop in the Treehouse tavern was limited to mostly Golden core stuff, the actual Gift shop in the Inn now even sold items suitable for Earth Immortals. The selection was pretty decent. It was just that Lex himself no longer needed any of those items because he was always fighting above his level, and his own abilities were so versatile that he could accomplish things on his own.

But that did not mean the Gift shop wasn't popular. Far from it, in fact. But it could be even better if Lex added items to it himself. His personal treasury was vast enough, containing countless valuable treasures that could fetch more than a modest amount of money.

But putting up his personal treasures was not a self sustaining business model, and so he didn't want to pursue it. Instead, he wanted to leverage his workers.

So, for example, in both the taverns he could open up a room which appraises items and buys anything of value, and then sell them in the Gift Shop for a much greater price than it was bought for.

It was a pretty basic strategy, and a good one, because the value of items was always relative. Compared to the Guild room, where Lex would only make 1% of the value of any item sold, he wanted to sell things through the Gift room.

As such, the Gift shop needed to be upgraded from a mere 'gift shop' to a proper shop or store.

But that did not mean that Lex had no plans for the Guild room. In fact, what he had planned for the Guild room was even greater!

At the moment, if anyone wanted to purchase something they would have to purposefully go to the Guild room to find out what they offered. But the realization that the Inn was basically just like playing a city builder game gave him a few ideas.

He had built entire cities and added to them parks and games and buildings, and even shops such as restaurants and clinics and Gifts shops, but he had not expanded the reach of the Guild room.

There were countless businesses conducting trade, selling and buying goods in large quantities, but their reach was limited to anyone who visited the Guild room alone. However, if he upgraded the Guild room so that the top 100, or top 1000 businesses could get the rights to open up stores in the various cities in the Inn, trying to sell their items in a more approachable way, their business would expand.

He could also integrate it into the Midnight portal, and establish an online shopping platform for the Guild room.

These were upgrades that he would have to do on his own, and went beyond the scope of the basic upgrades the shops got.

Another thing that he really needed to use better was the Inheritance Lounge. To date, the only inheritance in there was the one Lex got from killing that guy who had the Murder system. That inheritance was about leveraging luck, and seemed to have many drawbacks, which is why he never used it himself.

But if he could increase the number of inheritances there, then it would be much more tempting for guests to visit. This was not difficult for him, not just because he had studied under Pel for fifteen years within the Midnight realm. Qawain and Anita could also contribute, though Lex did not want to ask his workers to contribute their personal techniques.

Instead, Lex recalled one of his permanent spirit guests, the Cthulhu Abroar. One of the primary reasons he became a spirit was so that he could complete some sacred mission.

While Lex did not know what that mission was, he did know that he was very concerned about preserving the legacy of his people. If he could be persuaded to deposit some of his legacies in the inheritance lounge, it would fill up.

He could also step up the Midnight News room, and have them follow a subscription model for some very specific types of news for their guests.

Lex's inner capitalist had woken up, and he was more than ready to work overtime.