The Innkeeper

Poor old Velma, who had not really paid much attention to her cultivation, was completely overwhelmed by the responses that she got for her first newsletter. Over 100,000 guests had responded within just a few hours and asked her questions for her segment. How was she to pick which one to respond to?

For the first time, she regretted not having a higher cultivation level. If she did, she would not need to split this task. But either way it was not much of a loss, as she was only sharing the task with her good sister Antia, the pregnant lich. She had a happy and successful marriage with Qawain, the sword that had assumed a human shape after gaining sentience and entering the Immortal realm.

Her romantic advice was sure to be excellent, right?

She recalled that Antia had once shared a story about a romantic date she had when she was still dating Qawain, where he invited 9 generations of a cultivation family that had antagonized Anita and permanently resolved their disputes. It was such a warm and kindhearted gesture. That was exactly the kind of man… -eh, exactly the kind of sword every woman was looking for.

Anyway, whether Velma answered herself or it was Anita, the true identity was hidden behind the persona of 'Rachel' which is why she chose such a name in the first place instead of just directly using her name.

While the hype at the Inn was all about the Newsletter, barely anyone had learned about the Henali portal for it had been introduced at such a time that Velma didn't have time to edit the newsletter. In the next one she would definitely mention it, and anyone could even ask their personal holographic assistants about it, but otherwise it would remain a relative secret.

That was why when Tiffany, the girl who was the chosen of the will of the planet Nibiru wandered into the registration building, it was completely empty.

As a relatively ignorant girl whose worldview had mostly been limited to Nibiru, and the little she could learn from interacting with the Inn staff, Tiffany could not yet even grasp the concept of 'internet' or 'online'. So, completely ignorant of what she was doing or what it meant, she entered the virtual world of the Henali portal for the first time.

*****

A soothing incense filled the room, keeping Lex calm yet focused. He sat in his office chair with his eyes closed, completely still as if he was a statue. In front of him was the epistle, and on it was a countdown steadily heading towards 0. In fact, it was less than a minute away.

Despite his better judgment, Lex decided to attend the assembly. Since he was in the business of hosting guests from across the universe, and currently especially from the Origin realm, the more he understood it the better. He also had to understand what these 'Fuegans' that the Henali strongly despised were, and how large was their population in their realm.

How would the Henali react if he ended up hosting them? Even besides that, there were so many things Lex was unaware of that he didn't even know that he didn't know them. For example, the champions tourney that Dillion, the creature that took up Ragnar's tasks, mentioned. Lex did not even know of its existence, yet had somehow hosted tasks that could negatively influence it.

He needed to understand what the repercussions for such a thing were and what other potential pitfalls there were waiting for him. Also, and this was not in any way a significant factor in aiding his decision, he really wanted to see a living T-rex up close if one appeared there as well.

To be exact, Lex did not really understand how rare 'Daolords' were, but he supposed that a race that controlled over 100 galaxies probably had at least a few, right?

Just as he completed that thought, the timer on the epistle hit 0. Lex opened his eyes and focused on it. It was time to conduct his experiment and see if he would be successful in sending a clone to the assembly in the first place.

Picking up a business card from the cardholder, Lex channeled some of his energy into it, activating it. The, by now, familiar sensation of a clone being formed appeared before he saw an ethereal figure of himself standing before him.

This wasn't the first time Lex had summoned a clone by himself, so he was not surprised, and did not spend several minutes admiring the Adonis-like, perfectly sculpted representation of resplendence that was his clone. Not that he did so during the first time either.

Instead, he picked up the epistle and tossed it towards what should have been his intangible figure, and watched as its descent slowed down drastically while it passed through his clone's body. That was good enough and, using the clone, he activated the epistle.

He held his breath as he waited for the teleportation but… after a few moments, nothing happened, and the epistle fell through the clone's body onto the ground.

Just as Lex was trying to understand what had happened, for this should have theoretically worked, the epistle began to blow, and a projection of a few words formed above it.

The words read:

'Error 404: Connected teleportation point not found'.

It took but a moment for Lex to realize his mistake. He was so used to teleporting right out of the Inn that it did not occur to him that the Inn's protective formation would prevent others from teleporting in and out of it.

Not feeling dumb at all for making such a basic mistake, Lex directly teleported to one of the planets connected to the Inn and repeated the attempt. This time, the clone was sucked into a mini-wormhole, without losing connection to Lex whatsoever.

Lex quickly returned to his office and sat on his chair with his eyes closed. His entire focus, for now, had been diverted to his clone.

The teleportation it was undergoing was not nearly as instantaneous as the one the Inn afforded, giving him a little insight into how incredible the Inn's teleporting actually was. Instead the clone felt himself surrounded by a bubble with the faintest hint of blue in it. Outside the bubble was an endless void of gray… stuff.

Whatever was outside the bubble seemed liquid and solid at the same time. It flowed around the bubble like water flowing around a boulder in its path, yet at the same time it would solidify and form unusual shapes around it. It was like various colored sands mixed in together, forming different shapes, yet at the same time not quite. Even Lex's instincts weren't able to make sense of it, and gave him no warnings or recommendations regarding the substance outside the bubble. It was most likely because even his instincts weren't able to exceed the bubbles' limitations.

The teleportation took several minutes, which is something Lex could only tell because his main body was at the Inn. Otherwise, within that strange gray space, even time seemed somewhat abstract.

When the teleportation ended, Lex's extremely focused mind picked up various bits of information all at once.

Firstly, he was in a room that strongly reminded him of the US congress. But instead of getting a single chair, he had an entire booth. Though he was in the form of a consciousness clone, he could tell that the booth was filled with such… such… excruciatingly, beautifully pure spirit energy that he had never felt anything like it. At the same time, he knew that if his real body had appeared here, neither the Lotus on his back nor the system's ability to absorb energy would have been enough to prevent his body from being overloaded with what was surely the pinnacle of all energies, and exploding as a result.

Even as merely a clone of his consciousness, he had been influenced by the energy, resulting in him feeling such immense, orgasmic pleasure that it nearly drove him insane! Had he not entered the 'Overdrive' state before sending his clone away, it would have taken him a long time to recover.

Fortunately, he had made sufficient preparations. Moreover, the extreme control his Host Attire gave him over his expressions somehow extended to his clone, so even in the brief moment of near insanity, he had kept his expression placid.

The second thing he noticed was that while the room was large, it was not nearly as big as he had been expecting considering this was a gathering that invited 'all' those that had entered the Daolord realm in the Origin realm. In fact, there were probably less than 50 booths altogether.

Moreover, even of the existing booths, very few were actually occupied. Though he was not able to actually see into the booths that were occupied. This was probably one of the safety measures to ensure anonymity.

Well, to be more specific, he could not see in most of the occupied booths. This was because the third thing he noticed was a very familiar figure. It was the Devil Ballom.