Three men stood at the entrance to the Midnight tavern, their eyes aimed at the blood covered, collapsed man on the floor. The steam rising from his mouth was very visible, and his face was redder than the blood covering him, which had started to turn brown.
Behind the bar stood a casually dressed, very young man who was flashing them an awkward smile, and at the other door stood a tall, mature man wearing a black coast vest, white shirt and black pants.
Silence hung in the air as the man leading the trio slowly pointed at the man on the floor and said, "I'll have whatever he had."
"My god, Big Ben is flat on the floor," said one of the two men behind him.
"Why is he out cold? Doesn't he know the constable will come around to ask him questions?" "Who knows…"
The three men started chatting amongst themselves as they happily walked over the man on the ground continuing their chat. By the sound of it, they seemed to know 'Big Ben' well, and even knew that he had recently witnessed some kind of murder. Compared to how distraught Big Ben had been, they were completely nonchalant.
Lex breathed a sigh of relief, and looked towards the new barkeep, who promptly introduced himself.
"My name is Roan, sir. I can man the bar, and I can also cook."
"Very good," Lex said, allowing Roan to replace him behind the bar. "You make the drinks, and I'll take them over. Also, take care of Big Ben here as well. Take him somewhere he can take a nap comfortably."
"Yes sir," he said, his hands moving with experienced deftness, as he poured the drink from the green bottle in shot glasses. He put them on a tray, allowing Lex to take it over.
Lex could have just hired a bunch more workers from the system, but for the tavern he wanted to fit seamlessly in with the town. That is why, other than a few core employees, he planned on hiring the rest of his workers from amongst the locals. Seeing familiar faces instead of all strangers would allow the tavern to quickly become accepted by the locals, and provide a fresh experience for Lex.
"Here you go gents," Lex said, as he put down the tray on the table. "Drinks today are on the house, seeing how it's the tavern's first day."
"I was wondering when this opened up," said the man who had been in the lead earlier. "It's about time we got a decent tavern…" the man paused, took a slow look around the place, and then continued, "well, a somewhat decent tavern. I was tired of drinking old Husky's homemade spinach brew. Yuck!"
Grabbing the shot glass, the man raised the glass to Lex, and then downed the glass in one go. His two friends did the same, and in only a few moments, they started to blush, though fortunately none of them fainted.
"Before Big Ben, eh, took a nap, he was telling me about some murders that have been happening here. Do you know anything about that?" Lex asked.
"Yes yes, the Babylon killer, the serial psycho, the rat barber, people have given him different names depending on the district. What, you didn't look into it before opening the tavern? Worried it'll affect business? Well, yeah things are bad, but that's also good. As of today, there's been 22 murders in the last two weeks, all of them a bloody sight.
"The local constables can't seem to catch the guy and no one has any idea who it is. Things are getting worse, but that's good, because the local lord is bound to take notice if it starts affecting his profits. When the lord finally gets here, everything will get better. Until then, just keep on going, and pray that if the psycho is gonna strike again, he'll strike you because at least that way you don't need to listen to batty Marge's ramblings."
The man's two friends cheered and laughed, before they all started rambling about this 'batt Marge'.
Lex went back to the bar and waited for Roan to return from putting Big Ben away. His mind had been focused towards developing the tavern's backyard, but it seemed his first priority needed to be protection. After all, the town apparently had a serial killer on the loose.
But, he wasn't totally without protection. After all, a 300 million MP formation wasn't simple. Moreover, for whatever reason, the system seemed to be placing fewer restrictions on tha tavern than the Inn, so Lex had a lot more room to maneuver.
His first form of protection was the fact that no one could sneak into the tavern. No matter where or how they tried to enter, they would always be brought to the front hall. This was because the spatial formation freely allowed Lex to set several safety measures as he wanted in the tavern building occupied space. Similarly, while he could not teleport people freely, he could easily manipulate the location any door led to, effectively making the tavern building as complex a maze as he wanted to make.
But, for trouble makers who come barging in the front door, this was no obstacle. Unfortunately, the system still did not provide him with any formations with any offensive capabilities, but he could set up a formation to trap people, and then just keep them as prisoners indefinitely. This wasn't a perfect solution, but it was good enough for now. The best part was, once the second formation trapped someone, Lex could treat that trapped area as a room, and use the spatial formation to move it around. Yes, this would work out nicely. After all, Lex wasn't a fighter, he was a billionaire Innkeeper, he had other ways to handle troublemakers.
The trapping formation, due to its simple requirements, was only 1 million MP for one of its best versions. He doubted anyone could break out of it.
By the time he was done with that, Roan came back after putting Big Ben in a bed in one of the rooms.
"Will he be okay?" Lex asked, with a hint of guilt.
"Yes, the Jade Heart ferment that you gave him is a very potent, but safe spirit. It's a little hard for most people to tolerate normally, since it burns impurities and diseases in one's body. When he wakes up, he'll be the healthiest he's been in a long time."
"That's good, that's good. By the way, for today, the drinks are free. But, starting tomorrow, make sure the guest knows how much each drink is worth when they order it."
The drinks that had been stocked in his bar were not random drinks. The same way the Midnight Inn was connected to all the planets Lex anchored to it, the Midnight Tavern was connected to the Crystal realm. All the drinks here were drinks that existed in the Crystal realm, but all of varying rarity. These were still relatively cheap ones, but from the system interface Lex could stock his bar with extremely precious drinks. In fact, there were a few drinks that cost energy as well as MP. Lex was truly curious what they were like, but now was not the time to be wasteful.
Other than Roan, he needed one more worker who would maintain the place. Somehow, the tavern's banner had managed to attract some customers, but Lex really preferred if the front of the building looked presentable as well. Since he didn't want to use the system interface for that, his next worker would have to be skilled in these things.
Lex started entering his requirements into the system.
*****
Gamer's Den, Midnight Inn
Z was pacing around the busy store, waiting. He didn't need to manage all the guests because, under Lex's instructions, Mary had hired more workers for the Den, allowing Z to become the manager. A result of that change in position was naturally a raise in salary. A raise in salary meant Z could easily get whatever he wanted. But after a while, he ran out of things to buy. So he stopped thinking about it. Moreover, since the invasion of the Raskals, Z had been feeling down, though he never let anyone know.
He had been trying to figure out why he hadn't been able to overcome the difficult ordeal like all the anime main characters he'd seen. After all, Z had all the things they had. From spikey hair, to the power of friendship, to a training montage that he made in his free time, to even a speaker for combat music. So what was missing? How could he fail?
Then, one day, the answer came to him. He'd been using generic music. All the heroes had their own, dedicated theme music, but Z had been using random stuff he found online. What he needed was his own theme music, and he couldn't be limited in that either. He needed his signature music for when he was stoic, when he was pumped, when he was fighting, and especially when he needed to overcome his limits, and let the power of friendship make him stronger, leaving his enemies saying 'nani?'
So, using favors with friends he managed to make at the Inn, he hired the best composer he could find.
The next moment, the door to the Gamer's Den opened and a figure walked in. At first, Z could only see his silhouette, due to the bright light coming in from outside, but as the man stepped in, Z felt relief flood him.
"Mr. Hans Simmerz, I'm so glad you could make it."