"It's been a while," said Lex as looked at Velma, doing his best to avoid looking at the several bags behind her. No matter what, Velma and Gerard held a special place in Lex's heart as the first workers he'd ever hired at the Inn. They had been with him through everything, and their help along the way was invaluable.
All things considered, it was not strange to say that Lex genuinely missed them dearly.
"It has been too long," she said, maintaining the professionalism in her voice, though Lex could clearly hear how emotional she felt.
"No need to be so formal between us. We can be considered old friends now."
Velma lightly trembled upon hearing the Innkeeper's words, and relaxed. Her smile widened as she gestured to the Innkeeper to have a seat. She had prepared some snacks and refreshments, for their meeting would not be a short one.
"I hope you had fun," Velma said, but then greed gleamed in her eyes as she got to matters she really cared about. "Moreover, if you encountered any touching love stories, I hope you'll share them with me."
Lex smiled weakly as he quickly went through his memories to judge if he could recall any love stories. The hedonistic King's harem of wives did not really paint him as a romantic, and everyone else was too focused on killing Kraven to have any decent love stories. At most, Dino and his wife could barely count.
"I visited a realm under siege by an alien race. I did not get the chance to see any decent romances."
"How unfortunate," she said in a saddened tone, though Lex wondered if her sympathy was towards the realm being invaded or the lack of romance.
Her morose mood lasted only a moment, though, as she quickly brightened up when she unzipped one of the bags and pulled out her first binder.
"The Inn, on the other hand, was rampant with love stories of all kinds. While I was learning about them, I managed to also learn a bunch of interesting things about various worlds. Take Earth for example..."
When she opened her binder, Lex was expecting to encounter a scrap book dedicated to the romances of his home planet, but what he saw instead was an extremely well documented, and completely unraveled list of secrets.
"Though the planet has come under the rule of Fernanda, beneath her there is a web of political intrigue, all secretly being manipulated by the many political prisoners kept on the planet."
From the binder she took out a few pages which had pictures of a few key political leaders on Earth, as well as pictures of the so-called political prisoners on the planet who were manipulating them from behind the scenes.
The more Lex heard, the more serious he became. It reached to the point where over 90% of all wars in the last 200 years were caused by the same three prisoners, who all happened to be friends.
In fact, Velma even managed to uncover the fact that one of the Nascent cultivators from Earth, the one fondly called as Fatty, was just a normal person who reached his current realm due to a random treasure he found. The truth regarding that matter, however, was that one of the prisoners lost a bet, and had to give a treasure from their personal collection to a mortal on earth as punishment.
As if that was not it, one group of prisoners had been influencing the Nascent cultivators, and another had been manipulating the so-called rebellion, treating it all as some kind of entertainment.
The more Lex heard, the more horrified and amazed he was. He was horrified because of the reach and influence of the prisoners was ridiculous, and amazed at the detail with which Velma had managed to gather information. He did not even have time to process the complexity and intricacy of the conspiracies she was uncovering in front of him, so much so that the next few hours flew by like the wind.
But, unfortunately, the few hours did not mean they went through all the binders, no. It took them so long only to cover one binder, which had been labeled Earth. None of the other binders had anything to do with Lex's home planet, which, frankly, once again left Lex astounded at Velma's capabilities.
When he asked her how she learned all this, she said this was just her collection of useless information she got while asking various guests about their love lives.
Lex's jaw dropped, only mentally of course. In actuality, his expression only changed slightly and showed genuine appreciation for her effort.
In the end, though, Lex concluded that he could not listen to her entire briefing today, and instead told her that he would listen to her elaborate on one of her binders each day.
Velma found that most satisfactory, as she had assumed that the Innkeeper would only take her binders away and read them at his own leisure. By allowing her to tell him about them each day, he not only ensured that they would meet often, he allowed Velma to fully show off her hard work.
But he was not done with the binder from Earth, no. He told Velma to create another binder, keeping only information pertaining to all the people secretly causing wars and strife throughout Earth. He would first give the new ruler of Earth, Fernanda, a chance to set things straight. If she could not, he would make all that information public.
Once he was done with Velma, countless other workers had requested meetings, including Gerard, so Lex was still not free. Between meetings, though, he still found some time to set down the Inheritance lounge and open it, as well as used his new Remote presence ability.
The Remote presence ability let him create a holographic projection of himself anywhere on system grounds. In this case, that included the tavern.
This was very important for Lex, for while he was doing the rounds at the Inn, some people had arrived at the tavern to deal with him. Namely, Joseph Noel had shown up, followed closely by Mario and Elio Ricci. They had been very discreet in their arrival, ensuring that no one knew they arrived together. Moreover, they had gone directly to a private room, not taking the risk of being spotted together.
After all, Mario Ricci was the Goatfather of Babylon while Joseph was the actual owner of the town. In theory, they should be at odd ends instead of so close. Lex, however, had long surmised that they must have a close relationship.
Now that Joseph knew that Lex was in close cooperation with the royal family of Hum nation, he had dropped his guard, somewhat, and had arrived with the intention of discussing business.
Lex did not feel like leaving the Inn any time soon, so the Remote projection ability came in handy very quickly. Moreover, with the increase in his cultivation, his mental faculties had improved so much that Lex had no issues controlling the projection while he did work of his own.
When Lex's projection entered the private room, Joseph and the rest stood up to greet him respectfully. It appeared as if everyone had been briefed on exactly the kind of behavior they had to display in front of Lex.
Lex himself was quite curious because he had not seen Elio during the town blackout. He wondered if Elio had survived in one of the shelters, or if he had been somewhere else entirely.
"Lex, I know that you have already met, but let me introduce you again. This is Mario, my on ground manager for many of my ventures."
"Mario," said Lex with a nod in acknowledgment.
"Lex," said Mario likewise with a nod.
"In the future, he will be conducting trade on my behalf. Moreover, although it was a little tough, I've managed to arrange 100 energy crystals for you, though they'll be delivered in batches of 10 over the next few weeks."
"That's excellent. I have the stuff you asked for as well, I'll have someone bring them in. Though, I managed to get a lot of material. The price naturally went over 100 crystals, so you can just choose which ones you want and which ones you don't."
Joseph was both surprised and very pleased to hear the news, and became even happier when Rick carried in a chest full of extremely rare treasures. In his heart he wondered why Lex had trouble locating energy crystals when he could find other treasures so easily, but he did not complain. There was no market for the materials he wanted, simply because they were never available. In comparison, while the energy crystals were extremely expensive, at least they could still be found.
Their meeting eventually concluded with both parties very happy. Lex, especially, was very happy since he planned on relying on Joseph to learn about the secrets of the Kraven. That's because he asked Mary if another incident like the previous one where he got trapped in another realm could happen again. She only replied that until they uncovered the anomaly that resulted in Lex being sent there in the first place, they could take no precautions against it.