The lead up to the final day was not slow. Lex did not spend the days looking at the countdown, waiting with anticipation for the moment the big change happened. Instead, the final days were extremely busy.
The Inn was massive and prepping all of it for the big change was a monumental task that occupied the entire Inn workforce. Like ants, scurrying around in a rush to get their jobs done, all the workers were once again deployed, bringing forth a flurry of activity.
The guests had noticed it too, and may have been concerned about what was happening if the workers didn't all have an excited energy about them.
But the mood of the workers was one thing, and the building pressure in the Inn was another. Lex would have thought more guests would have left when the pressure started increasing, but the opposite happened. Guests actually stopped leaving, as they were all curious about what was going to happen.
Besides checking every once in a while to ensure his guests were fine, Lex did not have the time to fret over them. The last five days, Lex spent bringing his cultivation level to the very brink of a breakthrough, and making sure he was in the optimal condition.
In between cultivation sessions he went to the hot tub room to relax and even got a haircut from Harry to bring his state to its absolute peak. Just to be absolutely sure, he even went to Cassandra one more time to check if his state was the best it could be.
As it turned out, it was not. Lex had once again forgotten to sleep and eat. It was funny how easy it was to drop old habits once they transitioned from a need to a luxury.
On the final day, Lex slept for six hours, and fed on some extremely nourishing spiritual fruits. As the hours closed in, Lex teleported to his office and completely blocked out the world. He emptied his mind from all his thoughts, and meditated to calm himself down.
When he finally opened his eyes, the big change was only a few seconds away. He stood in front of the window in his office, and looked out at the Inn as he waited for the countdown to finish. When it reached 0, he heard a familiar ting.
New Notification: The Realm seed is sprouting. A new realm is being born. For the protection of the Midnight Inn, it is being completely sealed. Teleportation in and out has been disabled.
New Notification: The Midnight Inn is detaching from the Origin realm. The pocket realm within which the Inn is located will be completely destroyed.
New Notification: The birth process of a new realm takes approximately 1 hundred thousand years. New realms remain uninhabitable for approximately 20 million years.
New Notification: The destruction of the pocket realm, and birth of a new realm will release energies unsuitable for living beings. All guests, workers, non-sentient living beings, and Inn properties are being sealed so that they remain unharmed during the process, and isolated from the energies of the new realm birth!
New Notification: All isolated beings will remain in the pocket realm while it undergoes destruction, and will not be subject to the timeflow of the newly formed Midnight realm.
New Notification: Taro fertilizer remnants detected and used. Realm stabilization process expedited.
New Notification: No system features can be accessed until the new realm is born.
As if on cue, as soon as Lex read the last notification, the interface he had become so familiar with, vanished. The Host Attire that he was wearing also disappeared, leaving him in his baby form.
Lex tried to conjure the interface once more, but nothing appeared. In the meantime, another meteor crashed into the ground, causing incredible destruction in its wake. But Lex did not feel like he was in danger. Although he could not feel the isolation barrier around him, the sense of security he felt while fire rained from the sky and destroyed the place he had called home for so long to let him know it was working.
He tried to teleport, but of course that was not working either.
"Mary, are you there?" he asked out loud.
For a time, the only sound Lex heard was that of rumbling and falling meteors. But eventually, a very faint voice reached his ears, as if through some kind of insulation barrier.
"I'm here," she replied, her voice somber and melancholic.
"Don't tell me I'm going to be stuck like this for a few million years," he said. He was absolutely certain it would not actually take so long.
"The formation of the realm really will take that long. But what was left out was that the flow of time will play a big role in speeding up the process, or at least, you yourself won't have to go through those millions of years. When the realm stabilizes enough to support life, the time flow will also become more stable, although I highly doubt it will be the same as the Origin realm even then. Whatever the case, I expect that the timing of the formation of the Midnight realm will coincide with the destruction of this, so we should be ready to move over just before this space collapses."
Lex did not immediately respond. Instead, he walked out of the office and looked all around the Inn as the intense flames burnt everything to cinders. He could not help but recall his first day when he was designing the Inn. He wanted to replicate a 'Lord's Manor' because he thought that would be cool. Even then, he had done such a half hearted job.
He had come so far now, but somehow, with his own hands, or through his own actions rather, he had burnt down everything he had created. It was for the better, but it still caused him to feel forlorn.
"Mary, you remember the first time we met? What did you say back then? That you're an augmented reality avatar to help me get used to the system. But with all the system features offline, how are you still talking?"