The Innkeeper

Chapter 1385  Something amiss

Lex was naturally unaware of what happened within the Origin realm. Even though he had searched for Moon's clone relying on his own bloodline, finding even one such facility was incredibly difficult and time consuming.

Although Lex had not completely located all of them, he had to hand over this task to others while he handled more urgent matters. While they could not rely on bloodline to find these facilities, they could rely on traditional means of tracking and searching.

It was not that he did not care, but that he could not afford to spend too much time on this. If he did not handle the many matters that bothered him, who knew when he would also get swept away by a formidable foe?

The Midnight Inn, for all its bluster, was, at any given time, just one big accident away from being destroyed.

But though there was danger, Lex was also making tremendous progress.

With a soft smile, Lex observed the small birdhouse in front of him. The color was an odd blend of dark brown and maroon, shifting its shade in the light. The tiny bird house, small enough to fit in Lex's palm, would look quite pleasant in front of the soft brown bark of the Void Stabilization Sequoia tree, which was fortunate for this small birdhouse would be Lex's treehouse.

Naturally, once activated, the size of the treehouse would expand. In fact, besides its defensive capabilities, the thing Lex most paid attention to was its ability to grow and expand as required, as well as create any layout he wished, as long as it did not exceed the total greatest covered area that the birdhouse could occupy.

At the moment, the birdhouse could, at most, expand to 200,000 square feet of covered area. That was both quite a lot, and very little depending on one's point of view. The average house back in the U.S. was about 2600 square feet, and in the U.K. it was 1000 square feet. By that standard, it was pretty big. But compared to the Midnight Inn, which hosted hundreds of millions of guests, it was barely anything.

But it was enough for a tavern.

Lex wanted to admire the birdhouse a little more, but unfortunately he could not. The reason was pretty simple. While the Veevatil forge could handle prolonged exposure to dragonfire, the rest of the dwarven city could not.

A wild, raging flame spreading across an underground city was not exactly the easiest thing to contain.

"Stop, drop and roll guys!" Lex yelled as he conjured water and began throwing it at the fire. Lex's techniques were, even putting it mildly, hella strong. The problem with that was while dumping a lakes worth of water on a massive fire worked, it also released a massive amount of hot steam, which not only burned the lungs of anyone who breathed it in, it had a way of contaminating all the dwarves bee- cough, it contaminated their adult apple juice.

"MY BEARD!" yelled a distraught dwarf lady, but it was too late. Even with Lex's lightning fast reflexes, he could not avoid casualties.

That day, as a result of Lex's forging efforts, no less than 13,000 beards had been burned off. No one died, but honestly, the mood in the dwarven city was as if they had suffered a slaughter.

Even as Lex snuck away, suppressing his guilt, he could hear some old man crying about how he had groomed his beard for 999 years, only to lose it a day before year 1000.

He would make it up to the dwarves somehow, he swore to himself. At the same time, he wondered if he should sport a beard.

After all, he was not like a main character in a book, who had to maintain the same appearance for entire arcs or even volumes so that the reader's mental image is not ruined. He could change his appearance as he wished.

As a tribute to the dwarves, he decided he would try growing a beard. Then he rubbed his chin and his eyes narrowed.

Although he himself was quite a few years old, his body was still that of a teenager. By rights, he should have started growing a beard already, even if only a patchy one, but it wasn't.

This was one more problem he would look into. Lex had already determined to sport a stubble, or maybe a light beard. He was getting sidetracked.

Lex returned to the tree, and paused. Something was different, though he couldn't tell what specifically.

Of course, he knew that the tree had been struck with a lightning tribulation. He was not surprised. The turtle had informed him that having the tree mutate and mature early would trigger a tribulation, but the tree should be more than strong enough to withstand it. Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Indeed, the tree had withstood the tribulation without issue, and its body seemed greatly nourished.

The trunk was just as robust as ever, while each and every branch was firm yet flexible if need be. The leaves were green, and the whole tree was emanating an aura of liveliness. All was as expected.

Yet Lex could not help but suspect something was amiss.

He immediately summoned his spirit and soul sense, inspecting the tree for any changes, but all seemed to be normal. Whatever changes there were, he had already expected. So why did he feel like all was not as it seemed?

Lex had immense confidence in his instincts, so if they felt something was amiss, it definitely was. He was not one of those types to start doubting himself. The issue was, even if he was aware that something was wrong, he could not tell what it was.

Fearing that something might go wrong, Lex decided to skip the part where he took his time in admiring the treehouse. He attached the small birdhouse he created to the tree, and channeled his spirit energy inside of it, causing it to suddenly grow large.

In a matter of seconds, a large, sprawling treehouse appeared within the branches of the tree, and Lex submitted this tree to the system to inspect. Hopefully, if it passed, he could begin his second tavern.