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The 1 Minute Butter Knife token allowed Lex to use the Butter Knife at its full strength for a duration of 1 minute. Perhaps if he had used it as a sword or dagger instead of throwing it, he would have had access to it for the full minute instead of a single attack.

Yet it did not matter, for the damage he did with that single attack was far greater than anything he could have achieved by simply swinging it around.

All those who had attacked the Inn, or were secretly planning on attacking the Inn had been gathered by him in one location - not so that he could attack them but so that they would not cause trouble.

This raised the question of how Lex knew who the people were who intended to cause trouble when even the system failed to detect their malicious intent. The truth was, he was not detecting malicious intent, but his eyes saw them connected by Karma. Of course, Lex had no idea what Karma was, or how it worked.

But in his semi-sane state his subconscious mind was playing as much of an important role as his conscious mind.

Once in that location, they had been subjected to various pressures, auras and, finally, a strange and new formation.

This formation was what sucked up all of Lex's MP down to the last, yet other than a strange ethereal binding sensation it did not seem to do anything else. Lex however, did not care about what these people felt.

He only cared about venting his rage, and so he gave in to his most bestial urge for death and destruction! He used the Butter Knife in the way his instincts told him would be most useful.

But while all the energy for the attack should have come from the Knife itself, something about how he aimed sucked up all the energy out of Lex. So, with the last of his sanity, he teleported back to the Recovery pod, put up the sticky note, requested the Lotus to help him once again, and allowed himself to fall back into a coma.

This all happened instantaneously, and no one noticed it happen, for they were all focused on the fallout from the Innkeepers attack!

If one were to say it was devastating, it would be an underestimation, but if one were to say it underwhelming, they would also not be wrong.

Within the Inn, all the targets simply died. There was no explosion, no torture, no burning or ripping their bodies to shreds. One moment they existed, and the next their very existence was wiped. In fact, even the memory of what they looked like, or who they were, seemed to be erased from existence.

So, to the onlookers, it seemed only like the Innkeeper told the group to die, and then they did. It was that simple.

But the thing was… Lex did not aim for the targets who attacked the Inn. He attacked EVERYONE and EVERYTHING in existence which had something to do with the attack on the Inn.

As such, the energy from the Knife killed all the targets at the Inn with extreme ease and simplicity. Then it had to target the rest of the universe.

But for that, the energy from the attack had to first escape the Inn. The small rip in the fabric of reality that exposed the Midnight Inn from within its Minor realm, to the rest of the Origin realm, suddenly became a bottleneck for the energy to escape!

Earthquakes, airquakes, cracks in reality and the bending of space between the two realms itself all seemed to happen all at once.

The sound of a billion explosions rocked the Inn, and despite the lack of air, carried through the void of space, crushing all meteors and space debris in its path. That was only a result of the energy escaping the Inn.

Once it entered the Origin realm, the energy seemed to gain a life of its own as it ripped a hole in the realm and forced itself into the fabric of reality.

Space itself began to ripple as more and more energy seemed to disappear, forming new tears everywhere! Minor realms began to rain down through the ripples in space, spreading through hundreds of galaxies within mere seconds.

Mortals found it beyond their comprehension, and simply fainted from the overload of what they were watching. Earth immortals, barely counting as immortals, were somewhat about to keep themselves awake if they tried, but never had they felt more insignificant.

Those even stronger than Earth immortals… they were not looking at the dissipating energy or ripples in space. Instead, their eyes looked out into the distance as they traced where the energy flowed to.

Never before had such a scene been witnessed, at least in the Origin realm. Perhaps, they would never get a chance to see it again either. For a short moment, all living entities within a billion nearby galaxies froze as they were affected by the last of the energy that left the Inn.

Then the Minor realm surrounding the Midnight Inn closed once again, as if it was never there, and the energy that defied common sense also seemed to vanish. But those who were strong enough to follow the flow of energy knew it did not vanish. No, instead it was wreaking havoc on an unprecedented scale.

*****

𝓵𝒊𝓫𝓻𝓮𝓪𝒅.𝓬𝓸𝙢

Sitting in his divine palace, Ra, the father of creation, and also Bastet, had his eyes closed as he tried to track down his daughter. She was extremely naughty and purposefully kept destroying his plans all because he sold her into a marriage she didn't want. It was the height of immaturity, in his opinion.

He could not vent his anger on the stupid human race, whom he had passed his daughter to and asked to keep her in a dead zone so she may not escape. After all, the Henali looked upon the humans with great care simply because one of their prized pets was a human.

Instead he found a way to vent on an organization called the Midnight Inn, which had apparently played a part in helping his daughter escape, supposedly.

Honestly speaking he did not give it much thought at all, and simply passed the task to one of his underlings. As a God, he could not be expected to do tedious things such as revenge by himself.

Ra, the God with the body of a human and the head of a hawk, was just as arrogant as he was lazy, and was just as lazy as he was amorous.

But the arrogant God went from being focused on locating his daughter to screaming in fear and anger in a single heartbeat.

A blinding golden light encompassed his fist and he punched forward, clashing against an unknown force. The impact from the explosion destroyed the divine palace. In fact, it destroyed the whole planet where the palace was located.

Yet Ra only seemed to suffer from a burnt hand. Yet the expression on the deity's face was beyond simple anger as it suffered the greatest loss it had faced in its entire existence. It was not his burnt hand that was a loss, but his divinity which seemed to be dwindling. No, this was too dangerous. Though he could not understand what was happening, he had to defend his divinity at all costs.

The God disappeared.

*****

Egypt, Earth

In a rather luxurious apartment, a small group was kneeling and worshiping a picture that looked like a deity with the face of a Hawk. On their knees they hummed and prayed. They were one of the last few remnants of a religion thought lost to the ages.

Suddenly, in their minds, they heard a voice telling them to die. Then… there was nothing, not even dust. They had simply ceased to exist.

*****

Throughout the Origin realm, from small groups to countries to planets to star systems and even galaxies, anything and everything that had any direct affiliation with the sincere worship of Ra suffered from a mysterious and devastating attack.

There was no place safe, no place where they could hide. Wherever the followers of the God existed was exactly the place that became most dangerous for them.

This phenomenon was not slow or gradual, for within a few seconds, billions of years of hard work vanished. Even the religion itself seemed to vanish in some places, alongside tools and records of worship.

Ra began to appear in his temples in person for the first time in eternity, but it was pointless, for he never reached anywhere in time. An utter hopelessness gripped him when he lost more than 50% of his divinity in the blink of an eye, and forced him to make a difficult decision.

For a single second Ra hesitated more, but that single second cost him 8% more divinity, so he lost all hesitation and did something taboo for a deity.

He killed all of his worshipers across the universe himself in an ultimate sacrifice, squeezing their existence of any divinity he could scrounge up, before vanishing himself as well. He did not know what just happened, but he would get his revenge one day.

For now, though, he had to hide before his daughter realized how weak he had become

.

Just as instantaneously as the energy had appeared, it vanished. People across the realm stopped spontaneously disappearing, and an entire major religion that had once dominated the Origin realm seemed to disappear from existence.

Not everyone realized instantly what happened. Depending on their strength and cultivation, it took them a few hours to a few days to possibly even a few months or years. For most beings, though, the actual purpose of the event, which was quickly being titled as the 'Interstellar wave' eluded them. Instead, they were focused on the secondary repercussions of what happened.

Though the distortions in space stopped as soon as the energy vanished, the effects that they already had were far from over. The movement path of an estimated 1 billion galaxies was severely compromised, and even more were suffering from mild deviations. The few strands of energy that escaped the attack dispersed into the universe and gave birth to a phenomenon of a bountiful harvest. Planets quickly started rising in their star ranks, though quick was only a relative term, and treasures that were so rare they had no names began to form.

A time of rapid growth suddenly overcame the few galaxies that had been the closest in contact with the energy, but while that growth brought with it prosperity, it also brought greed and war. For better or worse, the trajectory of the Origin realm had changed.

A thing to note, however, was that none of the galaxies affected were actually a part of the galaxies that had directly interacted with the Inn so far. For example, these galaxies were so far from the Jotun Empire that, besides their strongest immortals, none of them even felt the energy surge that enveloped the whole realm.

Of course, the Henali were the quickest to understand what happened, and quickly even summarized accurately what had happened.

In the Henali assembly, there was an awkward silence as the Daolords had been stopped midconversation for an announcement. They had no idea what had just occurred because the location of the assembly was special and cut off from the rest of the realm, but they were about to find out.

"There was a clash amongst lords," said the Henali convening the assembly. "We do not know the background of the issue, but it seems that God Ra provoked the new lord known as The Innkeeper. As a result, The Innkeeper retaliated, and Ra's religion had ceased to exist in the realm, and Ra has escaped, hiding his trail."

No more was said, but excitement filled the room. Amana especially was thrilled, and a little flushed. She was extremely grateful to the mysterious Innkeeper and, strangely, feeling a little attracted to him. Daolords almost never clashed, for it was not easy for any of them to get an advantage over another, yet the Innkeeper had reduced Ra to hiding in a single clash.

The Innkeeper must be incredibly powerful, which meant... he would also make a good father. Her blush grew as her thoughts started to race.

Very few Daolords were able to keep their composure, but Ballom was one of them. After all, the Devil's background was not as shallow as everyone else's. Still, it seemed like the Innkeeper was worthy of cooperating with. Since his Inn catered to the whole universe, perhaps he should also invite him to Garvitz, one of the main realms of the Devils.

𝒍𝒊𝙗𝓻𝒆𝓪𝙙.𝙘𝙤𝙢

A few other Daolords also developed an interest in the Midnight Inn. After all, now that the Innkeeper had shown his hand, there was no doubt he was worthy of sending a team to the Henali Champions tourney. It seemed that things would be very interesting this time around.

*****

At the Midnight Inn, all was still. The sky itself had been ripped asunder by the Innkeepers attack, allowing them to glimpse the havoc it wrought onto the universe. Of course, since the system had failed to protect the guests from the aura of the attack, most of them had fainted outright - including the workers.

Mary especially was disoriented, for the System itself had suffered from the attack. A countless barrage of notifications flooded Lex, but unfortunately, he was asleep. This time, though, he would wake up soon as he had already informed the Lotus of the kind of aid he wanted - though Lex himself was disoriented when he gave the instructions, so it was unknown what his exact purpose was.

Still, a few managed to stay awake, and as soon as the rip in the sky healed and the dark clouds over the Inn dispersed, they began working. After all, they had already suffered a huge blow to their credibility. It would be a massive shame if the remaining guests woke up and found themselves on the floor.

Anita summoned an army of undead, still looking beautiful and magnificent instead of ugly and decaying, and had them start working. As the workers began waking up, they helped as well.

Moreover, while the guests who had been here for the chaos had been affected, as the Inn had over time developed some prestige, more and more guests came every few minutes. Soon, the Inn seemed to be returning towards operating normally. Lex hadn't had time to clean up the Inn but the workers quickly began getting to it.

When Mary finally recovered, she breathed a sigh of relief and was just about to begin passing out orders to return things to normal, when a golden beam of light shot through the air right from the grounds where Lex killed all the miscreants.

Mary was too sensitive right now due to everything they had faced, and immediately turned all her attention to the light, ready for another battle. But it was not new enemies that appeared from the beam of light. No, instead a hearth was formed right in the open.

A golden flame lit up in the heart, and began producing a crackling sound, as if logs were being burnt. On the stone, writing started to appear alongside a countdown that was ticking each second.

After ensuring it was nothing bad, Mary scanned the heart. Even though she had no physical body, she shuddered mentally as she read the words and looked on in horror.

It read: here lie the souls of those who deigned to become enemies of the Midnight Inn, serving as timber until their time is up.

The countdown was only about 100 days, but in a way, it was longer than eternity. When one focused on the flames, amidst the burning the flames', faces appeared from time to time. If one focused on the hearth with their spirit sense, the wails and screams of countless souls could be heard, even if ever so slightly.

The souls trapped here were only those that Lex had trapped in the formation, and not all the ones from the entire universe, but even then the number went into the tens of thousands. Moreover, trapping souls was not an easy task. Taking it a step further and trapping thousands of souls, and then torturing them made the formation increasingly expensive.

A majority of Lex's MP went into purchasing the soul trapping formation, and the rest went into maximizing the number of days they could be trapped.

Perhaps it would be a waste of MP to do such a thing, for it had taken a long time for Lex to accumulate so much. But maybe, it would serve him in another way, and the price would end up being worth it.

As it happened, a guest teleported to the Inn, and they appeared right in front of the hearth. Ragnar stepped out of the golden light with a creased brow, clearly under great stress. Things had not been going well for Jotun on the battlefront, but then again, when were things ever simple?

He had come to the Inn to find out if the Innkeeper had returned, as well make a few updates on his assigned guild task. He still did not know that it had been accepted already by someone, and was already in the process of being completed.

As the golden light disappeared and Ragnar got ready to move on, he suddenly noticed that something was unusual about the Inn. He did not need to sweep his spirit sense as just his eyesight was enough to see the damage it had suffered, and the numerous unconscious people on the ground.

Before he could even begin to speculate, however, his attention turned towards the hearth. He was stunned as numerous thoughts ran through his mind, but first he kept checking the hearth. This was because, within the souls trapped in there, he recognized a few. In fact, he did not even need to search for them, as the hearth had some kind of mystical ability to let him know exactly who he knew that had been trapped inside.

He could not believe that soldiers from his regiment would be stupid enough to attack the Inn. It went against common sense. In fact, they should not be participating in any conflict that he did not assign, it was a clear dereliction of duty and betrayal!

He froze, and tasted the word on his lips. Betrayal. Suddenly a few things made sense to him.

Ragnar did not let his emotions show on his face, but his mind was extremely turbulent. As a man who had dedicated his entire life to the human race, one of the things he hated most were demons, devils and other races that for some reason targeted the humans.

But the single thing, without a shred of doubt, that he hated most were humans who betrayed the human race. He understood that there was always conflict and interest, and humans could never completely be peaceful with one another. It was all but natural. Yet there was a difference between fighting other humans due to a conflict of interest, and betraying them to gain benefits from another race.

He knew, unfortunately, that as despicable a thing as this was, it was still prevalent in humans. He just never imagined that he would face it on such a high level.

To be clear, he was not considering some members of his regiment participating in an attack on the Inn as high level interference. No, instead it was the fact that there was even a possibility that a Jorlam had been born in the Pendal galaxy that meant there was a high level betrayal.

Moreover, this was not just a betrayal of the human race, but the Henali as well. The battlefield where Ragnar was currently stationed was to fight off invading Fuegan, a duty assigned directly by the Henali. If someone was interfering with that… well, the loss of a single galaxy was far from the worst thing they could end up having happen to them.

Ragnar collected himself, gave one last look at the hearth as well as the countdown on it, listing how long the enemies of the Inn would be tortured, before moving towards the Guild room.

Along the way as he saw the condition of the Inn, it served as a reminder for him that no matter how strong or capable one might be, there would always be those who would challenge them.

*****

Velma woke up in the Recovery room, her hair a mess and her face pale from the shock her body had suffered. Her body was sore, not only from the fighting she had been exposed to, but from the aftermath of an explosion that she had been lucky enough to survive.

She was disoriented at first, but recovered quickly. Then she hopped on her feet and began helping where she could. There were countless injured who needed tending to, and even the ones who recovered needed aid, let alone the number of guests who were unhurt, but still needed tending to. After all, this was an Inn not a hospital, and there was no shortage of regular guests.

She saw a pale looking guest who, according to Nurse Jubilation, was perfectly physically healthy, but kept crying and wailing in fear. But while it was their job, none of the workers or nurses were willing to help him. This was because… the crying man was the person who had challenged the Innkeeper to a fight!

The fact that he hadn't been killed meant that he was never really involved with the attack, he was just an incredibly arrogant man with unfortunate timing. But whatever the case, his greatest misfortune was that he encountered Lex who was in a state of seeking revenge for every petty grievance at the time. Though he had not killed the man who challenged him, but just let him be exposed to the aura released by the Butter Knife while forcing him to stay awake.

Suffice to say the man was extremely traumatized. Eventually, with time, he would recover, but it seemed like his recovery would not be at the Inn, for on one was willing to aid him, except nurse Jubilation who was burdened with responsibility.

Velma was about to go tend to other patients when one of Anita's undead helpers appeared and informed Velma that Anita was requesting her prescience.

Anita was in the Midnight Library, recording the past days' events down by hand - her handwriting the most beautiful calligraphy Velma had ever seen.

"I'm glad to see you are unhurt," said the Lich. "But I think you have more pressing matters currently than helping guests."

"What do you mean?" asked Velma. Though she had recovered somewhat, she was not in her peak state so her thoughts were somewhat slow.

"Why, you have to write a newsletter on the Innkeepers actions of course," she replied, placing a printed picture before her. It showed the silhouette of a man shining alone in the darkness, a single Butter Knife in his hand. "And don't just write a newsletter this time. There's a new building that the Innkeeper created that lets you enter the Henali portal. Publish his actions for the whole universe to know."

Stars shone in Velma's eyes as she suddenly realized that's exactly what she needed to do. While she was at it, and the Innkeeper was in the limelight, should she create a dating profile for him? After all, she'd never heard of a Mrs. Innkeeper yet.

*****

Lex's sleeping body looked even more withered than the first time it had been out into the Recovery room, but that was to be expected. Not only did his body suffer through the same strain as last time, this time the Lotus was contributing to his condition.

Lex had made a simple request, to step by step make his body's foundation capable of interacting with universal laws physically. Well, he did not phrase it like that, because he did not even know, nor could he comprehend, what the universal laws were. Instead, he asked the Lotus to give him a foundation which could tolerate the immense stress his hallucinations were putting him under, and then allowed the Lotus to examine his body.

The Lotus, however, immediately recognized the influence of laws, and it began to work. The first step was to enhance Lex's blood, for which it would have to first absorb all of his blood. It was an extremely tedious process, but fortunately Lex would be able to survive a few minutes without any blood in his body. After that, the Lotus would give Lex new blood which was carried a lot more than just nutrients and oxygen. Then it could begin on its other changes. It was a little hard to fulfill such a request without any materials on hand, but it would do what it could.

*****

Luthor stood silently in front of the Recovery pod which contained Harry's body. He had never met Harry for his time at the Inn was too short. In fact, not only had he not met a majority of the workers, he had missed out most of the battle that had taken place, simply because he was in training and did not know about it.

To make matters worse, when he did learn about the battle, he had been too pathetically weak to do anything. He could only watch helplessly as the Inn was destroyed around him. Then, when everything seemed to be at its worst, the Innkeeper arrived, like heroes from the legends of old.

His fury was the fury of the universe, and his wrath had rained down swiftly on his enemies, yet the Innkeeper had left just as swiftly. Luthor heard a rumor that the reason the Innkeeper had not helped at first, and had disappeared as quickly as he appeared, was because he was taking care of incredibly important matters.

They were so important, in fact, that the Innkeeper could not even stick around to drink the coffee he had requested from Gerard, apparently.

When Luthor heard such a thing, he had never felt more ashamed in his few weeks long life.

The Innkeeper was working tirelessly to deliver the universe the ultimate hoteling experience, and here they were, unable to even deliver coffee on time.

But no amount of frustration would help, and no amount of anger would suddenly make things better. He needed to spend some time studying, learning how best he could help the Inn. For that, he had discovered a new facility - the Henali portal.

𝓁𝘪𝑏𝑟ℯ𝒶𝑑.𝑐ℴ𝘮

Without saying a single word, Luthor left the Recovery pod and made his way to register for the portal. The universe had bested the Inn today, though it could not best the Innkeeper. But such a day would never come again. A golf cart, an incredibly upgraded golf cart, pulled up besides Luthor as he was walking.

Gerard, who was in the driver's seat, signaled Luthor to get in.

"I've been talking to some of the fellas. Everyone feels the same way. We're too weak."

Luthor said nothing. He had no words left in him right now.

"To be honest, we can't be blamed. We've been trained to be hosts, not fighters. But that doesn't mean we can't change. I remember the little lass Velma told me about a rumor once, about a place that can train people to become strong."

A light flickered in Luthor's eyes, but he still remained silent.

"I don't know if the place is true, but apparently there is a trial you can take to enter. I'm going to start searching for the trial. If you're interested, once I find the trial, you can come as well."

"What's the place called?" Luthor finally asked hoarsely.

"Ventura."