Chapter 2517: System Reboot

If Lex were a suspicious person, and history had proven that he was the absolute least suspicious person, he would have suspected that Mary was keeping secrets. Not the deep, insidious kind of secret that would find him with a sharp pain in his back and daggers edge sticking out from the front of his chest. Rather, the kind of secret where he felt like he was going to somehow find himself in an embarrassing situation that was difficult to explain.

"You can’t blame me. This body is pathetically weak," Mary suddenly complained. "It needs sustenance every year or so or its performance will start to drop. I need to prepare adequate groceries to make a meal that’ll keep me satiated and provide my body with the kind of nutrition it needs. Those kinds of groceries can’t be found in your local mart. Naturally, then, in the kind of place that sells the kinds of groceries I need, I need to look the part."

Lex did not comment. He did not mention that the greatest suppliers of the Inn were currently unavailable due to teleportation issues so anything for sale here was being sold by the Inn, or by locals mining or harvesting resources from the countless Minor realms connected to the Inn.

"Well, you let me know if you need any help with the groceries. Meanwhile-"

Lex was about to explain his situation to her, but Mary seemed especially pleased by the offer.

"Oh, you can count on it, I’ll definitely be asking for your help. But you’ll need to dress up - and a suit is fine, but an Inn uniform suit is definitely not fine," she said firmly, confirming Lex’s suspicions that she was up to something. He had a feeling it concerned Moon. Was Z finally going to ask her out properly? Were they going to spy on the kids going out on a date?

Technically they were all adults here and Moon didn’t need his permission or supervision, but spying on them could be fun. He nodded and gave Mary a mental thumbs up. Yes, that sounded like fun.

"Right, now that that’s out of the way, I wanted to talk to you about teleportation. I tried to hack the system myself and it didn’t exactly work like I intended," said Lex very seriously. "Nothing bad happened, but I have no way to carry out targeted teleportations. We’re going to need that if we’re going to find all our workers.

"I also want to begin selective teleportation, allowing only mortals and low level immortals from various realms to enter the Inn. I can’t really spend the next thousand years with the Midnight Inn shut down, so we’re going to need to figure that out."

Mary nodded, and was about to speak, but Lex responded to her suggestion before she gave it.

"The Inn hasn’t given me any quests lately. The system is telling me to lay low during this transition period so I think quests will be tough to get, at least until the system network finds an effective way to hide from the universe."

Mary lowered her finger, took a moment to think, and then came up with another idea.

"You need to get your hands on a System Reboot token. It won’t really reboot your progress - it’ll just reset the quests and quest difficulty to start from the beginning. You’ll get a lot more quests, and they’ll have starter level difficulty. More importantly, due to how broken your system was, you didn’t really go through the normal progress of quests and development.

"If the system reboots, there are chances that you’ll start to unlock system features that would have normally been made available to you at the correct level of development. That token is not easy to get, but if you can fulfil that quest you have - the one about submitting a way to hide systems - then maybe you can make a request for it."

In the end, the answer was still to fulfil a quest, but at least it was more targeted than doing quests blindly. It seems that for now, tampering with the system was not really a viable option.

"I’m trying, but Lotus is taking its time learning Regal Embrace. I’m helping it, but there’s no telling when it’ll be successful in learning the technique."

Mary’s expression became serious and she finally sat up straight, as if she were taking this matter with grave importance.

"That’s not acceptable. You need to complete the process in three months at most, preferably long before then. Don’t be afraid to use your resources - go sit in a Meditation room with Lotus on your back and start using the Scent Diffuser if you need to. Don’t let the decade long timeline fool you - no one knows what’s actually going to happen right now. Everyone is guessing."

Lex nodded. For once he agreed with her.

"That’s exactly why I’m coming to you. I’ll keep working with Lotus, but we need other ideas. We can’t just rely on the quest and hope it works out for the best."

Mary shook her head.

"It’s not a ’works out for the best’ kind of deal. System quests are designed specifically to always reward hosts with whatever they need at the moment. It’s a mechanism designed to increase survivability of hosts because the developer was clearly aware that the system quests would lead them into unexpected and difficult situations, so they’ll need all the help they can get.

"But I understand your point. I’ll think of more ideas, but at your current level, there’s very limited ways to interfere with the system. Moreover, finding loopholes to exploit will become increasingly difficult from now on since the system is close to full functionality."

Lex sighed, and then looked towards the Tribulation Fiends from across his office window.

"Well, let’s move onto the next topic then. How long do you think those Fiends are going to stay inside the Inn? I feel like leaving them around is just waiting for trouble. I appreciate their MP, but it’s not worth the risk."