After showing Elara to the finest guest room he had available—one at the far end of the hall, offering the most privacy—Leo returned to the main lobby to find a thick, unnerving silence. Lyra stood like a silver statue by the cold hearth, her face grim. Silas had sunk back into his shadowy corner, but his usual relaxed posture was gone; he was coiled as tightly as a spring, his emerald eyes darting around as if he expected hunters to burst through the walls at any moment.
The reality of their situation had settled in. They were not just providing shelter to a fugitive noble anymore. They were harboring a creature of myth, a living legend whose existence could destabilize kingdoms. And by doing so, they had painted a target on their home for the most dangerous mercenary guild in the world.
Leo looked from Lyra's stoic dread to Silas's paranoid tension. He understood their fear. A part of him felt it too, a cold knot of anxiety in his stomach. But another, larger part of him—the part that had thrived on high-stakes deals and impossible deadlines—was buzzing with a kind of manic energy.
He looked at the system screen only he could see, at the number that glowed with so much promise.
[Current Value: 12,685 Units]
Fear was a liability. Capital was an asset. And in his experience, the best way to deal with risk was to invest heavily in strengthening your position.
"Alright," Leo said, his voice cutting cleanly through the heavy silence. He clapped his hands together, the sound sharp and decisive. "Meeting. Now."
Lyra and Silas both looked at him, startled. "Meeting?" Lyra asked, her voice tight. "Leo, we should be preparing for a war."
"This is how we prepare," Leo replied, gesturing to the large table in the center of the lobby. "We're not going to sit here waiting for the sky to fall. We're going to grow. We're going to expand. We're going to make this Inn so valuable and so powerful that the Wyvern Hunters will look like gnats trying to bite a mountain."
His confidence was so absolute, so at odds with the crushing weight of their predicament, that it was strangely infectious. Hesitantly, Lyra and Silas left their respective posts and joined him at the table.
"As you both know, the Inn runs on Value," Leo began, falling into the familiar rhythm of a business presentation. "And thanks to the Duke's generous, albeit involuntary, donation, we currently have a massive surplus of capital." He focused his will, and the blue [Renovations] menu shimmered into existence, hovering over the center of the table so they could all see it.
Both Lyra and Silas gasped. They had seen him conjure a contract, but this was different. This was a look into the very control panel of their sanctuary. They stared, wide-eyed, at the long list of potential upgrades.
Silas recovered first, his sharp mind immediately grasping the implications. His clawed finger pointed to a line of text. "There," he said, his voice urgent. "[Observatory: Grade F - Cost: 1,200 Value Units]. It says it allows for basic scrying of the immediate exterior domain. We could monitor the Hunters' movements, anticipate their strategies. Information is our best defense."
"Defense is not enough," Lyra countered, her gaze fixed on a different option. Her eyes, usually so stoic, were filled with a warrior's longing. "[Training Hall: Grade F - Cost: 500 Value Units]. My skills are useless if I have no space to hone them. Elara is a powerful being, but she is wounded and weakened. I am the only true combatant among us. We need to be stronger."
Leo listened to both arguments, nodding thoughtfully. They were both right. Intelligence and strength were vital. But they were thinking like soldiers, like spies. He was a landlord. He had to think about the long-term health of his business.
"You're both thinking about how to survive the next month," Leo said calmly. "I'm thinking about how to dominate the next year."
He pointed to a different option on the list, one that made Silas's ears flatten in confusion and Lyra's brow furrow.
[NEW FACILITY: Ashen Baths (Healing Hot Springs) - Cost: 1,000 Value Units]
"Baths?" Silas said, incredulous. "The most dangerous men in the world are setting up camp on our lawn, and you want to build a spa?"
"Precisely," Leo said, a confident smile on his face. "Think about it. The Training Hall benefits one person directly. The Observatory gives us information we can mostly get from your network anyway. But the Ashen Baths… they are a luxury amenity. They provide a high-end service: healing, relaxation, rejuvenation. That doesn't just make our current tenants happier and healthier; it makes the Inn a destination. It raises our prestige. It will attract new tenants—powerful, wealthy tenants who can pay in S-Rank Value, just like Elara did."
He leaned forward, his eyes gleaming with ambition. "We don't survive by building bigger walls. We survive by becoming so indispensable that the world's most powerful people have a vested interest in our continued existence. We build a client base. We don't just offer sanctuary; we offer the best damn sanctuary on the market. This isn't an expense; it's an investment in our brand."
Lyra and Silas stared at him, speechless. His logic was so strangely corporate, so utterly divorced from their world of swords and shadows, that they couldn't find a flaw in it.
Leo looked at the screen, his decision made. "Guide, execute the purchase."
[Confirm construction of [Ashen Baths (Healing Hot Springs)] for 1,000 Value Units? Y/N]
He mentally pressed 'Y'.
[Confirmation received. Value deducted. Commencing construction.]
His Value count dropped to 11,685. A deep, resonant hum filled the Inn, a sound of immense power awakening. The far wall of the lobby, a plain expanse of solid stone and wood, began to shimmer.
The three of them watched, mesmerized, as the wall dissolved into a flowing river of liquid light. The stone and wood flowed and reshaped themselves, not with the chaos of destruction, but with the grace of a master sculptor. An elegant, arched doorway of pale, white marble formed where the wall had once stood, intricate carvings of steam and waves etching themselves into its surface.
The process took less than ten seconds. The humming faded, and where there had been a solid wall, there was now a beautiful, inviting entrance. A gentle, warm mist, smelling faintly of minerals and rain, wafted out from the doorway.
The Ashen Baths were now open for business.