The Innkeeper

Chapter 1788: Umbragard City I

The auction, which did not really have any specific name but people had taken to calling the Midnight Auction, was held in an enlarged replica of the Midnight manor in Umbragard city.

Umbragard city was named after the House of Midnight, Umbragard. It was the house founded by Gerard, and was the one dedicated specifically to the protection and safeguarding of the Midnight Inn.¹

When the houses had been formed, back in the earliest days of the Inn, it had been more as a result of the ever increasing sense of belonging and home that the many workers of the Inn had. Some had taken to expressing that sense of belonging by taking up the name of Midnight, yet they were very few who did that. Most dared not tie that name to themselves, out of fear that they might one day shame it.

Z, often called the big brother of the workers of the Inn, was the one to notice the feelings, and the subtlest growing unease. He was also the one who took the initiative to suggest forming houses.

He had formed the house Starcloak, a house inspired by the vast and endless night sky, carrying and accepting all the stars and galaxies without rejection.

Gerard had formed Umbragard, and it was meant to unite the ever growing security team who stood ever ready to protect the Inn. Vigilant, stalwart, and dedicated, the house Umbargard was formed to give special recognition to those workers of the Inn who rarely saw recognition. They hid in the shadows, away from the guests, watching, protecting.

One might think that because of the security hired by the Inn, the Umbragard had it easy. That was far from the case. In fact, they trained the hardest – harder even than the Midnight Battalion – because on their shoulders was the burden of protecting their home. They were among the first of all the Inn workers to become Earth Immortals, and even within that realm, they had already made tremendous progress.

Velma founded the Nyxheart. Different workers had different temperaments, and not all of them were suited for fighting. Some of them were suited for chatting, for discussion, for gathering intel across countless platforms and realms, and bringing it all together, for the express purpose of exacting the Innkeepers will.

Luthor, then, created the Nightshade. They were focused on dealing with external enemies. The Battalion had ended up joining them. Whether it was matters of assassination or straight up war, whether it was strategy or diplomacy, whether it was identifying new enemies or extracting the details of old ones, they were the ones who took care of it.

Of course, all of these were just broad descriptors of the houses, and over time countless workers joined them.

Initially, the houses had just been a way to manage the sentiment of the workers. But as the Inn grew, and the scale of its operations grew, and the number of workers grew, and the influence of time began to reveal itself, the houses started to perfectly fill in any gaps that were required from them. They became an exemplar of synergy at not only managing the large and diverse groups of guests that visited the Inn, but at managing the relationships between the workers as well.

The Planning Division, which consisted mostly of Nyxhearts and Umbragard, then proposed the idea of four major cities, each designed with a very specific purpose in mind. Each city would be named after one of the houses, not because it housed the workers, but because the purpose of the city was exemplified by the original founding purpose of the houses.

Umbragard city, then, became a city with a very specific purpose. It was designed to hold all kinds of important events in the Midnight Inn, accommodate all kinds of guests, and provide the utmost security, and more importantly, ease of access to whatever event was taking place.

Since the city had been designed with those things in mind, its scale was similarly massive. In fact, just the mere replica of the Midnight manor was built with the intention to be able to house 1 billion guests inside.

It had 100 floors underground, with many floors dedicated to various types of guests who needed to live in soil of various pressures, and up to 500 floors above the ground.

The building alone covered 82,000 acres of land, the reason being that not only could it accommodate guests, but the building also contained various biomes such as forests, rivers, lakes, mountains, all to accommodate various types of guests.

There were large platforms on the upper levels, acting as bridges between different sections of the building, as well as outdoor parks, farms and forests.

While the building itself was amazing, and could be used to house guests normally, its core purpose was to act as the focal point of any large Midnight Inn events, and so it contained large auditoriums, luxurious private booths that were basically just Inn rooms with a dedicated living room to view the events, and even large public pavilions in case certain guests wanted to attend the event while getting a sense of community.

All of this was done, while keeping security at the forefront, so the entire structure was not only filled to the brim with countless protective formations, it was designed to easily contain any and all incidents, not to mention that the structure itself was strong enough to bear a lot of damage.

That was only the replica of the Midnight mansion. The actual Umbragard city was designed to hold 10 billion guests, with the potential to expand even further in the future if necessary. In fact, the Planning Division had not worked on any of the other cities yet at all, because they were still fine tuning all the small details of the city.

The auction, which would be the first event in the city, would be equivalent to a soft opening for the city, compared to the grand events that it had been designed to be able to accommodate.