Doomsday Innkeeper

Doomsday Innkeeper CH.4

Jiang Rong was awakened by thirst the next morning. The absolute first thing he did upon opening his eyes was feel for the cold, reassuring presence of his only weapon: the crowbar. Gripping the metal tightly, he lay frozen for a moment, straining his ears to pick up any sound from outside his bedroom door. Hearing nothing but silence, he finally let his tensed muscles relax, his eyes tracking the pale morning daylight filtering through the high, narrow window. A digital clock on the wall read 7:30 AM. He breathed out slowly, feeling the deep, restorative effects of a solid night's rest settle into his pores.

As Jiang Rong slowly brought himself up to a sitting position, his movements halted abruptly. His pupils contracted into sharp pinpoints.

His body... did not hurt. Not even a little.

He gingerly pressed his side where his ribs had been fractured the night before, but there was no flare of pain. He touched his temple—the agonizing, hot throbbing was completely gone. Blinking rapidly, he realized his vision was perfectly clear, both eyes working in seamless sync.

The brutal injuries inflicted by Mao Dong had seemingly vanished overnight.

He hastily yanked up his shirt to inspect his torso. The only things greeting him were the loose, shifting folds of the bandages he had wrapped around himself the previous evening. There was no trace of the purple bruises, no swelling, and no physical trauma. Holding his breath, Jiang Rong unwrapped the gauze completely and massaged his side with full force. He exhaled slowly.

The excruciating pain and labored breathing that had brought him to his knees just hours ago had truly left him.

Springing from the bed, he rushed into the bathroom and stared intently into the mirror. The gash on his forehead had closed up entirely, leaving behind nothing but a faint, fading red line. The swelling on his face had dissolved, and aside from a slight peeling on his dry lips, he showed no signs of having been beaten within an inch of his life.

"Can a single night's sleep really heal all injuries?" he muttered in bewilderment. The silent bathroom offered no answers to his doubts.

Jiang Rong stretched his shoulders and tested his legs with a few deep squats. His frame felt extraordinarily light, and his physical strength had clearly surged overnight. Just hours ago, he couldn't even climb the stairs without clutching the handrail in agony; now, he moved as if the beating had never happened. He couldn't tell whether this miraculous recovery was a property of the hotel as a whole or a unique perk of the Innkeeper's private room.

Yet, Jiang Rong couldn't bring himself to be entirely happy.

The hotel would restore his health, but it wouldn't fight his battles for him. The zombie left behind right after the system binding had already taught him that harsh lesson—in the end, he was the one who had to personally clear the trash from inside his walls. Furthermore, while the system had granted him a temporary Absolute Domain as a first-time binding gift, he had no idea what would happen once those initial twenty-four hours expired.

Walking out of the bathroom, his eye caught a soft glow emanating from the small study—a detail he had completely missed in the dark the night before. Intrigued, he stepped inside and found a 24-inch screen embedded flush into the wall, its display fully lit.

At the very top, glowing text read: Doomsday Inn Management System

There were no complex instructions or tutorials below the header, only a few lines of straightforward, utilitarian data:

• Hotel Rating: Level 1

• Crystal Coins: 0

• Upgrade Requirement: 500 Crystal Coins

• Rooms Available: 5

• Restaurant Status: Open

• Grocery Store: Locked (Requires 10 Crystal Coins to unlock)

• Utility Status:

• Power Grid: 95% Online / 4 Crystal Coins Per Refill

• Clean Water Filtration: 99% Online / 4 Crystal Coins Per Refill

• Absolute Domain: 10 Crystal Coins required daily to maintain Level 1 Domain. (Temporary 'Absolute Domain' Active: 19 hours remaining.)

Jiang Rong tapped the glass screen a few times, but the interface remained static. It didn't offer any guidance on what to do next, nor did a mechanical voice echo in his mind to issue starter quests. Ever since the initial binding, the system had gone completely radio silent. The most logical explanation his analytical mind could conjure was that the system was purely a tool; he had to figure out the mechanics and operate this hotel entirely on his own.

The guest rooms and restaurant were fully operational, but he still hadn't figured out how to actually convert his physical crystal core into the system's digital currency. It seemed that after he had flatly rejected the system's prompt the previous day, it had simply stopped reminding him.

Deciding he couldn't learn anything more by staring at the wall, he changed into fresh clothes and headed downstairs. The first-floor lobby was dead quiet. The only disruption was the muffled, rhythmic scratching of zombies mindlessly clawing at the heavy roller shutters outside the main entrance. From the back door, however, there wasn't a single sound.

Jiang Rong, holding tightly onto his crowbar, inspected the front desk with meticulous care. Although he knew that the Absolute Domain theoretically kept him perfectly safe within the hotel's walls, the psychological trauma of the previous night's betrayal left him unable to truly lower his guard. Only now, under the steady morning light, did he take the time to audit the physical transformations of the reception area.

The traditional cash register was completely gone, and so was the card reader. In their place, a small, palm-sized black disc had materialized on the top right corner of the wooden counter, seamlessly embedded flush into the surface.

There were no accompanying instructions, labels, or operational buttons. He tentatively pressed his palm against the smooth material, but the interface remained utterly unresponsive.

Acting on a sudden, intuitive hunch, Jiang Rong reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the grayish-white crystal core, and set it directly in the center of the black circle.

The reaction was instantaneous. The jagged crystal trembled slightly before sinking straight into the solid surface as if dropping into deep water, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye. The matte face of the disc immediately lit up, flashing a crisp digital readout: 10. The number lingered for a brief few seconds before fading back into pitch-black stillness.

"No confirmation prompts, no warnings," Jiang Rong murmured quietly to the empty room.

He bent down to thoroughly search beneath the counter, expecting to find physical tokens, coins, or a redemption slot where his currency might be dispensed. Finding nothing but empty space, a shadow of doubt crossed his mind. He immediately turned on his heel and rushed back up the stairs.

Entering the small study, his eyes snapped to the wall-mounted monitor. Sure enough, the digital ledger had automatically updated, the balance shifting cleanly from 0 to 10. Below the total, a new line of log history had appeared:

• Currency Exchange: 1 Zombie Crystal Core = 10 Crystal Coins.

At that moment, the transactional logic of the Doomsday Inn became perfectly clear. The reception desk disc functioned as a direct deposit terminal; it devoured physical crystal cores, digitized the asset, and updated the master ledger on the second floor instantly. The system offered no automated notifications or user tutorials—everything was hard-coded to process silently, forcing Jiang Rong to reverse-engineer the operations on his own.

His eyes swept across the dashboard text once more, his gaze lingering intentionally on the locked Grocery Store option. It was a tempting utility, but his analyst brain immediately overrode the impulse to spend. Instead of blindly unlocking a new department, he headed back downstairs. He needed a comprehensive risk-management strategy before committing his minimal capital.

To rigorously verify the architectural parameters of the system, he spent the next hour testing the limits of the Absolute Domain. He slammed his body weight and his iron crowbar heavily against the drywall, the structural pillars, the door frames, and the electronic locking mechanisms. He struck until his hands went completely numb from the vibrations. The results were absolute: he didn't manage to deform a single surface, let alone leave a microscopic scratch.

Using the blunt-force impact of his enhanced strength as a baseline, he calculated that the property was entirely impervious to standard human or low-level zombie attacks. While he couldn't test how the structure would hold up against high-caliber firearms, military explosives, or mutated variants of the undead, he wasn't about to risk his life to establish that boundary.

Based on this stress test, Jiang Rong made a firm executive decision: he would absolutely not open all five guest rooms for rent at once. Even though his physical strength and reflexes had drastically multiplied overnight, he was still ultimately just one man running a fortress.

If he allowed too many desperate survivors into his perimeter simultaneously, they could easily form a faction, hoard their resources internally, or attempt to overwhelm him through sheer numbers. Every variable had to be perfectly controlled. No errors were permitted. For the foreseeable future, entry would be heavily rationed; even if a refugee arrived at his doorstep with a mountain of crystal cores, Jiang Rong would not let them cross his threshold unless they fit into his exact strategic layout.

Returning to the safety of the upstairs study, he tapped the screen to deep-dive into the property layout. The interface broke down into modular sub-panels, separating the main entry points from the lodging corridors. Under the Main Entrance panel, the technical schematics confirmed that a physical remote control had been auto-generated inside the front desk drawer to operate the heavy external roller shutters. Behind those armor plates sat the tempered glass automatic doors, which were now hard-wired to external proximity card readers.

The operational blueprint for his business model was beautifully simple. When he chose to open for commerce, he would use the remote to raise the heavy steel shutters. Prospective tenants outside would be required to swipe their issued system room cards against the external sensor. The automated terminal would scan the card's data, verify a valid coin balance, and unlock the glass doors to let the authorized individual inside. The moment the guest crossed the barrier, the electronic locks would engage instantly. Without a verified, system-stamped hotel card, the entire outside world would remain permanently locked out