"Oh, wow. So that's how you're going to talk to me. Nice," muttered Luke.
He felt the floor beneath him tremble briefly, and instinctively he knew it was the inn's answer. Luke chuckled nervously and shook his head. "Haha, I'll take that as agreement then."
He returned to the center of the room and sat on one of the long wooden benches. "Listen. Now we're going to talk about ground rules."
There was no tremor or response, but Luke felt the mimic was listening.
"Okay, Arx… may I call you Arx?"
The mimic answered with a vibration through the chair Luke was sitting on.
"Great. So Arx, rule number one," he said, raising a finger. "No eating me."
Arx didn't respond. "Second. No eating guests. Unless they're truly malicious and act first."
This time Arx answered with a strong tremor, as if disagreeing. "Ok… ok. We'll talk about this later."
Luke leaned back against the chair, staring at the wooden ceiling of Arx Inn, shadows flickering from the fireplace. "Hmmm," he muttered with a long sigh. "So… about your feeding."
A small tremor spread through the floor, reaching the chair Luke sat on. "System… I'll call it a system because it's like the fantasy stories I read back on Earth. The system says you eat mana, emotions, and intent," Luke continued. "Which is… I don't know. I don't have some kind of hero energy or mana, so I don't know how to feed you."
"But what I gather," Luke said, shifting his posture, leaning toward the fireplace with his elbows on his knees, "is that you're a mimic, a monster of the inn type. And you're not actually feral."
"So, you feed off the emotions of guests—whether monsters, humanoids, whatever this world has—as long as they come with intent, and also have mana, you can consume that intent and mana. Right?"
The fire crackled and formed a hand with a raised thumb. Arx approved Luke's analysis.
"Aha, ok. So we agree now. I'll manage the inn, and you must provide protection and comfort to the guests, and feed off their intent and mana. Deal?"
Arx answered by flaring the fire, this time forming a tick mark.
"Oh, don't take too much mana from the guests, of course. Just a little."
The fire flickered, and Luke sensed the mimic was chuckling.
A system panel appeared before him, reporting the progress of his bond with Arx.
[Feeding Protocol Established]
[Primary Source: Guest Intent & Ambient Mana]
[Secondary Source: Innkeeper Emotional Overflow]
Luke read the last line and snorted softly. "Huh, seriously? My emotions are on your menu too?" he muttered.
The fireplace formed a small fiery figure shrugging, Arx pretending to be innocent.
Luke stared at it for a long time, then sighed heavily. "Fine," he said at last. "But you can only take emotions since I came to this world, ok? Once there are guests, you only feed from them. My emotions only if it's an emergency."
The fiery figure lowered its arms, nodded, and vanished.
The system panel went blank, then new text appeared.
[New Function Unlocked]
[Communication Channel between Innkeeper and Arx Inn Established via Direct Mental Intent Transfer]
[Reward from Ownership Claim and Bonding between Innkeeper and Arx Inn]
Finally, the panel disappeared, leaving Luke slightly confused about what form this communication would take.
Luke's body tensed in shock, standing immediately as a voice echoed directly in his head. The voice was deep, rough, heavy, truly like a monster's. "…Arx?"
"Oh. Now you can talk in my head?" he asked, glancing around the room.
Luke gaped for a moment, slightly amused that magic worked better than technology, but then froze mid-gesture. "Does that mean you can read my mind?"
"Hahha, good thing you can't…" he said nervously. The last thing he wanted was a monster reading all his thoughts.
They fell silent again for a while, until Luke's stomach growled. He stood and walked toward a door he assumed led to the kitchen.
But it wasn't a kitchen door, and the inn immediately responded to its new owner's hunger. A wooden panel beside the hearth slid open slowly, the building itself stretching.
A door formed where none had existed before.
Luke gawked. "…Cool."
"Oh, okay. Thanks," Luke replied, stepping through the newly formed door.
The kitchen was modest but functional. Stone stoves, iron cookware neatly arranged, a wooden counter long unused. A cupboard stood in the corner, containing only a loaf of rough bread wrapped in cloth, and a ceramic jug beside it.
Luke inspected everything carefully. "Did you make the bread?" he asked after checking the loaf, which was fresh.
Luke chuckled. His view of this seemingly backward world was shifting. A massive storage space, able to hold anything, even preserve food better than a refrigerator? "Damn, this world is cooler than I thought."
He tore the bread with his hands and ate it standing. It tasted plain but dense, and most importantly, real, not an illusion.
"So," Luke said while chewing bread and some rations salvaged from the forest monster's piss, "you can now talk to me properly, and you can feel all my emotions. Right?"
He nodded, sitting on a chair near the wooden counter. "So now we're clear. I'll handle guests, rules, food, and everything else. You handle the structure, guest safety, and never eat guests."
Arx didn't answer for a while.
Luke clicked his tongue at his new home and companion's hesitant reply. "Tch. We'll talk about more rules later."
He finished his meal, then sat for a while, thinking about what he would do next.