A Retired Monster Hunter's Guide to Innkeeping
(2026)(The first book in the Last Inn on the Hunting Road series)
A novel by Clay Whitlock
For thirty years, Garron Pell was the last thing the monsters on the north road ever saw.
These days he wants something smaller. A dry roof. A barrel of ale that doesn’t taste like boiled boot leather. One quiet year with no bounty notice nailed to his door. So he buys the cheapest ruin on the old hunting road, the Last Lantern, and tells himself the place is simply forgotten.
It isn’t forgotten. It’s avoided. Something already lives in the stable.
Marrow is a half-starved young gravewyrm with far too many teeth, a purr like a shovel dragged over gravel, and a generous idea of what counts as food. Garron knows exactly how to put the creature down; he did it to its mother once, and that was the kill that finally broke his certainty. So this time he sets out a bowl of old bones instead of drawing a blade, and gets to work on the stable roof. The first house rule he writes is the hardest one to teach: guests are not groceries.
The village of Bellwether calls reopening the inn madness. The road is feared. Garron is famous for ending monsters, not boarding them. And the first travelers through the door arrive frightened, full of old stories, certain the strange man at the bar is exactly who the rumors say.
But a lonely boy with a monster notebook keeps turning up to help. The village brewer tastes Garron’s ale, pronounces it fit for stripping rust, and stays anyway to teach him better. A blunt carpenter takes one look at the wreck, lists everything wrong with it, and decides it can be saved. One difficult guest at a time, the road learns that the strangest roof for miles might also be the safest, so long as you read the rules chalked beside the door.
Then the summer storm breaks, the road washes out, and a terrified creature is cornered in the dark, with every frightened soul at the inn waiting for the old slayer to do what he does best.
Garron knows how to kill almost anything that walks, crawls, or slinks out of the wild. Learning to welcome it in from the rain is going to be much harder.
What’s waiting at the Last Lantern:
These days he wants something smaller. A dry roof. A barrel of ale that doesn’t taste like boiled boot leather. One quiet year with no bounty notice nailed to his door. So he buys the cheapest ruin on the old hunting road, the Last Lantern, and tells himself the place is simply forgotten.
It isn’t forgotten. It’s avoided. Something already lives in the stable.
Marrow is a half-starved young gravewyrm with far too many teeth, a purr like a shovel dragged over gravel, and a generous idea of what counts as food. Garron knows exactly how to put the creature down; he did it to its mother once, and that was the kill that finally broke his certainty. So this time he sets out a bowl of old bones instead of drawing a blade, and gets to work on the stable roof. The first house rule he writes is the hardest one to teach: guests are not groceries.
The village of Bellwether calls reopening the inn madness. The road is feared. Garron is famous for ending monsters, not boarding them. And the first travelers through the door arrive frightened, full of old stories, certain the strange man at the bar is exactly who the rumors say.
But a lonely boy with a monster notebook keeps turning up to help. The village brewer tastes Garron’s ale, pronounces it fit for stripping rust, and stays anyway to teach him better. A blunt carpenter takes one look at the wreck, lists everything wrong with it, and decides it can be saved. One difficult guest at a time, the road learns that the strangest roof for miles might also be the safest, so long as you read the rules chalked beside the door.
Then the summer storm breaks, the road washes out, and a terrified creature is cornered in the dark, with every frightened soul at the inn waiting for the old slayer to do what he does best.
Garron knows how to kill almost anything that walks, crawls, or slinks out of the wild. Learning to welcome it in from the rain is going to be much harder.
What’s waiting at the Last Lantern:
- A retired monster slayer trading the blade for a brewing paddle
Marrow the gravewyrm: the most lovable thing in the stable and by far the worst-behaved
Found family, a wary village, and a road that forgot how to feel safe
Roasted-garlic suppers, honest house ale, and rooms made warm one repair at a time
Light LitRPG progression through the inn’s magical Welcome Ledger
Clean, low-stakes, no harem, wholesome, comfort from the first page to the last
Read free in Kindle Unlimited.
Genre: Fantasy
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Clay Whitlock's A Retired Monster Hunter's Guide to Innkeeping