Ch.68Bad Night, Good Morning

At the Cotton Tail Trading Post as the sun was setting, I found myself facing off against a gunslinger dressed in black from head to toe.

The gunslinger’s name was “Crow.”

A crazy duel maniac who carried a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun and picked fights for no reason at all.

Standing ten paces apart, hands ready to draw the guns at our waists, we’d been facing each other for about twenty seconds.

As a crow perched atop a street signpost suddenly took flight with a flutter, both our hands moved quickly.

For what it’s worth, I’m the American champion of quick-draw shooting competitions.

There’s no way I’d lose to someone with a sawed-off shotgun—

‘BANG!’

“Huh!?”

I opened my eyes with a chilling sensation to find myself in a first-floor room at the Clover Garden Inn.

Apparently, I’d been having a nightmare about losing a duel to the man called Crow.

“…Oh really, this is getting ridiculous.”

Still lying in bed, I rubbed my face and sat up to look at the pocket watch I’d left by my pillow.

The current time was approximately 2:10 AM. I’d only slept for about three hours after coming up here following a heated complaint to the innkeeper.

After the duel with Crow ended without resolution, we finished some quick shopping and dispersed to our respective lodgings, agreeing to rest early.

The fatigue from marching, stress from dealing with peddlers, and mental exhaustion from the duel commotion had taken too great a toll.

Located in a corner of the lodging district, Clover Garden was a good value accommodation offering decent bedding and minimal shower facilities for the affordable price of 80 coins per night.

The plan was to recover physically and mentally here, then set off to investigate Mount Evernight in the morning with refreshed spirits.

That would have been nice, but…

‘Knock knock’

Barely ten minutes after I’d showered and gotten into bed, someone knocked on my door.

Slightly annoyed at having my rare moment of rest disturbed, I opened the door to find a Whitepaw woman in her underwear, winking and offering a night of pleasure.

‘Hey adventurer, how about spending the night with me for 15 gold?’

The reason the entire first floor of Clover Garden consisted of male-only rooms was because it was connected to outcall services from surrounding entertainment establishments.

After sending away the Whitepaw prostitute with her blatant seduction, a new girl would knock on my door every 30 minutes. Only after I reached my limit of patience, ran to the counter, and made a scene with the innkeeper was I finally able to restore peace to my room.

That hard-won peace ended just three hours later because of a nightmare about that unpleasant man called Crow.

‘Crow… probably not his real name.’

Crow had barged in right after my duel with the brute who’d been harassing Jessica and Seti, demanding I accept his challenge to a duel without any regard for our situation.

Just to provoke me, he flirted with a woman he wasn’t even interested in, and even went so far as to fire his shotgun at her head.

His behavior alone made it easy to guess he wasn’t in his right mind, but the intimidating aura emanating from him suggested there was something more to him than just being a madman.

– If the duel had actually started, do you think you could have won?

I close my eyes and recall Jessica’s question to me once more.

My name is William J. Kim, national champion of the “Gunslinger Championship,” a quick-draw shooting competition.

My first-shot record in the last competition was 0.171 seconds.

Though it falls just short of the all-time world record, it’s enough to surpass the Phantom Thief team’s gunman and Shinjuku’s Thoroughbred, challenging the domain of the thick-eyebrowed Sniper.

I could feel that my quick-draw skills had been improving bit by bit since coming to Grantis.

Add to that my thought acceleration ability through the Crisis Detection skill, and I could proudly claim to be the man who could draw and fire a gun faster than anyone else in Grantis.

Heh heh heh… you might call it “rapid fire.”

The problem was that despite possessing such rapid-fire skills, I wasn’t confident I could win against the man called Crow.

Crow had challenged me so nonchalantly even after witnessing my lightning-fast quick draw that fired two magic bullets in an instant.

The pressure he exuded was certainly impressive, but if asked whether it approached me as fear, the answer would honestly be ambiguous.

If we’re talking about pure terror, I’d give the edge to the voices of victims that bored into my mind in the Disease Demon’s dungeon.

What I felt from Crow wasn’t fear but discomfort, something closer to “a vague unpleasantness toward an unknown entity.”

Not the fear of defeat or death, but a strange sensation that peering beyond that felt unpleasant in itself.

It was like seeing a box full of insects in a dream, then finding an identical box while walking down the street the next day.

If the duel had actually taken place and we’d faced each other with fingers on triggers, who would have won?

Did Crow have a hidden talent that could surpass my 0.171-second quick draw?

Would a bullet hole have been drilled through my head, with Jessica and Seti screaming and crying, while Mina and Phyllis lost their dreams and returned home…

“Ah, damn it. This won’t do. I’m already short on sleep, and here I am thinking about some madman.”

Lying back down on the bed and turning over, the empty space beside me feels particularly lonely.

How nice it would be if my two lovers, a hundred times more lovable than any scantily clad bunny girl, would walk through that door right now.

They say the best remedy for a man’s gloom is to be held in the arms of the woman he loves. I hope tomorrow night I can sleep in a large tent with Jessica and Seti in my arms.

The next morning, after checking out of the lodging, I headed to the meeting place in front of the “Traders Inn.”

Mina and Seti had already arrived, and after waiting about five minutes, Jessica and Phyllis joined us after completing their checkout.

As we walked from the lodging district across the minor barrier boundary toward the central area, we exchanged impressions of our respective accommodations.

“What!? Clover Garden was that kind of place?”

“That’s what I’m saying. It was already annoying enough being assigned to a lodging far away from everyone else, but having someone knock on my door every 30 minutes nearly drove me crazy.”

“You say that, but maybe you actually enjoyed a passionate night behind Jessica and Seti’s backs…”

*Glare*

“…which obviously didn’t happen. Hahaha.”

Mina scratched the back of her head and hid behind Phyllis after receiving intense glares from Jessica and Seti.

“Just to make sure, the Traders Inn and Little Joe’s Inn were normal places, right?”

“Yes. The interior decorations were a bit luxurious, but nothing unusual. Though it was strange that there was a corner selling expensive cosmetics and jewelry in the second-floor corridor.”

“Mina said the inn she stayed at had expensive liquor displayed in the room cabinets.”

“That’s right! They said you could drink freely and pay for everything at checkout!”

“Customer-tailored service, huh… not a trace of privacy protection to be found.”

While dispatching prostitutes to male-only inns might be within the predictable range, displaying expensive liquor in rooms assigned to dwarves and accommodating young ladies in hotels with boutiques attached is the result of thorough customer analysis.

We’d already fallen into their trap the moment we approached the reception desk and revealed the number, gender, and race of our guests.

“So, how many bottles of that expensive liquor did you finish off?”

“Wuhuhuh~ I may be a dwarf, but I’m not crazy enough to pay 50 gold for a small bottle of 88-year-old whiskey!”

“A dwarf resisted alcohol and just left? You expect me to believe that?”

“It’s true. Mina didn’t drink any of the liquor in the cabinet. I saw her checking out.”

“I got by with the honey wine we brought from the Willow Sanctuary! Honestly, if there had been even one bottle of something tastier, I might have been in danger.”

So even Mina, who seemed most at risk, managed to stay safe by a narrow margin.

After we finish investigating Mount Evernight, it might be safer to purify the black magic during the day and leave the trading post.

“Now that everyone’s here, let’s head to Mount Evernight… but first, what should we do about breakfast?”

“How about buying something we can eat while walking? Restaurants are crowded everywhere.”

“I agree. It’s not particularly pleasant when peddlers come in and out trying to sell their wares while we’re eating.”

“OK, then let’s buy some skewers from over there and eat them as we walk.”

Cotton Tail Trading Post.

Once known as the “Wide Fields of the Whitepaw,” where hardworking native Whitepaw enjoyed a slow life.

But now it had transformed into a cauldron of chaos where human figures obsessed with money—be they Whitepaw or Human—jostled against each other.

We passed through the western gate of Cotton Tail Trading Post and began walking toward the magical mountain where dawn never comes.