Ch.77The Queen of the Back Alley – 3

The building the blonde man brought me to was extraordinary from the entrance.

Despite my height being far from short, two hulking men standing on either side of the door were easily three heads taller than me.

These brutes immediately bowed respectfully upon seeing the blonde man and greeted him with booming voices.

“Good day, Big Brother!”

“Hey, come on. ‘Big Brother’? That makes me sound like some back-alley thug. I told you to use a different title.”

“We apologize!”

“Fine, just be careful next time. Is the Madam here?”

“Yes! She’s waiting for a guest at the top floor!”

“Huh? What? Waiting? I didn’t say a word about coming here.”

“The Madam already knows why you’ve come, Big Brother!”

The blonde man appeared genuinely surprised by the brutes’ words, but I immediately recognized it as an act.

It was a show of force, a silent pressure suggesting they had such rapid information gathering that I shouldn’t even consider telling poor lies.

If he were truly surprised, he wouldn’t have had time to check my reaction. Even as he stood there with his mouth agape, he kept glancing at me, gauging my response.

When I showed no particular reaction, the man quickly dropped his surprised expression.

“Well, that was embarrassing. Let’s head inside.”

At the blonde man’s words, the brutes respectfully opened the doors. As soon as they opened, an elaborately decorated lobby came into view.

As if claiming to be a space for only one person, the entire first floor was furnished with just a single table and a single chair.

One wall had been converted entirely into a cabinet for storing alcohol. It contained everything from expensive wines to premium spirits.

Women wearing tight-fitting clothes that revealed their figures bowed deeply to greet the blonde man.

Their breasts hung downward following the laws of nature, and their already short skirts rode up, stopping just at a precarious point.

The man naturally handed his weapon to one of the approaching women, placing it on her hands. Then he looked at me with an expression that seemed to ask why I was just standing there.

“Why aren’t you putting down your weapon, mister?”

“Do I have to?”

“Sorry. No one’s allowed to carry weapons inside. But I promise nothing bad will happen.”

“And I should trust you because…?”

“If you can’t trust us, you can’t meet the Madam. And that means your new identity goes up in smoke too. What’ll it be?”

There it is.

At first glance, he seemed to be giving me a choice, but the reality was the opposite. He was subtly pressuring me to put down my weapon.

It was half a threat, really. “You’ve come all this way, are you going to turn back now?”

So naturally, I had to take the bait.

After pretending to seriously consider it for a while, I reluctantly removed my weapon and placed it on the woman’s hands. She clutched it to her chest and scurried away.

“Good choice. You’ve come all this way, it would be a shame to turn back now, right?”

“I suppose. Just keep your word.”

“That nothing bad will happen? Of course. Don’t worry about a thing, mister.”

The man continued talking even as we climbed the stairs. Thanks to him, I had to listen to his chatter the entire way up.

He went on about how I was getting off easy just by surrendering my weapon, and how some people would crawl up these stairs naked just for a chance to meet the Madam.

I let most of it go in one ear and out the other. It was all meant to make me think that giving up my weapon was no big deal.

“The Madam’s room is here.”

The man stopped at a door right in front of the staircase on the top floor. All the doors along the corridor were of identical design.

“Your name… you won’t tell me, will you, mister?”

“If I was going to tell you, I wouldn’t have had a reason to come here in the first place.”

“Right, got it. Stupid question. In return, don’t ask for our names either.”

The man grabbed the doorknob and pushed it open. The scent of strong perfume squeezed through the opening. It was an incredibly intense fragrance.

“Just go right in.”

“What about you?”

“I can’t go in. She didn’t call for me this time.”

The man shrugged his shoulders.

So that’s what it meant when those brutes at the entrance said the Madam was waiting for a guest on the top floor.

As I entered the room, the door closed behind me. Click—I heard the sound of the lock automatically sliding into place.

I slowly surveyed the room. What met my eyes was a space painted entirely black.

The carpet on the floor was black, the desk was black, the walls were black, the curtains on the windows were black, and even the coat hanging on the rack in the corner was black.

And in the middle of all this blackness sat a black-haired woman dressed in a black dress.

Her black hair was tied at the nape of her neck and flowed over her right shoulder. It was quite long, reaching down to her thighs.

The dress she wore had a deep neckline that fully revealed the valley between two hills, and the shoulder straps holding it up were so thin they looked like they could be cut with a fingernail.

The dress ended at her thighs. Beneath the fluttering hem, her thighs were pressed against the chair.

Below that, her slender thighs, calves, and the high heels on her feet were fully visible. Even the high heels were black.

With her right leg crossed, the woman sitting in the room looked me up and down.

In this room full of blackness, only the woman’s irises were uniquely golden.

Decadent might be the word—she gave off the strong impression of a mature married woman.

It’s a terribly crude expression, but I couldn’t think of any other words to describe the atmosphere emanating from the woman before me.

A strange silence persisted as I observed this “Madam” and she observed me in return.

“I like what I see.”

The woman before me spoke first.

“What?”

“Black eyes and black hair. That’s enough to score points with me.”

This person seems a bit off too.

While I was absently wondering if this woman who gave me points for having black hair and black eyes was really the “Madam” who ruled this place, she continued speaking.

“You need a new adventurer certificate and plate, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“With the name and personal information fields left blank.”

“Yes.”

“What rank should it be? D? C? If you want B or higher, you’ll need to be prepared. The price increases significantly.”

She kept flipping through papers in her hand. They appeared to be documents filled with text. The writing was too small for me to make out the content.

“E rank will do.”

“…E?”

Her hand froze mid-flip. Annoyance settled in her eyes as she looked at me.

The atmosphere changed completely. Until just now, she had truly been treating me like a customer, but now she looked like she was dealing with some beggar.

It was the complete opposite of her warm expression when she said she liked my black eyes and black hair.

“You came to me for something so trivial?”

“That’s right.”

Crunch—the woman crumpled the papers in her hand. Rather than doing it deliberately, it seemed more like she lost control of her strength in a moment of rising irritation.

“Ha, my brother’s gone blind too. Bringing in this kind of idiot as a guest—”

“Wait.”

“What?”

The woman growled. She looked ready to kill me if I hesitated even for a moment.

“What does asking for an E-rank adventurer have to do with that reaction?”

“Why should I explain that to you?”

Instead of answering her question, I took out a pouch of gold coins from my bag and tossed it at her feet.

With a clink, the coins collided inside as the pouch’s opening parted slightly, spilling golden light. The woman’s golden eyes widened a bit.

“Isn’t this reason enough for an answer?”

“…100 coins. And definitely not counterfeit.”

The woman activated a magic circle engraved on her palm, causing the pouch of gold coins to float up into the air. Judging by the magic circle on her palm, she seemed to be quite an accomplished mage.

Or perhaps she had paid a mage to engrave it for her.

After observing one gold coin floating in the air, possibly using telekinesis, she put it back in the pouch.

“I apologize for my behavior just now. Most people who come to us for identity laundering and ask for E-rank are idiots who try to pay with just a few silver coins. That’s why I got a bit excited.”

The woman placed the pouch of gold coins on the desk and unfolded the documents she had crumpled.

The magic circle on her palm glowed once more, and the wrinkled paper became like new again. Her black eyes scanned the text on the paper once more.

“I couldn’t rule out the possibility that you had committed a crime serious enough to require complete secrecy about your name and personal information, and had barely escaped with nothing but your life.”

“Penniless, you say…”

I opened my bag and took out more pouches of gold coins.

As pouch after pouch identical in size and appearance to the first one emerged, her golden eyes trembled slightly.

“If there was such a misunderstanding, you should have said so earlier.”

I untied a pouch and turned it upside down. Gold coins poured onto the carpet near my feet. I grabbed another pouch and did the same. More gold coins poured onto the pile.

After repeating this several times, a small hill of gold coins formed near my feet. The empty pouches scattered around numbered at least twenty.

I pulled my feet out from the pile of gold coins as I watched the woman, who couldn’t hide her surprise as she stood with her mouth slightly open.

‘I didn’t originally plan to go this far.’

I inwardly sighed deeply as I reflected on this absurd performance I had just put on. Why would I do something so unnecessarily crazy?

Part of it was to counter their attempt at establishing dominance, but the main reason was because of Charlotte.

After parting with Christine and returning to the palace, Charlotte had interrogated me about why I hadn’t spent all the gold coins she’d given me, asking if I had another woman paying for me.

This was the result. A demand to prove there was no other woman by spending all the money she had given me.

‘What am I supposed to do with thousands of gold coins?’

As I pondered how to use the remaining pouches of gold coins—at least 30 more—I forced a smile and met the woman’s eyes.

She looked completely dumbfounded.

“If that were the case, I would have paid in advance.”