Boulder City had more than just the Queen of the Night bar.
Just as Rob was dreaming of ruling Boulder City's nightlife, Pirate Bay Tavern on another street was also cheering over the good stuff brought in from the northern outskirts.
"Spirit water?! Damn it, where did you get so much good stuff in the middle of winter?"
The man seated at the bar looked at the bottles and jars on the shelves, his face filled with envy and longing.
His name was Ante, leader of the Red Rocket Mercenary Corps. He had around forty or fifty men under him, including six awakened ones counting himself.
Outside Boulder City, with that kind of strength, he might not have become a local tyrant, but he could certainly have been a wealthy landowner like Old Leech.
But here, he was merely a mercenary boss.
There were too many people like him. No one bothered to remember the name of any particular mercenary corps or exactly how many people it had.
Because it was meaningless. Maybe tomorrow they would be gone, or maybe they would change their name and take up another line of work.
The bartender standing behind the counter seemed not to have heard his question at all. He calmly wiped a glass and spoke in an unhurried tone.
"Two hundred chips."
Ante's eyes widened as he shouted.
"Two hundred chips?! For that little two-hundred-milliliter bottle? Are you crazy for money?!"
The bartender glanced at him without changing his expression.
"This is undiluted premium stuff. Extracting these two hundred milliliters of concentrate takes at least a kilogram of spirit leaves. You wouldn't be dumb enough to chug the whole bottle in one go."
An intake below twenty milliliters was relatively safe. Many mercenaries mixed it into alcohol or diluted it directly