White Tit Tavern, private room.
A light, sweet, cool mint fragrance mingled with the hot aroma of the dishes, drifting lazily through the air.
Beneath the glow of the glass crystal chandelier on the ceiling, the dark, lightless floor reflected fine, irregular grain—that was high-grade oak from the depths of Thin Mist Forest.
Delicate, soft velvet cushions lay on every seat around the table, and flawless silver-white tableware refracted an expensive sheen.
If not for the din from the hall beyond the crack in the door, reduced by layer upon layer of soundproofing to a thin veil of white noise, it would have been hard to connect this luxurious room, which exuded extravagance in every detail, with the words "White Tit Tavern."
The difference between inside and outside was like that between a high-end restaurant and a roadside food stall. Once the wooden door closed, they were two completely different worlds.
In truth, there was nothing strange about it.
Occupying a prime location beside the Association, most of White Tit Tavern's customers were low-level adventurers, but it also frequently saw high-ranking professionals of considerable strength come and go as patrons.
For these veteran adventurers, whose single piece of equipment could be worth decades of an ordinary person's income, quite a few among them did not mind finding a seat in the hall, ordering a few mugs of beer, and casually chatting a few words with the drunken Dwarf next to them.
But in the end, they were professionals already walking the Transcendent path. Very often, a sentence their team members mentioned offhand while bragging might, to ordinary adventurers, be useful intelligence worth paying for in daily life.
When necessary, they also needed a quiet, undisturbed place to discuss topics inconvenient to mention in public.
Under such circumstances, facing these free-spending,