This wasn't Hao Ren's first time visiting Becky's estate—but it had indeed been a long while since his last visit. Compared with when he had left, the estate had hardly changed. Its furnishings and layout remained just as they had been originally. It seemed that even after becoming a noble, Becky still had little interest in buying luxury goods or decorating her estate. The only change was the large wine cellar in the basement. The communications equipment and emergency teleportation devices Hao Ren had left there back then were still in place. Becky had isolated them in a separate hidden room, then expanded the space outside it—she had probably simply dug out the entire basement—and turned it into a huge wine storage vault. It was packed with fine wines from all over the continent, and the fragrance of alcohol was so strong that even the mice coming out of the cellar weighed at least half a pound...
From this alone, Hao Ren could tell that Becky was a mercenary to the marrow. It was hard to believe that a young woman could be so addicted to alcohol... Could she be planning to train her drinking capacity until she was invincible, then use drinking contests to knock out Marshal Ofra?
The three of them had dinner in the estate's living room, while the butler instructed the servants to prepare comfortable guest rooms for them. During their after-dinner chat, as they strolled around to aid digestion, Hao Ren found the butler and asked about Becky's current assignment. "What kind of place is the Dark Mountain Range? What happened there?"
Perhaps because Becky's mission itself was public knowledge, the butler did not conceal anything. "The Dark Mountain Range lies southeast of the royal capital. It's a natural barrier separating the Black Forest from