Night fell.
Hunter Bar was once again filled with clamor.
Openly, it was a gathering place for bounty hunters; secretly, it was one of the entrances to the mysterious world. There was never any shortage of customers here.
This single bar brought Vulture over 500 pounds in profit every month. No wonder McG had clung to it so tightly.
Aaron had not gone to the Black Queen District. He sat in a corner of the bar with a glass of mead before him, quietly thinking.
If it were only the profits from selling beer, Balkin could work himself to death and still never make 500 pounds a month—unless he stopped every mysterious person and charged them a toll, while making sure they couldn't enter the Mobile Castle through any of the other nineteen entrances...
That's obviously unlikely. So Hunter Bar's greatest source of income used to be serving as a platform for bounty hunters. It issued jobs to bounty hunters and could even collect bounties on their behalf, taking a cut...
Bounty hunters came from all walks of life: dismissed police officers, desperate strongmen, hopeful young people, part-time amateur detectives, wanted criminals, and even Beyonders newly stepping into the mysterious world!
Most of them needed to keep their identities secret, and that was the soil in which platforms like Hunter Bar could survive.
Of course, trust was also important. Well-informed bounty hunters had long since learned that Hunter Bar had changed owners.
Whether they would continue trusting the bar as a platform was hard to say.
Aaron took a sip of mead and watched William and Isabet, dressed in black-and-white waiter uniforms, struggle through the packed bar.
Every now and then, some drunkard would give Isabet's plump backside a hard slap, leaving the waitress furious but afraid to speak. She