Zhang Tie had just taken his seat when a glamorous maid swayed over to him, bent down, and gave him a clearer view of the scenery at her chest. "Sir, what would you like to drink?"
Although Zhang Tie's appearance was now utterly ordinary, and he did not look like a wealthy man at all—even the longsword he carried was nothing more than a common frontier sword—the practiced warmth of the maid's smile still made people feel well disposed toward her. If it had been some greener fellow, he might even have thought she was interested in him.
"Brandy."
"Certainly. Please wait a moment."
The maid swayed away, then soon returned with a bottle of brandy and a glass, which she set on Zhang Tie's table.
As Zhang Tie idly sipped his wine, his eyes seemed to be watching the dancer moving on the platform before him. In reality, he was using his ears to listen to the conversations at the surrounding tables. For Zhang Tie, whose five senses had already become comparable to a Knight's thanks to his Knight consciousness, once he sat in a tavern, nothing within it could escape his ears.
At one table, several mercenary-looking men were discussing the riot that had erupted at Karle Port two days earlier and the bloody suppression that followed. After the crackdown, news from Karle Port said that, judging from various clues, there might have been a hidden hand behind the refugee uprising there. Quite a few people had mixed among the refugees and ultimately pushed the incident to an irretrievable point. Yet after the suppression, many of the "refugees" who had initially been the most conspicuous had vanished without a trace. The garrison at Karle Port had begun strictly investigating suspicious individuals today... "Have you heard? The Eastern Continent's