That night, we found a comfy little inn that wouldn't be too far away from the tournament. It was the only one that didn't have a sign that declared no vacancy. I had serious worries that we wouldn't have a place to stay. However, five seconds after entering the door, I realized why the place had room. There were three tables full of barbarian looking people. They were both noisy and extremely filthy, spilling food on the ground at frequent intervals.
The innkeeper was a scrawny looking man who was wringing his hat and staring anxiously as the men effectively destroyed his inn. There were two barmaids, but as soon as one of them passed a man, he grabbed her behind. The other got pulled on a man's lap, and despite the frown on her face, he was fondling her quite rudely. She shot the innkeeper a desperate look, but he could only stare on helplessly. If he caused trouble, naturally, these men would beat him up.
As soon as I stepped into the room with four beauties, we drew the eyes of everyone present. As for the tables of men, they all looked at the girls with hungry eyes. It made my skin crawl instantly.
"Hehehe…. Look what we have here!" One man growled.
The innkeeper looked over at the group of us with sympathy.
"Uh, sorry, wrong door. Apologies," I turned to leave with the women, but these men were prepared.
A man I didn't even see slammed the door behind us and then crossed his arms with a grin on his face. "Where are you going? It's getting dark outside. How about your women stay a while and get warm with us?"
"Slaves, are they?" Another man said. "Yours, huh? How about you share a bit? You couldn't possibly need four women every night. How about you lend them all out to us for a while?"
The girls picked up on the implication of these men. Only Lydia seemed to be able to handle it and keep her cool. She was trained to deal with men exactly like this, after all. That didn't mean I wanted her to execute any of her training whatsoever!
This was part of the reason men were so angry. A monster would attack you and that would be it. These guys would do stuff far worse than killing if they were allowed. Plus, I had no means of reading their status. They could literally be any strength and I wouldn't know. To date, I wasn't sure how strong we were. They looked stronger than the bandits, at least. This could be a mercenary group or something. Just because someone broke laws didn't necessarily mean their jobs would be bad. In fact, getting labeled as a Thief or Bandit usually held you back from leveling.
From how I understood it, Mercenaries should be stronger than your typical Bandit. They had access to dungeons and means of leveling quickly. Unless a Bandit could find a steady supply of monsters, the only way he could level is through banditry, which was admittedly a limiting option for them. Either way, the point was, fighting was a complete gamble.
As I struggled to come up with a means of getting us out of this situation, my eyes landed on the glasses strewn across the table and an idea formed in my mind.
"Okay…" I said.
Everyone blinked. Even the men who were grinning at us seemed surprised by my confession.
"Okay?"
"How about we make a bet?"