The fat man then stomped away,his heavy footsteps causing the worn floorboards to creak loudly under his massive weight.

As he walked, he continued hissing loudly under his breath, muttering curses and angry complaints until he finally turned the corner and disappeared from sight.

Leon stood frozen at the entrance for a brief second before he slowly closed the door behind him.

The lock clicked shut with a metallic scrape, sealing him back inside the quiet isolation of his cramped room.

He leaned his back against the cold, hard wall, letting out a long, low exhale that carried all the heavy tension and frustration he had been holding in.

He stared blankly at the bare walls of his pathetic apartment, his thoughts racing.

’I need money...’ Leon thought, his jaw clenching tightly as the harsh reality of his situation settled deep into his chest. ’Badly...’

He opened his system interface, and the window of his personal inventory materialized in front of him.

He stood perfectly still, his eyes staring intently at the various items and weapons lying silently within the digital storage slots.

’Selling a few of these would do...’ Leon thought, a calculating look finally replacing the exhaustion on his face.

The main issue was finding that buyer. Leon wasn’t registered in any official guild, which severely limited his options for a standard transaction.

However, that didn’t mean he didn’t have alternative places where he could easily trade his items for quick, cold cash.

If he was an official member of a guild, the process would be incredibly simple. He could just walk into a guild hall and safely trade his monster drops or weapons directly through their secure network. But as an ordinary, low-ranking player without a faction, he would have to use the black market instead.

The black market had a notorious reputation among the high-ranking citizens and top-tier guilds. Yet, despite how heavily frowned upon it was by most elite players, it wasn’t actually illegal by the system’s laws. There were no authorities shutting it down, and no rules explicitly forbidding players from gathering there.

It was just that the quality of items sold and bought there were universally said to be of much lower quality than the refined, vetted gear coming directly from the major guilds. The gear found in those shady alleys was often crude, unpolished, or stripped from low-rank dungeons.

Leon let out a sharp, cynical snort as he dismissed the inventory screen with a wave of his hand.

’Who gives a fuck about quality though...’ Leon thought, a cold, pragmatic smirk forming on his lips.

He wasn’t looking to buy top-tier armor; he was looking to liquidate his extra inventory as fast as possible. ’I should just sell these and make some money.’

The opinions of high-ranking guild masters meant absolutely nothing to him right now when his landlord was planning to throw him onto the streets by tomorrow morning.

Money was the only thing that mattered if he wanted to keep a roof over his head and continue testing his legendary draw talent.

He didn’t waste another single moment sitting on his bare mattress. Leon turned around, grabbed the door handle, and unlocked it once more. He stepped out of his cramped room into the dim hallway, pulling the door shut behind him with a firm click.

With a clear goal in mind, he walked out of the run-down building and onto the dirty streets of the lower district, heading directly toward the nearest black market shop he knew in the area.

A few minutes later, Leon was standing deep inside the lower district, the heavy air of the city streets left far behind him.

He was now standing directly in front of a long, dark bar counter made of cheap, stained wood.

The air in the room was completely still and carried a heavy, stale scent that made the entire atmosphere feel incredibly depressing.

The bald man standing behind the counter had an intensely bored expression plastered all over his wrinkled face.

He didn’t even look up when Leon approached, completely ignoring his presence as he kept slowly, repeatedly swirling an empty glass cup around in his thick hands.

The rhythmic clinking of the glass was the only sound cutting through the heavy silence of the room.

The bar itself was entirely empty, devoid of any customers or lively chatter.

There were no patrons sitting at the stools, and even from where he stood near the entrance, Leon could clearly see thick layers of gray dust piling up heavily on the top of the wooden tables and chairs scattered across the room.

It was completely obvious that business had been practically nonexistent for a very long time.

Leon stepped closer to the counter, raised his hand, and knocked his knuckles sharply against the hard wood to get the man’s attention.

The bald man let out a long, dramatic sigh at the sound, instantly dropping the empty cup onto the counter with a dull thud before finally turning his dull eyes to look directly at him.

"What do you want, man..." the bartender said in a remarkably rude, impatient tone, his voice dripping with pure irritation. "I have absolutely no money to borrow you, I have no jobs to give a completely useless player like you, and as you can clearly see around you, I’m already having a terribly bad day."

Leon’s brows twitched violently at the man’s incredibly insulting words, a sudden surge of anger bubbling up in his chest.

However, he forced a slow, deep exhale through his nose, tightly clenching his hands into fists as he forced himself to calm down. He couldn’t afford to get kicked out before making a deal.

Instead of arguing back, he raised his hand and tapped his palm flat onto the dusty counter.

Immediately, two common grade weapons dropped out of his inventory, landing heavily on the wood with a loud, metallic clatter.

One of the weapons was the ugly, crude wooden club heavily spiked with rusted nails that he had taken from Bort.

The other item resting right beside it was a basic, worn-out wooden shield that showed clear signs of previous battles. Both items looked completely rough around the edges, but they were tangible loot.

Leon leaned slightly over the counter, a faint, confident smirk forming on his face as he stared into the bartender’s stunned eyes.

"Are you entirely sure... you don’t want me here?" Leon asked. "I mean, I can easily leave right now and take these somewhere else if you really want me to."