Chapter 422: Twelve Restaurants and a Winery

"Lots of food."

Boren said it with such certainty that Sage briefly wondered whether the man possessed an undisclosed tracking ability that activated exclusively around meals.

He had stopped near the base of the Mana Cultivation Tower with his head turned toward the western side of the Grand Complex, where several broad avenues disappeared between newly completed buildings.

Mina sniffed the air as well, apparently deciding Boren’s discovery deserved investigation, while Pax simply looked toward one of the nearby direction boards.

The answer was written there clearly enough: Adventurer Quarter.

Beneath it were arrows pointing toward accommodation, dining, recreation and residential facilities. Boren read the sign, looked at Sage and started walking before anyone gave him permission.

Sage followed with Mina and Pax, deciding that inspecting the next section of the Headquarters had been the plan anyway, even if Boren now appeared to consider himself expedition leader.

The Adventurer Quarter occupied a substantial portion of the public side of the Grand Complex, positioned close enough to the Grand Guild Hall and Mana Cultivation Tower that visiting adventurers could reach either without crossing production roads.

The atmosphere was immediately different from the administrative center. Instead of enormous government-like structures, the avenues were lined with buildings designed for people who would actually live, eat and spend their free time here.

Open plazas separated several facilities, covered walkways connected others, and signs marked spaces reserved for future stores and services. The largest building stood near the quarter’s entrance, occupying almost an entire block around a landscaped courtyard.

Boren stopped beneath the sign above its doors.

GRAND ADVENTURER HOTEL

"This," he said, "is already better than the inn."

"It’s a hotel," Mina replied.

"I can read."

"Then why are you surprised?"

Boren ignored her and entered. Sage had expected something comparable to the larger establishments they’d seen throughout the Capital.

Instead, the lobby immediately showed why the System classified it as a B-Rank facility. Multiple reception desks stretched across one side, with separate counters for ordinary guests, registered adventurers, merchants, long-term residents and high-ranking visitors.

Several lounges occupied the ground floor, and broad staircases led toward upper levels while transportation formations offered faster access.

A secure luggage service connected directly to storage rooms, and one side entrance opened toward a carriage reception area where travelers could arrive without hauling belongings through the main doors.

The hotel wasn’t designed merely to provide beds. It was designed to accommodate the constant movement of people expected from a Kingdom-wide organization.

The facility interface divided accommodation into categories. Standard rooms provided affordable lodging for individual adventurers. Party rooms were larger and included shared planning spaces so groups could stay together before missions.

Long-stay apartments served adventurers assigned to the Capital for weeks or months, while merchant suites included small offices where traveling traders could conduct business.

High-rank adventurer suites offered reinforced storage, private meeting rooms and better security.

Above those were VIP floors intended for wealthy merchants, famous adventurers, nobles willing to use Guild facilities and important visitors from future Regional Headquarters.

Then Sage reached the premium suites.

Boren leaned over his shoulder as the details appeared.

"Private bath. Meeting room. secure artifact storage..." His eyes stopped. "Private Mana Cultivation Room."

Sage opened the floor plan. Each premium suite contained a smaller cultivation chamber connected to the hotel’s mana infrastructure.

It wasn’t comparable to the specialized environments inside the hundred-floor tower, but it allowed guests to cultivate privately without leaving their rooms.

Boren became very serious. "As one of the Guild’s earliest employees, I believe it would be appropriate for me to live here."

"No."

"You didn’t consider it."

"I did."

"For less than a second."

"That was enough."

Boren gestured toward the suite. "Think about efficiency. If I lived inside the Headquarters, I could begin working immediately after waking up."

"You can do that from employee housing."

"Employee housing doesn’t have a private cultivation chamber."

"Exactly."

Mina laughed loudly enough that a nearby worker turned toward them. Boren attempted another argument about the importance of maintaining senior staff morale, but Sage walked away before he could transform a luxury suite into an operational necessity.

They left the hotel through another entrance and emerged onto a broad avenue surrounding an open square.

That was when Sage finally understood what Boren had smelled from the tower.

Twelve separate establishments occupied the dining quarter, distributed around the plaza and along two adjoining streets. Their kitchens were undergoing final testing, and enough food was being prepared for staff inspections that different aromas drifted together across the entire quarter.

Boren stopped moving.

Sage looked at him. "Still with us?"

"Don’t speak to me."

Mina was already reading signs.

The twelve restaurants weren’t copies of one another. The first was designed around inexpensive, filling meals for ordinary adventurers, large portions, quick service and enough seating to handle crowds returning from missions.

Another specialized in grilled meats, including ordinary livestock and monster meat certified safe for consumption. Its kitchen contained reinforced preparation areas for ingredients considerably tougher than anything a normal butcher handled.

A third focused on regional dishes, with menus intended to rotate as the Guild expanded and brought recipes from different parts of the Kingdom into the Capital.

There was a seafood restaurant supplied through merchant contracts, complete with cold-storage formations for transporting and preserving ingredients from distant waters.

Another establishment focused on magical ingredients, using mana-rich herbs, monster meat and cultivated plants to create meals that offered minor restorative or cultivation benefits depending on preparation.

Sage immediately saw why it would attract warriors and Mages even if prices were higher than ordinary food.

The sixth was unmistakably high-end. Private dining rooms occupied much of the upper floors, with secluded entrances available for customers who valued discretion.

Nobles, wealthy merchants, Guild executives and high-ranking adventurers could hold dinners without sitting beside hundreds of ordinary visitors. Connected banquet halls could host celebrations, negotiations, Guild ceremonies and large private gatherings.

Boren walked through it in reverent silence.

"You haven’t said anything for almost five minutes," Pax observed.

"I’m experiencing culture."

They continued. There was a restaurant centered on stews, soups and recovery meals designed for adventurers returning injured or exhausted.

Another specialized in baked food and breakfasts for guests leaving early on missions.

A ninth offered dishes based around unusual monster ingredients that ordinary restaurants rarely purchased because supply was inconsistent.

The Guild, however, would eventually have a Monster Processing Center receiving materials continuously from adventurers, giving its kitchens access to ingredients other businesses couldn’t reliably obtain.

The tenth catered primarily to traveling merchants and caravan crews, serving large communal meals late into the night.

The eleventh was built around smaller private dining rooms and party celebrations, ideal for adventurer groups splitting rewards after successful missions.

Then Mina discovered the twelfth.

Desserts.

She vanished.

One moment she was walking beside Sage. The next she had crossed half the plaza and was staring through the entrance.

Boren watched her go. "Amateur."

Sage raised an eyebrow. "You’ve spent the last twenty minutes looking like you’ve discovered religion."

"Food requires appreciation."

"Is that what this is?"

"Yes."

Sage left Mina investigating desserts and opened the dining-quarter management interface. Each restaurant could operate independently while sharing certain Guild supply chains. Ingredients from ordinary merchants could enter through central procurement, while monster products from adventurers could move directly from processing into kitchens.

Hotel guests could charge meals to their rooms. Guild members could receive designated benefits. Banquet halls could be reserved through Headquarters administration.

Even waste from food preparation was integrated into collection systems rather than leaving each establishment to arrange everything separately.

The deeper Sage looked, the more obvious the design became. These weren’t random facilities added because adventurers liked food. They were pieces of a larger economic structure.

Before he could explore that thought further, Boren discovered another sign.

His reaction made Sage close the interface.

"What?"

Boren pointed.

GUILD WINERY & BREWERY

"Oh, no," Sage muttered.

Boren was already moving.

The winery occupied a large facility closer to the supply road than the restaurants, allowing ingredients, barrels and finished products to move without crowding public streets. Inside were brewing halls, fermentation rooms, storage cellars, bottling areas and temperature-controlled sections maintained through formations.

The facility could produce ordinary ales, beers, wines and spirits, but the interface went far beyond that. Regional recipes could be registered as the Guild expanded, allowing drinks from across the Kingdom to be produced or distributed through the Headquarters.

Certain monster ingredients could be safely incorporated into specialized spirits, while mana-rich fruits and herbs could create wines with mild restorative or cultivation properties.

Sage examined one requirement and realized some future products would require ingredients from powerful monsters, rare magical plants or materials obtained from high-ranked dungeons. Those drinks wouldn’t exist simply for intoxication.

Proper recipes could create temporary recovery effects, improve mana circulation or complement cultivation, though the ingredients and production requirements increased drastically with quality.

Boren had become dangerously quiet again.

Then he asked, "Do employees receive discounts?"

Sage pretended not to hear him.

Boren followed Sage through the storage section while asking increasingly specific questions.

Were discounts limited by rank? Did long-serving employees receive additional benefits? Could Guild contribution points purchase alcohol? Would management receive samples for quality-control purposes? Who exactly qualified as management? Could Boren volunteer for quality control?

By the sixth question, Sage regretted bringing him to the Capital.

Yet as ridiculous as Boren was being, the winery completed the pattern Sage had started noticing inside the restaurants.

He stopped near the facility exit and opened several Headquarters interfaces together.

The Mana Tower charged for cultivation.

The hotel charged for accommodation.

Restaurants sold food.

The winery produced goods that could be served locally or distributed through future branches.

The Guild Exchange would connect merchants with adventurers.

Monster materials could move into processing, then into smithing, alchemy, restaurants or commercial sale.

Traveling adventurers would arrive for missions and need rooms. They would earn rewards through the Guild, purchase equipment, cultivate, eat, drink and prepare for their next expedition without leaving the Grand Complex.

Merchants would come because adventurers brought valuable materials.

Craftsmen would come because merchants and materials were here. Customers would come because the facilities offered services unavailable elsewhere.

Money wouldn’t simply enter the Guild through mission fees and disappear again as rewards.

It would circulate.

Sage stepped back onto the avenue and looked across the Adventurer Quarter differently. The restaurants were no longer just restaurants. The hotel wasn’t simply somewhere to sleep, and the Mana Tower wasn’t merely somewhere to cultivate.

Together with the facilities they had yet to inspect, they formed an ecosystem capable of supporting the population that would eventually gather around the Adventurer Guild.

Greyvale’s Adventurer District had developed naturally because businesses followed adventurers.

Here, the System had anticipated that process from the beginning.

Sage looked toward the Grand Guild Hall rising beyond the quarter, then toward the roads leading to the other sections of the Headquarters.

The complex was still nearly empty. Most kitchens were running tests rather than serving customers. Hotel rooms had no guests.

The streets had no crowds.

But if he filled them? If thousands of adventurers began passing through these roads every day, followed by merchants, craftsmen, travelers and clients?

Sage slowly smiled.

The Adventurer Guild Grand Complex wouldn’t merely become the Kingdom Headquarters.

Properly populated, it could become one of the largest commercial centers in the Royal Capital.