I woke up around eight o'clock and found that Amber had left me some eggs and sausages for breakfast on the counter. She may have said she wasn't my maid earlier, but she sure acts like one.

The girl came down the stairs shortly after I finished eating. She was yawning and had a slightly tired look on her face. I wonder if she just moved into one of the bedrooms and slept there.

"Just curious, but where did you sleep last night, Amber?"

"Hm? Upstairs, of course."

Yep, she definitely moved in. What she said seemed a bit odd to me, though. The other two bedrooms appeared to be empty when I was unpacking my belongings late last night. I didn't hear the sound of any doors closing, either.

I guess she either sleeps much later than I do, or is very good at sneaking around places. I'll assume it's the latter, given how she managed to smuggle me and a large carriage across the border.

I hung up a door chime at the shop entrance, then took the empty plate of food into the kitchen to clean it.

*Ding!*

Apparently it didn't take long for the chime to ring. It really made me wonder if it was just Amber playing with it to mess with me.

I dropped what I was doing and came back to the front of the shop to find two other people at the door. Looks like I have customers!

One person was a male of the reptilian race, judging by his lizard-like face. He was one head taller than me, was covered in dark green scales from head to toe, and had a large long tail that resembled those of alligators. He was accompanied by a female of the bird-people race. She was only half as tall as the reptilian, which was around my chest level in terms of height. With a curved sharp beak and shiny black plumage, she resembled a large black falcon.

"Welcome!"

I gave a bright smile to my first customers since moving to this town.

"Pay up."

"I'm sorry, what was that?"

What a rude way to start a conversation. The reptilian could have at least said hello or something…

"You're new here, right?"

"That's right. I just came here yesterday."

"Then pay up the Neighborhood Safety Fee. One thousand doviti a day."

I figured some delinquents would eventually come into my shop and demand a "protection" ransom, but I never expected that day to be my first day here. One small silver coin a day seemed cheap, though. Commander Mavuto was going to pay me over one hundred times that much, after all.

"And what if I refused?"

"Then we can't guarantee that your merchandise would be protected against troublemakers."

The reptilian replied to my question with a smirk, while the bird girl picked up a couple potion bottles and shook them around. I turned to Amber to ask,

"Is this legal here?"

"It's technically illegal, but social status and civil disputes here are often determined by one's prowess in battle."

"What?"

"People can fight to settle their differences if they both don't want to take their matters to court."

I had a feeling that somehow, these two had managed to start a fight with other merchants in this town and won those fights, resulting in any charges held against them, if any, being dropped. Goblins were relatively easy to beat because of their small sizes, but orcs weren't. I'm surprised these two could defeat the orc merchants.

"Has nobody ever tried contacting the authorities?"

"Unfortunately, harassment isn't considered a crime here since it doesn't physically maim anyone. All the battles they fought against other merchants in town were with mutual consent, too."

People often said that large creatures like orcs were all brawn and no brain. I'm starting to think that was true. Normally one would be wary after a couple of their companions get defeated in battle, yet all the orcs still consented to fight.

"How long has this been going on?"

"From what I was told, about a month."

If they've been able to get away with extortion for a full month, then the authorities most likely didn't care enough to deal with it. Or maybe they've been able to beat the authorities to a pulp to settle the matter. Who even came up with this kind of system that allowed using force to settle disputes, anyways?

Oh, wait. I was in the Demon King territory. Of course this sort of system would benefit extremely powerful devils, since they would most likely easily win fights against any other individual opponent.

"I don't have a choice here, do I?"

"I don't think so..."

Amber seemed to have an apologetic look on her face, as though she wanted to indicate that she was incapable of beating the two in battle.

The bird girl put the bottles back on the shelf and pointed her talon-like hand at me.

"You heard the girl. Now pay up if you don't want trouble."

"And don't even bother bringing up commander Mavuto, either. He's not in town most of the time, so you're not going to be protected every day."

The reptilian had a somewhat sinister smile on his face.

"Hey Amber, would these two normally be able to defeat the army's minor demons?"

"I think they're slightly weaker, but the two have significantly higher stamina. Because of that, they'd be able to win if time wasn't an issue since they could just run around for hours to tire out the minor demons."

So that means they could beat opponents that people stronger than me struggled against.

And yet, I felt the urge to do something stupid for some reason.

"In that case, I'd like to settle this dispute with a fight."

"What?"

I turned my gaze back towards the two delinquents.

"If I win, you two will leave the residents of this district alone and give back what you took from them. If I lose, then I'll pay you one hundred fifty thousand. I'll take you two on right now on the street in front of the store."

I could have wagered more, but I need to have a little bit of money left over to buy necessities.

The bird girl raised one eyebrow at what I said, while the reptilian's smile became even more sinister.

"Hehehe... Deal."

"Blaze! Stop! Don't do this!"

The two delinquents seem to have been too busy thinking about the amount of money I was planning on paying and kept chuckling. Amber, on the other hand, was desperately worried about me and clung onto my left arm, trying to prevent me from leaving the shop.

In all honesty, I could have just given them what they wanted. One thousand a day was an insignificant amount compared to my promised daily profits. Yet for some reason, I felt a strong urge to stop these two. Maybe it was because I wanted to start on good terms with my neighbors. Especially when I was worried an "accident" might occur out of jealousy since last night.

"Forfeiting now is the same as losing."

It was now too late to take back what I said, so I took out a magic staff from behind the counter and headed outside.

The staff was a standard magic item made from hard oak wood that I used back when I was an adventurer. I customized and strengthened it over the course of my adventures and self-studying of alchemy, using unsellable rare drops I obtained from the large expedition monsters, as well as other oddities from adventurers who found no particular use or sales value in them. As a result, my staff had a lower than normal power output and weird enhancements like "tougher than tempered steel," "awareness of measurement scales," "chance to avoid food poisoning," "lightning rod," and so on.

On second thought, "chance to avoid food poisoning" was probably not a bad enhancement at all. I did have to eat other people's leftovers on a few occasions before, and I never fell ill.

In any case, to counter the low power output of the staff, I attached onto the staff's tip a concentrated mana stone of the highest possible grade I could afford to craft, to concentrate the power. This allowed me to fire more powerful shots at the expense of reduced effective range. Most fire-type spells had a very large effective range to begin with, so reducing it a little wasn't a big issue.

The people on the streets seemed to have figured out what was about to happen as I stood face-to-face with the two delinquents. They formed a large circle to spectate the upcoming battle and started muttering amongst themselves. I could have sworn I heard some people placing bets on who would win, with horribly unfavorable odds against me.

I considered saying something about that, but ultimately decided to ignore those people. Betting against me wasn't a bad choice anyways, since humans were neither as physically strong nor fast as reptilians and bird-people. Heck, even I would bet against myself and lose on purpose if my money and pride as a shopkeeper weren't on the line.

"Hehehe… You're going to regret trying to pick a fight with us. See all these people gathered here? Once they see you get pummeled by us, you're going to be the laughing stock of the market district. Even though that cat girl warned you about us, you still wanted to challenge us to a fight, so I'll—"

"Flame pillar."

The reptilian was interrupted by a powerful pillar of fire that shot out from under his feet. While the scaly skin of their race gave them high resistance to both physical and magical attacks, the biggest weakness of reptilians was extreme temperatures, which was due to their cold blood.

The eruption caught the reptilian by surprise, so he took the full brunt of my attack and passed out while still burning. Unless people leave him to burn like that, the attack shouldn't have been fatal, though, due to his thick skin.

"First rule of battle: don't talk unless your opponent can't."

I'm pretty sure such a rule didn't exist. I only wanted to sound cool. If anything, the only rule of battle would have to be "hit him but don't let him hit you back."

In any case, the reptilian took too much time with his monologue earlier, so I had already easily completed the "Flame Pillar" spell chant while he was talking and delivered a devastating blow on him. One could say it was a critical hit.

"I won't let you get me that easily!"

The bird woman said so after using her wings to blow the lingering fires away from her fellow delinquent.

Individuals of her race had poor defenses, but landing attacks and spells was near impossible due to their naturally high agility.

Now I have to quickly think about what to do in this fight against her…