Chapter 109: E-class lowlives
The blonde-haired man’s frown deepened, and he turned his head slowly toward Leon instead, his black eyes narrowing.
"I had my doubts..." he said. "But you really are a player."
Leon scoffed, unable to help the flicker of irritation the comment stirred up in him.
’Why is everyone so surprised at that?’ he thought, glancing briefly back toward the crowd of civilians still huddled a short distance away, then back at the floating stranger in front of him.
First the disrespectful kid in the crowd, and now this arrogant floating archer, all of them acting like the very idea of him being a player was somehow difficult to believe.
The man continued, ignoring Leon’s obvious annoyance entirely.
"I take it you killed all the monsters here?" he asked, his tone carrying less of a question and more of a flat statement, as though he already assumed the answer.
"Yes," Leon said simply, his patience wearing thinner by the second. "And who the hell are you to just swoop in and try to kill the boss?"
The stranger’s face twitched visibly at the question, a flash of genuine anger crossing his otherwise composed expression.
’Who the hell am I?’ he thought, bristling at the blunt disrespect in Leon’s tone. ’How disrespectful.’
Clearly, he wasn’t used to being spoken to so casually, let alone challenged so directly by someone covered head to toe in sewage stains and grime.
Before either of them could push the confrontation any further, a deafening, furious crow tore through the street, cutting the tension between them cleanly in half.
The boss monster had finally emerged fully from the dungeon gate behind them, its massive, four-legged frame towering over the wreckage of the street.
It let out another enraged screech, clearly agitated by the fire arrow that had already grazed it moments earlier.
The civilians still gathered nearby flinched back instantly at the sound, several of them shrinking further into the alley behind them, trembling visibly at the sheer size and hostility radiating off the creature.
Still, despite their obvious fear, there was a small, noticeable shift in their expressions as well, a faint relief settling over some of them.
Whatever chance they had of surviving this encounter clearly felt a little more secure now that there were two players standing between them and the monster, rather than just the strange, foul-smelling stranger who had saved them earlier.
Leon and the blonde-haired man turned back to face each other briefly, neither willing to back down first, the tension between them almost tangible, crackling in the air like static electricity refusing to settle.
Then, without another word exchanged between them, three more blazing fire arrows began forming rapidly around the floating man, condensing out of thin air with sharp, crackling hisses of heat.
A heartbeat later, all three loosed at once, streaking forward in a tight formation, cutting through the smoke-hazed air with terrifying speed as they shot straight toward the towering boss monster now fully emerged from the gate.
The three fire arrows struck in rapid succession, the impact erupting into a violent, blinding explosion that lit up the ruined street.
The shockwave rolled outward, rattling loose debris and sending a fresh wave of startled screams rippling through the crowd of civilians still huddled nearby.
The blonde-haired man’s lips curled upward the instant the explosion bloomed, a satisfied, almost triumphant look settling over his sharp features.
He turned toward Leon with a smug smirk already forming, clearly ready to gloat over having claimed the kill right out from under him.
What he found instead stopped the expression cold.
Leon was standing there, perfectly calm, completely unbothered by the smoke and fire still rolling off the explosion behind him.
In his hand, held loosely by a fistful of feathers, was the severed head of the chicken boss itself, its twin crowns drooping lifelessly, blood still dripping steadily from the ragged stump of its neck.
Leon smirked at the stunned look on the man’s face.
"You thought you could snatch my kill from me with such slow attacks?" he said, his tone dripping with casual mockery. "What a joke."
The man’s eyes went wide, darting rapidly back and forth between the smoldering wreckage of his own explosion and the severed head dangling from Leon’s grip, as if trying to reconcile the two conflicting realities in front of him.
It didn’t make sense. His arrows had struck true, he’d seen the explosion himself, felt the heat of it roll off his own skin.
Yet even as the seconds ticked by, no notification appeared before him. No message declaring that he’d been the one to bring down the boss monster and claim its experience for himself. Nothing.
His teeth ground together audibly, frustration bleeding into his expression.
"How come..." he muttered, almost to himself, his composed arrogance cracking rapidly under the weight of his own confusion.
Leon scoffed, rolling his shoulders slightly as he tossed the severed chicken head casually to the ground beside him.
"I told you," he said, unbothered, "you can’t steal my kill with an attack that slow."
The man’s frown deepened further, his black eyes narrowing sharply as he studied Leon with a fresh, uneasy caution now bleeding into his earlier disdain.
’To be able to do something like that...’ he thought, his mind racing. ’Just how strong is this guy?!’
It didn’t add up. Nothing about the disheveled, foul-smelling man standing in front of him, covered head to toe in sewage stains, matched the level of raw, terrifying strength required to pull off something like that. Yet here he was, holding undeniable proof in the form of the boss’s own severed head.
The man’s frustration only sharpened further as another thought crossed his mind, one far more personal and immediate than his confusion over Leon’s strength.
"I needed that EXP..." he muttered under his breath, his jaw tightening. "I’m so close to leveling up..."
Whatever calculations he’d made walking into this fight, whatever careful planning had gone into targeting this specific dungeon break at this specific moment, all of it had just been thrown completely off course by a stranger who’d apparently beaten him to the reward without even trying.
His composure finally snapped entirely, the earlier condescension in his expression twisting instead into hostility as he glared down at Leon from where he still hovered several feet above the pavement.
"Why are you standing in my way?" he shouted. "Which guild are you from?"
Leon didn’t bother responding, only letting out another short, dismissive scoff, his eyes drifting briefly toward the dead boss monster’s remains rather than dignifying the demand with an actual answer.
The lack of response only pushed the man further past his breaking point.
Veins began popping visibly along his forehead, his composure cracking apart entirely as his hovering form seemed to tense with barely restrained fury.
He forced himself to exhale slowly, dragging in a sharp breath through his nose in an obvious attempt to rein in his temper.
’Calm down...’ he thought, doing his best to talk himself down even as his fists clenched tightly at his sides. ’Whoever this guy is... he’s crazy strong, probably A-rank. I don’t want to get on his bad side.’
Swallowing down the last of his anger, at least outwardly, he tried a different approach instead.
"Why are you helping these people anyway?" he asked, his tone shifting into something more measured, almost dismissive. "They’re just E-class lowlifes. We’re both players, we should be working together."
Leon’s frown deepened sharply at the phrase.
"Just E-class lowlifes?" he repeated, the words leaving a sour taste in his mouth.
’So their lives don’t matter to him,’ he thought, his earlier irritation curdling quickly into something colder, more disappointed.
He glanced past the man briefly, letting his eyes sweep across the wider street, past the smoking chicken corpses, toward the handful of civilian bodies still scattered across the pavement further down.
Each one lay motionless, their skulls split open and hollowed out, the same brutal fate he’d already witnessed firsthand back near the alley.
His frown deepened further the longer he looked.
’All of this is nothing to him,’ he thought, the realization settling uncomfortably in his chest.
He wasn’t naive enough to pretend the world treated everyone equally. He’d grown up in the slums himself, had lived through more than enough hardship to know exactly how brutal life could be for people without power, without the protection that came from being strong enough to defend yourself.
He understood better than most just how thin the line could be between survival and ruin for people living at the bottom.
Even so, something about the sheer, casual disregard in the man’s voice didn’t sit right with him.
In the slums he’d come from, life had been hard, often unfair, sometimes downright cruel. But even there, even among people with nothing, there had never been this complete, dismissive neglect for human life, not like this.
Whenever a dungeon gate had appeared anywhere near the slums during his time there, players had still been dispatched quickly to handle it, cutting down the threat before it could spiral out of control and start tearing through the neighborhood.
It hadn’t always been fast enough, and it hadn’t always been perfect, but at the very least, someone had come. Someone had bothered to try.