Chapter 130: Bounty
All around them, the street had gone quiet in a way it hadn’t been only seconds earlier.
Pedestrians who had been walking briskly toward their evening destinations slowed, then stopped entirely, heads tilting upward toward the massive display.
Conversations died mid-sentence. A small crowd began gathering naturally along the sidewalk, everyone’s attention locked onto the same impossible headline.
Murmurs rippled through the gathering crowd, disbelief and shock threading through every scattered whisper Leon could pick up with his sharpened hearing.
"That can’t be real."
"An S-rank, dead? By his own kid?"
"I heard Roaring Lions was one of the strongest guilds on the whole continent..."
Leon remained motionless amid the growing commotion, the noise around him fading into something distant and muffled, drowned out by the weight of his own thoughts pressing down heavily against his chest.
He’d known, obviously, that killing Teon would eventually become public knowledge.
He’d known even if the Player Guild Association wanted to keep it hidden, something of this magnitude couldn’t just fade quietly.
But some part of him hadn’t fully prepared for the reality of actually seeing it, displayed so plainly, so publicly, his own father’s face broadcast to an entire city as though it were nothing more than another piece of passing news.
Killed after a fight with his own son.
The words repeated themselves in his mind, stripping away everything complicated and painful about what had actually happened that day, reducing it down into a single, simple headline anyone could read and move past within seconds.
They didn’t know the reasons behind it. Didn’t know about the abandonment or cruelty had driven him to that confrontation in the first place.
To the rest of the world, it would simply read as another shocking, tragic headline. A powerful man, cut down by his own child.
Leon’s hands curled slowly into fists at his sides, his jaw tightening further as the crowd’s murmurs continued rising around him.
Beside him, Iris finally tore her eyes away from the screen, glancing over at him instead, something uncertain flickering across her expression as she took in his frozen, cold demeanor.
"Adam?" she asked quietly, her earlier shock softening slightly into concern. "Are you okay? You look..."
She trailed off, apparently unable to find the right word to describe whatever expression he was currently wearing.
Leon forced himself to breathe evenly, pushing down the storm of complicated emotion still churning beneath the surface.
Grief wasn’t quite the right word for what he felt, not for a man who’d caused him nothing but pain throughout his entire life.
But it wasn’t pure satisfaction either, not standing here now, watching the entire world learn about it secondhand, reduced to nothing more than a passing headline scrolling beneath a stranger’s blurred, lifeless image.
Something in between, then. Something he didn’t have a clean, simple name for.
"I’m fine," he said finally, his voice carefully controlled, though it came out slightly rougher than he intended.
Iris studied him for a long moment, clearly unconvinced by the flat response, though she didn’t press him further.
She could sense that whatever was happening behind his expression wasn’t something he was ready to explain, especially not standing here in the middle of a crowded street.
Around them, the murmurs continued rippling outward, more and more pedestrians stopping to stare up at the massive screen, the shocking news spreading rapidly through the gathering crowd with every passing second.
Leon remained still amid it all, the only person on the entire street who wasn’t reacting with open shock or disbelief.
To everyone else here, this was simply extraordinary news, the kind of headline that would dominate conversation for weeks to come.
To Leon, it was something else entirely.
Whatever path lay ahead of him now, there was no quiet way back from this. No possibility of slipping unnoticed back into whatever remained of his old identity.
Leon barely had time to process the first headline before the display shifted, Teon’s image fading into a new segment, sharp red lettering bleeding across the massive screen.
"WARNING: Rogue S-rank Player Leon Allistar at Large."
Beneath it, a second block of text scrolled steadily into view, each word landing heavier than the last.
"Leon Allistar, previously exiled from the Allistar family and Roaring Lions guild years ago after being discovered plotting a coup against his own father, has returned and killed guild master Teon Allistar in cold blood."
"He is confirmed extremely dangerous. Citizens and players alike are advised to exercise extreme caution."
Leon’s eyes narrowed sharply as he read it, something hot and immediate flaring up beneath the cold shock already sitting in his chest.
’A coup?’ he thought. That wasn’t even close to the truth.
He’d never plotted anything against his father, never harbored ambitions toward the guild or its leadership.
The real reason behind his exile had nothing to do with betrayal or scheming.
He’d simply awakened a D-rank talent, weak and unremarkable by the family’s high standards, and that alone had been enough.
Teon hadn’t hesitated for a second before casting him out, discarding him like a rag, all because he hadn’t measured up to whatever arbitrary bar the Allistar name apparently demanded.
Now the entire continent was being fed a lie instead, a convenient story that painted him as some scheming, power-hungry son who had to be exiled from the family.
It erased the truth entirely, buried it beneath a narrative that made Teon look like the victim rather than the man who’d thrown his own child away over something he’d never even had a choice in.
"A reward of 10,000 coins is offered for any verified information regarding the suspect’s current location."
"A reward of 1,000,000 gold coins is offered to whoever successfully eliminates Leon Allistar and delivers proof of death to any registered branch of the Player Guild Association."
The numbers hung there, bold and impossible to miss, burned into the side of the skyscraper for the entire street to see.