Chapter 131: One million gold coins
Leon stared up at his own bounty, the anger from the fabricated story tangling uncomfortably with the same cold, distant sensation from before.
He’d officially become a wanted man, and wasn’t exactly sure how to feel about that.
Around him, murmurs rippled through the gathering crowd, disbelief and judgment threading through every scattered whisper his sharpened hearing picked up with uncomfortable clarity.
"Plotting a coup against his own father," someone muttered nearby. "That’s cold."
"Guess some kids really are just rotten," another voice added.
"Deserved to be exiled, if you ask me," a third said. "Can’t trust someone like that."
Leon’s jaw tightened further with every comment, each one landing like a small, additional blow.
Beside him, Iris had gone very still, her eyes locked on the glowing bounty figures, her lips moving faintly as she read the number over and over under her breath.
"One million gold coins," she muttered, disbelief thick in her voice. "With that much money... i could..."
She trailed off, apparently unable to finish the thought out loud, though Leon could guess well enough what she meant.
A sum like that could transform someone’s life entirely. Buy property, security, an escape from whatever hardship they currently struggled under.
It was a sum most players didn’t even have, except S-rank guild masters who had been accumulating wealth from their youth.
Leon glanced sideways at her, something sharp and unreadable flickering briefly behind his eyes.
He didn’t say anything. He simply let out a slow, quiet breath instead, turning his attention back toward the massive screen still glowing above them.
Iris turned toward him a moment later, her earlier shock still written plainly across her face.
"Leon Allistar..." she said slowly, testing the name aloud. "Did Teon ever have a son with that name? I thought Yeon was his only son."
The words landed harder than Leon expected, a small, unexpected pang settling into his chest.
’People already even forgot I’m an Allistar too,’ he thought bitterly.
It made a sense in a way, he supposed. He’d never been anything worth remembering, not in the eyes of the world at large.
Yeon had always been the one paraded around, the golden heir, the proper Allistar son groomed for greatness from the moment he was born.
Leon had simply existed in the background, a footnote at best, easily forgotten by anyone outside his immediate family, even before the family itself had cut him loose entirely and, apparently, rewritten the reason why.
Before he could answer her, another voice cut in from somewhere within the small crowd still gathered around the screen.
"Teon really did have a son named Leon," someone said, a middle aged man standing a few feet away.
His attention remained fixed on the fading broadcast. "But he was nothing but a failure. Couldn’t even awaken a good talent."
Iris’s head turned sharply toward the stranger, her brow furrowing in confusion.
"A failure?" she repeated. "Then how did someone who couldn’t even awaken a good talent suddenly kill an S-rank player? His own father, no less?"
The man shrugged, seemingly unbothered by the question, his attention already drifting back toward the rest of the crowd.
"No idea. Maybe the scumbag got his hands on a powerful weapon... or the someone betrayed the guild master and poisoned him before the fight... to give that bastard a chance. Wouldn’t be the first time."
Iris turned back toward Leon slowly, her expression caught somewhere between confusion and something more thoughtful now, clearly turning the stranger’s words over in her mind.
A failed talent, publicly labeled a traitor and a schemer, somehow strong enough to end the life of one of the most powerful S-rank players in the world.
None of it fully added up in her head, and Leon could see the gears turning behind her eyes as she tried to make sense of the contradiction.
He kept his own expression carefully neutral on the outside, though internally, the anger from moments earlier hadn’t faded at all.
If anything, it had settled into something colder, harder, the injustice of the lie sitting heavier the longer he stood there listening to strangers casually condemn him based on a story that wasn’t completely true.
"Adam?" Iris said quietly, drawing his attention back to her.
Leon blinked, forcing himself back into the present moment, aware suddenly of how tightly his hands had curled at his sides without him noticing. He loosened his grip deliberately, exhaling slowly.
"It’s nothing," he said, though the words came out rougher than he intended, sharper at the edges than he meant to let show.
Iris studied him carefully, clearly not buying the deflection this time, though the ongoing commotion around them seemed to hold her attention just as much as his strange reaction did.
The crowd had grown considerably since the broadcast first began, more and more pedestrians stopping to stare up at the fading screen, murmurs of disbelief and quiet judgment still rippling steadily through the gathered onlookers.
"This is insane," Iris said, mostly to herself now, shaking her head slightly as she glanced back up at the last remnants of the broadcast.
"An S-rank player is dead... just like that. The killer is his son, and now has... a bounty that huge. I’ve never heard of anything like this before."
Leon said nothing, simply watching the screen finally dim entirely, the massive display cycling back into whatever standard programming normally ran across the building’s surface, the shocking headline gone as quickly as it had appeared.
The crowd around them began to disperse slowly, murmurs and whispered speculation still trailing behind departing pedestrians as they resumed their interrupted evening routines.
A few lingered longer than others, still discussing the sheer scale of the bounty, the scandal of a son turning against his own father, none of them aware they were repeating a story that had never actually happened the way they now believed it had.
Leon remained still amid the slowly thinning crowd, his mind racing through everything that had just happened.
Whatever fragile sense of peace he’d felt walking beside Iris only minutes earlier had shattered entirely now, replaced by anger.
He glanced at Iris again, an uncomfortable thought settling into his mind.
She was standing right beside him, completely unaware that the very killer being discussed by strangers all around them, was walking casually next to her, hiding behind a stolen face and a borrowed name.
If she ever learned the truth, how would she see him?
He didn’t have an answer to that, not yet, and the uncertainty of it settled uneasily alongside the anger still simmering quietly beneath his calm exterior.
"We should probably keep moving," Iris said eventually, glancing at him with lingering concern still evident in her expression. "You still look a little out of it."
Leon nodded slowly, forcing his thoughts back under control. "Yeah," he said. "Let’s go."
They resumed walking, though the earlier ease between them had shifted considerably, replaced now by a quieter, more careful kind of silence.
Iris kept glancing at him occasionally as they walked, clearly still processing everything she’d just witnessed, though she thankfully didn’t press him for further explanation.
Leon kept his own thoughts carefully guarded as they walked, turning the events of the last several minutes over in his mind again and again.