Chapter 132: What guild are you in
Chapter 132:
"A million gold coins," Iris muttered, shaking her head slowly. "That’s an insane amount of money. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of a bounty that large before."
Leon said nothing, letting her talk, his own thoughts still churning quietly beneath the surface.
"Still," Iris continued, "I wouldn’t want to go anywhere near trying to collect it. Not against someone like that."
"Someone who actually managed to kill an S-rank player, his own father no less, has to be terrifyingly strong. I’d probably die before I even got close enough to try."
She let out a short, humorless laugh, more nervous than amused. "Not that I’d ever consider it anyway. I’m not exactly cut out for hunting dangerous criminals."
Leon kept his expression carefully neutral, listening as she continued.
"Even the smaller reward," she said. "Ten thousand coins, just for information. That’s still a lot of money to most people. But honestly, I wouldn’t want that either."
"Why not?" Leon asked, keeping his tone light, casual.
"Because I don’t know anything," she said simply. "And even if I did, I wouldn’t want to paint a target on my own back. Someone capable of doing what he did wouldn’t think twice about silencing anyone who talked, would they?"
She shivered slightly, wrapping her arms loosely around herself despite the mild evening air.
"It’s honestly frightening, thinking about it too much. Imagine having someone like that as an enemy. Someone who actually killed Teon Allistar."
She turned to look at him directly as she said it, her expression caught somewhere between unease and genuine curiosity.
"Can you imagine that? Being hunted by someone with that kind of strength?"
Leon met her gaze steadily, allowing a small, easy smile to settle across his face.
"Yeah," he said simply.
Iris studied him for a moment, apparently satisfied with the short answer, before turning her attention back toward the street ahead of them, still shaking her head slightly at the sheer scale of everything they’d just witnessed.
Leon’s expression remained calm and composed on the outside, the same easy smile lingering naturally on his borrowed face.
Inwardly, though, something far less steady churned beneath the surface, a storm of complicated, conflicting emotion he had no intention of letting show.
The only reason he managed to hold his expression together at all was the mask still sitting quietly over his real face.
Trickster’s Mask of Many Faces, apparently, did more than simply alter his appearance.
It smoothened over whatever turmoil sat underneath as well, keeping his features composed and natural even as his own thoughts spiraled increasingly out of control.
Without it, he suspected, Iris would have noticed immediately just how badly the last few minutes had actually rattled him.
It wasn’t the bounty itself that bothered him, not really.
What actually troubled him, sitting heavy and uncomfortable in his chest, was something far more immediate.
He was the killer everyone on that street had just spent the last several minutes discussing so casually, judging so freely, and he was currently walking right beside a girl who had absolutely no idea.
Iris stood less than a foot away from him, talking openly about how frightening it would be to face someone capable of what he’d actually done, completely unaware that the very person she was describing was walking calmly at her side, using another face as a disguise.
The thought sat uneasily with him, tangled up further by everything else from the last few hours.
The warmth of her house. The easy laughter over ridiculous old illustrations. The genuine, comfortable connection that had formed between them over the course of a single afternoon, built entirely on a foundation of lies he hadn’t planned on constructing quite so deeply.
He hadn’t meant to let things go this far. He’d only wanted information, a way to fill in the gaping holes in his own understanding of Excalibur, Medusa, and everything else tangled up in his current situation.
Somewhere along the way, though, the simple transaction of information had shifted into something else entirely, something considerably more complicated than he’d anticipated when he first sat down across from her in that library.
They continued walking in relative quiet for another block, Iris apparently lost in her own thoughts as well, still processing the shock of everything they’d witnessed.
Leon used the silence to steady himself further, pushing the tangled mess of guilt and unease back down beneath his carefully maintained composure.
Eventually, Iris broke the silence again, her tone shifting into something lighter, apparently eager to move the conversation away from the heavy weight of the broadcast entirely.
"You said you’re a player, right?" she asked, glancing over at him. "So what guild are you in?"
Leon’s mind raced quickly, already anticipating the question even as it caught him slightly off guard with its timing.
He’d known eventually she’d circle back to something like this, given how naturally their earlier conversation had touched on his status as a player already.
He kept his expression easy, unbothered, buying himself a brief moment to think before answering.
"I’m not," he said finally. "Not officially, anyway."
Iris’s eyebrows rose slightly at that. "You’re not in a guild? I thought most players joined one pretty quickly after awakening. Isn’t it safer that way? Better access to resources, dungeon clears, that sort of thing?"
"It is," Leon admitted. "I’ve just never found one worth joining."
That, at least, was true enough, even if it left out considerably more than it revealed.
"That’s unusual," Iris said, studying him with renewed curiosity. "Most independent players I’ve heard about are either just starting out, or they’re the kind who can’t work well with others. You don’t really seem like either."
Leon huffed out a short laugh. "Maybe I’m a third option."
"Which is?"
"Someone who prefers to handle things himself," he said simply.
Iris considered that for a moment, apparently turning the explanation over in her mind.
"I guess that makes sense," she said eventually.