Chapter 73: An Escort?
He looked at her, truly looked at her. The Guildmaster. Jolly. The woman who’d shown him kindness, who seemed genuinely concerned. But the Association... Rowena... they wouldn’t stop. The lie was already fraying.
Trust her? How much?
His cores hummed quietly. The cold logic of the Mana Cell warred with a flicker of something else, something almost human.
He sighed, the sound weary, letting the carefully crafted mask slip just a little.
"Okay," he said, his voice losing some of its deliberate weakness. "The amnesia... it’s bullshit."
Jolly leaned forward, her eyes sharp, missing nothing. "I suspected as much. Tell me."
He recounted the mission. Hana’s focus on the artifact. The Queen. The overwhelming power. Hana’s betrayal, the sword through his chest.
He described absorbing the Mana Cell during the revival, though he framed it as a desperate, accidental fusion during his ’death’. He mentioned fighting the Queen, but heavily downplayed his dominance, implying a chaotic struggle where he somehow, miraculously, survived as the dungeon collapsed around him.
He left out the Admin entirely. Left out the erasure of the Queen, the Mark of Dominance, the pocket dimension. Left out the true scale of his power.
He needed her help, but full transparency? Too dangerous.
She listened intently, her expression shifting from concern to shock, then to grim understanding.