Chapter 182: You’re a little kid

Leon looked at the number floating above her head and wondered how much EXP it would give him.

Garrick had been a high S-rank, and killing him had pushed Leon up four levels in a single breath.

This woman was level 200. If a fight with her ended the way the last one had, he could not even guess how many levels he would gain. It might be ten. It might even be more!

He felt his fingers twitch at his sides, and he had to remind himself that he was not here to fight her. Not yet.

Behind him, Maelis cleared his throat.

"Excuse me," the lightning mage said, raising one hand like a student in a classroom.

"I have been trying to look at her level for some time now, and I cannot see anything. Is that normal? Is my eyesight damaged?"

"It is not your eyesight," said Haldor. His voice was tight. "I cannot see it either."

"Nor can I," Ilsa said.

Seraphine pulled her burned coat closer around herself.

"I have looked three times. There is nothing there. It is like looking at an empty wall."

Batnac said nothing, but his eyes had gone very wide.

None of them could read her level, and that meant only one thing. Her level was so far above theirs that the system would not let them see it.

Every S-rank in the room had just learned that the woman standing in front of them was beyond anything they had ever measured.

And the boy had read the number without even trying.

Milda tilted her head, and for the first time her smile slipped a little. Her amber eyes moved over Leon from his head to his boots, slowly, the way a person checks a coin to see if it is real.

"Hmm," she said.

Leon raised an eyebrow. "Is something wrong?"

"Your level," Milda said. "It says twenty."

"It does."

"Which is strange, because a level twenty player should not be able to stand in this room without his knees giving out." She took a step closer, and her golden hair shifted around her shoulders.

"So I will ask you once, and I would like an honest answer. Are you hiding your true level somehow?"

"No."

"No?"

"I am not hiding anything," Leon said. "That is my level."

For a moment nobody made a sound.

Then Maelis sat down on the floor very suddenly, as if his legs had stopped working.

"Level twenty," he whispered.

"Maelis, stand up," Ilsa hissed.

"I cannot. I am having a realization." The lightning mage stared at Leon with his mouth hanging open.

"I have been a player for years. I am an S-rank. I have my name on a plaque in the capital. And this boy, who is level twenty, has been toying with us... laughing at us."

"He was not laughing," said Seraphine weakly.

"He was smirking. It is the same thing."

They were all looking at the notification now, the small number that hung beside Leon like a joke. Twenty.

They had all been too occupied with their anger that they hadn’t bothered to check his level before, and now that they did, they couldn’t believe it.

A level twenty player had walked into the council chamber of the Player Guild Association.

He had thrown their strongest members around the room like toys. He had stood in front of ten S-ranks and made them look like children.

And he had killed Garrick, who had been the strongest of them all.

Haldor closed his eyes and pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose.

"I think," he said slowly, "that I would like to go home and never come back to this building."

"That is the most sensible thing anyone has said tonight," Maelis said from the floor.

Leon heard all of it, and he did not care.

He had no interest in what a room full of defeated S-ranks thought of him. They could be shocked, or scared, or ashamed, and it would change nothing.

The only person in the chamber who mattered stood a few steps away from him with her hands clasped behind her back.

He kept his eyes on her.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Milda frowned, and the faint amusement faded from her face.

She let out a slow breath.

"My name is Milda," she said. "I am one of the ten Heads of the Player Guild Association."

Nobody spoke. It was only a few words, but they landed in the chamber like a stone dropped into a still pond.

Batnac slid down the far wall until he was sitting. Ilsa had stopped moving altogether.

These were people who had spent their whole lives climbing toward the top of the Association, and they had all just learned that one of the people standing at the very top had been watching them from a corner, and had seen every embarrassing second of what had happened.

Even Leon felt his chest tighten for a moment.

He had already guessed that she was strong. The feeling coming off her was too close to the one he remembered from the night at the Roaring Lions, and he had not forgotten it.

But hearing it said aloud was different. A Head was one of the ten who stood where Thokas stood.

Then his lips curved upward, and he nodded slowly.

"That is good," he said.

Milda blinked. "Good?"

"It means I do not have to talk to anyone else." Leon crossed his arms.

"You can grant my request directly. There is no need to send it up through a council, or a committee, or whatever else you people use to waste time."

Milda’s eyes narrowed.

She had been very calm up to now, but there was something in the way he said it that bothered her.

He did not sound like a boy who had been caught off guard by a powerful stranger. He sounded like a man who had been waiting at a door for a long time, and had just seen someone come to open it.

"Your request," she said.

"The one I already told you about."

"Say it again."

"I want to become a player, an SSS-rank."

Milda did not answer right away. She looked at him for a long moment, and the other players did not dare to breathe.

"Do you really know what you are asking for?" she said at last.

"I do."

"I do not think that you do." Her voice stayed light, but each word was placed carefully, like a person setting down glass.

"SSS-rank is not a title that is just handed out."

Maelis made a strange choking noise on the floor, which might have been a laugh.

Milda ignored him.

"You are just a kid," she said.

"Really?" Leon said.

Milda sighed and shook her head again, and the pitying look returned to her face. It was the same look as before, the one that made Leon’s jaw tighten, and he felt his temper stir under his ribs.

"You have a great deal of confidence," she said. "It will be a shame if it gets you killed."

"Is that a threat?"

"It is advice."

"Then I will take it the way I take all advice," Leon said, and smiled. "I will listen to it carefully, and then I will do whatever I want."

Milda looked at him for a few more seconds, and then she turned away, and walked slowly toward the window where the faint blue glow of the city was beginning to creep over the glass. She stopped there with her back to the room.

To everyone else, she looked perfectly at ease. Her shoulders were relaxed, and her hands were still clasped behind her, and her voice had never lost its gentle tone.

But behind that calm face, her mind was racing.