Chapter 110: In the western continent

Here, though, there seemed to be a complete and total absence of care for the lives of these people, and it all came down to one simple, ugly reason: they were poor.

Leon’s mind drifted back to the exact phrase the man had used only moments earlier.

’E-class lowlifes...’ he thought, turning the words over slowly, distastefully. ’I don’t remember Ranxdale using a term like that.’

Back where he came from, ranking systems existed for a clear, practical purpose.

Guilds were ranked, same with Players. They were sorted by strength, skill, and achievement into tiers that made sense on a battlefield.

However rankings had never been applied to ordinary people, not entire classes of civilians sorted and dismissed based on where they happened to be born or how much money they had.

He frowned slightly, a distant memory tugging at the edge of his thoughts.

’I read about a place that uses rankings for societies too...’ he thought, trying to recall the details. ’What was the name again?’

Whatever the answer was, it stayed frustratingly out of reach, buried somewhere beneath the exhaustion and chaos of the day.

He didn’t have the patience to chase it down right now, not with an actual, immediate problem still hovering directly in front of him.

He turned his attention back to the blonde-haired man, his expression hardening.

"Leave this place," he said flatly. "You’re a disturbance."

The man’s teeth ground together audibly at the blunt dismissal, his composure fraying further with every passing second.

"You’re really choosing to stand with lowlifes instead of a player like yourself?" he snapped, disbelief and outrage warring openly across his face. "Who do you think you are? Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?"

Leon scoffed, entirely unmoved by the outburst. "I don’t care," he said simply. "Just leave this place."

The man’s frown deepened even further at that, his expression twisting with barely restrained fury, the veins along his forehead looking as though they might actually burst from the sheer pressure building behind them.

For a moment, it looked like he might push the confrontation further, might lash out despite every warning instinct telling him not to.

But as his mind flashed back to what he’d witnessed only minutes earlier, the boss monster’s head already severed and dangling from Leon’s grip before his own arrows had even finished detonating, that instinct won out over his wounded pride.

Without another word, he turned sharply in the air and shot off into the sky, flying away from the ruined street at considerable speed, putting distance between himself and Leon as quickly as his skills would allow.

Leon let out a low hiss through his teeth as he watched the man retreat, some of the tension in his shoulders easing slightly now that the immediate confrontation had resolved itself without turning into an actual fight.

He hadn’t particularly wanted to test his strength against another player today, not on top of everything else he’d already been through.

He turned back toward the crowd of civilians still gathered nearby, and found them all staring at him in stunned silence, their expressions caught somewhere between disbelief and awe.

Whatever they had expected from this encounter, they clearly hadn’t anticipated watching a filthy, disguised stranger stand his ground against another player and send him running without so much as raising a hand.

The old man opened his mouth, clearly about to say something else, likely another round of gratitude or apology on behalf of the crowd, but Leon raised a hand sharply, cutting him off before he could get a single word out.

His eyes narrowed as he studied the ruined street around him, the destroyed buildings, the unfamiliar architecture, the strange, dull color of the sky overhead.

"Where is this place?" he muttered, his tone flat and serious.

A ripple of confusion passed through the small crowd still gathered nearby. Several of them exchanged uncertain glances with one another, clearly puzzled by the strange, disguised player asking something so basic, something that should have been obvious to anyone standing here.

The old man hesitated for a moment before answering, his brow furrowing slightly at the odd question.

"This is Ratdale," he said slowly, choosing his words with care. "A small town... in the country of Berx."

Leon’s frown deepened instantly. ’Country of Berx?’ he thought, running the name through his memory over and over, searching for even the faintest hint of familiarity. Nothing came up.

He had never once heard that name mentioned, not during his years at the academy, not in any of the maps or geography lessons he’d sat through, not anywhere.

He pressed further, his voice sharper this time. "What continent is this?"

The old man’s eyes narrowed slightly at the question, clearly caught off guard by it.

It was, admittedly, an even stranger thing to ask than the first question, the kind of thing that only made sense if the person asking genuinely had no idea where in the world they currently stood.

He remained silent for a few seconds, studying Leon carefully before finally answering. "Western Continent," he said.

Leon’s fists clenched tightly at his sides the moment the words left the old man’s mouth.

’I knew it...’ he thought, a cold, uneasy feeling settling deep in his chest.

Ranxdale, the country he’d grown up in, the place he still thought of as home despite everything that had happened, sat firmly within the Southern Continent.

And in the Southern Continent, certain things simply didn’t exist, things like formally ranking ordinary citizens by class, or the kind of blatant, dismissive disregard for the lives of the poor that he’d just witnessed firsthand only minutes ago.

Here, though, things were clearly very different, and the realization sat uncomfortably with him, heavier than he expected given everything else he already had to worry about today.

He remembered sitting through lessons on exactly this topic back at the academy, years ago, long before any of this chaos had entered his life.

His instructors had spent considerable time drilling the difference into their students, explaining how the Western and Eastern Continents were the only regions in the world that still practiced formal societal ranking, sorting entire populations into rigid classes based on wealth, birth, and standing, with almost no regard for individual merit or basic human dignity.

At the time, it had all felt like distant, abstract history to him, the kind of thing you memorized for an exam and promptly forgot about the moment the lesson ended.

He’d never imagined he would one day find himself standing in the middle of one of those very regions, staring down the ugly reality of exactly what that kind of system actually looked like in practice.

"You all should go home," he said simply. "I’ll take care of this dungeon gate."

The old man opened his mouth to respond, but Leon had already started walking, his legs matching over broken pavement and scattered feathers as he made his way toward the dungeon gate still shimmering faintly in the distance.

Whatever questions the townsfolk had, they would have to wait. Right now, there was a dungeon sitting wide open, its monster boss already dead, and Leon wasn’t about to let the opportunity slip away while he stood around answering questions about a continent he’d never even heard of until ten minutes ago.

As he approached the gate, its rippling crimson surface pulsed once, almost as if acknowledging his presence, and he walked into it.

He didn’t hesitate, stepping forward without a second thought, and the world around him dissolved instantly into a blur of light.

When his vision cleared, Leon found himself standing in a long, narrow corridor made entirely of packed dirt and jagged stone, the walls curving upward into a low, uneven ceiling.

A faint, sulfuric smell hung in the stale air, mixing unpleasantly with the lingering stench still clinging to his ruined clothes.

The first floor stretched out ahead of him in eerie, unbroken silence.

He’d half expected to run into another wave of chickens the moment he stepped through, claws and beaks ready to tear into him the same way they had out in the street. Instead, there was nothing.

He pressed forward cautiously at first, his senses sharp, half-expecting an ambush at every turn. But floor after floor, the pattern held.

Scattered remains of broken nests lined the walls in places, torn open and abandoned, feathers and eggshells crushed underfoot as if the entire dungeon’s population had already clawed its way out in one desperate, chaotic rush.

It made sense, he supposed. If every monster inside had already swarmed out into the streets of Ratdale, then there was nothing left down here to actually stop him. Just the emptied husk of a dungeon that had already spent everything it had.

With no monsters to stand in his way, he quickly got to the third floor.

Unlike the rough dirt and stone of the tunnels leading here, the walls of this chamber were smooth and almost polished.

They curved upward into a domed ceiling that glowed faintly with a soft, ambient pink light, the same shade as the gate he’d stepped through to get here.