Chapter 137: Of all people

Thokas studied him for a long moment, something unreadable flickering behind his dark, pupil-less eyes.

"It’s good to be ambitious," he said finally. "But you’re still premature. You’re not currently strong enough to matter in that equation, Yeon Allistar."

The blunt assessment stung, though Yeon forced himself to keep his expression steady, refusing to let the insult visibly rattle him.

Thokas’s attention shifted toward Pale Smoke instead, studying him with the same careful, assessing gaze.

"You, however, showed considerably more composure that day than most A-rank players would have, faced with someone like myself."

Pale Smoke straightened further, something tense and uncertain flickering across his expression.

"I’m promoting you," Thokas said simply. "Effective immediately, to S-rank."

The words landed heavily in the quiet room.

Pale Smoke’s eyes widened in excitement, and his composure broke for a moment before returning back to normal.

"Thank you," Pale Smoke said, bowing his head slightly, careful to keep the enthusiasm from bleeding too obviously into his tone.

"Don’t thank me yet," Thokas said. "The promotion comes with conditions."

Pale Smoke’s excitement dimmed slightly, replaced by cautious attention.

"You’ll remain directly under Yeon’s command," Thokas continued. "Until he himself reaches S-rank. Consider it an investment in Roaring Lions’ recovery."

"A strong subordinate accelerates a weaker leader’s growth far more effectively than resources alone."

Pale Smoke’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly, though he kept his outward expression carefully neutral.

Whatever excitement he’d felt only seconds earlier now tangled uncomfortably with a fresh wave of quiet frustration.

S-rank. The rank he’d been chasing for years, finally handed to him directly, and yet bounded him to serving under someone weaker than himself.

Still, questioning an order given directly by one of the Association’s ten heads wasn’t something Pale Smoke had any intention of doing, whatever quiet resentment simmered beneath his composed exterior.

"Understood," Pale Smoke said finally, bowing his head again, deeper this time.

Yeon, for his part, felt a small, satisfied flicker of relief at the arrangement, though he carefully kept it from showing too openly.

Whatever Thokas’s true motivations, having an S-rank player bound directly to his command represented exactly the kind of strength Roaring Lions desperately needed right now.

"Thank you," Yeon said again, this time with more genuine sincerity behind it. "This means a great deal to the guild’s recovery."

Thokas waved the gratitude aside once more, his attention already drifting back toward whatever calculations continued turning steadily behind his unreadable, pitch-black eyes.

"Focus on growing stronger," he said simply. "Both of you. You’ll continue reporting anything relevant you learn, directly to me."

"Of course," Yeon said.

Thokas studied them both for one final, lingering moment, his expression unreadable, before finally turning his chair back toward the window, the gesture unmistakably dismissive.

"That will be all," he said. "For now."

Yeon and Pale smoke glanced at each other one last time, before turning around, leaving the room.

Thokas remained seated on the chair long after the door closed behind Yeon and Pale Smoke, simply staring out the window.

"A golden sword..." he repeated what Pale Smoke said about Leon, the words barely audible in the quiet room.

He turned the description over carefully in his mind, weighing it against everything he already knew, everything he’d hoped, quietly and privately, he would never have reason to consider again.

"I hope..." he said slowly, his voice low, "that it isn’t what I think it is."

The possibility sat uncomfortably in his chest, heavier than he wanted to admit even to himself.

A weapon capable of that kind of presence, that kind of raw, overwhelming power in the hands of someone who, by every account, shouldn’t have been capable of wielding anything beyond the most basic equipment available to a D-rank talent, left very few reasonable explanations.

Legendary grade.

The words alone carried weight enough to unsettle him, and Thokas wasn’t a man who unsettled easily.

He’d sat in rooms with monsters capable of leveling cities. He’d stood before threats that had brought entire guilds to their knees within minutes. Very little in this world still managed to genuinely trouble him.

This did.

He rose from the chair slowly, moving toward the window, resting one hand against the cool glass as he stared out over the estate’s quiet grounds, his mind drifting backward through years of memory he rarely allowed himself to revisit.

The last person to hold a legendary-grade weapon had been White.

The name alone still carried a peculiar weight, even now, years after the man had effectively vanished from active involvement in the world’s affairs.

White had been the first, and so far only, player to ever reach SSS-rank, a tier of strength so far removed from ordinary players that most people barely understood it existed at all, let alone what it actually meant in practice.

And then, gradually, White had disappeared from public view entirely, and along with him, his legendary weapon disappeared also.

In the years since, not a single confirmed legendary-grade item had surfaced anywhere in the world.

The entire category had effectively vanished, becoming the stuff of old rumor and myth.

Until now, apparently.

If Leon truly carried something of that caliber, it changed the entire shape of the problem Thokas was currently dealing with.

A D-rank talent, discarded and dismissed by his own family, suddenly wielding power that hadn’t been seen anywhere in the world since White’s own rise to prominence, was not a coincidence Thokas felt comfortable dismissing.

"Of all the people," he muttered, shaking his head slightly, "it had to be him."

He would have preferred almost anyone else. A promising young S-rank prodigy, perhaps, someone already under the Association’s watchful oversight, someone whose growth could be tracked, guided, contained if necessary.

Even an established, ambitious guild master with something to lose would have been preferable, someone motivated by predictable incentives, someone who could be reasoned with, negotiated against.

Leon Allistar was none of those things. He was too much of an unknown variable, who’d somehow clawed his way into possessing power the entire Association had assumed permanently absent from the world.