Chapter 185: SS-rank

She let out a breath through her nose. The wind pulled at her hair, and she brushed a few strands away from her face.

She was annoyed, and she did not try very hard to hide it. But the annoyance did not last long, because underneath it there was something else, something she had already known before she asked.

He was never going to tell her.

She had read enough about him to understand that much.

A boy who could walk into the Association’s council and hold a room of S-ranks hostage was not going to hand over his secrets because a woman in a nightgown asked him politely.

If there was an answer, he would keep it to himself, and she could ask a hundred more times without getting anything different.

Milda straightened her shoulders and looked at him for a long moment.

Then she gave a quiet, tired laugh.

"I thought you would say that," she said.

"Then why did you ask?"

"Because I am a Head of this Association, and it is my job to ask." She shook her head. "It was worth trying."

Leon looked at her without much interest. He had expected more of a fight. In his head he had already prepared three or four answers for the moment when she lost her patience and started making threats. But she did not seem to have any threats. She just looked tired.

Milda folded her hands in front of her.

"Very well," she said. "I will not ask again. And you will have what you came here for."

"Say it clearly."

"You will have the rank of SSS."

It was a very short sentence, but it seemed to take something out of her to say it. Her shoulders dropped a little, and she looked down at the clouds floating far below.

She was not lying. She had thought about it carefully, and she knew there was nothing else she could do.

Milda was the strongest woman in the room she had left behind.

She was level 200, which was more than ten times what any S-rank in the building could claim. She was one of the ten Heads of the Association. In all of her years, she had never met anyone in this world she could not at least fight to a draw.

She did not think she could fight Leon.

She had tried to count the ways it might go. If it was only a contest of levels, the answer was easy, and she would win in an instant.

But he was not an ordinary player, and he did not follow the usual numbers. He had stood in the sky, awkward and angry, and kicked his legs until they vanished, and he had still not been afraid of her. Not for a single second.

And then there was the Aegis.

A shield that returned any attack ten times over was not something she could risk testing, even if she was sure she could survive it.

She had no idea how far the reflection went, or where the limit was. It might break at a certain point. It might not break at all.

And the shield was only one of them.

That was the part that kept sitting in her mind. She had seen the shield, and she had heard about the sword.

If a boy of level twenty could carry two legendary items, it was foolish to assume there were only two. There might be a third in his pocket, or a fourth waiting in his inventory.

There might be things he had not shown anyone, things even more terrifying than a shield that could turn a dragon’s breath back on itself.

She did not know, and Leon was not going to tell her.

And she did not want to find out the hard way.

Leon nodded once.

He did not say thank you, and he did not look surprised. He nodded the way a man nods when a shopkeeper finally agrees to the price he named at the start.

"Good," he said.

"I am glad you approve."

"I do. Now, I have a question for you."

Milda blinked. She had been ready for him to start laying out demands, and the polite way he said it threw her off for a second. "A question?"

"Yes."

"Ask whatever you want," she said. After a short pause, she added, "I do not promise to answer it."

"That is fair." Leon tilted his head. "What rank are you?"

Milda hesitated.

It was a simple question, and an obvious one, and she should have seen it coming. She was clearly above S-rank.

Anybody with eyes could see it, and Leon had seen more than most. He had read her level from across the room when nobody else could, and he had watched her do something that no S-rank could do. It would have been pointless to lie.

She smiled, a little wryly.

"SS-rank," she said.

"SS."

"All ten of us. The Heads of the Association are all SS-rank players."

Leon frowned slightly. "I have never heard of SS-rank."

"You would not have. It is not something we advertise." She glanced down at the tiny city below them.

"The public does not know it exists. Most players think S-rank is the highest anyone has ever reached, and that the Heads are only very senior officials who sit in an office and sign papers."

" A few S-ranks around the world know the truth, because they have been told, and they have kept quiet. But that is all."

"And the rank above that?"

"SSS?" Milda’s smile faded. "There has been only one, in all the years I have held my seat. His name was White."

Leon said nothing.

"He was the last," she continued. "The last person in the world to hold the rank of SSS. That was a long time ago now, and most people have forgotten that anyone ever had it. If you ask a child on the street, they will tell you that S-rank is as high as it goes."