[NunuNote: Thanks to WyrmWood’s Magic Castle we are gonna get 2 Bonus Chapters in the next hours! When I thouth I was gonna be able to release all Bonus Stockpile! XDD]
Deciding to test the theory she had ford in her mind, Isabella sent another ssage to Halon.
[Lisa: Btw, I was thinking. You sold those first 5 silver coins we received as a reward to the Elysium System, right? Do you plan to sell more coins like that? Because instead of selling them to the ga, I could buy them from you and use them as guild funds, rather than letting those coins disappear. 🤭]
Reading that ssage, Lohan was shocked.
Not because it was a revolutionary idea that Lisa could never have thought of, but because it was precisely because he’d had that idea the night before, to try selling those coins to Lisa, that he’d decided to send her a ssage today.
Since he hadn’t sent her a ssage like that before, he didn’t want to seem like a gold-digger, so he kept chatting about various things, saving that topic for later.
Who would have thought that that sly little fox would think of the sa thing as him and suggest it before he even could?
Excited, Lohan smiled and replied quickly.
As his fingers tapped on the cracked screen of his phone, in Lisa’s view, the Hayes she was chatting with was also typing!
Her perception was much sharper than that of normal people, so she didn’t need to focus her vision on that boy to see if he was typing or not... even with her peripheral vision, she could still clearly see the mont he started typing and the coincidence of seeing Halon’s ssage bubble appear with a [...] indicating he was typing.
[Hayes: Tbh, that would be great. I need to pay so bills and that money would help a lot, not to ntion that it could still be spent on the Guild as an investnt!]
Just as Isabella predicted, as soon as the boy from the Lower Zone stopped typing, Halon’s ssage was completed and sent, making it increasingly clear that the chances of him being Halon were even higher!
[Lisa: I’m glad you accepted. Honestly, the current exchange rate for these coins is 2.5:1, aning 100 copper coins are equivalent to $250 in real-world credits. Let’s use this sa conversion rate, it’ll not only be good for , since I’d already spend that money when we et other Players, but it’ll probably help you too. How about it? ☺️]
Lohan saw that and was surprised, not imagining he could receive even more than he’d expected.
But considering that he was also a mber of Astralis Requiem, and not just an ordinary mber, but the Vice President, Lohan felt bad about doing this.
Even though he knew Lisa had a lot of money in the real world, he didn’t want to take advantage of his friend in a situation like this.
[Hayes: Thanks for the offer, but we don’t need to do that. A 1:1 rate is fine with , after all, I’ll still benefit, even if indirectly, from using those coins. I know you must co from a wealthy family, but I don’t want to take advantage of you like this and ruin our friendship.]
That response surprised Isabella even more.
She analyzed the boy’s typing speed and the timing of Halon’s replies and was now practically certain that this boy really was her virtual friend.
And that confirmation was what shocked her even more.
The boy was clearly going through financial difficulties; he wore old, obviously secondhand clothes, and instead of an ocular hologram, he used an old, broken cell phone.
Even with so many hardships, he didn’t want to accept her money for fear that it would change their friendship, the complete opposite of how her "friends" acted upon learning her last na.
When they found out she was Isabella Vance, and worse yet, when they discovered she was THE primary heiress of the Vance Group, people would co up with all sorts of reasons or excuses to get investnts from her, or financial help to deal with the "problems" they were facing, or simply out of greed, wanting gifts from her.
Most saw it as a given, or her obligation, that she hand out money for the various reasons they ca up with, as if it were her responsibility that soone’s uncle had lost the family’s essential funds, and that if it weren’t for her help, they’d be bankrupt and ruined.
At first, Isabella was still naive and believed this kind of thing, but the problem was that the requests for money never stopped after the first transfer.
People always ca up with another reason, then another, and yet another...
To the point where she realized she was being taken for a fool and had to learn to say no.
After hearing a "no," these people would first beco desperate, then illogically enraged with her, as if she were a bad person for not giving them money when she had so much to spare.
And seeing soone take the opposite stance to all of that, knowing she had far more money than he did, soone who was truly in need of money, refusing her offer to pay more than the standard rate, and still wanting to receive only what was fair, was sothing entirely new to her.
Isabella stood still for a few seconds, just reading and rereading that ssage, unaware of a warm feeling that welled up in her chest as she did so.
’Could it be that he’s only acting this way because he doesn’t know how rich I am? After all, he only knows that I’m from the Upper Zone and have connections with so hospitals... he doesn’t know about my direct involvent in those hospitals and how rich I am compared to ordinary people in the Upper Zone...’
That thought made Isabella feel insecure, unsure that if she revealed more than he imagined, he would beco like those other people, that he would see her as a walking ATM, seeing in her the opportunity to get "infinite money"...
"I don’t want that." She thought, torn between insisting on paying more or accepting Halon’s 1:1 rate.
To her, it made no difference whether she paid $100 or $250 for a silver coin from Elysium... in fact, even a difference of $100 or $100,000 was negligible to her, and with money being sothing so worthless to her, knowing that her friend was in need while she stood by idly seed unfair.
Without realizing it, she was falling into the sa guilt trip that self-serving people from the past had tried to instill in her mind, but now in a completely proactive way.
Sighing, she didn’t know what to do.
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