[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 formed in her mind, Isabella sent another message 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 game, I could buy them from you and use them as guild funds, rather than letting those coins disappear. 🤭]
Reading that message, 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 message today.
Since he hadn’t sent her a message 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 same 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 moment he started typing and the coincidence of seeing Halon’s message bubble appear with a [...] indicating he was typing.
[Hayes: Tbh, that would be great. I need to pay some bills and that money would help a lot, not to mention that it could still be spent on the Guild as an investment!]
Just as Isabella predicted, as soon as the boy from the Lower Zone stopped typing, Halon’s message 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, meaning 100 copper coins are equivalent to $250 in real-world credits. Let’s use this same conversion rate, it’ll not only be good for me, since I’d already spend that money when we meet 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 member of Astralis Requiem, and not just an ordinary member, 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 me, after all, I’ll still benefit, even if indirectly, from using those coins. I know you must come 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 name.
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 come up with all sorts of reasons or excuses to get investments 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 came up with, as if it were her responsibility that someone’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 came 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 become 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 someone take the opposite stance to all of that, knowing she had far more money than he did, someone 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 something entirely new to her.
Isabella stood still for a few seconds, just reading and rereading that message, 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 some hospitals... he doesn’t know about my direct involvement 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 become 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 something so worthless to her, knowing that her friend was in need while she stood by idly seemed unfair.
Without realizing it, she was falling into the same 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.