Chapter 216: The Perfect Shield
"Uhm... Are you okay?"
Jason turned to face Juliet when she suddenly asked this question, and Juliet held her bag in front of her nervously while talking in a more understanding tone.
"I saw the news about your house burning down and everything. It must’ve been hard for you and your girlfriend."
Jason hummed calmly as he turned to the side and saw that Griselda was also looking at him worriedly. He just waved away their concern and told them that he was fine. It was just a house that burned down, so it wasn’t a big deal. Besides, he had already planned on moving to a new place before everything happened, so it wasn’t like he didn’t have anywhere to go.
Jason’s dismissive attitude only made Juliet more worried since she knew that Jason was not the sort of person to talk about his feelings, but she could tell that Jason wasn’t interested in sharing what happened, so she nodded along and excused herself as she began making a call for someone to pick up the crystal and Gold Coin.
"I think it was the work of some rival guild that found out you already promised to join my guild."
Griselda was the one who spoke from her place against the wall. Jason turned to see that she had a sagely look on her face, like some sort of wise man on a mountain giving wisdom to his student. Jason asked her what the hell she was talking about, and Griselda continued.
"Those other guilds are just jealous of us! Don’t worry, Jason. I know things were hard, but you can rest easy now. I’ll make sure they never try something like that again!"
Jason gave Griselda a look of absolute confusion.
’What the hell is this crazy girl talking about?’
Griselda looked so assured of herself at that moment as she began to nod in self-satisfaction, and Jason decided that she was just insane. Jason already knew that Griselda was trying to recruit him into her guild, but he still hadn’t changed his mind about joining any guilds. He just wasn’t interested.
"I thought I told you I wasn’t joining your guild? And how do you even have a guild? You’re not a superhuman."
Jason gave Griselda a curious look, and Griselda’s lips spread into a confident smile as she thrust a piece of paper towards Jason!
"You’re looking at the youngest person to ever create a Guild in history! The chaos in the SMD over the past few hours allowed me to get into the system using my connections and register a guild before anyone could do a proper profile check! I had to pay more than a hundred thousand dollars in bribes, but I did it!"
Jason took the paper and read through it, and he couldn’t help but be impressed when he saw that it was actually a real guild registration invoice! Griselda had somehow managed to register a guild in the past few hours. The guild was called ’Griselda’s Guild,’ and Jason couldn’t help but chuckle when he read that name. The guild had two members already. One of them was Griselda, and the other one was him. But his name had the words ’pending registration’ written beside it. The process for registering a guild wasn’t that difficult since the government wanted as many guilds as possible for fairness, but the guild would still need to have at least one registered superhuman before it could be recognized as a real guild.
Jason’s eyes trailed towards another paper, and his expression changed into one of amused disbelief when he saw that Griselda had already started to fill out a guild registration form for him. This woman was insane. Absolutely batshit crazy! Griselda must’ve done this because she wasn’t a registered superhuman. She used Jason’s name there to ensure the system wouldn’t flag the registration as incomplete. It was crazy, but Jason couldn’t deny it was also genius. It was just too bad that he still wasn’t interested in joining a guild.
But Jason just couldn’t believe that Griselda had chosen her own name as the name of the guild. Jason turned to her with a raised brow and an amused smile.
"You chose ’Griselda’s Guild’ as the name? Really?"
Griselda’s cheeks lit up in righteous embarrassment, and she huffed while turning away to make sure Jason couldn’t see the effect his words had on her!
"I don’t see what’s wrong with putting yourself first. Besides, I think it’s a good name."
Jason laughed while stretching the papers back towards Griselda.
"Sorry, Griselda. I’m just not interested in this right now—"
"Actually, I think Griselda’s idea isn’t a bad one."
Juliet suddenly came towards Jason from the side and spoke seriously, and Jason turned to her and asked what the hell she was talking about. Juliet had just gotten off the phone with some people in the SMD, and she heard that the enforcers were carrying out an operation on the BloodRaven guild because of their attack on Jason. Even though the rest of the world thought the raid was only because the BloodRaven had tried to assassinate Jason, Juliet knew that it was far more significant than that.
The BloodRaven guild was a pillar of the country and they were seen as one of the most important guilds in their entire country due to the prestige and financial benefits that they brought. There were a lot of things that the government simply allowed them to get away with because of their status! So the mere fact that the government was going after them now meant that the government had chosen to side with someone they believed would become even more important than the BloodRaven guild. They had chosen to side with Jason.
But there was still going to be a lot of yellow tape to jump over in the coming weeks due to the fact that Jason was just a single superhuman. The government would be hesitant to go all the way against the BloodRaven guild, and people would begin to point fingers at Jason since he was just a single individual. It would become a case of Jason against all of those who were on the side of the BloodRaven guild. But that would be completely different if Jason were in a guild. Guilds were not just organizations that gave superhumans the freedom to dive into Gates, they were also shields that protected superhumans when they needed it.
Juliet was still worried that the number of crystals Jason was bringing to her, along with the sheer amount of propaganda surrounding him, would cause problems in the future. But if Jason was already part of a guild, then all of that could be easily covered up. Why did Jason have so many crystals? Well, they aren’t Jason’s crystals, they are the guild’s crystals. Why does Jason have an issue with the BloodRaven guild even after everything they have done for the country? Well, Jason doesn’t have an issue with them, Jason’s guild has an issue with them. It was the perfect way to prevent personal drama for Jason.
"Having a guild backing you will make a lot of your problems go away without you having to lift a finger. Whenever you hear about guilds having difficulties with other guilds, it’s usually because one or more members of the guilds have issues with each other. But the media takes it as a general problem and that prevents superhumans from having any personal propaganda. It’s the perfect shield."