"Mr. Chase, Avery informed me of your situation and mentioned you are planning to hire our firm. Before we begin, let me warn you, hiring an attorney from Smith & Holts without a corporate or individual membership will be incredibly expensive," Mabel said, calmly eyeing my expression. Taking a slow sip of my coffee, I nodded, trying not to look irritated by Avery’s loud slurping. "How much does a membership cost?"
"Individual and corporation accounts have different membership pricing structures," Mabel explained, leaning back slightly and tapping on the coffee cup in her hand. "In your case, an individual account will suffice. The baseline tier is a flat annual retainer of ten thousand dollars. That grants you immediate priority access to our senior partners, blocks our litigation teams from representing any of your competitors, and covers up to fifteen hours of direct legal counsel or document preparation per year."
She paused, letting the numbers hang in the air, her expression completely professional. "If you choose to bypass the membership and proceed on a standard hourly rate, you will be billed out of pocket at roughly twelve hundred dollars per hour for an associate, and upwards of twenty-five hundred for a managing partner. Avery requested I fast-track your intake because of your referral status, but Smith & Holts strictly enforces these structures. How would you like to proceed, Mr. Chase?"
"Is it the same for hunters?" I asked only to be met with their confused gazes. So, I calmly explained, "Yesterday, I awakened my innate skill during the Kobold outbreak."
"What actually happened after you were thrown out of the elevator?" Avery asked, her voice tight with concern. The raw guilt in her eyes was agonizing, but hey, at least she had stopped slurping loudly.
"I killed the Kobold, awakened my innate skill, and used it to hide in the archive from a Kobold Rider," I briefly explained.
You have to physically enter a monster gate to finalize and secure a specific class. I hadn’t decided which class I would choose yet, but I knew I needed the political weight of Smith & Holts law firm to contract a trustworthy guild to guide me safely through that transition.
"Congrats," Avery muttered, her eyes turning red as she quietly looked down at the floor. It seemed the details hadn’t just rekindled her intense survivor’s guilt, it had actively added to it.
Meanwhile, Mabel frowned, pulling no punches as she gave it to me completely straight. "Mr. Chase, congratulations on your awakening, but I’m deeply sorry to say this, we no longer have a case. Your awakening changes the legal premise of the entire situation."
Noticing my astonished face she sighed, tapping her coffee cup. "I can deeply sympathize with your ordeal, but the opposition’s defense team will absolutely weaponize your awakening. They will combine it with the reasonable doubt that pushing you out might have technically saved the rest of the civilians in the elevator, and narrative sympathy by spinning Derulo into a tragic hero who made a tough call. Not to mention, in today’s society, newly awakened individuals are envied far more than billionaires. A jury won’t look at you as a victim anymore. Then, there’s the media... sigh, it’s best if we leave it here."
"And let him get away with it?!" Avery snapped, all her agonizing guilt bubbling into pure rage toward Mason Derulo. "You work for Smith & Holts, Mabel! I’m sure you guys can think of something to make that son of a bitch pay!"
"Avery, the moment a judge hears Mr. Chase awakened because of Derulo’s tough decision that might have saved a dozen lives, no court will let this case go beyond the initial hearing," Mabel said, shaking her head as if she had firsthand experience dealing with something similar. "If word about the case gets out, the social media is full of jealous trolls who will ruin Mr. Chase’s reputation. Unless one is prepared for that, the kindest advice I can give is to let this go."
"And there’s more: he publicly begged for your forgiveness on his knees. Even though he wasn’t sincere and would likely repeat his actions if given a similar opportunity, the public doesn’t care about sincerity. They have a goldfish’s memory when it comes to these things.
"However, all hope isn’t lost. You can collect all the evidence now and file the case a few months later. By then, the people who were in the lift will have gotten over the initial joy of surviving and may be struggling with survivor’s guilt over how they made it out alive. Hopefully, one or two of them will come forward and agree to testify in your support, Mr. Chase.
"But don’t get your hopes up. At most, he’ll probably receive the minimum sentence unless you can prove that he acted deliberately."
"That works," I nodded, locking eyes with unconvinced Avery. But she quickly looked down, breaking the contact. I couldn’t imagine that even my late mother would have felt this much guilt had she been in Avery’s shoes.
Shaking my head, I turned my attention back to Mabel. "I will drop the case for now. But I still want Smith & Holts as my retainer. Since I need professional help with my official transition into a registered Hunter. Specifically, I want to secure a high-tier, rare class like a Paladin or a Summoner."
Mabel let out a visible breath of relief upon hearing that I was dropping the hopeless case against Mason Derulo, but her expression immediately soured the moment I voiced my next demand.
Her brow furrowed in deep skepticism as she silently calculated the sheer audacity of my request. At Smith & Holts, the firm charged a staggering 1,200 denars per hour just for the time of a junior associate like her. She had only agreed to tag along this early in the morning out of professional courtesy and her close friendship with Avery. But now, she was starting to resent her own politeness for giving free professional advice, feeling it was actively devaluing her professional worth.
To her, I was just a random, low-salaried library employee. The delusion required for someone in my position to believe he could afford a high-tier firm to manage a basic Hunter transition, let alone secure a hyper-rare class like a Paladin or a Summoner, was staggering. Even with her income and extensive corporate connections at the firm, Mabel had barely managed to secure a mediocre Alchemy Apprentice class for herself.
Looking at me, she couldn’t decide if the man standing in front of her was completely ignorant of how the supernatural economy worked, or just dangerously arrogant and full of himself.
While Mabel was frantically trying to formulate a polite excuse to untangle herself from this mess without hurting her friendship with Avery, I quietly pulled out my smartphone. I opened my secure banking application and turned the screen around, casually showing her my current savings account balance.
Her thoughts ground to a violent halt. Her eyes widened in astonishment as her mind struggled to reconcile the image of a low-salaried archivist with a bank account that could buy out her senior partners.
Her posture instantly shifted from an elitist professional to a deeply deferential subordinate. Bowing her head slightly, she immediately apologized, her voice trembling with newfound respect: "Please, forgive my utter blindness, Mr. Chase. I misjudged your situation."