Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"The question for now, though, is, what am I to do with you now?"

A cold shiver moved down my spine. Irene's question sounded… a bit too final to my liking.

'I guess it's time,' I thought, gritting my teeth as I readied myself to summon my personal portal at any second.

'What are the chances it will work?' I wondered.

Both Etaria and Madam already proved that a supreme could pretty much ignore or, at the very least, avoid any sort of danger brought upon by modern weapons.

But… In both of their cases, they knew what they were getting themselves into in advance. Madam saw how the guns worked and thus grew to know how to deal with them. On the other hand, Etaria knew she was going into a battle and she likely had some prior knowledge of weapons she never knew about situated within the forest.

They were both warned and thus gained the ability to survive even on a modern battlefield.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

When it came to Irene, though… She couldn't know there was a whole group of gunmen ready to sacrifice all the innocent people within the cafe if it meant taking her by surprise. The most she could know was a deduction that I wouldn't have confronted her without some sort of prior arrangement ensuring or at least, increasing my odds.

Would that be enough to overcome the massive gap of power between us?

'Is something as simple as a gun barrage enough to kill someone on pretty much a level of a damn god?'

I gritted my teeth, steeling my resolve for whatever was going to happen next…

Which turned out to be Irene heaving a long, bothered sigh.

"Stop whatever you are thinking about doing," Irene ordered while giving me the look of an adult politely smiling in response to some infantile bullshit spoken by a kid. "I understand if my words scared you, but for the last three years, I've come to consider you a wasted investment anyway."

My eyes widened.

"What?"

"Haaaah…." Irene uttered a long sigh, finally dropping her mask of superiority as she leaned her head forward and rested her forehead against her cupped hands. "I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but after two years of watching you refuse to give in to your damn desires even once…" Irene shook her head while refusing to lift it up from her hands.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

At this point, I forgot all about the primal fear Irene's power induced in my soul. I forgot all about just how much more powerful she was than me, making me a mere ant dancing in her palm.

Because just now, she revealed I wasn't moving as she desired at all!

'Is it a lie?' I gulped my saliva down. 'Her attempt at making me lower my guard and…'

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, burying those idiotic thoughts.

With the difference of power between us, there was absolutely no need for Irene to play any sort of tricks. It was merely me projecting my own circumstances, methods, and views on her… while completely ignoring her own look on the matter.

'Just like Leon wouldn't bother scamming people over the phone to earn a thousand or two, she wouldn't bother playing tricks like that on me. It's arrogant to think she would have any need for tricks…'

Irene raised her head from her cupped hands and looked directly into my eyes.

"From now on, I will adopt the preposition you often like to include yourself," she said with a small smile lingering at the corner of her mouth. "Whatever I say from now on is likely to be a simplification so major, it will make my words no different from lies."

"Wait, you are actually going to answer my questions?!" I nearly jumped up in my seat.

This conversation wasn't going anywhere near the flow I predicted it would take.

'Is this the instance of a god laughing at the plans of a man?' I thought.

Instead of answering my last question, though, Irene simply continued to stare right into my eyes for just a bit longer.

"I see," she then noted, finally breaking eye contact and pulling away from the table as she rested deeply into the cafe's comfortable chair. "At the very least, you don't consider darkness to be the embodiment of evil or something like that," she pointed out before shaking her head a little. "That will make this conversation a bit easier."

Irene suddenly shut herself up and simply continued to stare at me with… an extremely tired expression.

Soon, the reason for her silence materialized herself in the form of a server that approached our table.

"Would you like to order anything else?" the serviceman asked while taking a meaningful look at our empty cups.

Somewhere along this extremely weird conversation, we have both emptied out our glasses, now just sitting in the cafe and taking up a spot that some other customer might want to take.

And so, given how little of concern money was to me at this point, I raised my head and ordered a new round of coffee, this time accompanied by two pieces of some of the fancier cakes the cafe had to offer to go with the drink.

"Back to it," Irene muttered once the server left the two of us alone, allowing us to pick up the conversation right where we left it. "There's just one more thing I need to ask before I will give you some hints as a reparation for the pain my core brought upon you, irregardless of how it's your own fault things went the way they did."

'My fault?'

I raised one of my eyebrows… but opted not to dive deeper into this part that I couldn't agree with.

'How was anything back then my damn fault?!' I thought while forcing an empty smile on my face as I looked at Irene.

"And that question would be?" I asked, trying my very best to appear as uninterested as I could.

Seeing my act, Irene only smiled.

"When you open up those portals of yours, what color do you see?"