We were walking through the forest, and Hope was quiet right now, so I started analyzing her.
Who would've thought that that cute girl was a cold-blooded killer.
It was true that I had been in a trance when I had been thinking about my sister, but I had enough awareness of my surroundings to feel something sharp try to pierce my chest. After all, if I hadn't had that kind of situational awareness, I would have died in this tower a long time ago.
'Well obviously, I should have expected this as she was the second one to reach this floor in my tower, so she had to be at least a little special.'
'But to think that she had no qualms about killing, she truly is an interesting girl.'
I had also known all of this when I recruited her to be my partner, as I knew her unassuming figure was something that we could take advantage of and her other personality of a cold-blooded killer was also very useful for my future plans, especially my plans for creating a guild.
"Hey Shin, where are we going now?"
"Well it seems like you need to level up, seeing your pitiful level, so I'm taking you to a dungeon."
"Is it the same one you went to?"
"Nah, I already completely cleared that dungeon, and even if it wasn't cleared yet, you still wouldn't have been able to handle any of the monsters in it."
"What! You know I can't stay still after hearing you say that. What rank is the dungeon?"
"B+"
"What! B+, are you fucking with me?"
"No, and the boss was an AA ranked drake."
'Holy shit!, no wonder he was able to level up so quickly, but how was he able to accomplish that feat?'
"If you're wondering how I managed to clear the dungeon, it's simple, it's just because I'm that much stronger than you."
"Fine, don't tell me if you don't want to," she muttered under her breath.
"Hmmm, what was that?"
"Nothing, nothing," she said, while her face flushed red.
I stopped walking as in front of us was a humungous tree thats top was higher than the clouds, unable to be seen.
"Okay, well since you now know the difference in our skill levels, you understand why you're clearing this EE rank dungeon first."
"What dungeon?" she asked, as there was no obvious dungeon around that she could see.
"Come on, use your senses, you must have gained at least some perception stat points if you made it all the way here."
I watched her as she closed her eyes, trying to extend her senses.
'I guess I really have a huge head start, knowing how to fully utilize each of my stats at all times.'
Judging from what Hope was doing right now, I figured that most other players were also in a similar situation to her, having gained all of these stat points but not knowing how to use each one and having to actively think about it and "activate" it instead.
"Oh, is it up in the tree?"
"You finally noticed it? I was going to tell you after a little bit you know?" I said, teasing her.
"Fuck off", she said, while doing a really vulgar gesture that included flicking up only a certain finger while creating a hole with the other hand and moving that finger in and out of the hole.
"Okay, okay, you can stop doing that."
I proceeded to jump up to a certain branch of the huge tree that we had been standing in front of.
"Oh come on, don't tell me you can't just jump up this tiny distance?" I said, calling down to her.
"Again, just fuck off. You know it's more than 50 meters to get up there," she shouted back up.
I could see her visibly grinding her teeth as she started climbing the tree using her hands and feet instead of being able to jump up this "small height".
'It seems she's really annoyed by my teasing,' I thought, visibly showing my teeth in probably the biggest smile that I had given in the past 10 years.
'She really is just like my sister.'
Although I thought this, there were some differences too, especially the vulgar attitude that she had.
'What do they teach their kids in America these days?'
I only guessed that she was from America due to her clothes and looks.
'Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, the reader, that I could speak more than 10 languages, including the languages that I made for the different races in this game.'
'Wait, what am I saying, it's not like I'm in a fantasy world in a book that people are reading.'
When she finally got to the branch that I was on, I could visibly see some scrapes and bruises that were already starting to turn purple here and there, but I pretended to not notice them.
"Come on, let's get going."
"But I just got here!" she whined.
"Okay let me rephrase that. You're better drag yourself along or I'm pushing you off this branch, I mean you'll survive if you have more than 25 Hp." I said, knowing fully that she couldn't possible have that much Hp points.
"Uggghhhh!" Screaming out loud, she dragged herself after me.
'Doing this is just too fun and her reactions are just too cute.'
"Come on, we're almost there."
Entering a small hidden hole in a tree, we set foot in this E+ ranked dungeon.
"Okay, clear the entirety of this dungeon and come back when you only have the boss room left," I said, while proceeding to sit down in a lotus position to begin meditating again.
"What, you're just gonna leave me hanging here?" she exclaimed.
"Yep, that's exactly what I'm doing. You want to become stronger right? This means that you'll have to face your own trials."
Grumbling some curses at me, I watched her take out her daggers and proceed down the path into the tree.
I started meditating, and thought about the girl that I had just met, and who was now my ally.
'So far, I have seen 3 personalities from her. First is the naive, innocent girl. Second is the sadistic, cold-blooded killer, and third, her main personality that she uses around me and what I thought was her "true" personality, which was the vulgar, bratty, spoiled girl that was always sniping at me.
'She definitely has some kind of backstory to be that wary of humanity at such a young age and have that much personalities that she can use. Well I guess I can call her a kindred spirit.'
After spending some more time thinking and meditating, I heard footsteps proceeding my way.
"Oh, you're done already?"
"Yeah you bastard, I finished in 1 hour, and now I'm all covered in monkey blood and poop. I mean, why didn't you tell me that the monsters that I would be facing were monkeys that throw exploding poop!"
She started barraging me with punches, but they felt like nothing more than if blossoms were falling on me against my 52 point stamina.
"Oh, only in 1 hour, I had expected you to clear it in 30 minutes, are you sure you actually made it through all the tests?"
"Yeah, yeah, just fu... I mean could you buy me a cleaning scroll."
"No, you have enough to buy one yourself," I said, while pointing at the number of TC's beside her name on the leaderboard.
"You sure gained a lot from some gods that enjoyed watching poop getting thrown at your perfect looks."
"Come on, pretty please?"
"Nope"
"Uggh, meanie."
She proceeded to buy a cleaning scroll and teared it, instantly returning her to her figure of innocent, childish perfectness.
"Are we taking a go at the boss monster now?"
"Yep, follow me."
Instead of going back down the hole, I came back out onto the branch and jumped up, soaring over the topmost branches and landing in the center of the top of the tree.
"Where the hell did that guy go? Wasn't the boss monster behind that huge door at the end of the dungeon inside the tree?"
'Well whatever, I better follow him up if I don't want to fall behind, and it's better not to keep him waiting with that shitty personality of his.'
All I could do was grit my teeth and began the arduous process of climbing up the tree.
After a while of climbing:
'Fuck, did he have to go all the way to the top? I'm already more than 2 kilometers off of the ground!'
Resigned to my situation, all I could do was keeping my pace whilst climbing until I reached the top.
I then sat down and waited for Little Hope to climb up here.
I waited 2 hours for her to get up here and then immediately took her to a place where the bark of the tree was soft.
"Get yourself ready."
"For what?"
Just when she asked that, I stomped down hard, causing the bark of the tree under us to collapse, making us fall down.
I fell down with a calm expression the whole time while Little Hope screamed the whole way down.
After a while of falling, we landed in a huge steaming hot brown pile of a mushy substance.
"Ewwww, fuck this shit!"
"Well, this is literally shit you know?"
"Ahhhhhh," she screamed while jumping up and down in a futile attempt to get the poop covering her body off without dirtying her hands.
"Oh stop being a baby, here's a cleaning scroll."
I had bought two of them before this and gave one to her while using one for myself.
After we became clean again, I motioned her to follow me around the pile of poop.
As we rounded the corner, I heard an audible gasp from beside me. After all, in front of us was humongous ape with a crown on his head.
Aptly named "Wukong" this ape was the hidden SS+ rank boss of the dungeon below, and was the strongest monster on this floor.
"We're going to be fighting against that thing?" she said, showing an incredulous expression.
"Of course we are, and you're the tank."
"We'll I'm officially fucked, I'm starting to regret my decision to partner with you." She said sarcastically.
"Oh, you're only regretting this now, I thought you had started regretting your decision earlier?"
"Whatever" she muttered.
"Am I really going to be tanking that thing."
"Yep, of course, because you're my partner, you can obviously do that." I said with a big smile on my face, sounding completely serious.
"You know I'm not stupid enough to fall for that remark."
"Of course you didn't, but it's not like you have a choice either. Just follow the directions I shout out and I will guarantee that you survive."
Not giving her a chance to respond, I let out my loudest bellow, awakening the boss and starting the boss fight.