I woke up and saw Hope's face looking down on me.
Well, more specifically, she was looking at the area in front of my face, probably having the forum pulled up and checking the latest news.
"Hey, are you alright?"
"Ohh, you finally woke up!" she said swiping away the forum and checking my face to see if something was wrong.
"Hey brat, what the fuck are you doing just staying there like that, get the fuck away from me, you know you're too close right?"
"Hey... you know I was worried about you right."
"Worried my ass, I knew what I was doing, now move."
I had really known what I was doing. The only way that I could have defeated Wukong at my level right now was to agro him enough for him to use his skill, and then use Wukong's own force when using the skill to force the knife through his extremely tough skin that even a level 150 strength practitioner would have a hard time with, not to mention, I also had to be really precise with where his heart was.
I would then have to take a risk and count on killing Wukong in one shot, which would mean that I would level up, healing me of all of the bodily injuries that I would acquire withstanding the brunt of his attack.
Everything went exactly to plan, except for the part where I fainted from the immense pain.
"I guess the pain that happens in real life makes the pain that I sustained in the game feel like nothing."
I, of course, could have done it by myself, but I opted to use the opportunity to train Hope's reflexes.
I had actually been pretty surprised when I saw her adapting to Wukong's attack pattern and learning how to use her reflexes better.
'I mean, there is a reason after all that she was the second person to reach this floor in our tutorial tower.'
"Hmmmph," she helped me sit up even though I was fine, which was kind of annoying and then moved away a little.
"How much did you rank up?"
"I ranked up about 10 times from my share of exp points from Wukong, I'm now level 43."
'Hmmm, that was pretty good since she was just level 1 this morning.'
"Did you get the drops for the boss or did I?"
"You did, sir."
"Why the heck are you calling me sir, did you hit your head or something during the boss fight?"
"...No"
'Yeah right.' The girl sitting next to me was worlds apart from the stupid brat that complained about everything. It was like... she respected me more now?
'Well, whatever, she was bound to change do to what she thought was a life/death experience. I mean, any person would probably change after seeing a huge ass ape hurling at them from the sky.'
"How're we doing in terms of the leaderboard? Have Zero and the sisters passed us yet?"
"Uhhh, let me check..... huh, oh yeah, we're now in 4th and 5th place. It seems like Zero and those people you call "sisters" are now on the 9th floor."
"Wait, how do you know that Bam25 and 876 are sisters?"
I considered telling her, but there was no need to do that at this moment in time.
"It's none of your concern."
I closed my eyes, expecting her to start complaining like "That's no fair!" or "Why can't you just tell me?" but surprisingly, she stayed silent.
'It must have changed her more than I thought it would. I mean, I knew she had to experience this feeling of being on the verge of death to get stronger, but still, to affect her this much. Just what did she see?'
Little did I know, it was none other than I that changed her to this extent.
"Well, do you want any of the boss drops, I mean, there are some good materials in here, although unfortunately, the boss didn't drop any equipment."
"No, I'm fine, I don't want anything right now, and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to use it anyway."
"True, fine, I'll keep all of it in my inventory and when you need an SSS ranked material in the future, just come find me."
"I'll make sure to save one or two of the 5 boss. drops for you, is that fine? I mean I killed it so I should take 3 right." I asked shamelessly.
"That's fine, although the levels that you gave me were more than enough."
'Seriously, where did that shitty brat go? Why is she being so nice to me? Is this another one of her personalities?'
"Man, I have so many questions." I muttered under my breath.
"Oh yeah, did any other person make it up to this floor?"
"Six other people have made it up, are we going to hunt them now?" She asked excitedly.
'Well, here's the cold-blooded killer.'
"Yes we'll be hunting now."
As there was nothing to climb to get out of this place, I had to carry her and jump out through the small hole we made earlier when coming in.
We were back at the top of the map, so I decided to test her perception abilities more.
"How much of those extra stat points did you put into perception?"
"I put in 20 of the 42 points into perception."
'Huh, I guess she knew that she had a strength in those incredible reflexes of hers, and the perception stat was the stat that would compliment it the most.'
"From here, try to use your perception to sense where the other players are."
I watched as she closed her eyes and "turned the perception stat on".
I already knew where all of the other players were due to the fact that using all of the stats was as natural as breathing to me, so I always kept all of them "on" at all times unconsciously.
"Ummm, there's 1 person to the north, 3 to the east, 2 to the south, and 1 to the west."
"And where should we attack first?"
"You mean we're killing all of them?"
"You probably don't know this but killing other players means you receive 2 of their stat points and half of their exp, which is really important to most players, including us right now. There are probably players in other towers that are just spawn camping noobs and killing them the moment they come out to increase their level and stat points."
"Holy shit... that changes everything, but how did you figure that out?"
"I checked the forum."
Obviously, this was a lie, but it was a believable one.
"So back to the original question, where do we attack first?"
"We should attack the group of three first."
"And why is that."
"So that we can guarantee getting the most amount of stat points before the other people meet and kill each other."
"Surprisingly, you're correct."
I went over and patted her head.
She looked like she was enjoying it for a second, but then remembering her dignity, her expression quickly soured.
"Hey! Fuck off!"
"Sigh," now she's back to her bratty self.
"Ok, let's hurry and move."
"Hey! What what.. no stop!"
I had picked her up again in a piggy back position and was running towards the tip of the farthest branch that extended in the direction that we were going.
"Hold on tight!" I said, with a mischievous grin.
"Noooooooooo...." She shouted, her voice being lost in the wind as we fell down toward the treetops below us.
Fearing for her life, she wrapped her arms tightly around my neck and dug her face into my shoulder.
When we reached the first tree, using my high agility stat, I was able to transfer our falling kinetic energy into forward moving kinetic energy and we burst forward towards the unknowing players, soaring over the tree tops.
Looking back at Little Hope to see her expression, I could see that her face filled with fear was now showing an elated expression.
Her eyes were closed and it looked like she was enjoying the wind rushing through her hair.
'She's already gone from fearing the situation to enjoying it. I guess she's as much of a "death-junkie" as me.'
'Let's see how long you'll be looking like that.'
At about 500 meters away from the group of 3 players, I suddenly dropped her.
"Waaaaaaaaaahhhh, crack, crush, crack, ummmpth."
Landing lightly on the ground next to her without making a sound, I took in the view that was her surprised and pained face.
"What the fuck was that for!"
"You were just having too much fun, your lesson for today is that you should never lose awareness over your surroundings and you should always be prepared, even when you are in safe hands and having fun, as you never know what might happen."
"Yeah right, like I would actually believe that that was a lesson. You just wanted to drop me and make me experience pain right?"
Not even meaning to deny it, I shamelessly said, "Yep! It seems like my partner is at least not lacking in that noggin of hers".
'I don't know whether I should take that as a compliment or a dis.'
"Fuck you." She said, while once again while raising up a particular finger and pointing it at me.
I was about to joke with her more, but our prey was getting a little too far from us.
"Hey, we got to stop right now, our prey is getting away." I said, with a creepy smile on my face.
"Yeah let's go." She said, returning the same smile, a smile full of our anticipation for the taste of blood.
With that, we headed towards our unsuspecting prey, who never thought for a second that death was swiftly approaching them.