We raced through the forest, quickly closing in on the position of the group of three.
"What weapons do they have?"
"One of them is using a longsword, another is using a great-sword, and the last is holding a bow, although he also has a pair of daggers strapped at his sides."
All I could do was sigh.
"Wrong, how bad are you to only notice their basic equipment? You missed the shiv in the boot of the man using the longsword and you also missed the poison needles in the sleeves of the man holding the great-sword."
"Fuck, did I really miss those?"
"Yeah you did, and you also didn't sense their trump card either, although I won't tell you what it is so that the hunt is more fun."
"What do you mean, aren't you participating too?"
"Nah, I'll let you take the points from these three, also, I need you to get more experience in 1 v. many fights."
"Alright, I'll beat them in just 5 minutes. How about that?"
"Want to make it a bet?"
"Yeah, how about 50,000 TC."
"That's fine with me."
'She's letting her guard down too much. Even when I informed her that they had a trump card, she's still getting too overconfident.'
"Sigh"
'Alright, let's see how she does.'
I watched as she immediately dispatched the great-sword user with her knives, whom she deemed as the greatest threat.
Taking a second look at her weapons, I could only feel a little bit surprised.
This was the first time that I had a chance to see what weapon she used after all, and I couldn't help but approve of her choice.
'She must have spent a lot of coins to buy those daggers though, the probably took her a lot of saving up.'
In reality, she had used the coins that the players she back-stabbed had dropped, so she had bought those daggers with blood money.
I started analyzing her again.
'That's the wrong choice, she's already starting off bad.'
Alerted by the death of their comrade, the longsword user started engaging in a close combat fight with Hope while the archer started knocking an arrow and was aiming it at Hope.
Luckily, Hope was smart enough to use her fight with the sword user to her advantage and kept it so that the sword wielder was always in the way of the archer.
After 2 minutes of constant fighting, Hope started gaining the upper hand solely due to her higher strength and agility stats because she was at a higher level than her opponent.
She quickly dispatched of him after he started getting tired and started making mistakes in his movements.
Finally she rushed towards the archer.
'There she goes. I hope she learns her lesson.'
Arrows came flying at her from the archer, but she easily dodged with her high agility, which was her second highest stat other than her perception.
She quickly closed in, so the archer dropped his bow and took out his knives.
She then again started engaging in close quarters combat.
She obviously had the upper hand over the archer due to her class actually being a close ranged fighting class.
She was able to rid the archer of his weapons in 30 seconds, but what happened next was something that she hadn't expected.
Something appeared in the hand of the archer from his pocket and he immediately tore it.
A huge resounding explosion swept the area between the two fighters.
Due to the effect of the scroll, the archer wasn't injured, but Little Hope was severely injured.
'If only she had heeded my warning.' I said, shaking my head.
'She'll at least still be able to beat him though.'
And indeed, that was what happened. Seeing the injured Hope on the floor, the archer had dropped down his guard, and that was when she quickly threw her dagger at him.
The last thing that the archer felt was something piercing his chest before he went to meet his grandparents.
And with that, Hope was able to get enough exp for a level up. A green hue surrounded her body and all of her injuries recovered.
Appearing out of the shadows, I walked up to her.
"You got to pay up now." I said, holding my palm out.
Seeing that she had spent a little less than 10 minutes fighting the trio, the only thing she could do was inwardly curse at Shin.
"Alright, fine!" She said, gritting her teeth while forking over the money.
"Thank you for your patronage." I said, doing a perfect bow.
"Fuck You!"
I then slapped her on the back of her head.
"Oh yeah, you can't blame anybody but yourself for getting into this mess. I mean, I already warned you that they had a hidden trump card, but all you could do with that thick head of yours was rush in with only a flimsy plan that mostly based around how your stats were higher than them. Lesson 2 today, never underestimate your opponent. Treat all opponents as if they're stronger than you."
"Yeah yeah, I already realized all of that after being the one to actually feel the pain, you can stop assaulting me with your words now."
"Also, the correct way to have started fighting them was to take out the archer first even if you didn't know of his trump card, due to his ranged attacks being the hugest threat at that moment, and also because he had the highest level of the three."
"I mean, this is a world where you can see the name, and level of all other players you come across, so why didn't you take a look at their levels before starting your attack?"
"Then, you should have grabbed the archer's daggers after killing him and thrown them at the other two, to use it to distract them and rush in at them with your superior agility. You would have been able to take the second one out easily after that."
"After taking out the first two, the third one would likely have tried to run, so all you needed to do was throw a knife at his exposed back, and even if he didn't run, you still would have easily finished him off with your superior stats."
"Do you get what was wrong with all your decisions now?"
"Yes, master." She said while sighing, in the most obviously sarcastic voice that she could muster at the moment, due to her mental state being in shambles after almost being defeated.
As punishment for that, I kneaded her head.
"Fuck! Stop it, you're messing up me hair." She complained.
"Okay, if you're that ready, let's hurry up and quickly kill the others too."
With that, we rushed to the location of the next target.
It only took us less than 2 hours to kill the rest of the people on this floor, and killing them didn't even give us enough exp to level up.
So instead, I used the players to coach Little Hope from the sidelines, telling her what she was doing wrong and making her fix it.
By the end of the killing spree, she had already grown quite a bit in terms of using her perception to sense an enemy's traps and planning attacks on a group of people.
"You wan't to move up to the next floor now?"
"Yeah let's go, it's starting to get boring on this floor."
And with that, we moved onto the next floor.