"YO! Finn! We are sitting over here! Where are you looking?!"
Leo shouted at Finn when he saw him stop and start staring at another table.
This loud shout made the two girls who were sitting at the other table stop their conversation and look at who was shouting.
One of these girls was Sophie, the girl Finn met at the Dragon's Maw Village and embarrassed himself in front of.
"Are you stalking me?"
Sophie, who had spotted Finn standing in the middle of the bar looking at her, frowned.
He wasn't wearing his mask because he thought that he didn't need to when he was just meeting his friends.
But his clothes, which were the same ones he was wearing when he met Sophie, gave him away.
"Huh? No, it's a coincidence. I'm here to meet my friends."
Finn replied as he went and sat at the table where his friends were sitting, thinking only one thing.
'I can't embarrass myself again.'
Leo and James were surprised to see Finn talk to a girl since he never showed interest in them in real life.
"You know her? Not bad. You have good taste. So how far have you gone with her?"
Leo asked him with an expectant look.
"What? Nowhere! After she added me as her friend, she ditched me in the starting village, so there is nothing going on between us."
Finn quickly explained, as he did not want to make his friends misunderstand.
Suddenly, the other girl who was previously talking with Sophie stood up and walked to Finn's table.
She had short, curly ginger hair that reached her shoulders. Her eyes were brown, and she had a small nose with freckles around it.
This girl was really cute and had this little sister aura around her.
With her small stature and a round face, she looked really young, but the confident way she walked revealed that she was not a kid.
All three boys were wondering why she was approaching them, and as soon as she reached their table, she sat down and smiled at Finn.
"Hi, you know my friend Sophie, right? I'm Mia. Nice to meet you."
She then looked at the other boys sitting at the table too.
Leo was hoping to fight Finn as soon as possible, so he found her to be a bother.
"I'm Leo, this is James, and this is Finn."
He quickly pointed to his friends while introducing their names, then frowned at Mia.
"Now can you leave us alone? We have something to talk about."
Leo gestured with his hand for her to leave, while looking extremely annoyed.
Mia's eyebrow twitched slightly, but she kept smiling as she called her friend Sophie over, who sat between Mia and Finn.
"We were looking for a party that can help us explore a dungeon we just recently found, and we wanted to ask you if you wanted to join us in the exploration. Right, Sophie?"
"Mhm"
Mia explained her reason for sitting at their table while completely ignoring Leo, and Sophie just nodded without a change in her ice-cold expression.
"Tsk, what a pain."
Leo mumbled, but Mia still heard him, so she looked at him with furrowed eyebrows.
"Look here! I don't know what your problem is, but you should be happy that two beautiful girls approached you and offered to be in a party with you."
Mia had enough of Leo's attitude, so she started to show her arrogant side that was hiding underneath her gentle smile.
"HAHAHA! You call yourself beautiful? Just how egoistic can you get, and I already told you to leave, so why don't you just listen like a good kid and do as a big adult tells you?"
At that comment, Mia snapped. Her small height was always her weak spot, so when someone called her a kid, she would always get really mad.
"What did you just say, you bastard! I dare you to say that again! The only thing big about you are your muscles, and you probably think with those too!"
She started shouting while Sophie stood up, trying to hold her back from running at Leo and trying to punch him.
"Hah! Not only are you short, but you also have a short temper-"
"Enough! Stop it, Leo. You are taking this too far."
Finn also stood up and positioned himself between Mia and Leo.
"I get that you want to fight me, but you don't have to start cursing at other people for wasting five minutes of our time."
He intervened so that the argument wouldn't escalate even more than it already had.
Sophie also stopped her friend and made her sit down on her chair.
"Alright, I apologize. I was looking forward to the fight so much that I got a little agitated. I'm sorry."
Once Leo calmed down, he looked at Mia and slightly bowed his head in apology.
"Hmph!"
Mia had her arms crossed over her chest, and she was looking to the side while pouting.
"Anyway, as my friend was saying. We wanted to ask for your help in exploring the dungeon to ensure that we don't fail by challenging it with only the two of us."
Sophie noticed that Mia wasn't planning to speak, so she finished their request.
Finn had a slight crush on Sophie, but that didn't mean he would do everything she told him to do and immediately agree, hoping to be her knight who would protect her.
He thought about his plans and realized he was planning to do a dungeon with his friends anyway, so he might as well accept.
"Okay, but I have a condition." Finn said after a minute of thinking. "Me and Leo were planning to fight in the training arena, so we will go with you only if you agree to wait after our fight is finished."
When Sophie asked other players to join them, they usually started to act like dogs in heat, so seeing Finn and his group of friends act so sensible made her agree to his request.
But before she could speak, her friend, Mia, jumped up from her chair and shouted.
"Okay, we will come and watch the fight!"
She snickered, hoping to see Leo get beat up after he called her short multiple times.
"You don't have to, but sure, if you want to come, we won't stop you."
Finn was a little taken aback since he expected that they would wait for them in the bar, but he didn't mind more people in the audience.
---
They then left the bar and went to the training arena, where players could either train alone or spar together with their friends.
The girls didn't mention any information about the dungeon, planning on saying everything after Finn and Leo's match.
Finn added Leo and James to his friend list, but since Mia was still pouting, she refused to shake their hands.
The training arena was a huge black circular building that had a lot of rooms that the players could rent.
These rooms looked like a Colosseum fighting arena, and there were hundreds of them in the training arena building.
They went to rent a room, which cost 50 copper coins for an hour, and since Finn was pretty rich after selling the monster corpses, he rented the room for two hours, knowing it wouldn't put a dent in his finances.
The room they rented had sand as the floor to soften the players' falls in a fight and was illuminated by an artificial sun that was on the ceiling of the arena.
The girls and James sat down on the audience seats, and both Leo and Finn got ready for the fight to begin.
Leo was wearing the newbie outfit, and since he was trained in martial arts, he didn't need a weapon since his body was a weapon by itself.
Finn was taking the fight a lot more casually, as he just stood there in a relaxed pose that made him look like he wasn't in a fight but was waiting for his morning coffee at Moonbucks.
Since this fight was a training match, after one of the players died, he would instantly respawn without any penalties imposed on him.
"3, 2, 1… Start!"
James shouted from the audience, and Leo rushed at Finn, using his built-up momentum to punch with his fist aimed for Finn's throat.
As the strike was about to connect, Finn suddenly disappeared and appeared behind Leo using his Shadow jump skill.
He then stabbed Leo's back with his two daggers, aiming for his lungs.
Leo didn't know where Finn went, but his honed instinct told him to dodge, but as the daggers were already too close, he only got to slightly move his body, making the two daggers barely miss his lungs.
He jumped away from Finn, taking the two daggers that were still stuck in his back with him.
Finn pulled out his sword, Last Wish, from its scabbard, and he then slashed using his skill Vital hit and the sword's skill Moonlight strike to launch an arc that was boosted by a lucky 198% bonus.
It traveled towards Leo's throat.
He wanted to bend down to dodge it, but he couldn't with the daggers still stuck in his back, and before he thought of crouching instead, the arc had already slashed his head off, making his it fly in the air while his body turned into light particles and disappeared.
Leo soon appeared beside Finn, who had already collected his daggers and sheathed his sword.
[Player Chained_Trickster has defeated the player FightMe and won the match.]
In the middle of the arena, a floating message announced Finn's victory.
Leo walked over to him and patted his shoulder with a smile.
"Not bad! You were lucky I didn't know about your abilities, but it won't be the same next time, so let's have a rematc-"
"KYAAAAAAA!"
Leo wasn't even able to finish what he was saying as he was disrupted by a loud scream that came from the audience.
Both Finn and Leo looked in the direction where the scream came from and saw Mia rushing over.
She stopped in front of Finn and started shaking his hand while looking at him like she was meeting her idol.
"I didn't know you were Chained Trickster! I'm your biggest fan!"