Little Hope - 10

Opening my eyes again, I checked the leaderboard.

[Leaderboard:

1. Anonymous (Tutorial Tower 83) - 8th floor | Lv. 55 | 175,105,000 TC

2. Zero (Tutorial Tower 3) - 8th floor | Lv.17 | 73,146 TC

3. 876 (Tutorial Tower 82) - 8th floor | Lv. 12 | 63,931 TC

4. Bam25 (Tutorial Tower 82) - 8th floor | Lv. 12 | 63,281 TC

5. Liu Zhang (Tutorial Tower 61) - 8th floor | Lv. 4 | 69,789 TC

...]

'Well, I got back to the top of the leaderboard again.'

Most of the top rankers were already grinding exp from dungeons and were already increasing their levels by now.

I scrolled down the leaderboard list and found that the next highest player in my tutorial tower was now on the 8th floor.

'Well, it's time for some PKing.'

(PKing = player killing)

Propping myself off the ground, a sudden pain hit my head.

"Fuck" I groaned, clutching my head.

Although leveling up had rid me of all physical conditions, mental damage was a whole different matter as I had seen my life flash before my eyes several times during the boss fight.

Too tired to look at the drops from the boss room, as I already had an idea of what was dropped, I proceeded to find my way out of the dungeon.

"Ugghh", I blinked, shielding my eyes from the burning sun, as I had spent the last day in complete darkness.

Waiting for my eyes to adjust to the sunlight, I picked a fruit off of a tree close to me and ate it.

Color slowly returned to my face as I ate more, and I was mostly good by the time I finished eating.

'Let's check the drops.'

[Drake Scales x 10 (S+) - Material]

[Drake Leather x 3 (S-) - Material]

[Drake Claws x 2 (S) - Material]

[Drake Teeth x 2 (SS) - Material]

[Broken Skill Crystal (AA+) - Skill

Description: When ingested, the player receives the skill Firestorm (S), but can only use it once a week. Firestorm (S) -> Firestorm (AA+)]

Without a second thought, I ingested the skill crystal.

[An essence of fire has planted itself in your body.]

[Your affinity towards fire increases!]

A burning feeling enveloped my body for a few seconds, but then calmed down.

After fixing my wardrobe, I put away the other drops from the boss because I couldn't use them right now, but if I survived the tutorial, I would be able to use it very soon.

"I guess I better start searching for the other player on this floor."

I spent the rest of the day searching for the other player, but was unable to find them, so I decided to climb a tree and rest in it for when night approached.

'The hidden event should be starting soon.'

Right when the sun dipped below the horizon, screams started resounding across the map.

This was the hidden event aptly named, "Haunting of the Night," where ghouls, a species of monster somewhere in between a human and a ghost, so a lesser form of a ghost, all of them about D+ to C+ rank, went around hunting the Players on the map. This event only triggered when there was less than 3 people on the surface of the 8th floor and was designed to instill fear in the newbie players, showing them that this wasn't just some fun fantasy game.

It was a really easy event to avoid, as I just needed to climb up into a tree, and rest in it. Now that I was experiencing the real, "Haunting of the Night," I was just really annoyed at the constant screams breaking apart the silence of the night taking me away from my precious sleep.

Giving up on sleeping, I listened for the one set of screams that would actually be real, coming from a real human being, and so I waited... and waited... and waited.

Finally, just before dawn was about to break, I "saw" with my perception that the trees in one area were moving abnormally, and it seemed that the abnormality was coming closer and closer to my position.

'Huh, the other player is literally running into the palm of my hand.'

Judging the exact right moment with my perception stat, I jumped down, grabbed the person, making sure to cover their mouth and eyes, and then jumped back up to where I was on the tree.

'Wow, I can already jump this high!'

Breaking my sense of accomplishment, the person in my arms started squirming and trying to bite my fingers off, so I knocked them out. I then layed them where I was sitting on the tree before and then jumped back down, rolling my shoulders to warm up, I grinned in the night.

"It's time to start the hunt."

I swept across the whole map with my destructive power, single handedly clearing all of the ghouls on this map. After all, the sun was already coming up which made it so that the C+ ranked ghoul's power fell to about E to E+ rank, which was basically a cheat code in leveling, as they still gave as much experience points as a C+ monster.

When I returned back to the tree, I found that only 30 minutes had passed since I left, so I just sat their on the ground and meditated, replaying the fights that I had been through and reflecting on what I could do better, while waiting for that person to wake up.

"Hu.. Hu... Hugh! Where am I."

"Calm down or you're gonna fall out of the tree."

"What did you... did you do anything to me?"

"Calm down, I'm not some pervert who's into kids your age."

The person that was in the tree above me was a girl in what I thought was her early teens. She had long, flowing blond hair that came down to her waist, and if I looked at her objectively, the best word to describe her would probably be cute, as it looked like she still hadn't lost all of her baby fat.

'Hoooo, I missed the days when I would tease my sister by pulling on her cheeks.'

I don't know why I suddenly reminisced about that, I just did, DON'T JUDGE!

I guess the girl in front of me reminded me of my younger sister, as she looked kind of like what my sister had looked like the last time I saw her, just with different hair and eye colors.

Thinking of my little sister again, I felt a sudden pain in my chest.

'I guess I still have attachments to that miserable time in my life. Forget it you fucking old man, when you left, there was no going back! Your game was what was most important to you so you chose it, don't second guess yourself.'

I guess I just felt a little guilty from my decision back then, choosing to leave my little sister alone in that cruel, cruel house.

I started seeing flashbacks of "her". Seeing her bright, beautiful smile when I had brought her some flowers when she graduated elementary school, seeing her crying in the window through the rain when I left, and also, her sad smile that she always tried to hide when looking at me, covering it up instead with a fake happy smile.

"Hey, hey, HEY!"

I suddenly jumped up surprised by the sudden noise and the hand waving in front of my eyes.

"I've been calling to you for the past 5 minutes!"

"Oh, sorry."

"That's all you're gonna say for making a young lady like myself wait?"

"Okay first off, let's get this straight, you're way more of a brat than a "young lady", secondly, you have no right to talk to your elders like that."

"Who fucking cares about elders or whatnot, I just want to know why you saved me."

"Hey watch your language and tone young missy, I'm not your parents, after all, I could just be a psychopath, saving you up for just the right delicious moment when you start trusting me to kill you laughing at the betrayal in your eyes, and licking your blood off of my knife."

"Ewwww, first off, old man, you have a really creepy imagination, second, I just feel like you won't kill me, just something about your demeanor."

"I'm only 25" I mumbled under my breath.

"What was that?" she said, cupping her hand around her ear and turning her body in my direction.

"Eh, fine, whatever, just believe whatever you wan't."

(Author's Note: For clarification in parts where it could be any speaker talking, I'll use <name> to clarify.)

"Also, what's your name?" <Shinubwa>

"Why, do you wan't to work together?" <Girl>

"Fine, yes! I want to work with you." <Shinubwa>

"Okay, I'll work with you too. My name is "Little Hope"." She held out her hand for me to shake.

"My name is "Shinubwa", but just call me big brother, nice to meet you."

"Like hell I'd call you that, "Shin" will do."

"Okay, nice to meet you Hope."

"Nice to meet you Shin."

We shook hands, verifying our relationship under the careful gaze of the gods.

<Little Hope's POV>

At first, when I felt the large, strong hands covering my mouth and face, I was honestly scared, but then I blacked out.

When I woke up, I saw the strange man sitting in a lotus position beneath me, knowing the dangers and evilness of humans, I pretended to just be a young slightly naive girl.

Seeing that he wasn't doing anything to me, I just thought of him as a regular guy I guess, so when he was staring off in a daze, I tried to stab him with my dagger as that was the clear condition for this floor.

But the dagger just bounced off of his skin, even though I had my strength at the max, 20 points!

I got flustered and was coming up with excuses to why I had stabbed him, but when I saw that he was still in a trance, I decided to act as if nothing had happened.

'Ugggh, I should have expected this, he is the top player in the tower after all!'

'Wait, what level was he at again? 61!"

(He gained levels when killing all of the ghouls on the map.)

'Well that explains why a level 1 noob like me can't even touch a hair on him, but was he pretending to be a normal person, or was he just truly ignorant?'

I was then surprised by his sudden action of wanting to form a team with me, I mean, how was a level one supposed to help him? Again, I found myself questioning his actions.

'He might really be the psychopath that he mentioned before, well it doesn't hurt to play along with him and learn more about him. I can also try to find out how he leveled so quickly and learn his methods if I stick by him.'

After shaking hands with him, I stared at his back, plotting ways to catch him by surprise and back stab him, but before that, I just needed to follow him and get stronger.

Smiling my evil smile behind his back, I started humming a happy tune while rushing to follow after him.