Trial 10 "Battle Royale" (8) - 27

<Shinobu's POV>

After seeing the system announcement that marked the fall of the jungle biome, I knew that the remaining 6 were now all in this wetlands biome.

"They should all be converging on the center soon. Hoo, I wonder what'll happen then?"

We were already in the center, so all we had to do was wait until the 3 other players came.

'I'll also be meeting Hope again, I wonder how she's doing now?'

'Well, all those question will be answered in a day or so.'

I then spent the rest of the morning watching as the sun rose over the waterways and grasses, creating a dazzling display on the fog hanging over the land.

It was midday when we first saw signs of other people.

'There are two, so it must be Liu Zhang and Hope.'

I waved at them, quickly getting their attention.

With my enhanced perception, I could "see" the muscles in Hope's arm twitching as she tried her best to hold back her desire to wave back at me.

Now that I was looking at them closely, it actually looked kinda weird that a child with a weird mask was traveling with the tall Liu Zhang, who was almost a meter taller than her.

'Was that what we looked like to other people too?'

Noticing that something was happening both my sisters came out of their tent, and upon seeing the two people in the distance, got into defensive positions.

I inwardly laughed seeing them getting ready to fight, as I knew for a fact that they couldn't even match Liu Zhang's strength, especially with his familiar, much less trying to even touch a hair on Hope's back.

I mean, Onee-sama had decent power and she was able to take down a sandworm by herself, but that was still far from Hope's power after training with me.

On the other hand, little sis was probably aiming to be a mage, but because most people including her have only learned one skill, that meant that she was basically going to be useless in a fight, unless the skill that she learned was overpowered, but I could probably bet all my money that it was still inferior to my Firestorm (AA+) skill.

So, probably the only reason they made it here was due to the fact that they had been working together the whole time, making a lot of the trials easier, as when you could fully trust a teammate, you could fight with your best without having to worry about your back.

"Hey guys, stand down. They're not enemies you can beat right now."

Appearing in front of the other group in the blink of an eye, I bowed, greeting them.

"It seems like 5 of the 6 people have made it here. May I make a suggestion to you guys?"

"Shoot."

It was kinda weird hearing Hope respond in the American way while I was greeting them in an Asian manner, but I took no offense to this because I knew her personality the best here.

My sisters were also surprised that Hope had answered, but that was due to a completely different reason.

Seeing as how, most of the time, only the leader of the groups would talk to each other, that meant that Hope was the leader of the group that was her and Liu Zhang, but anybody could see that she was only a teenager!

"How about we have a little tournament to determine our hierarchy when the last person comes. Then, we can just kill the person in last place, as they would obviously be the weakest one out of all of us, and wouldn't deserve to go into the main tower."

I let that sink in for a second.

"I'll let you discuss your decision until the last person arrives."

'With this, I can finally see all of their abilities and plan accordingly.'

With this, I turned around, heading back to my island.

<Little Hope's POV>

Watching their turned backs leaving us, I asked Liu, "What should we do?"

"I think his suggestion makes sense, but we don't know if he really is the number one player on the leaderboard or if the last person to come is the number one person, so we shouldn't do anything hasty yet and wait until the last person arrives."

"But, we should accept his situation anyways, right? I mean, we're the 2nd and 3rd on the leaderboard, for this region at least, so we'll have no problem with not being the weakest person here. So what do we have to lose?"

"We lose by revealing our fighting styles to other players, as later, if they attacked us in the main tower, they would know vaguely what weapons and what attack patterns we might use."

'Yeah, I know that's true, but I want to see if I've caught up to Brother Shin a little bit yet, and I also want to find out why those two girls are so important to Brother Shin.'

(A/N: Doesn't that have a hint of jealousy in it?)

After that, we stayed silent whilst setting up a small camp, just motioning with our eyes what we wanted the other person to do.

'Ugh, why do we have to sleep on the hard ground while those to princesses around Brother Shin get a tent. No fair!'

'Wait, why am I being so caught up on this? Am I jealous?'

I shook my head fiercely, 'No, that'll never happen.'

As we just sat there and waited, night came. We decided to sleep in turns, as Liu obviously didn't trust Brother Shin's group to not attack us during the night, so I decided to take the first watch.

Sitting on a rock while looking out at the dark water illuminated by the quickly disappearing and reappearing moon, I suddenly heard a familiar voice in my head.

/Hey Hope, how are you doing?/

(A/N: I'm using the same format for when he was writing on the ground back in chapter 17. I'll be using this notation for whenever people are talking indirectly to each other without using their voice.)

'Brother Shin? No, this is probably just a delusion, I mean, how can I hear somebody else's voice in my head?'

/Yes, I'm speaking to you mentally./

'What?'

/Don't act so surprised, I mean I can see your shocked face from here, in the dark. I'm literally just using a skill that I learned, what's so surprising about that?/

'You mean, you learned telepathy?'

/Yeah, but I can only "hear" thoughts that you are thinking in your mind directly, so I can't "hear" or "see" any of your memories or other stuff so don't worry./

'Yeah, like that reassures me one bit.'

/Come on, you don't have to be this cheeky even though this will probably be the last time we speak to each other in the tutorial tower./

'So you won't be even speaking to me at all?'

/Yeah, I can't have anybody, especially Liu Zhang, getting suspicious of our relationship as we already have matching masks, so most people would think that we know each other or something. You have to perfectly infiltrate into Liu Zhang's circle or our future plans might be screwed up./

'Alright, but before you leave, can I ask one question?'

/Sure./

'Who are those girls to you? Are you building up a harem or something like a protagonist in a shounen?'

/Smirk, are you jealous?/

'Seriously, this guy is literally saying "smirk" in his mind just to make fun of me!'

/You know I heard that right?/

'Whatever, just answer the question.'

/They're just girls whom I... well, it's actually kinda complicated. I'll tell you my story when we meet back up again in the main tower, let's say, in 2 years?/

'That long! I mean, what am I supposed to be doing for that long (without you)?'

/Just level up hard and stay close to Liu Zhang, he'll probably make a guild so join it./

/Also, I'm not dense enough to not notice your slight "affection" for me, but I already told you, I'm not interested in little girls, so don't worry about me creating a harem and just focus on growing your own body./

/And, I can already tell that you just turned beet red from that, so I'll be leaving now, goodbye Hope./

'Goodbye... Brother Shin'

And with that, he severed his connection.

<Shinobu's POV>

'Did she just call me Brother Shin?'

(A/N: He's surprised because he told her to call him big brother a while ago but she refused, so he's surprised that she's calling him that now.)

A huge smile appeared on my face as I layed down on the grass with my arms under my head, watching as the clouds shifted in the night sky, revealing a glowing, pale, crescent moon.