Love triangle

"I didn't know you were Chained Trickster! I'm your biggest fan!"

Mia screamed while shaking Finn's hand up and down.

Sophie and James also came down from the audience seats to see what was going on.

"Mia, what are you doing?"

Sophie asked, confused about her friend's behavior.

"Don't tell me you don't know who Chained Trickster is?!"

Mia turned to look at Sophie with a bewildered expression.

"No, not really? Is he someone famous?"

Sophie was still confused because she started playing after the world announcements, and she never bothered to check the Second Life website, so she had no way of knowing about what Finn had done so far.

"He is the number one player in Second Life! He was also celebrated in two world announcements, one about the first boss monster kill and the other about him soloing a dungeon only a day after the game's release!"

Mia excitedly shouted Finn's achievements with her hands on her hips and a proud look in her eyes.

"Ah ok. Guess the dungeon will be easier then."

Sophie just expressionlessly nodded, acknowledging that they had a strong person on their team.

"THAT'S IT?! He is capable of soloing dungeons, and all you say is that it will be easier?!"

Mia was about to have a panic attack after seeing that her friend wasn't as excited about her idol as she was.

Noticing how she was acting, Finn tried to talk to Mia and tell her how it really was.

"That's not entirely true, Mia. I did finish a dungeon solo, but it was the lowest rank, and the reason I was able to finish all the monsters in there was because I specialize in assassinations."

He paused and then continued his explanation.

"The dungeon was a dark cave, and so I used the darkness to swiftly take care of the monsters and the dungeon boss. So, I appreciate that you are my fan, but please don't make me out to be someone I'm not."

Finn had a gentle smile while he was trying to clear up any misunderstandings that Mia had about him being someone akin to a god.

There was a god in his head, and he knew he wasn't even close to being as powerful as him.

"There is no need to be humble, Mister Trickster. I know that doing a dungeon with us is beneath you, but please don't change your mind!"

Mia bowed her head, acting like she didn't hear Finn's reasoning.

"Mister Trickster? *sigh* Mia... Please just call me Finn like before, and it is true that I have the highest level right now, but having the highest level doesn't make you the strongest. Also, we already agreed to help you in the dungeon, so why would I change my mind?"

Finn helplessly looked at her, not knowing what to do with her.

If she was as stubborn as his father, she would probably call him Mister Trickster forever, and he wouldn't want that.

"Okay, Finn, thanks a lot."

She nodded and thanked him with a lovely smile.

Mia didn't change her mind about Finn being the strongest, but if her idol wanted her to call him by his real name, she would gladly accept.

Leo, who was standing beside Finn and was watching this whole conversation play out, suddenly felt his heart skip a beat when he saw Mia being so passionate about something while an adorable smile decorated her small face.

He was so focused on his upcoming match back then that he never actually took a good look at Mia, but now that he was finally seeing what she looked like up close, he felt how his face started to heat up.

'Cute.' is what he thought, but then he realized that Mia looked like she was his little sister's age, so he quickly looked away before anyone could notice his flushed face.

After that, Mia added Leo, Finn, and James to her friend list.

While adding Leo, she was kind of unwilling, still angry about him comparing her to a little kid, and it didn't help that while they were shaking hands, he was looking away.

She thought that he was so arrogant that he didn't even want to look in her direction during a handshake, but Leo was just doing his best not to blush while holding her small, soft hand.

"Okay, now that you are finished with your matches, let me tell you everything we know about the dungeon we found."

Sophie didn't even give Leo a chance to try asking for a rematch again and just went straight to the point.

"The entrance of the dungeon we have found looks like a stone temple, and it leads inside a mountain. It is located five kilometers south of Iliados and is an E rank."

She suddenly stopped talking and looked at Finn to see what his plan would be.

"Huh? That's all the information you have? That's like… well… nothing."

Finn looked at Sophie to see if there was anything else, but she just stared at him expressionlessly, like she was done speaking, so now it was his time to talk.

'Can you find anything in my memories, Loki? I can't seem to remember anything about this stone temple dungeon.'

'Not much, because you never went there. The monsters are golems, and the person who was the first one to clear it said that it was a puzzle dungeon.'

Puzzle dungeons were dungeons that made the player solve various puzzles, and if he correctly solved all of them, he would get the dungeon's loot, but if he was wrong, he would have to fight the guardians of the dungeon, which in this case were the golems.

'Hmmm… Golems are pretty hard to deal with, but I'm pretty confident in my intelligence, and I loved to solve puzzles when I was a kid, so this dungeon might turn out to be a lot of fun.'

Finn thought as he started to look forward to what puzzles he would have to solve.

After finishing his talk with Loki, he looked at the group in front of him again.

"I think that it is a puzzle dungeon, and the guardians are golems. I bought some information about the dungeons around Iliados from an information broker, but that's all I know."

He quickly thought of a reason for having this information that he wasn't supposed to know.

"As expected of Mister Tr- I mean Finn!" Mia immediately shouted, "But what's a puzzle dungeon?"

The others were also confused about this term, as it was their first time hearing about it, so Finn quickly explained the term and how the dungeon would work.

After he told them about the puzzles and guardians of the dungeon, James raised his hand like he was in a class, so Finn pointed at him with a smile.

"If it's like that, we might not even have to fight! But won't that mean we wouldn't be getting any experience?"

He asked after seeing that Finn was allowing him to speak.

"We will get experience points for solving the puzzles. Let's say there is a puzzle that, if answered wrong, would spawn two level 5 golems."

As Finn was explaining, he kept waving his hands around to make it easier to understand.

"If it is answered correctly, everyone in the party would get the exp you would receive upon defeating the golems. But if the puzzle is answered wrong, you would have to fight those two golems and get the exp the hard way."

Finn finished explaining, and James's eyes brightened up like he had gotten an idea.

"Oh, I get it now! So, you can brute force the dungeon if you are too dumb to solve the puzzles, but it is much better for us to take all the exp without fighting. Let's just keep doing this dungeon until we are all at least level twenty then!"

James exclaimed as he thought about how the dungeon would give them an infinite amount of exp if they could just keep repeating it over and over.

"You can't do that. You can only challenge the same dungeon once a month. After that, you have to wait a month to either try again if you failed or finish it again if you succeeded the first time."

After thinking for a second, Finn added another thing.

"The dungeon also stays the same as you level up, so after a month you will most likely be at a point where you don't have to visit this dungeon anymore since it will still give the same amount of exp."

Finn quickly shot James's plan down before he could even get his hopes up.

"Anyway, let's go gear up first. Puzzle dungeon or not, we need to be prepared for us failing to solve a puzzle and fighting a golem or two."

He said as he prepared to leave the training arena and head to the Royal Emporium again. Since it was like a department store that sold everything, he could buy his friends some gear.

"But I don't have any money…"

James looked down at the ground with a sad look because he spent all his money getting to the city and he hadn't hunted any monsters since he was too busy doing quests like "Milk my cow" or "Bring me a bucket of water from the well."

"It's alright, I got some money after selling all the monsters I have hunted so far, so I'll be paying for everything."

Before James could thank Finn, Mia ran up to him and hugged his arm.

"Thank you, Finn! You are the best!"

Finn was slightly embarrassed to have a girl hang onto him, so he gave her a wry smile while saying that it was fine.

Meanwhile, Leo and Sophie were staring daggers at Finn's back.

Sophie was angry that Finn was trying to steal Mia from her, as she had always been her best friend, and Leo was jealous of Finn because he also wanted Mia to hug his arm.

Since Loki remained silent, Finn soon concluded that he was just being paranoid when he felt like two predators were staring at him from behind.

Meanwhile, Loki was too busy enjoying the show of a love triangle slowly being created.

It was pretty hard to walk with Mia on his arm, so he asked her to let go and then led the way to the Royal Emporium.

She didn't mind and continued to skip alongside Finn, but Sophie suddenly pulled her away from him because she thought of him as a thief who was trying to steal Mia from her.

Once Leo saw this, he secretly gave Sophie a thumbs up and went beside Finn to protect his arms from being grabbed again.

---

Mia stopped attempting to hold onto Finn, and they soon all arrived in front of the Royal Emporium.

There were a lot of people, and all the lines were pretty long, so they all dejectedly sighed and joined the shortest line, which was still pretty long, so it was going to take around an hour for their turn to arrive.

Finn suddenly remembered that he had received a VIP card, so he went over to one of the guards and pulled out his slick black card.

He didn't know how his card worked, so he just pulled it out, hoping it would enable him and his group to not have to wait.

The guard bowed after seeing the card and led them to Nora's office, where she was writing some documents.

She was surprised to see Finn again when he left only a few hours ago but still went to welcome him.

Nora then saw that he wasn't alone and noticed the two beautiful girls walking behind him.

She wanted to pay him back for the tea he spilt on her in their last meeting, so she decided to tease him a bit.

"I didn't expect to see you so soon, sir, and certainly not after you made me so wet last time."

Nora smiled at Finn while giving him a wink, but he didn't share her joy at all.

He was looking at her with his mouth agape, and both Leo and James were showing him a look of approval for snatching a hot milf, while Sophie and even Mia moved away from him after hearing that he was a pervert who preferred older women.