“Please take me with you!”

The words sounded musical in Hydra’s ears. He could only ponder slowly as he thought about the pros and cons. While he was a nub, knew nothing of the world, broke (it was now decided that the one silver coin was to be a keepsake), and gearless but on the other hand he wasn’t sure of her strength. Hydra could easily see the bow attached to her back but what did that mean? Does she even know how to use it? Irina was worked tirelessly during the war with th Liza and was even the top archer akin to Lila but how would Hydra know that? He was being chased by hundreds of terrifying piglets, piglets that had a red death glare a super buff and an infinite aggro lock on that only required his death. He wasn’t even looking at the condition of the castle the flaming battering ram or even the Liza on top of the wall. He had only one thing on his mind and that was he immediately wanted to run away and not die. Thus although the situation still led to his death it was a matter of course that Hydra didn’t hear anything about Irina’s skill specially because the Shadow Lurkers have left.

‘Ah whatever It would be lonely with just Pan and I and even if she’s not that strong she’s a ranged user at least the bare minimum support will help.’

Hydra kept thinking until finally coming up with a sound reasoning. Little did he know it was at that point that everything started for him.

“Okay, It will be a long journey so until the end let’s get along!”

“Sure!”

The Irina gave a brilliant smile that shone with a unique beauty. Once again he blushed uncontrollably this girl in real life would be able to steal the hearts of every living man, and he quickly looked away in embarra.s.sment.

“Ah, but don’t you need to get better equipment?”

“I don’t want to hear that from you who’s only wearing a one piece.”

“Hey that’s rude this is enchanted magic armor you know!”

“Whatever, let’s go.”

“Don’t you need pots?”

“…Where’s the party disband b.u.t.ton!”

“Hey that’s rude you know!”

All of a sudden Hydra was shocked! It was a conversation that spoke ‘game’ how would an AI know about such a thing that only users should? He couldn’t help but ask.

“…..Wait you know what i meant by that?”

“You make it sound like I shouldn’t know an obvious thing about you foreigners?”

“You know about our menu interface?

“Yea? I mean you guys get to adjust your stats, invite parties and control your items etc. through it right? Any Naturals would know that?”

Confused again Hydra could only nod in response being slowly asking again. While Irina this whole time was answering without hesitation as if the questions shouldn’t be asked in this first place.

“Oh I did not know that. But if you can’t do it then how do you know if I cancel the party?”

“Well it’s like telepathy I guess? It kinda just tells us. It’s the same when we level up as Naturals, although you guys use NPC’s to refer to us, we just have to imagine where we want our strengths to be and it grows naturally like that. I thought every foreigner knew that?”

“No, you… uh can think of me was a new foreigner.”

“Oh so what level are you then?”

“8!”

“Wah….. you’re weak.”

“…..You?”

“52!”

Somehow, Hydra once again found a new reason to get stronger. To never be called weak by the person he saved!
—————————-

“Look [White Tipped Snake]”

“Got it snake”

“Look [Spiked Turtle]”

“Turtle!”

“Over there a giant level 15 [Griz bear]”

“No problem!”

“Look…”

“Would you cut it out already?!”

“I don’t know what you mean be that!”

As Irina avoided eye contact practically admitting she was guilty of something, to make matters worse she was petting Pan non-stop and this made Hydra’s veins start to pop. He calmed himself down and thought for a moment

‘She’s almost harder to deal with that my sisters’

As Hydra thought back to the start of them hunting. It was fine at the beginning the first monster they found was a level 10 [Snake]. It wasn’t named or had any special t.i.tle, easy picking for both of them. When Hydra ran off to fight it, Irina had already shot off an arrow. The target quickly had a feather between its eyes and turned to particles. The experience was then split up between the both of them, as they were in a party together. Hydra was surprised but more so happy and thought to himself

‘With her around being able to farm will much easier!’

Showing his emotions it was easy to tell Hydra was happy. However that’s where the problem started from then on. As Irina kept on finding more monster’s she also kept putting a feather in between their eyes before Hydra was able to approach. Once he even tried to use [Shadow Arm] to make the arrow move, but then an inconceivable thing happened. Noticing her arrow was going to miss she shot another arrow with much more strength that barely tapped the arrow back on course. It might be stupid to say this, but naturally being that talented both arrows struck between the eyes.

‘What kind of G.o.d like ability is that?!’

Hydra was stupefied. Wouldn’t he get murdered in less than second if he fought her? The answer was easily yes. Though Hydra could dodge her arrows, that only applied to one arrow at a time. If she shot multiple while moving and even could change the in flight trajectory than she was simply too strong. He even started to doubt his ability but he reaffirmed himself when she called out to him.

“Ah sorry, I’ve been practising all my life. It got to the point where I mastered archery and then moved onto the next tier which was G.o.d tier. I’m not sure what it means but after I reached that level I was able to do things like changing mid air trajectory. I haven’t met anyone else that could do this!”

‘Thank G.o.d.’

Hydra almost lost all motivation to play until he heard that. Still at this rate Hydra would only watch Irina fight so he decided to change that.

“Okay from now on until I get stronger let me fight everything alone!”

“Okay pa.s.s me Pan.”

“No he needs to start looking for items! He can’t always be spoiled!”

“Arooo”

Pan cried in protest as if him just being there was good enough. Hydra naturally couldn’t refute that and let Pan be carried by Irina. Thus after finding one, it was Irina that found all of them, she would call out towards him. This became a habit for the last couple hundred monsters. She was definitely diligently finding monsters. But somehow the thought of her sitting happily petting Pan while pointing them out didn’t sit well with Hydra. She would only sit after she found one and look delighted at Pan until Hydra killed and would repeat over and over again.
—————

After a quick battle with the [Griz bear]. Hydra got frustrated and said.

“Forget it! I’ve gained 12 levels and im now level 20. Let’s go find something stronger and put Pan down. Pan can you do me a favour and find some drops? Every Time you do I’ll let you sleep on my shoulder!”

“Aroo!”

Pan broke free of Irina’s grip and started to look for some drops. Irina stuck out her tongue in disapproval at Hydra’s actions but he just waved his hand as he didn’t want to argue with what he could do with is own pet. As they started watching Pan started to run over to a direction. Just then a message popped up.

‘Already?!’

Hydra sighed. He was starting to get really tired from all the sudden developments today. As he couldn’t possible be disappointed with Pan finding something this soon, it was more that Pan became so excited worked for a second and get the benefits of the deal. It was practically stealing! Hydra walked over and pat Pan slightly hard while Pan just cried softly in happiness. Then Hydra picked up Pan and put him on his shoulder where he quickly snuggled and fell asleep. Finally Hydra looked at the [Silver Gra.s.s].

‘Pan is definitely going to help me in the future. I should up the reward requirement if he finds stuff that fast though.’

Hydra and Irina walked together for some time. Now Hydra had hit level 20 all the monsters names had turned white. He quickly found out that they would no longer attack him unless the name was red. An interesting piece of information was learned but at the same time he was unable to fight anymore monsters without personally chasing him. That was more effort than worth it so it was time to find a new area. Thus leading to the walking for some time without any fighting. Hydra was diligently looking around for nw monsters while Irina was humming softly without care but stopped suddenly staring at him. Feeling somewhat awkward he couldn’t help but ask he what she was staring at.

“What are you staring at?”

“I was just thinking you’re a lot different from the savior I thought you were.”

‘No, that’s your own impression isn’t it?’

Is what he thought to say but instead said this.

“Well I can’t be perfect.”

“Actually, that’s what I’m happy about. If you were then I would be too nervous to talk to you like this. And I like you better like this.”

The words ‘like” reverberated in his mind a few times before shaking his head in protest.

‘She obviously didn’t mean like that get your head together!’

He was used to girls yes, however two of the three were his sister’s while the other was his boss’s daughter and his childhood friend not to mention she was terrifying. He had met with Lila and Rina but he soon realized Rina was in love with Lockon and Lila didn’t show any interest romantically towards any guy.

“Well I guess that’s good then?”

As Hydra couldn’t prolong the silence anymore he quickly answered with a neutral response.

“Ya! I thought so too.”

“Well now that I’m higher level do you want to visit a dungeon? should be pretty easy with the two of us?”

“Actually I was just thinking the same thing! There’s a hidden dungeon by the waterfall over there! Let’s go!”

As she spoke the last bit of word she grabbed onto Hydra and pulled onto his arm dragging a long side. As they arrived in front of a beautiful waterfall that was nearly 100 feet tall looking down was a somewhat shocking sight. At first he wasn’t able to move because he was intimidated by the height but realized it wasn’t as if he was going to jump. In the meantime Irina was already following a stone path on the edge of the cliff downwards. It was neatly made but gave off an ancient feeling to it. Though it was impossible to find this pathway unless you knew about it as it was covered with lively grown shrubs.

Upon reaching the bottom Hydra was amazed that the intricacy of this world. The sun had reflected off the water showing a small rainbow. The waterfall itself was slamming loudly against the surface of the water turning it white. The rocks were all damp covered with moss and gave off a musty smell. But it was a sight of nature as if it was all real. The smell touch sound, if Hydra didn’t explicitly know it was a virtual reality if someone told him this was fake he would protest with his life. It was just that amazing!

“Okay you jump into first I’ll follow after!”

Irina called out waking him up from reality and in the moment he jumped in as if it was a natural thing to do. There were two problems with this. One being that Pan was rudely thrown into cold water while asleep. Of Course Pan was unhappily crying in protest However that was where the second problem came from. Irina noticing that something was wrong could not help but wait for a few seconds. Hydra seemed so confident so no one would be able to tell such a minor detail of him not being able to swim right? Thus in the next few moments a body resurfaced. The continuously -5 damage marks was. .h.i.tting him every second as the water started to carry him down the river.