19th of December

You know, sometimes I don't know if all this hatred towards people is fake or not. Reading back it all seems pretty clear cut, and anyone reading it would probably think that I'd sit back and watch players get killed, even if I knew I could save them.

But I don't. How do I know that? Because I have a partner sleeping right next to me in the inn of the third floor.

I really don't know why I keep him. It's not like I'm attracted to him or anything. I was practicing my sonic leap skill when it upgraded to sonic dash. It's basically two consecutive sonic leaps but stronger. Practicing it for two days must've upgraded it quickly.

Then some guy approached me from behind and said "Hey, pretty strong." His eyes were opened wide and his hands were in his pockets. I could tell instantly that he'd want to be friends with me (as if friends could be so easily made with the press of a button) and then go up the tower until he found another guild willing to take him on.

"No." I said, and started to walk away.

The player scrambled after me, his shoulder-length, brown hair flapping about in the simulated wind. Akihiko really was good at this. To even be able to simulate wind.

"Hey, come on." He was pleading. "We'd be good together." Yeah, like a begger and money. "I'm just going to follow you until you say yes." He called out as I walked to the second floor dungeon. The idiot apparently thought that that kind of 'determination' was going to sway me. It wasn't. And it didn't.

We'd gotten to the entrance of the dungeon, and instead of facing all the enemies, I used sonic dash to run past all the enemies. I hoped I'd lost him but he was good at running away as well and he was only a few metres behind me. He'd drawn two knives and was catching up. He must've focused on his dexterity stat to suit his choice of weapon. I was running but I almost ran into a pillar looking back at him. I gritted my teeth as more orcs spawned in front of me. I executed sonic leap this time, going for accuracy over speed. If I ran into an orc on the second thrust I'd lose all speed and actually have to fight. I got past the next batch and kept on running. By now I was getting short of breath, and I looked back to see the other guy keeping up with me, along with all the other orcs that I'd skipped over.

Now I was a little scared. For now I was still faster than the orcs, but if the end of the section didn't come up soon, I'd be overtaken by what seemed like a horde of orcs. There were probably 15-20, but back then they looked like a whole army. You would've thought that after weeks here I would've gotten used to Akihiko's genius, but who the hell could've simulated adrenalin rush. I ran ahead, and saw a flight of stairs signalling the end of this section. I sprinted towards it and ran up as quick as I could. When I got to the end I sat on the ground, panting.

It took me a while to realize that the other guy was right next to me. His name's Jaden. I didn't know this at the time, but it's annoying to type "the other guy" over and over again, so I'll call him Jaden even though I didn't know it at the time.

Jaden looked over to me and asked "So did I pass?"

Idiot. "That wasn't a test." I replied.

Jaden just smiled. "Oh yeah, it was pretty obvious you were trying to lose me."

I glared at him. "So why do you think that was a test?"

Jaden' smile didn't waver and he shrugged. "To see if I can keep up. And now that you see I can, you'll accept me as your teammate."

I looked away, keeping eye contact was giving me a crick in my neck. "If you can run around like that, why do you need someone else?"

"To cover me." He replied. "To be a tank while I finish them off. We'd make a good team." His smile broadened.

What he meant was that he wanted to use me as a human shield. He still probably does. At that point I decided that there wasn't any point in talking. I actually don't know why I talked to him in the first place. I got up and continued forward, Jaden following along, of course.

After that we made our way steadily up. Both of us were pretty capable, and in small bunches the orcs weren't any match for us. In a pretty short gap of time, we'd gotten past three sections. We didn't need to map anything, the clearers that had rushed in here had helped us and made the map public. With this in hand, we made quick progress, and only needed to use health potions occasionally. I had to admit, Jaden was useful.

I hesitated over typing the word useful. It makes it seem like I'm using Jaden. But I don't think I could've typed in anything else. Not something that would've sounded awkward and like I was trying to hide something up, which would've been worse.

Anyways, we approached the end of the dungeon and selected the option to skip the boss option. After that, we walked out into the moonlight and found ourselves in the middle of a town on the third floor.

A/N: Sorry about the double posting of the last chapter. Everything should be fixed.