"Then, shall we go now?" Lexi walked up to Axir and cheekily smiled at Selena. "I'll be borrowing your boyfriend for a bit."
She put her hands on Axir's shoulders, expecting him to hold her waist and fly away.
Axir glanced at Yuta. 'Oh, alright. He can't hide it in his eyes. Good. Very good. So Yuta is already developing feelings for her. This is perfect.'
"No need for this. Just grab my hand." Axir grabbed her hand and summoned Rocket Wings.
"I'll drop her off first, and then we'll go."
Saying that, Axir flew up.
Kazuo and Yuta laughed and made faces at Lexi as she flew away, hanging onto Axir's hand with a pout on her face.
'Come on, bitch. Show your true colors and let me increase the drama,' Axir thought.
And indeed, Lexi spoke. She mumbled, but loud enough for Axir to hear.
"Tsk. Blind in love, idiot. She's just pretending anyway…"
"What?" Axir turned to her. "What did you say?"
Lexi raised her eyebrows. "What? I didn't say anything."
Axir blinked. "But you did say something. You know, having higher stats means my hearing is way better than before."
"You called me an idiot, right?" Axir frowned. "And what did you mean by 'she's just pretending'? Were you talking about Selena or someone else?"
'What do I do now?' Lexi thought, panicking inside. 'I fucked up.'
She looked at Axir and saw him narrowing his eyes.
"We'll talk later. And you better not hide anything."
Axir slowed down and descended onto a cliff 1.4 kilometers away from the mountain where they were going to farm.
Facing Lexi, he put his right hand on her shoulder and said, "Look. If you want a better future, you'd better be honest with me. And if you are honest with me, you will be rewarded."
Axir took out a card.
"This is a 3-star dual card, Thunderbird Assault. This card can be activated in two ways. One as a pure offensive attack for high damage, and the other as a travel card. I got it from a cave exploration."
Axir narrowed his eyes. "When we meet next time, and you decide to be honest, I'll give you this card."
"For now, focus on farming. Look, that's the spot. With the rifle's scope, you'll be able to observe it clearly."
'I have to use you little shits, so you need to become powerful enough to serve as fodder and bait for me.'
Axir flew away.
Lexi was left standing there, filled with confusion and uncertainty.
Then, she had an epiphany.
'He gave me a chance to be honest. If I expose Selena, will I get into his good books?' Lexi began thinking. 'Hmm… I can pretend to be his girlfriend too.'
'I can do it if Selena can do it. And I'm no less beautiful than her after tweaking my appearance. My boobs are bigger, in fact.' Lexi snorted. 'This way, my brother can get together with Selena, and we can still use Axir.'
'Yeah. I just have to pretend better than Selena and make him fall for me after exposing her.'
…
Returning to the group, Axir led everyone forward.
He killed the monsters they encountered along the way since he wanted to position the group first.
After getting them into position, he carried Selena like a princess and flew away to kite monsters.
The ground he chose was an empty basin, where he planned to dump the monsters.
Jason, Yuta, and Aoi were inside the basin with melee weapons.
Jason's job was to blind the monsters, and taking advantage of that, Yuta and Aoi moved around, hitting each monster to inflict debuffs.
Kazuo rained arrows from the edge of the basin, while Lexi sniped from above.
Axir had an easy time kiting monsters, as Selena fired slingshot shots that staggered and stunned them.
After he brought the first group of monsters into the basin in ten minutes, the group killed them all in just two minutes.
Everyone leveled up.
"Let's do this two more times, and you'll all reach level 30. I'll probably reach level 40."
…
Half an hour later, everyone reached level 30, while Axir reached level 40.
Other players could see the leaderboard, and players who joined guilds now had their guild names displayed alongside their names in profiles.
So they knew this group of six that rapidly reached level 30 was associated with the number one player, as he was helping them farm.
"Haha, people are talking about us."
"They're jealous, obviously."
"By the way, we got the quest, so we should finish it, right?" Jason blinked. "So we can get a new deck."
"We need to kill fifty monsters above level 30."
"Axir, will you help us?" Selena asked. "Let's gather more monsters."
Axir smiled. "I have a better idea. Let's explore this mountain. We'll kill monsters along the way. I saw a place, and if there are many monsters there, you'll complete the quest faster."
"As you wish, Guild Master. You always have the best plans, so we'll follow you," Kazuo said with a boot-licking grin.
"Alright, wait here. I'll go bring Lexi."
Axir flew away and soon arrived at the cliff.
"I'm ready to talk," Lexi immediately said, her expression firm and eyes resolved.
Axir raised his eyebrows. "But I'm not. We'll talk outside after the game time is over. For now, we're going exploring."
"…Fine."
…
Axir led them up the mountain. They killed twenty monsters along the way before arriving at a secret door that opened in a tree trunk after Axir splashed a monster's blood on it.
"Damn, how did you find this?"
Everyone was surprised.
"I got lucky while farming here yesterday," Axir grinned. "When a monster's blood splashed on the tree, it opened the door. There were too many monsters back then, so I couldn't check it out."
"But we can now. Let's go."
With that, Axir dove into the magical door first and vanished.
[ Congratulations. You have discovered a level 50 secret area — Wailing Mansion Moltimor. ]
'Time to make yourselves useful, fools.'