Ank

“You know? I always thought that summoning spells were just for perverts and degenerates, but you changed my mind, Ank”, the eight-eyed hunter commented, nodding seriously. Behind him, I had my humanoid summons, the best ones to deal with complicated orders, to set up the tents, lit up a bonfire, and even peel the vegetables.

Even more, I had my creatures carrying all of our equipment since we left the city, and even patrolling the camp.

“What do you mean?”, I squinted my eyes, confused.

“Oh, you know”, Pata covered her smile with a hand, sheepishly. “How they always try to explain how ‘absolutely necessary’ is to learn the spell to summon the hot sexy demon girl, kuhuhu!”, she laughed at the end of the explanation.

“Can you summon a ‘hot sexy demon girl’, Ank?”, Hunah immediately passed to stare daggers at me. “Hm? Can you?”

“No, of course I can’t”, I nervously shook my hands in negative. Then, a wild idea crossed my mind, and I quickly added: “I already have a hot sexy twin sister, after all”, finally I pulled Hunah closer and kissed her as if we were alone.

“Wh- Wha-!”, Hunah stuttered, her eyes going from me to the two [Party] members staring at us in stupor, mouths open.

“What the…?!” all the eight eyes of Nif went wide as he lost his words.

“I- I knew it! Everyone who uses summoning spells is a pervert!”, the fox-girl covered her face with both hands, but left her fingers apart so she could still look at us.

“Hey, guys, I brought the water”, Jao came back with a small cauldron filled with water (I still hadn’t unlocked anything that allowed my summons to go too far from me, so someone still had to go get the water from the nearby source), and stopped while staring at everyone. Then, I just had a blushed Hunah on my lap, while I caressed her hair. “Has something happened?”

“Hm? No, but you came just in time: my summons just finished peeling the vegetables”, I replied as no one else dared to say anything.

As I expected, those two started to feel way more comfortable around us, but they wouldn’t dare give us out. And, if I had assumed was wrong? Well, we’ve been traveling for some time already, if we couldn’t find support in that [Party] about our relationship, we definitely wouldn’t be able to convince them to go hunting [Gods] once they became strong enough.

“Okay, now, while everything is boiling, and we seem to be safe…”, Jao commented brushing his hands on one another, cleaning them from the vegetable and meat oils he threw in the cauldron. Tension grew between the two other adventurers. “Time to invest our points”, instead of commemorating the [Sunight Party] immediately opened their menus, invisible to us, and pondered about their hard-earned reward from going from [Level: 17] to [Level: 18].

“When it comes to choosing a new [skill], it’s always hard, isn’t it~”, Jao commented.

“Uh, you already distributed your [Attribute] points?”, I asked, as, obviously, neither I nor my sister had leveled up from a few low [Level] monsters pooping from the bushes and trees from time to time. “I always take my time, so I won’t put a point in the wrong place.”

“Well, yeah, I do it too, but it doesn’t take long to move your finger to over a couple of [Attributes] and push it down 5 times each, right?”, the [Party] leader replied, a little confused.

“You put all of your points in two [Attributes] only?”, my sister and I asked in unison, equally confused.

“Well, yeah?”, Jao confirmed, tilting his head.

Noticing our confusion, Tapa, the fox-girl, explained:

“The vast majority of people invest in only 2 or 3 [Attributes] once that, you know… not everyone will willingly face an army of mon... I mean, will ever reach a [Level] higher than 50. We can only get good at one thing.”

“Do… Do you two do it differently?”, Nif, asked, all his eight eyes moving from his invisible menu, to us.

“Our mentor advised us to do so…”, as we exchanged an almost angry look whose meaning was clear just for us: okay, Taffy definitely had been a weird influence for us. “We kind put points at everything?”, I concluded.

“Ank you’re a summoner, right? How much strength do you have?”, Nif asked again.

“101”, I replied, and even the usually controlled and always smiling blue-haired Jao’s face went pale, everyone gaping, almost catatonic.

“W- WHY?!”, Nif asked, hands moving like crazy.

“IT’S BECAUSE YOU HAVE A SPANKING FETISH, RIGHT?!”, Tapa asked, eyes covered in bright red veins and jumping from me to my sister constantly, panting and drooling.

“T- Tapa…?”, Jao asked, still smiling, but showing genuine concern.

“…It’s because fighting costs stamina?”, I replied. “Besides, my summons are useless if I need to keep them close and protecting me all the time. And, before you ask about [Resistance]: who knows what kind of spells can damage your body, right? You have to be prepared.”

“Oh… sure, of course! Ku- kuhu… hu…”, the fox-girl said, ignoring the [Party] leader's preoccupation. “I don’t think you need to worry about [spells] destroying your body, though: usually, only magic that directly affects the ambient, or the magic-user itself, has this side effect… And even then, wizards and stuff usually put only 1 point in [Strength] and [Resistance] every 3 [Levels] of so.”

“Ah, magical items can be pricey on your health, though”, the eight-eyed man added, staring into nothingness with a smile on his face, as if full of dreams. “Magical items… I could make quite some if we ended up looting a good one.”

“Hu~ You two know a lot about this kind of stuff”, I pointed, noticing that neither the [Strength] nor the [Resistance] [Attributes] description mentioned nothing on those lines.

It was even a little embarrassing that I thought for the longest time I couldn’t see Taffy’s [Level] or [HP] was because of some kind of item she had, and not just because someone could make it invisible. In reality, we, bumpkin heads, never set it to hidden because we never needed to, mindless monsters don’t know how to do it, and [Gods] are just too egocentric and proud, I guessed.

“Nah~ Nif here is only money-hungry, and as a magic-user, I’m kinda expected to know at least this much. The real [System], magic, and ‘secrets of the world’ nerds are wizards, and researchers. Most of them are crazy, and don’t usually leave their libraries, though!”

“Most of them”, Jao pointed.

“I hadn’t forgotten about him, kuhuhu!”

“What are you talking about?”, Hunah asked.

“Ceacatle”, Nif explained, tilting his head. Noticing that we had no clue about who he was talking about, he continued: “Wow, you really are from the countryside, hu? I- I mean… sorry. Prince Ceacatle was probably one of the strongest adventurers to ever live, only the second person to ever become 1st Guild Master, and he was a wizard. It’s said he could purify the surrounding magic to such an extent, that it shone in blue, and a single simple [Fire Ball] from his was like a volcano exploding! I bet his items coasted a fortune…”

“Man, if we found his items I wouldn’t let you sell a thing”, Hunah immediately replied.

“Hunah, we’re in a [Party] now, we have to share and stuff~”, I lectured, raising a finger.

“You just say it because you can just use your magic bulshit and summon him; I need his items”, my twin sister continued.

"Nah, I needed to defeat the creature myself to be able to learn how to summon them... unfortunately."

We continued to joke around. The rest of the night was uneventful and unmemorable; we ate, had some small talk, and went to sleep in four separate tents (though I could see Tapa giving my sister and I a thousand not-so-stealthy glances as she observed the two of us, twins, enter the tent the [Party] bought us with renewed curiosity – on the other hand, Nif seemed a little nauseated). But that tranquility was a good thing, we needed rest at the moment, and once that [Party] woke up so early in the morning, we all needed some good night of sleep. For we should reach the [Party]’s objective already next day:

[Name: Sssssssspace!

Race: Dungeon

Floors: 9

Type: Single monster type (snake) themed

Difficulty: 10/100]