The all-knowing Player

Job change quest (3)

"Hee-Jin!" I hear someone calling from a distance. "Hee-Jin!"

I open my eyes to see him bend over me, trying to wake me up. I sit up with a grunt and bite my tongue to stop myself from screaming as sand enters my wounds.

"Jin-Woo," I mutter, noticing his worryful stare.

"What happened to you?" he asks, visibly as exhausted as me.

"Some dogs mistook me for a chewing toy," I grumble.

He chuckles, but the worried glimmer in his eyes doesn't disappear. I open the system's shop and buy the best health and mana restoring potions I can find.

"The health potions only restore the fatigue, it won't actually heal you," Jin-Woo warns me. "I guess it doesn't restore HP when we're seriously wounded."

"How do you know that?" I ask, opening a bottle to pour its content down my throat. He's right. But it still makes me feel a lot better.

"I've tried before finding you. You've been out of it for a solid ten minutes, you know." He points with his thumb behind us, where two giant desert centipedes lie, dead. "The penalty quest already started. And more are coming our way."

I empty my last bottles in a hurry, stand up and summon my dagger. "You killed those?"

"Well, I couldn't just let them eat you alive. You're too precious to die here." I'm- What? He doesn't give me the time to search for an answer. "Anyways, I was wondering, what's with these clothes?"

He stares at my old hoodie and shorts. Both are in a terrible state, but that isn't what he isn't what he meant: his aren't better in that regard. I need some seconds to understand. I wasn't wearing that when we parted ways.

"I accidentally fell in a lava pond so my other clothes burnt. I'm not hurt, don't worry, I have a fire resistance skill. So I changed."

"You-" He hides his face between his hands. "Okay. I understand. I'll give you my jacket. You can use it if it happens again." He takes it off and hands it to me without daring to look in my eyes. "It's in bad shape, but I think it's better if you have it. I don't need it."

I want to laugh at his strange reaction, but the perspective of burning my clothes is rather embarrassing. And as much as I hope not to need it, I know that I'd better be cautions. So I accept his jacket, surely as flustered as he is. 

"Thank you," I croak out.

I barely have the time to store it in my inventory: the sand moves around us to reveal four giant centipedes that screech at us. I sigh in relief and silently thank the monsters for the distraction. I jump up and plant my dagger in the head of one of them, soon followed by Jin-Woo who attacks another monster. They scream in pain, attracting other monsters. They are tall, but that only makes them an easier target. They are strong, but we are stronger.

And so we fight. Together, again. We fight back against back, just like we are used to. The four hours pass surprisingly fast, despite the effort. We kill the monsters that attack us and, when we can't find any other beast, we tell each other what hurdles we encountered behind our respective doors.

Everything happened like I knew it would over to his side. He says that he wouldn't have struggled this much if I had been there, but he managed it very well by himself. My presence wouldn't have changed much.

"You already fought alone against that B-rank assassin. Even if we're used to fighting with each other, you could still defeat both of them without my help," I protest, sitting on the carcass of a centipede next to him while waiting for the next monster wave.