Time slipped by faster than Grimm expected. One blink, then another, and the night dissolved into the faint glow of dawn.
Soft light crept over the canopy, tinting the sky a pale gold. The forest woke with its usual chorus, a mix of rustling leaves and distant growls from the monsters that had already started respawning across the first floor.
Grimm stood outside the tent, hands in his pockets, staring at nothing. His expression stayed calm. His thoughts didn't. Inside, he heard movement. Sophia was awake. She'd been up for a few minutes, judging by the soft metallic clinks and shifting fabric coming from the tent.
Technically, he didn't need to keep watch anymore.
But still he didn't go inside.
It wasn't fear. It was simply that the atmosphere outside felt kinder. Sophia's presence tended to smother the air inside the tent, like invisible smoke you couldn't breathe through. Better to freeze out here than sit under that aura again.
His quiet didn't last for long though. Footsteps rustled inside the tent, followed by the soft rip of the flap being pulled aside.
Sophia stepped out.
She looked nothing like the woman from last night. The simple white dress was gone, replaced by a fitted silver armor set with thin lines of white tracing the edges like comet tails.
Sleek plates wrapped around her form with such precision it was obvious the armor had been made for her. It wasn't bulky. It was elegant, almost aristocratic, the kind of thing knights in old tales might wear if those knights had personal blacksmiths with divine skill.
Grimm didn't need to activate Omnivision to tell the armor was high-grade. Perhaps selling everything he owned wouldn't even cover a single misplaced rivet.
His ego, already fragile from yesterday's events, took another hit. So this was real wealth? He'd been feeling proud after seeing his ridiculous farming rate. Thought he'd soon be rich. But her armor alone reminded him he'd been a frog at the bottom of a well, staring at the sky and calling it the world.
He forced himself to look away from the armor and the equally high-quality sword at her waist before it crushed the rest of his pride. He tried focusing on something else. Her aura, for example.
Another mistake.
Her aura wasn't the same as yesterday. Before, she'd felt like a heavy weight pressing on his shoulders, blunt but overwhelming. This morning she felt refined, honed, polished into a blade so thin it might cut him if he breathed wrong. His danger sense twitched like it was warning him to keep a respectful distance unless he wanted to be bisected.
Then he realized he'd been staring too long. Sophia didn't comment. She didn't even glance his way. But he wasn't stupid enough to risk being labeled a pervert for staring at a walking blade-maiden at dawn. He cleared his throat, ready to say something casual to break the tension.
He didn't get the chance.
A deep, rumbling noise rolled through the air like distant thunder.
RUMBLE! RUMBLE!!
Grimm froze. Every instinct snapped awake. "What was that?" he muttered. It sounded like a storm building overhead, but that wasn't possible. The first floor didn't have weather beyond its artificial day-night cycle. No rain. No thunder. No storms.
So what did he just hear?
He turned toward Sophia to see if she'd heard it too.
What he saw didn't match the Sophia he knew.
Her composed face had cracked. A faint blush crept up her cheeks. Her eyes darted away. She wouldn't meet his gaze. She looked embarrassed.
Embarrassed and Sophia did not belong in the same sentence.
He stared, confused.
She swallowed, mumbled something about breakfast, and turned around so quickly she might as well have fled back into the tent.
Grimm stayed rooted, trying to piece it together.
That noise. That thunder.
Was that… her stomach?
His mind faltered. That sound had been loud enough to qualify as an act of God. If someone told him the heavens had been storing lightning for decades and finally let it loose, he would've believed them.
But it had just been hungry Sophia effect.
"What is she keeping in there? A starving dragon?" he whispered.
He wisely kept those thoughts to himself. Curiosity wasn't worth decapitation.
He stepped inside the tent a moment later. What he found wasn't what he expected.
Sophia was already making breakfast.
Not travel rations. Not dried meat. Not stale bread.
A sleek, polished coffee machine sat in front of her, something only a step below a sacred treasure.
For once, Grimm's ego survived. He could technically afford a machine like that. If he spent all his savings.
He sat across from her, still processing the fact someone was casually brewing fresh coffee in a monster-infested tower.
Warm aroma filled the tent as the machine hissed and clicked. Sophia moved with practiced ease, as if she'd made this brew every morning of her life. When she finished, she produced two glossy mugs with a wave of her hand. She poured coffee, set one cup before herself, then nudged the other toward him.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.
Then she raised her hand again.
A full spread appeared.
Toast. Croissants with a golden sheen. Fruit slices drizzled with something sweet. Small jars of jam and butter. Soft pastries dusted with sugar. Even a plate of miniature sandwiches arranged neatly, like she'd raided a noble's breakfast table on her way here.
Grimm's jaw dropped.
For the average tower climber, storage space was sacred. People guarded it more carefully than their lives. Even high-level teams hired porters just to save room for loot. Nobody stocked their inventory with breakfast.
Unless they were clueless, stupid, or had so much space they forgot the concept of limits.
One look at Sophia's calm expression told him which one she was.
He let it go and focused on the food. His mouth watered. His Absolute Body didn't require much sustenance, but instincts were instincts. A good meal was still a good meal.
They ate in silence.
Grimm had previously wondered why she summoned enough food to feed a small settlement, but he got his answer fast.
She ate like one.
Her appetite bordered on mythical. If someone told him she'd been cursed with a bottomless stomach spirit, he would've believed it.
By the time they finished and cleaned up, the scent of the meal still hovered in the tent. Silence settled again. The same heavy silence from earlier that made the tent feel small.
Sophia leaned back, satisfied. Grimm's danger sense didn't relax for a moment. Sitting beside her felt like sitting next to a detonator. One wrong move and goodbye future.
He finally broke the silence.
"So… what now?"
Sophia didn't look at him. "What do you mean? I'm following your lead."
He blinked.
Then it clicked. Her words yesterday. She meant them literally. Wherever he went, she'd follow.
He expected her to take charge. Set the direction, choose the route, lead the pace. Instead she dropped command in his lap and folded her arms like a bored aristocrat on holiday.
Not necessarily a bad thing.
He was free to do whatever he wanted. Go anywhere. Kill anything. Farm whatever.
With the minor detail of a powerful, unpredictable woman trailing him like a hanging guillotine.
But he could live with that. He had plans anyway.
He stood and stretched.
He'd meant to farm the goblin settlement yesterday before everything went sideways. Why not today? Nothing was stopping him. He had energy. He had motivation. He had a dangerous companion who could probably level the entire camp, him included, by sneezing wrong.
Time to farm some experience and loot from goblins.