Author's Note: Guess who's back? I apologize. I had a new job and writer's block. I'll let you guys know next time something like this happens. To make up for it, I'll do a double release today. How long has it been since I uploaded a new chapter? Like a week?

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Null is currently laying down in fetal position rolled up like a ball. He tried not to cry, but he ended up crying a lot. Cici occasionally patted Null's back and said words of encouragement. She didn't know what else to do. Null has been like this for the past 17 hours in-game. Suddenly, Null gets out his depression and stands up. Cici finally relaxes and breathes out a sigh of relief. She has been on edge the entire time.

She says to Null, “Finally ready to go?”

Null nods and says, “Yes. It's been fun. So this is how far I was able to go. Delete account!”

You are now trying to delete your account. When you delete your account, all rewards, titles, levels, and experience you have gathered will be deleted. All of your possessions will go to the town in which your avatar was created unless you give someone a will which will enable them to get all your items as soon as your account is deleted. Are you sure you want to delete your account?

“WAAAAAAIT!” Cici yells out while running at full speed.

She did a full on tackle and pushed Null onto the floor.

Null scowls saying, “What are you doing?”

“I should be asking you that!”

“Isn't it obvious? I'm going to delete my account. I'm never stepping foot inside this world again. Now could you please get off of me? This position is starting to turn me on.”

Cici blinks, and now pays attention to the position she's in. She sees that right now, she's sitting on Null's pelvis and has his arms locked to the ground.

“Ah!” She yells out.

She quickly gets off of him and gets her blushing under control. She's very embarrassed. Null gets off the ground and dusts himself off.

After Cici has calmed down, she says, “Why are you deleting your account?”

Null sighs and says, “Well I recall telling you why I played this game in the first place right?”

“Yeah. You played this game because you said you wanted solitude, but just because some people know about you doesn't mean that you should delete your account! That's overkill!”

“It's not only that. I was forced to do this C-rank. I already knew that C-ranks were beyond my capabilities, yet I was forced to do it. I could run from this mission, but the penalties for abandoning a mission are severe, and they keep increasing according to the mission difficulty. This mission was given by Qasburg Kingdom, which means that if I were to abandon this mission I would be wanted all over the Goldcrest Empire since Qasburg is a member of it.”

“Then just don't abandon the mission! Finish it and then you can go back to your solitude!”

“No, the worst reason is that I was forced to choose between either having to do the mission with the Qasburg force or having to do the mission with you! You! I fucking hate you! Anything that forces me to interact with you is the most fucked up, diabolical thing ever! Now I'm famous on top of that!? Fuck that, I'm out!”

Cici is sweating. She knows that Null is serious. She does not want someone who has gotten 5 classes to the intermediate level and someone who manged to get Essence of Mana to intermediate to delete their account. That would just be a huge waste. Once you delete your account, it will be gone forever and there would be nothing you can do to get it back. She starts thinking up a plan.

“Hahaha. Null don't be silly. This will all blow over quickly.” Cici says with a strained smile.

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. First of all, no one knows what you look like.”

“You're lying.”

“Nuh-uh. Look at the forums that are talking about you.”

Cici pulls up the forums from her menu. You cannot connect to the web from inside New Reality, but you can browse the forums and chat rooms. When she pulls up the menu to show to Null, sure enough, when he goes to the discussions on him, there is no one who knows what he looks like.

“And Null, think about this. The vast majority of people don't even care about alchemists. Even of those who do care, they'll all forget about it within a month's time in-game, which should be around the time that we beat the dungeon!”

Null is starting to feel a bit better.

She continues saying, “Besides, they'll be looking for an alchemist! Your main class is librarian! Within a month's time, you'll be a forgotten loser! No one would want anything to do with you!”

Null feels inspired from what she said.

He nods in understanding and says, “Perhaps you're right. I was a little too hasty in trying to delete my account. I had almost forgotten about my dream. If you want to reach your dreams, they must be fought for. I gave up too easily.”

'What a stupid dream.' Cici thinks to herself.

“Well lets go finish this dungeon. The sooner we separate the better.”

Cici nods and she goes on ahead. When she's far away enough, Null goes under options and goes to screen capture.

'Okay. Now let's rewind it back to when she tackled me, preparing to save, aaaaaand done. It's been a while since I've made a new deposit to my spank bank.'

They resume their expedition, defeating monsters on the way. Thanks to Cici's boost to Null, the monsters are easily dealt with.

Along the way, Null starts getting wary thinking, 'This is supposed to be a C-rank dungeon right? I heard you need around hundreds of high leveled 200's or thousands of low level 200's to beat it, yet with just the two of us, we have easily gotten this far. Even with both of us at intermediate, it's still far too easy. The most monsters we fought at the same time has been 5. What's going on? Well, this is still only the beginning of the dungeon.'

The cave starts getting narrower and narrower the more they progress until there is only enough room for them to enter one at a time. It takes a while, but they see up ahead that the cave starts getting wider again. They're about to go out when they see a monster up ahead. It looks like it guards the tunnel. It's an enemy they've seen before: A giant dart frog.

Null thinks to himself, 'This one is level 243. We can probably beat it, but we need to get out this narrow corridor.'

Cici performs her buffs on Null. When she finishes, he tries to rush out as fast as he can. The frog opens its mouth and its tongue shoots out incredibly quickly, far faster than what Null can see. He puts up his arms to block. Even though he blocked successfully, he still gets pushed back and rams into Cici. They tumble and hit the wall. Null gets up and tries again, not even caring that he slammed into her.

You have been poisoned. 300 health per second for 60 seconds.

Null takes out the antidote to dart frog poison and drinks it. He has fought with this particular kind of monster before, and had already prepared an antidote beforehand, though he has never met one this high leveled. He manages to bring the poisoning damage down to a level that can be easily dealt with. Cici frowns while trying to think of a way out.

She says, “Null, do you have anything that can stall him so that we can get out of this narrow passageway?”

Null throws a bomb at the frog to see how it responds to projectiles. Sure enough, its tongue whacked the bomb back towards them. Luckily, the bomb exploded from contact with the frog's tongue.

'Good. Even though its far higher leveled than me, its defense is weak. I have an idea on how to take care of this.' Null thinks.

He throws more bombs at it and it deflects it with its tongue. While the frog was deflecting the bombs with its tongue, Null starts running towards the frog. Cici was right behind him.

'Okay. I need to get closer in order to launch the needles.'

He throws more bombs. This time, they were smoke bombs. When it came into contact with the frog's tongue, smoke quickly fills up the area. The frog wasn't be able to see them, but since they're in a narrow corridor, it ultimately doesn't matter. That's what the frog thinks. He then sees the needles.

The frog's tongue may be fast, but it cannot use its tongue to deflect that many needles. It knows it can't jump out of the way, lest those two people come out of the corridor and become a threat. It sits there and uses its tongue to try and deflect as many of the needles as possible.

Some bypass the tongue and hit him. The frog notices that the needles are poisoned, but he feels that the poison is far too weak to affect him much so he's not worried. Just when he thinks that everything is under control, an arrow far faster than the needle strikes him in his eye. He croaks in pain trying to get the arrow out of its eye with its tongue. It takes a few seconds, but he gets it out. It's relieved.

It turns back to the entrance. The smoke still hasn't cleared. It launches its tongue randomly in so it can hit the humans and clear the smoke. When the smoke clears, he notices the humans are gone.

'Did they run away?' The frog thinks.

He then felt a pain from his back left leg. It's from an arrow. He jumps high into the air and strikes his tongue out. What he hit was a crossbow launcher that was attached to a stand. He looks around and can't find the humans.

Splech! He feels a searing pain on his back. Null had used wires to hold him and Cici on the ceiling, then dropped on his back. If they had fought head on, Null would never have been able to touch him because the frog is just too fast. Now that he made contact, he doesn't have to worry about that. He impales the frog with a spear. Though the spear barely does any damage at all due to Null's library class, it makes it so that Null doesn't fall off.

You have been poisoned. 300 health per second for 60 seconds.

Null thinks to himself, 'Touching the frog's skin directly will give me the poison condition, even with armor on. I have to kill him quickly. I don't have that many antidotes to the frog's poison, and its poison is far more powerful than the other dart frogs I fought, so I have to take even more of the antidotes.'

Null keeps slashing down. Luckily for him, the frog's tongue loses a lot of its speed when it tries to hit Null on his back. After 15 minutes of Null slashing the frog with his gauntlets and Cici constantly healing them both, the frog finally dies.

Null thinks, 'I have a very weird feeling. We've been traveling and fighting for a week, and the monsters have been very difficult, but not so difficult that hundreds of level 200's couldn't take care of them. I just wish that the difficulty would hurry up and rise so that I won't be so anxious anymore.'

“Nice work Null! Awesome!”

“Whatever. Let's just divide the loot and go.”

“Rude.”

The drops consist of combat boots, a tunic, a shield, and 74 gold. Null and Cici both don't need any of those things, but decide that the combat boots and shield will go to Null, while the tunic will go to Cici. They split the 74 gold between them easily. Null and Cici keep walking forward with Cici trying to start conversations and Null constantly ignoring her.

“Null, please talk to me.”

“Why? You're doing enough talking for the both of us.”

This continues until they see the next group of monsters. It's the Purple Striped salamander. Null grimaces when he sees it because it's surrounded by 20 other monsters who are all above level 200. The salamander is at level 232. Most of them are scorpions that are between level 215 to level 227. There's some poison dart frogs that are level 231 to 234.

Cici gets nervous and says to Null, “There's no way we can take on this many opponents by ourselves.”

Null says, “Don't worry. Our only opponent mostly is going to be the Purple-Striped Salamander.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Null ignores her and rushes out to attack. Cici performs the buffs while he's running. The monsters except for the salamander go on to attack.

Null thinks, 'Looks like its not as dumb as it looks. It won't release its poison while the other monsters are fighting, but sadly that salamander doesn't have a choice in the matter.'

Null manipulates his mana for dexterity. Even with the boosts from Cici, he can't dodge all those blows coming from the other monsters, but Cici's phenomenal healing skills save Null. When he gets close to the salamander, it gets nervous and starts to release its breath.

The salamander knows that the paralyzing breath is all he has. He's slow, has weak strength and dexterity, and has a weak defense. The salamander also knows nothing can stop its breath, so even if he hits his allies, he can take his time killing the humans, and the poison would eventually wear off. He breathes out his paralyzing poison vapor. Null could have interrupted it, but he wanted the poison to blow out at full strength. Every living thing inside the area gets hit with the paralyzing poison, including Null and Cici.

Most immediately drop down. Everyone who falls is only capable of shallow breathing. However there is one who is still standing. The salamander is shocked, and if it could sweat, it would. He relied on only he himself being able to move. He breathes in and fires it again. Once again it covers the area, but Cici looks totally fine.

“I've got to hand it to you Null. You sure do know how to make an antidote. I can't feel the poison effects at all!”

Null is currently paralyzed, so he can't respond back. Even if he weren't paralyzed and could respond back, he wouldn't on account that its Cici, his most hated enemy. Cici starts grinning at the purple-striped salamander that's trying to retreat. She buffs her stats in strength and dexterity, and starts rushing towards the salamander. The battle was anticlimactic. She just jumps on the salamander's back and bashes him with her staff until he dies. She then kills the other monsters there the same way while they were still paralyzed.

When she's done, she walks over to Null and tells him, “That was some good exercise swinging around my staff like that.”

She then looks at Null's condition and says, “Looks like you're going to be useless for a while. Hmm... Maybe I should steal your things while you're down and can't move. Hehehehe.”

Null squints at her provocation.

“Geez. I'm only kidding. Should I carry you? But I'd rather not touch you. You're soo gross!”

She then sticks her tongue out and plays the “I'm not touching you!” game. Null just shuts his eyes to relieve himself of the irritation standing before him. She then says, “Geez. You're no fun.”

Around 15 minutes pass until the poison permeating Null's system starts wearing off.

Cici watches him standing up and says, “Finally. Can we go now?”

Null ignores her and continues further into the cave. They hunt for several hours. The enemies start to get more and more numerous and powerful. They start barely surviving their encounters. Cici who was a little confident at the time due to Null's skills starts to have doubts on their ability to finish a C-rank dungeon. The cave is starting to get to her. They had almost died fighting from the last group of monsters, and this is still only near the beginning of the cave.

When they walk further, they see a big opening. To both their horror, the place was filled with thousands of monsters. The salamanders, the poisonous creatures, even giant flying mosquitoes were all there. Their faces get drained of all color. They had been walking without break thanks to Null for the past 19 hours.

Cici says frightened, “Maybe we should take a break before entering that deathtrap.”

Null for once agrees with her. They head back to a previous safe place they found. Every 300 meters or so, Null searches for areas where monsters do not show up mostly by using his Essence of Mana. They find an empty area where they will rest and make camp. When they enter it, Null uses his Ink hand technique to draw an inky line dividing that area into two.

Null says to Cici without looking at her, “That's your side. This is mine.”

It takes them a while to set up their different areas and they finally finish.

Cici says, “Null, if you cross that line, I'll kill you in the game and in real life!”

“Well judging from what you say, at least you aren't foolish enough to come to my area. I'll tell you one better. Whoever crosses that line gets riddled with explosives.”

“Why would you do that!? I could accidentally cross that line! A monster could come and I would have no choice but to go to that side! Get rid of them!”

Null looks at her disgruntled and says, “You said that if I were to cross that line, you were going to kill me in the game and in real life, and yet here you are saying I can't do the same? I'm not even threatening you with real life killing. Besides, I need these bombs to protect me from the most dangerous monster in this entire cave.”

Cici gets shocked and curious.

She asks, “Really? What's the monster's name?”

“Honors Society President or annoying cleric. I dunno.”

“Asshole! Get rid of them!”

“Then what will protect me?”

“Get. Rid. Of. Them.”

“Always taking everything dear from me. First my solitude, now my bombs. You don't even have the courtesy to go die in a ditch. Fine, I'll get rid of them.”

After Null picks up the bombs, he sits up against the wall preparing for sleep looking at Cici with wary eyes.

He then hears Cici saying, “Null, I know I'm beautiful and amazing, but I hope you don't do anything disgusting to my body while I'm asleep. Restrain yourself okay?”

“You're plenty disgusting enough as it is. You don't need my help in that department.”

“Jerk.”

“Irritant.”

Sparks flew between their gazes. They avert their eyes and soon fall asleep over their respective sides. Even though Null said he would get rid of the bombs, there are still some surrounding him. He still doesn't trust her, but she has kept her word so far to help Null clean up the mess that she had started. Though Null may not be able to kill her, the same can be said for Cici's ability to kill him, which is why he agreed to work with her temporarily in the first place.

Several hours pass when Null wakes up first. He hears the snores on the other side of the room so he assumes Cici is asleep. Null decides that he'll do an activity and wait for her to wake up.

He thinks, 'Smithing is too loud. I could try and level my librarian mastery, but that would require snooping around trying to find new things, and I would rather not be accused of trying to find something of that girl, so that only leaves alchemy, painting, and calligraphy.

Out of all the skills that I have in the main and sub classes, I've only figured how to level up alchemy more, but to level that up would require weeks to complete even a single potion. I still don't know what I should do to level up painting and calligraphy, so I'll work on figuring out how to level up painting for now.'

Null activates his light orb skill. He takes out the primary paint colors of red, yellow and blue, then takes out some paper that he made accompanied by some paint brushes and charcoal.

'Okay. What to draw, what to draw?'

He looks around and sees only rocks and ragged walls. He then hears a snore and looks over. It's Cici still sleeping. Null looks at Cici's sleeping figure and starts unconsciously drawing her with the charcoal. He has drawn while not really being aware of it often. It's a state of mind that Null achieves when he's inspired.

When he sees something he wants to draw, he draws it. He has never gotten in trouble for what he has drawn because no one ever sees what he draws, so he has never restrained himself from drawing. The pictures would end up being destroyed and recycled anyway. This habit will come back to bite him in the ass later.

He finishes the picture of her and starts painting it.

When he is done, he looks at the picture satisfied and thinks, 'Beautiful. When she shuts her mouth, she is simply beautiful. Of course, Luciana shits on her if comparing looks, but then again, Luciana shits on everybody when comparing looks, so it's not fair to compare them.'

While admiring his artwork, he realizes something. 'Wait a minute. Going on an adventure with just the two of us? Our bickering? Me noticing how beautiful she is? What the hell is with all these relationship flags!? Why am I only now just noticing this!?'

Null gets a solemn look.

'If I'm not careful, this will end up like all those other times.'

************

Null's Imagination:

It's real life in a park. Cecile had forcibly dragged David here. She's walking by his side with David being under duress.

Cecile says, “David, wasn't this the perfect day?”

“Yep. Holding me here against my will, holding my AR glasses hostage, and colluding with my sister to force me here? The only way this day could get more perfect is if we were going to get my dick chopped off.”

“Hehe David, you're so funny.”

David grumbles. When she's not paying attention, David snatches back his AR glasses from Cecile. He says to her, “Now our business has been concluded.”

Cecile panics and says, “David could you follow me for a second? There's something I wanna show you.”

“Hell no.”

She runs in front of him and says, “Pleeeeeease?”

Cecile says with upturned eyes and quivering lips. Now usually, David is a hyper rational misanthrope who would've just ignored her and walked off, but since her face was so close and her face was so cute, Null wasn't thinking right. He is not immune to a beautiful woman's charms. In fact he has less of a resistance that the average guy. This is due to him not interacting with people.

He tells her, “Well m- maybe for a little while.”

“Yay!”

She grabs his hand and runs off.

David, now out of his stupor from that earlier charm attack thinks, 'What have I done?'

She brings him to a spot on top of a hill and says, “Look at the sunset. Isn't it beautiful?”

Null gives her an apathetic look, then looks out the sunset.

He thinks, 'The sunset has always brought back traumatic memories, and yet I can't ever look away from it. It looks like its legacy will continue with the HS president.'

Cecile then grabs David's hands and holds them while pressing her chest against his. David is shocked and says in a panic, “W-What are you doing!?”

She ignores his question and closes her eyes and puckers up.

David thinks to himself, 'Is- Is this what I think it is? But that's impossible! Relationship wise, we aren't even in the same number system! I'm like a 3 and she's a 100! Well, I can't think of any other way to interpret this, so I guess I'll go for it.'

David is so desperate for his first kiss he doesn't even mind that it's his hated enemy. He then kisses her. Cecile opens her eyes wide and pushes David away angrily.

She yells out, “What the hell do you think you're doing!?”

She starts spitting and wiping her lips. “Huh!? Weren't we having a romantic moment!?”

“What the hell would make you think that!?” Cecile yelled furiously.

“You-You held my hands and had your chest against mine!”

“I was cold!”

“You had closed your eyes and puckered your lips!”

“I was checking my lip gloss!”

“With your eyes closed!?”

Cecile yelled out to the surrounding people, “Hey everyone! David just forcibly kissed me!”

What had been only a few hundred people in the park had suddenly swelled to hundreds of thousands in a matter of seconds.

Everyone has angry faces looking at David yelling at him.

“Dude what the hell!?”

“Why would you do that!?”

“He must be a rapist of some sort!”

David is in a panic.

He says, “There's no need for all this! Everything was just a big misunderstanding alright?”

One man in the surrounding angry mob shouted, “Psh. Misunderstanding? How the hell did you think someone like you even had a chance with someone like her? Look at you. Now look at her. Case closed.”

David yelled out frantically, “But-But-But she held my hands and her chest was pressed against mine!”

“She was probably cold!” A nearby woman yelled out.

“Yeah!” Everyone else yelled out with her agreeing.

David once again tries to plead saying, “She had her eyes closed and her lips puckered up while doing that!”

“She was probably checking her lip gloss or something.” Another woman who had a pitchfork yelled this out.

“She had her eyes closed! What's wrong with you people!? And where the hell do you get a pitch fork in this day and age!?”

“Enough of your excuses! Everyone, let's laugh at thinking he had a chance with this girl, then lets kick his ass, then lets send him to jail. Forever! Let's see how he likes unwanted kisses!”

“Yeah!”

Everyone proceeded to point and laugh at David while throwing rotting vegetables at him. They yelled out various insults.

“HAHAHAHA! He thought he had a chance with that beautiful, smart girl!”

“What a loser to even think he could ever even get a girlfriend!”

“Shame him! Shame this pathetic loser!”

2 minutes into the laughing, everyone abruptly stops at the exact same time, then pulls out an assortment of weapons. Bats, knives, guns, RPGs, iron maidens. Wacky Wavy Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube men with brass knuckles. David knew he was screwed, but he was even more curious where they even got those weapons. Everyone then jumped 20 feet into the air, and was heading in David's direction, surrounding him on all sides. There was no escape.

Null's imagination end:

************

Null gets a determined look thinking, 'I cannot allow that to happen.'

Cici wakes up 2 hours later. She stretches and glances over at Null's direction. Strangely, it looks like Null is on edge, surrounded by a lot of bombs. He gives Cici a wary look.

Cici concerned says, “Null, did something happen while I was asleep? Were we under attack or something?”

“No. Everything's perfectly fine.”

“Why are you surrounded by bombs?”

“I sneezed and they all fell out.”

“But the bombs are laid out in a perfectly symmetrical formation.”

“Let's just go!”

They pack up their things preparing to leave. Just when things are going fine for Null Cici says something that makes Null panic.

“Oh Null! Is that one of your paintings on the floor!? I wanna see!”

Null looks down. He had forgotten that he had drawn her.

'NOOOOOO!' David yells out in his mind. “It's terrible. You don't want to see it. It's a failure.”

Null said this nonchalantly, but he was actually sweating bullets.

“The fact that you don't want me to see it makes me want to see it more. Lemme see.”

She starts running over. Null picks up the paper and prepares to rip it, but no matter how hard he tries, the paper wouldn't break.

'God dammit! Why the hell would I make these papers so damn indestructible!?'

Null usually puts paper he has already used in water for several days. This insures that the new paper he makes doesn't drop in quality.

'I have to use Ink hand to cover this up!'

Before he could try to use the technique, Cici grabs the paper and runs off.

Null yells out, “I thought you were trying to be friends with me you annoying jerk!”

“I still am! Friends also goof off like this!”

Cici laughs and then looks at the picture. She stops running and is amazed by the picture. Cici has a complicated look on her face. Why would Null draw her? Null braces himself for the ridicule he's about to receive.

“Oh, Null. Is this why you didn't want me to see the picture? Because it's of me?” Cici says while giggling.

Null's face turns red and starts continuing on through the dungeon.

“Aw. It's okay. It's nothing to be ashamed of if you have a crush on me.”

“I do not! I had to practice my drawing and you were the only thing present that I could draw! Now can we please focus on the dungeon!?”

Cici doesn't know whether or not Null has a crush on her, and honestly, she doesn't care. She just loves giving Null that flustered look. It's very rarely that she sees this look on him. He mostly looks like he doesn't care about anything. It's usually her that is getting served by Null, so she's going to savor this moment.

“Sure, sure. It's fine. It's okay.” Cici says as if she's talking to a little boy who wet his pants.

She pats Null on the shoulder and walks off. This only serves to infuriate Null more.

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Author's Note: Cecile for troll president!