“I can’t, or more like I won’t, do Quests.” I reiterated and Layla gave me a look.

  “Okay? And why can’t you work as an Adventurer to do even an item retrieval quest?” Layla asked and I tilted my head.

  “What?” I asked in turn, and Layla tilted her head as well.

  We stared at each other for a bit, and then it clicked in my mind.

  “You’re talking about regular quests aren’t you?” I clarified and she nodded.

  “Yeah? What did you think I meant?” Layla untitled her head and so did I.

  “The System you have access to should have a Quests section that will give you XP and Skills for completing them. I thought you were talking about that.”

  “Oh.” Layla nodded along, then shook her head.

  “You can’t do those? Why?” She asked, less accusatory than last time.

  “I’m trying to slow my Leveling. I don’t want to change more than I already have, and I don’t really need any more power either.” I explained and Layla nodded in understanding.

  “Well, will that stop you from doing regular quests? I’m trying to have an adventure here.” Layla asked.

  “No, we can do normal quests. I actually haven’t done that before. When I tried to, I was denied, then got too busy with other shenanigans to try again.” I put my hand on my chin in thought, remembering the first time I visited town.

  “What kind of shenanigans are more important than becoming an Adventurer?” Layla tilted her head again and I smiled.

  “Breaking into Dungeons several times my Level.” I spoke and Layla giggled.

  “Can we do that?! That sounds much more fun than doing a quest!” She begged but I shook my head.

  “No, I banned you from monster hunting, remember?” I reminded her and got a groan in response.

  “Oh come on! I’ll do better this time, I promise. You won’t hear any laughter from me!” Layla continued to beg, and the Cabold decided to join in on the ‘bothering me’ train.

  Layla kept saying please, and the Cabold kept whining for some reason, but I wasn’t giving in for anything.

  “I just want to hang out with my missing brother…” Layla pouted, genuinely upset.

  Except for that.

  “Fine! Alright, shut up already. Jeez.” I sighed while Layla just gave me a winning smile.

  The Cabold kept making noises, but I clamped a hand around its snout to shut it up.

  “Yay! You know of any fun Dungeons that we can do?” Layla asked, and I did not.

  Dungeons stopped being interesting after doing several tens of them every single day for weeks on end, all to fund the construction of a city I hardly see anymore. Ugh.

  “Not really. We’ll just go find one.” I said as I began walking into the forest.

  I could feel where the nearest Dungeon was, so that’s where we were walking. It was only a short hike away, and Teleporting everywhere would take the adventure out of it. Which Layla would hate, then blame me for ruining her fun.

  “Do you know where we are going?” Layla asked after 5 minutes of walking.

  “Yes, I do. I have that over powered sense, remember?” I quirked an eyebrow, ignoring how the Cabold had turned my hand I used to shut it up into a chew toy.

  “Right. You can sense atoms ‘n stuff.” She nodded while looking off into the tree line.

  Just walking through the forest with my younger sister brought back memories of my childhood. Exploring the creek that ran through the park, where the ‘cool kids’ would smoke weed in the underpass. Or that time we stumbled upon a homeless camp in the middle of the woods, and ran away scared shitless when we saw some random homeless guy.

  Good times.

  “What is that? Is that it?” Layla asked while pointing at the colorless dark passageway between two trees that grew too close together, forming a natural looking portal.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  We walked closer, and checking the details told me its difficulty was quite high for Layla, but since I would be joining her it was no issue.

  “Level 30 to 50? Isn’t that too high?” Layla asked, surprisingly a bit reluctant to enter.

  “Yeah but it’ll be fine. I used to clear Dungeons level 800 and higher. Only stopped because I got bored.” I answered smugly and Layla gave me a mock look of respect and awe.

  “Oh wow! The OP isekai protag sure is strong!” She teased me and I chuckled.

  “Yeah, yeah. Your big brother is the strongest~.” I played along and she laughed.

  “Alright, so how do we break into the Dungeon?” Layla asked, and I thought about using my Skill that let me just enter them, but that would be a bit boring.

  So I decided to do it the old fashioned way. The way I first did it.

  “Watch this.” I said with a bit of flair and she focused on me and the entrance.

  I put a Gate on our side of the entrance, and an exit inside the Dungeon.

  “Ta dah~!” I wiggled my hands dramatically, and my sister gave me a very unimpressed look.

  “That’s it? Just put a portal through it?” She asked and I nodded.

  “Yeah, it’s super anticlimactic but effective.” I gave Layla a big smile, pleased with her palpable disappointment.

  “Whatever, let’s go in.” She sighed and entered the Black Hole, I followed right after her.

  The Dungeon was a forest orientated type, obviously, so the walls were super densely packed trees. Giving it a strange natural but artificial look.

  The room we were in was large, and had some trees placed randomly about it that acted like pillars to the extremely dense ceiling of branches and leaves. Just the tiniest amount of light getting through the gaps.

  “Woah…” Layla gaped at the scene, clearly amazed with her first Dungeon room.

  I just smiled while watching her look around, but there are monsters in Dungeons so I tore the Cabold off of my head and tossed it to the ground.

  Where it used the cat part of its biology to flip right side up and land perfectly on its feet, hissing at me for the insult.

  “I know it’s fascinating and all that, but I need you to focus. There’s a monster directly above your head.” I chuckled softly as my sister screamed, a truly horrifying monster landing on her face.

  It looked like a tarantula mixed with a house cat, but mostly a spider instead of a cat. It was also the size of a small dog.

  Was it a bit mean dropping that spider on my sister?

  Yeah.

  Was it funny?

  Yeah.

  The Cabold quickly started helping her… master? Friend? I’m not sure what kind of relationship dynamic there is between my sister and the Cabold, but I’m definitely leaning more towards a manipulative friend than either of the previous two options.

  With the assistance of the Cabold, and a lot of frantic flailing, the monster was off of my sister.

  She wasn’t bitten or anything, but she was scratched to hell from its claws. I didn’t wait to start healing her by personally stitching her skin cells back together and keeping her blood from seeping out.

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  “EW! What the FUCK?!” She continued to scream, even as she beat its corpse with her axe. Leaving a gruesome mess that thankfully neither of us could truly see. Thanks to the rainbow glitter censorship.

  At least she wasn’t laughing this time.

  Progress.

  “Hey, you got it! Nice job. There’s 14 more.” I teased her, dropping one more spider from the canopy above.

  She was already starting to get out of breath, as the axe wasn’t able to penetrate the carapace furry shell thing the monsters had, so she was just beating them with it like a heavily weighted bat.

  All of the spider cat things wanted to drop down and fight her all at once, but I couldn’t have that so I was holding onto them.

  Layla was really struggling with this second spider though, even with the help from the Cabold.

  I wouldn’t interfere though, since this was her battle and her Dungeon experience.

  The spider did, eventually, die from blunt force trauma to the cranium and Layla was panting like crazy with her hands on her knees.

  “That… SUCKED!” She hollered breathlessly and I nodded.

  “Yeah, it sucked to watch too.” I teased.

  “Anyway, you Level up?” I quickly changed the subject when she glared at me.

  “...No. Not yet.” She huffed, and stood straight while taking a deep breath.

  “You done for today?” I asked and she nodded.

  “Yeah… I want to see more of the Dungeon though.” She sighed and I smiled at her.

  “Then let’s keep going. Just explore it, and we’ll let Jimmy eat the monsters.” I offered and she looked at me quizzically.

  “Jimmy can eat?” She asked incredulously and I simply chuckled in response.

  “Indeed he can! Check this out. Get ‘em Jimmy!” I ordered Jimmy to do his thing, and 13 individual metallic tentacles shot out from my shirt, pants, and even my shoes.

  Layla watched on in horror as the tentacles speared through the monsters above instantly, then wrapped them in reflective cocoons that slowly shrunk until completely disappearing.

  “Holy crap! Jimmy just vored those monsters!” Layla exclaimed and I grimaced so hard I actually flinched.

  “Please, for the love of God, do not call it that.” I begged, and my sister just looked at me with that horrified look still plastered on her face.

  “That’s what happened though…” She said a bit listlessly and I shook my head.

  “I really don’t think so. Anyway.” I forcibly changed the subject, and ignored the blank stare from both Layla and the Cabold mimicking her.

  The Cabold freaked out at first, sure, but as soon as the tentacles went away she stopped caring. That dumb ass clearly doesn’t have object permanence.

  “We’ll just walk through the Dungeon and let Jimmy do that to the monsters. Shall we?” I prompted her and began walking through the next hallway.

  Layla followed after a brief moment, shaking herself free of her exaggerated horror.

  “How many rooms or floors is this Dungeon?” Layla asked, completely over the scene of Jimmy eating.

  “Meh, not sure. Most just have the one floor and maybe 5 rooms? It can be more or less, but it’s not set in stone.” I explained as we walked through a more cave like room, the monsters not even given the chance to appear as Jimmy sent out tentacles too fast to see properly.

  We continued our walk, essentially tourists inside a war zone with a very powerful guide.

  “...I can’t stop thinking about how Jimmy vored those monsters.” Layla said off handedly and I groaned.

  “Please stop.” I replied and she grinned.

  “I mean, you’re wearing him right now. Doesn’t that mean that he’s technically voring you?” She teased and I resisted the urge to smack her in the head.

  “No, it does not. Why are you so weirdly attached to this topic? Quit bringing it up.” I begged and she just smiled wider.

  “When you think about it, isn’t Jimmy like those living latex fetis-” Layla was going down a very bad path of thought, so I interrupted.

  “PLEASE! Do NOT finish that sentence.” I nearly shouted, rubbing my eyes.

  Jimmy was NOT like that.

  Definitely.

  …

  “You know I’m right.” Layla teased quietly in the silence in our walk.

  …

  “...I’m going to fucking kill myself.” I groaned and Layla just laughed heartily.

  Now that she had oh so graciously brought it up, my most powerful companion and piece of equipment did share a lot of similarities to a terrible fetishist's wet dream.

  “So you admit that I’m right?” She teased and I groaned loudly.

  “Hardly.” I lied, mostly to myself in a desperate attempt to convince myself that Jimmy was actually really cool and not… that.

  “Drop it.” I spoke with finality when my sister continued to laugh at me.

  Thankfully she did, and we had a somewhat ruined jaunt through a nice Dungeon boss room.

  Where Jimmy didn’t vore the boss cat spider thing, and we walked into the treasure room.

  The one covered floor to ceiling with an obscene amount of coins and various other loot.

  “Oh yeah. Forgot about that Skill or Trait or whatever it was.” I mumbled as we just stared at the pile of loot.

  “What…?” Layla asked in a whisper, stunned to silence by the sheer volume of just crap.

  Well, to me it was crap. To Layla it was treasure beyond worth. Truly priceless.

  They weren’t, since it all looked like common garbage to me, but whatever.

  “I’ve got a sort of magic bag situation going on with Jimmy, so if you want we can keep all this junk. It’ll need to be identified, but I’ve got a team of science drones for that.” I told Layla, picking up some random trinket and throwing it at her.

  She caught it desperately, finally coming out of her stunned silence.

  “JUNK?! You think this is junk? This is TREASURE!” Layla laughed like some insane person, completely drunk off of the golden allure from the coins and the cool walls that my ability gives the room.

  “It’s junk. Might be useful junk, but it is still junk.” I muttered to myself, ignoring my sister as she hugged a pile of coins.

  ‘Was I like that at some point too?’ I asked myself as Layla began to dress up the Cabold in accessories.

  Magic accessories.

  “Layla, that might be a bad-” I was cut off as the Cabold suddenly went invisible and grew three times in size.

  Which made it roughly the size of a very tall mundane human, at like six foot something, and it was beefy. Only God knows what was being done to the Cabold magic wise.

  “Lil Lay?! Where’d you go?!” Layla asked, panicked, and I calmly reached over and started pulling stuff off of the monster.

  “Layla, don’t put random magic items onto things you want to keep unharmed. This stuff could be cursed. Maybe.” I mumbled the last bit, since I personally haven’t run into anything cursed. Busted Luck Stat to thank for that.

  As I continued to remove stuff from the Cabold, who really didn’t want to part with some of it, she became visible again.

  More stuff came off, and she slimmed down to rough human like proportions. She did not shrink back down though.

  “Why isn’t she back to normal? I thought we removed the size enhancer thing.” Layla asked.

  “One of these things apparently made her more beefy, not sure what though.” I gestured to the pile of removed items.

  There was only one item left, a sort of amulet around her neck.

  When I tried to remove it, the item refused to budge and even tightened around the Cabolds neck.

  “Well shit.” I sighed as I glared at the either cursed or bound item.

  Layla tried to remove it, but she couldn’t either.

  “Oh. Oh no.” She muttered and I shook my head.

  “Well, as long as it's not choking her, she’ll be fine.” I almost convinced myself with that one.

  The last item was a silver chained amulet with a big, and I mean big, red and green accented rock tied to it. It looked like a gem, but it had marbling as if it was stone.

  I didn’t know if it was cursed or not, but since the Cabold refused to take it off, we’d find out later.

  “She’s taller now, I guess?” Layla said, tilting her head as she observed the Cabold.

  The Cabold was in fact still 6 foot 4 inches tall, a huge upgrade in size, but she still looked like a Cabold. If not a little misshapen from being stretched out.

  The Cabolds leather or skin tunic that it wore did not grow, but it was a cat thing anyway so it had plenty of fur for decency. Not sure why it even wore that leather thing in the first place.

  It looked like a house cat walking on its hind legs, but more natural or agile than a cat would be.

  “Oh no! She’s indecent!” Layla mockingly covered her eyes and I shook my head.

  “She’s fine. There’s nothing to see. It’s a monster.” I pointed out the obvious, and the Cabold proved my point by picking its nose and sneezing. With its finger still in its nose.

  Layla faked a gasp.

  “I’ll have you know that our not so Lil’ Lay is a lady.” Layla joked and I chuckled.

  “Alright, alright. Well, we’ll just put… this on her I guess.” I looked around briefly before grabbing a random black cloak that happened to be in the pile.

  The Cabold did not like the cloak, actively tearing into it with her claws and ripping holes in it.

  After several minutes of fighting her like a toddler, we got the ruined cloak attached to her torso. Where it was tied in the middle and formed a new rough tunic.

  “Finally.” I groaned as we got the final knot tied to keep it in place, and the Cabold didn’t seem that bothered by it anymore.

  “Now that Lay is dressed, we can gather my loot~.” Layla smiled back at the larger pile of junk and I shook my head. At least she wasn’t going crazy anymore.

  “Oh it’s your loot is it? Also, Lay? Isn’t that what we called you when you were a kid?” I teased and she just pouted at me.

  “You called it junk, and she’s not little anymore. Besides, I bet you have tons of magic stuff!” Layla pointed out the obvious, but she was right.

  “True. Do you want to go right to the lab? There’s someone I should introduce you to actually. You’ll love her.” I told Layla and her interest was peaked.

  “Oh? My cringe loner brother knows a woman? Now this I have to see.” She teased and I just shook my head.

  I was looking forward to this next encounter.