Sora's eyebrows rose almost imperceptibly. For the first time, he turned his head away from the window and looked at the screen floating in front of his eyes.
The last time he had seen something like this was back during his very first summoning.
In that world, a special stone the royal family called the Adventurer Appraisal Stone could bring up a special system window that showed a person's stats and some of their skills.
Seeing this reaction, Elena's mouth fell open.
"You really can access the system!" Her voice rose with excitement, then she shot a glance toward the kitchen and immediately lowered it. "Normally you can only access the system after going through the Awakening Ceremony. You didn't go through any ceremony, but... Anyway. What you're looking at right now is probably the system. Only you can see it. Well, apparently there are some special Professions that can see other people's systems too, but they're super rare and high-level. We probably won't see even one of them alive before we die."
Sora skimmed the lines on the screen. Then he closed it.
He didn't say anything. But he didn't turn back to the window either.
Elena took this as a victory.
"Tonight before bed I'm going to put on my watch, and we'll probably both get a message from the system," she went on. "Once we accept it, our consciousness will get pulled into the Dream Realm. There's a place there called the Endless Tower. The tower has floors, and every floor has monsters."
She started counting on her fingers.
"Normally, everyone fights alone for the first ten floors. But since you're my summon, we'll probably show up together. We level up there by killing monsters. Every level, our Energy stat goes up. And some monsters and treasures drop Essence Stones. With those stones, we can raise our other stats too."
Elena took a deep breath.
"So tonight, our adventure begins. I'm super excited."
The girl really had explained everything in a single breath, without caring whether he was listening or not.
Right then, a crash came from the kitchen.
The pot in Rosalind's hand had slammed onto the counter. The woman spun around and took two steps toward the living room, holding the wooden spoon in the air like a weapon.
"Wait a minute!" Her voice was shaking. "Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute! I completely forgot what just happened! Elena!"
Elena flinched. "W-what happened?"
"Downstairs! At the entrance!" Rosalind waved the spoon at Sora. "The mayor's son was harassing me, and then this boy showed up and just looked at him! And that boy collapsed! Face-first, like he was dead! The mayor's son!"
Elena's mouth fell open.
She slowly turned to Sora.
Knocking someone out? Just by looking at them?
She had seen Sora's status window. All of his skills were sealed. None of their names sounded like anything that could do that. His stats were higher than an ordinary student's, sure, but not high enough to knock someone out with a look.
Sora shrugged.
"I just let out a little killing intent."
Elena blinked.
Killing intent.
Killing intent?
Wasn't that something that only happened in anime? The thing from those scenes where the main character looks at the villain and makes his knees shake, a dark aura ripples in the background, and the side characters break into a sweat and shout, "What is this pressure?!"
Did something like that exist in real life?
While Elena was still confused, Rosalind had already started pacing in the middle of the living room.
"The mayor's son..." she was muttering. "He had bodyguards. His bodyguards must have found him by now. They saw us, they saw me, and they saw him with me. They'll come. They'll definitely come. What do we do? What do we do, what do we do, what do we do..."
Sora watched all this panic with complete disinterest. Then he turned back to the window.
...
Luckily, no one came to demand answers before evening.