Chapter 71 - Morpheian Memoriam

Tom pointed his arm at the wall where the stones would appear as soon as the boss would be defeated. 

According to the lore created by the Dungeons Online players, the stones were always there. It was the presence of the boss monster that made them hidden, hence why they would reveal themselves after the fight. 

But now, Tom proved this theory wrong. Because a single look at the wall was more than enough for Tom to abolish several major theories about the dungeons that everyone took for granted.

"A tier three stone?" Claudia asked in a whisper. Her breath got stuck in her chest as she stared at the wall, exasperated. 

One of the most important rules of the dungeon was the distribution of the stones. As the primary and almost the only form of loot that players could obtain outside of some rare cases of items dropping, everyone knew the rules governing the appearance of the stones by their heart. 

And now, Tom had to come up with a way to explain how a tier-three stone, one that should never appear below the thirtieth floor, was shining in the wall of floor ninth. 

"Was this your bet?" Claudia asked in a weak voice, moving her shocked eyes at Tom's face. 

"More or less," Tom replied, shaking his head to clear it from the meaningless thoughts. He then stood up, catching himself by his side in the process. 

As much as he didn't want to admit it, the barehanded fight with that lizard brought him really close to the edge. 

"I was curious whether the discrepancy between our power and the power of opponents will be reflected in rewards," Tom explained as he approached the slowly vanishing corpse of the monster. 

"That's why you wanted me to enter the room?" Claudia suddenly asked as her eyes flashed with excitement. "To make the monster even stronger?" Claudia added a bit more details to her question as her eyes gravitated towards the spear still stuck in the monster's carcass. "Let me guess, you got me to enter right when you were about to kill it?" 

Claudia guessed Tom's plan without trouble. Now that she saw its results and understood the process, figuring out the details was pretty straightforward. 

"That almost cost me my life," Tom confirmed the girl's words as a sour expression appeared on his face. "It managed to close its eyelid... And I'm sure that the spear bounced off,"  he added, looking down at the weapon. "It shouldn't pierce its eye like that," Tom said, openly refusing to take credit for what happened. 

"Wait, if it bounced off, how did you..." Claudia asked, only to cut her sentence in half. While she didn't know Tom very well, even she was capable of understanding Tom's confused expression. 

'Well, let's see how it is,' he thought, reaching forward and grabbing the back of the spear's handle. Then, with one swift move, Tom pulled it all out. "Huh?" A gasp of surprise escaped Tom's mouth. 

'This isn't my spear,' he thought when the reflection of some strange light suddenly blinded him. For a moment, rather than a spear, he saw a thunderbolt in his hand, formed by the same shine that blinded him a moment earlier. 

And then, everything came to an end. 

'Huh?' Tom thought, puzzled. 'What's this strangely familiar feeling?' he asked himself, looking down at the weapon in his hand. 

His first thought brought him back to the special spear he bought for his local avatar. In theory, it should still be stored somewhere. But in reality, it was just as accessible as the hidden golden reserve of the strongest nation that still remained in this world. 

Yet, there was no doubt. This spear felt exactly the same as the thunder spear he wielded as his avatar. But that alone was pretty strange, given how those two weapons didn't look alike at all. 

"Something wrong?" Claudia asked, casting a weird glance at Tom. 

'Huh? Something happened?' Tom thought, confused by the girl's question. 'Wait, could it be?' A sudden idea struck his mind. 

Tom raised his spear as if he wanted to flex it to the girl. "Tell me, what kind of material is this spear made off?" he asked a pretty simple question. 

"Huh?" This time it was Claudia's turn to be confused. "If I were to say... Metal..."

Hearing the response, Tom's face twitched. 'So she sees it? Then why wouldn't she react if it obviously changed from wood?' he asked himself. 

"The tip should be metal. The rest is obviously made from wood... Or wait, maybe it's some kind of plastic made to look like wood?" Claudia finished what she originally wanted to say, putting Tom into an even greater state of shock. 

'So she doesn't see the difference,' he thought, staring down at the handle of the spear. 

It was originally made out of wood and reinforced with spring-steel filling inside. In other words, it should have a brownish handle and a silver blade at its top. 

But right now, what Tom was holding didn't appear like wood at all. No matter how hard and long he looked at it, he couldn't see it as anything else but a full metal cast. As for what kind of metal the spear was made from, Tom had no clue. 

He wasn't a blacksmith or any sort of metallurgy professional. 'But even without any real knowledge, I think I can be pretty damn sure we don't have metals with this kind of lustrous, silver hue,' he thought, observing the fine details that replaced the original, wooden texture of the spear's handle. 

'Is this the rumored mithril?' Tom thought, scurrying through his memories of the community posts he read in his spare time. 

The item drop rate was incredibly low. What's more, the items could hardly even make a difference, as only a small number of them grew along with its users rather than becoming obsolete after just a few level-ups. 

But with the entire world on its scale, there were more than just a handful of items on the market. And various theories about what those weapons were made from arouse. 

Some came from fantasy geeks, trying to look for correlations with other worlds, games, and genres. Other suggestions came from the blacksmith guild, the major organization of hobbyists still dabbling in this ancient art. While there were several other credible sources of the so-called 'item theory,' there was only a limited number of the point where all those theories reached consensus, converged on a fact that all could agree on. 

And it was the mysterious and legendary material, Mythril. 

"Is this some kind of protection?' Tom thought, staring at his spear. He was so distracted with his thoughts that he didn't even realize that he voiced those words out. 

"Protection? Do you want to go again?" Claudia caught his words, looking at Tom with a weird look on her face. As if happiness mixed with embarrassment and disappointment. 

"Huh?" Tom shrugged when Claudia's words threw him off his mental focus. "What did you ask about?" He raised his eyes at the girl. 

"Nevermind," Claudia didn't dawdle on the topic. It was pretty easy to notice that Tom's mind was somewhere else when he spoke up. 'I guess I misunderstood,' Claudia thought, averting her eyes shyly. 

"Well, that reminds me," Tom said, turning his head towards the shining stone in the wall. In the place where only stones of the first tier should appear, it stood out like a sore thumb. "What are we going to do about it?" Tom asked, pointing at the stone with his eyes. 

"You risked your life to make it appear. You seem to also be way better at utilizing your strengths in here," Claudia said after swallowing a gulp of her saliva. "While I hate to push you into staying as kind of my bodyguard, I think it will be better if you will be the one to absorb it," Claudia said, lowering her head in shame. 

"It's okay," Tom smiled lightly, amused and genuinely happy with how honest the girl was with him. "To be honest, I can't wait to test it out, but I didn't want to leave you out of the fun," he said, turning around and approaching the wall. 

This time, Tom knew what to do. With the silverish spear in his hand, he simply struck the wall with all his mind, imagining all his strenght leaving him through the spear and infusing itself into the wall. 

Tac, tac, tac...

The sound of stones crashing and bouncing off the floor filled Tom's ears. And as he looked down, the shiny stone was amongst those that fell off after his attack. 

"Whew," Tom breathed out. "That was exhausting," he muttered as he leaned down and picked the stone up with his bare hand. 

And just like before, there was a slight flash of light, and then the stone started to meltdown and soak into Tom's skin. 

"Granted the blessing of Morpheian Memoriam," A voice said in Tom's head before his consciousness suddenly shut off.