Chapter 100 - Argument

"I still don't think killing Cleo's avatar was a good choice," Claudia muttered as soon as the boss of the floor fell to the ground. 

While it was initially a massive, if not a giant, orc, right now, it looked more like a hedgehog. During the fight itself, it didn't pose much danger to the current Tom and Claudia. Rather than an opponent, it turned into a test subject for how many spears could Tom conjure before they would start disappearing. 

"Are you for real?" Tom muttered, rolling his eyes. "How long are you gonna sit on this topic?" he asked, already annoyed with this matter. 

"For as long as I get my answers!" Claudia replied, furiously kicking the one spot of the dead ogre that was free from Tom's spears. "Ever since that happened, you kept dropping the topic, refusing to explain yourself!" she protested, pointing her finger right in Tom's face. "I don't think you appreciate the seriousness of this question!" Claudia added, squinting her eyes. 

"No," Tom turned his face around. For the first time since they entered the dungeon, it was completely still, as if all the emotions had disappeared from it. "I think it's you who does not appreciate the seriousness of the situation," he said, taking a step closer towards the girl. 

"So how about you explain it to me instead of trying to be some vague slash mystic shit of an arsehole?" Claudia bounced the ball back, unable to hold her doubts any longer. "I kept silent when you kept that act for the entire raid, went along with your ideas, did my best to help out," she listed out one by one, her hands tightening into fists with each word she said. "But my lack of protests doesn't mean I'm stupid. I simply hold all my thoughts close to my heart, but now I need some answers!" Claudia shouted, stomping her feet on the ground. 

"What a naive and oblivious kid you are," Tom uttered, shaking his head in disappointment. 'So far, I was taking her silence for a good note.' He shook his head once again. 'Who would've thought that it was a mistake?' he asked himself before focusing on the girl once again. 

"Sure, have some, then," Tom said, getting one step closer to the girl. "Right now, we are daring to infringe on the security of the single greatest contributor to the world's economy. All on our own." Tom looked at the girl without any emotions on his face. 

While he got ready to reveal the entirety of the truth to the girl, he could hardly feel anything but sympathy for her. 

"Just in case you still believe, we can just apologize and get everything straight, with what we saw here... If anyone ever learns that we entered the dungeon in the normal way, we are dead. Our families are dead. Everyone who recognizes us is dead. Just for good measure," Tom said, grabbing the handle of his real spear and pulling it out of the corpse with one swing. 

"Yeah, yeah, you are going to go far with that defeatist way of thinking," Claudia scoffed, turning her face to the side. It was a clear act of defying everything that Tom said so far as if she didn't want to hear it at all. 

"Let me explain it bit by bit, then," Tom said, crossing his hands on his chest. "Online Hub is an organization that provides roughly thirty percent of all the wealth currently circulating in the world's economy," Tom said. Then, he spat the facts he learned just a few days before the mission started. 

"From what my family discovered, their entire business is reliant on the exploitation of the dungeons to which they have a monopoly," he added, raising his hands and swinging them around. "Just because we were here with our physical bodies makes us a threat to the story they use to cover the reality. And tell me," Tom turned to the girl. "What do you think an organization that rich and influential does to those who endanger their entire business model?" he asked, sending Claudia a look worthy of some naive kid. 

"If they are that big and powerful, why pick a fight with them in the first place, then?" Claudia attempted to counter Tom's words. "You guys are at fault for picking a fight with someone you can't defeat, not me for denouncing it!" she added, slamming her fists into the dungeon's wall. 

"In a sense, you are right," Tom shrugged his hands. "If you were to just return, go straight to the Hub and report everything you saw here so far, you would have a nice chance of surviving," he revealed a potential way out for the girl without even a moment of hesitation. "Oh, by good chances, I mean about a single percent. I doubt anyone high enough to make decisions concerning your case would bother with the risk of keeping you alive," Tom added, turning his sight away from the girl as if he no longer cared about her whatsoever. 

"As if I would do something like that!" Claudia screamed, torn between her fury, confusion, and wish to understand. 

"Then your only and best shot at surviving is doing exactly what I did when I instantly attempted to kill Cleo's avatar," Tom turned his face around, looking at the girl. His face was tense, still without even a shred of emotion on it. "They can only harm us if they discover what we did. While they are sure to already know about the interference, for now, I made it look like the bug in their system simply autodestructed," Tom explained, turning his face back towards the stone-bearing wall of the room. 

For the first time since he started raiding the dungeons seriously, for the first time since he graduated, he saw the grade five stones. 

There were only a few of them stuck in the wall, mixed with all the other grade four brimming in the wall. 

'I can't wait to see how much they will help me improve,' Tom thought, taking a step closer towards the wall. 

"Wait, what bug? Did we bug their system?" Claudia asked, still trying to figure out the puzzle of the situation she was in. 

"We?" Tom asked, looking at Claudia with a weird expression. "Do you consider yourself a part of us right now? Or are you going to go back to whining at reality once it gets more comfortable to you?" he asked, squinting his eyes. 

"Get off my head already," Claudia requested, sending a hateful stare back at Tom. Then, as if she managed to calm herself down on the spot, her sight mellowed as she lowered her head. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't act like that. But, for now, can you answer my question?" she requested politely, holding her emotions back. 

"We didn't bug their system at all," Tom replied, following the girl's request. He kept going towards the wall, enchanted by the sight of the stones. "In a sense, we are the bugs. But to be more precise, Cleo was connected to the system directly, rather than going through the normal procedure," Tom said, bringing up something that Claudia saw with her own two eyes. 

"So she was the bug?" Claudia asked, unwilling to accept the complicated explanations. 'With how everything seems to be even deeper than I was worried about, it's better to make sure I understand the situation correctly," she thought, raising her big eyes at Tom's back. 

"In a sense, yes," Tom nodded his head, finally reaching the stone-bearing wall. He raised his hand to the wall before sending a quick burst of energy towards it. 

As if suddenly oversaturated with the amount of magic it could hold, the wall started to crumble, popping its stones out like ripe fruits. 

"What do you mean by that?" Claudia moved towards Tom, casting only a glance at the stones before moving her eyes back at her partner. For her, the value of information right now was far greater than the value of those stones. 

"I'm not a technician, so I can't give you the details, but Cleo was still connected to the system of the game while she was here, with us," Tom said, putting his spear towards the nearest grade five stone he could see. Without even uttering the name of his spell, he absorbed all of its energy. 

Sadly, ever since the massive breakthrough that unlocked a whole new plane of magic energy for him, following breakthroughs wouldn't come as easily as before. 

"But from what I can tell, is that they managed to almost reach the crux of the problem that Cleo caused," Tom said after focusing on absorbing the mana for a short while. "By forcefully killing her avatar, I burned the source of the problem, meaning it should fix itself before the Online Hub will be able to figure out what really happened," Tom said, moving on towards another grade five stone. 

"Or rather, that's what I can only hope for," he added after a moment before striking the stone with the tip of his spear.