Chapter 114 - Tom's (un)heartless Request

'And that's the last of them,' Tom thought, pulling his spear out of the last remaining monster in the area. With how swift this movement was, all the blood stuck to the blade fell to the ground, forming fat drops as it fell. 

"Please, wake up!" Then, behind him, one of the men that Tom saved with Claudia cried out, desperately shaking at the lifeless body of the girl that got her throat cut open. 

'Doesn't he realize that it's futile?' Tom thought, puzzled by the situation. Even though he never directly experienced a death of a fellow human, not to speak about someone close to him, his extensive training was more than sufficient to make up for this lack of experience. 

On the other hand, the party that Tom just saved shouldn't really have problems like that. While the death of a companion was always a tragedy, for someone clearly making a living by touring the dungeon, death should be no stranger. 

Yet, defying Tom's logic, a man continued to bawl his eyes. The strenght of his shakes gradually lost its might as the exhaustion of his flesh started to catch up to his mental state. 

"No matter how much you try, it's futile," Claudia was the one to speak up first.. She didn't care how her simple sentence could be classified as literally the first contact with extraterrestrial beings. Instead, the look of pity on her face proved that she was actually affected by the poor girl's death more than by the contact with the other party. "She's already dead," she added, lowering her head and pointing her eyes to the floor. 

"You don't know that!" The man shouted before forcing his head around. "Kaisha, please, I beg of you, heal her!" the man pleaded to the third of the girl in the group. His eyes were so filled with tears that Tom, if not for the hard limit of how many girls there was in the other party, would find it troublesome to figure out who the man spoke to.

"I don't have a single bit of mana left," a beastman looking female replied, slowly shaking her head to the sides. "I ran out of it half an hour ago," the girl added, raising her dagger-wielding hand. 

'So they know about mana,' Tom took notice of this small detail. While meaningless in the greater picture, it could serve as a small part of the mosaic of truth that he wished to build. In the end, if anyone were to attempt hiding some truths about what lay on the other end of the dungeon, one would bother with the major stuff. 

That's why, be it in the distant past of Tom's world or its present state, one had to look for the details. Because only the small elements of the picture could prove that the entire thing was just an elaborate falsification or the actual reality. 

'I guess some things don't change no matter how different the world is,' Tom thought, aware of his own thought process. After all, this coldly ration approach to tackling the unknown stemmed not from his innate character but the mental training his father put him through before disappearing. 

"She's dead," another man of the party said, slowly approaching his despairing friend before placing his hand on his friend's back. "You can't help her anymore," the man added as he bit his lips before raising his eyes at Tom. "For the timely... For the rescue, you have my gratitude," the man said after fixing his unintended mistake. 

'I guess he just wanted to get us off with a staple formula,' Tom thought, keenly observing every tiniest detail of the interaction. 'Well, it's not like I mind it at all,' he added in his thoughts before gently shaking his head. "We are going back now. Normally, you would have to ditch the body to return yourself, but this time you can at least give her a proper burial,' Tom said, moving his eyes at the despairing man. 

"I will stay back here," the man replied in an empty voice. His eyes were just as hollow as his voice, proving that he was already broken. "With her," he added, slipping his hands under the dead female's back before raising and then hugging her corpse. 

"Don't be ridiculous!" The third of the men, one that had the appearance of the tank of the group finally said something. His face was twisted in an ugly grimace. "Do you really think that's what she would want you to do now?" he asked, grabbing the despairing man's arms before shaking his soundly. 

"What does it matter," the broken man replied impassively, ignoring the physical stimuli just like he ignored the words of his friends a moment earlier. 

"Celestia is waking up!" Suddenly, the voice of the tank pulled all the attention from the tragic scene to one thing that actually mattered after the bloody encounter. 

'So that's her name,' Tom thought, looking how half of the party rushed to the elven girl who was about to regain her consciousness. Out of everyone, only one of the men remained focused on their despairing friend. 

"Are you all right?!" Kaisha asked, checking every inch of the delicate body of the elven girl. Her hands moved from her gentle yet dignified face, slid down her moderate chest, a slim waist, only to end up at the very bottom of her legs. "You don't seem to have any open wounds. To get away with only a few bruises..." the only human-looking girl in the party raised her head as she looked Celestia right in the eyes. "You got quite lucky," Kaisha said only to cast a quick glance at Tom, bite her lips and shake her head. "No, we were all lucky," the girl said, standing up only to bow her head low before Tom and Claudia.

"For saving us in the time of peril, you have our greatest gratitude," Kaisha said, only to raise her head back up. Yet, before her eyes could wander off somewhere else, her pupils suddenly dilated. 

'Seems like she finally noticed the state of our clothing,' Tom thought, shaking his head to harness the small crowd's attention on himself. "Gratitude?" he asked, shaking his head a bit faster. "That's not going to cut it," he added with a grim expression surfacing on his face. 

"Huh?" This time, it was the time for the tank of the group to react. As soon as he heard Tom's words, his expression darkened, yet that didn't stop him from standing up and looking at Tom with a clear challenge brimming in his eyes. "What do you want, then? We don't have any money. If that wasn't the case, we wouldn't be exploring..."

"I don't need any money or valuables," Tom cut the man's pleas short. " I'm not sure if you realized it given the shock caused by the death of one of your people, but we aren't really in a state to enter the city, don't you think?" Tom said, meaningfully lowering his eyes at his own body. 

"Oh!" The man's eyebrows twitched. "That's true..." he said before looking around the area. "But it's not like we brought some spare sets with us..." he said before his eyes suddenly fell on the lifeless body of the deceased girl. 

And at that moment, the man's face darkened beyond what Tom would ever consider possible. 

"Don't even think about it," Tom said, realizing just what had to be going through the man's head. "We don't need fulls sets. Two long coats or something alike will suffice," Tom quickly specified his request. Even though he couldn't care less about the deceased girl, even he wasn't as heartless as to demand her friends to strip her bloodied body naked just to fulfill his need for clothes. 

"That we can somehow manage," the man replied, breathing out a sigh of great relief. It appeared that in this hard moment for his team, he finally found a tiny bit of solace. "But if I may ask, what made you lose all your clothes like that?" he asked, clearly trying to push his mind away from the grief of losing one of his companions. 

"A slime on a sixty-fifth floor," Tom replied with a prepared lie right off the bat. "That bastard was so slippery and hard to deal with that we didn't even realize that it dissolved most of our clothes as we fought it. Only by some luck did we manage to save those few rags that we are wearing right now," Tom added more details to his prefabricated history. 

Just like he was on the lookout for the details, overwhelming the other party with them would make it harder to discern whether his words were true or not. 

And given how they were nearing the moment of disembarking to a world that seemed to be fully foreign to them, hiding as much about himself and Claudia as possible was imperative. 

After all, information was the greatest power that any intelligent species could ever obtain!