Chapter 403 They Looked Right



Mathew surprised even himself when he suddenly rushed forward, eager to meet with the returning group to such a degree he couldn't simply stand around and wait for them to approach him instead.

He ran across the field of corpses, quickly arriving at the edge of the area situated in the direction of the fortress. While taken by surprise by Mathew's sudden dash, Nadia easily kept up with his pace, arriving at the edge a mere moment later than the young man.

"You guys are alright," Mathew muttered as he slowed down and then stood his ground in front of the three girls.

"Eh?" Leila raised her eyebrows a little. "Was there a reason why we should not be?" she asked, leaning her head over her shoulder with a confused expression. Then, her face tensed up a little as she straightened her posture. "You know, if there was something for us to be wary of out there, I would appreciate it if you would inform us in advance next time, okay?"

Leila took on a disapproving look, with her left eyebrow raised high on her forehead and her arms crossed on her chest.

"No, it's not like that," Mathew shook his head. "If it was about something I'm aware of, you wouldn't even need to lecture me about it, as I would be the first to tell you about it," he vouched before shaking his head. "It's the stuff that I cannot foresee that made me worried."

"Is something the matter?" Daria asked, taking a step forward to put herself towards the center of the discussion. "If there is any problem..." she added while placing her hand on the handle of her own blade.

"Once again, nothing is wrong," Mathew repeated himself before turning around to take a sweeping look at the surroundings. "At least, that's what I hope for."

Mathew's face tensed up a bit.

It was still relatively early in the morning. The whole excursion, combat, and now the first part of harvesting was done before midday, leaving them with several more hours' worth of daylight to exploit.

'It sure doesn't feel like only three hours have passed,' Mathew thought before shaking his head and turning his attention towards Carol.

"Wanna share what system seeds you picked out?" Mathew asked, eager to move on from the topic that quite honestly, after falling into a momentary deep thought, he detached himself too far from to even recall what it was all about!

"I only got two hundred and fifty cores when I left, so I decided on a single better seed worth a hundred cores and three simplest ones," Carol quickly explained while raising her hand to expose a small, makeshift bag hanging down from her arm. "I found out beginner hunter system seeds for mere fifty cores, so I thought it was fitting to pick them."

'Is this girl for real?' Mathew allowed himself a moment of exasperation. 'They were hunter system seeds so she picked them up because they were fitting?'

He had to repeat what he just heard in his thoughts. Because the message that this single sentence conveyed was too damn ridiculous for Mathew to accept it!

"So you didn't look at what they offer and went with ones that have a fitting name instead?" Mathew asked out loud, just to make sure he wasn't mishearing something.

"Huh?" Carol jumped a little, something deep in Mathew's voice startling her out of a sudden. "That's right?" she then confirmed, although while leaning her head to the side and giving Mathew a confused look.

Mathew inhaled the air deep into his lungs, filling them all the way to their limit.

Then, he slowly exhaled, taking his time to empty his lungs.

Yet, even this exercise did a poor job of calming him down.

'Just shut the fuck up and play along,' Mathew ordered himself.

"After all I've heard of you talking about those systems and all, I thought that those cores wouldn't be as conveniently named and prized if they weren't a perfect fit!" Carol clearly noticed that something was wrong and tried to rationalize her actions.

'Wait, maybe that's a good point?' Mathew asked himself, opting to face Carol's points head-on, regardless of how ridiculous they sounded.

Yet, the more he thought about the topic... the more sense Carol's words made.

'I guess I didn't talk about system near her enough,' Mathew ultimately sighed.

Even after taking some time to calculate various things, the chances that the system and the merchants would oh so conveniently provide them with exactly what they needed at exactly the price they were willing to pay...

'It's more likely that she was scammed out of the first few cores she could spend,' Mathew thought, releasing yet another heavy sigh.

Still, rather than openly admonishing the girl, he still decided to play along.

"Welp, ignore my remarks, then," Mathew said while waving his hand. "Rather than assuming you did something wrong because that's what I think, we should check what those seeds are all about, right?"

There was no use arguing whether Carol's choice was right or wrong. And with quite a few newbies and hunters close enough to see and generally notice the commotion, it was outright stupid for Mathew to openly scold Carol.

She was to be the leader of all the hunters, after all. That was the reason why Mathew picked her up to get the seeds in the first place.

Right now, he had no other choice but to shut up about the worries that he harbored and make himself seem supportive of Carol's results.

"Shall we, then?" Mathew suggested.

"Sure thing," Carol raised her head high and said before passing by Mathew and moving over to the biggest gathering of the hunters.

And as luck would have it, that was also where Pavel currently managed the rest of the hunters.

"I'm going to give him the better core," Carol announced as she reached into her bag to pull out the seeds.

"Do you have anyone else that caught your eye?" Mathew asked before the girl could even look down.

"Hmm..." Carol thought for a second. "There is one. I saw one of the newbies that picked up a gun from the fallen hunter and never showed any signs of fear or hesitation as the battle went on."

Mathew smiled a bit.

"Great," he said before reaching out and patting Carol's shoulder... only to suddenly grab it and pull her ear closer towards his mouth. "Then wouldn't he make for the best subject to test whether those who absorbed one core will be able to switch to a higher grade one later?"