"Excuse me!" Tom said. Anger and embracement mixed in his soul as he grabbed Claudia's waist and pushed her off. 'Getting hard is one thing, but getting hard when she is basically pressing herself on it,' Tom lamented in his thought when...

'Huh?' Tom only managed to bring his upper body up when the realization struck him. In this unpleasant moment of his weakness getting revealed, he momentarily lost the awareness of his burden.

For a moment, he was free of all those memories. For a moment, he could look at the world around him without the petrifying knowledge that was previously hidden.

"Thanks," Tom said, resting his face in his hands.

"Huh?" Claudia twitched. Her eyes widened a little. "My pleasure," she replied with a graceful look on her face, when her cheeks suddenly turned red. "I mean," she started, averting her eyes in panic, "I'm happy I could help!" She shouted, proving she noticed the unlucky play of her words.

"What do you plan to do from now on?" Claudia asked after a long moment of silence.

"I think I will move back to my old place," Tom opened up. He spent most of his life in this city. Yet now, this old home of his appeared to hold a lot more secrets than he knew.

"Where is it?" Claudia asked, snooping closer to Tom and resting on his shoulder.

"Far out in the sticks," Tom cut the topic, not willing to reveal the location of his refuge.

'It's not that I don't want her to come eventually, but it would be just too risky,' Tom thought as he recalled some less pleasant bits of his newly regained memories.

"Come on, stop being so secretive!" Claudia playfully protested, then she sent a nudge to Tom's side. "I already bit on that mysterious aura of yours, so you don't need to bait me anymore," Claudia spoke out of nowhere, in a monotone voice.

"Eh?" Tom spoke out in surprise.

"Eh?" Claudia raised her confusion-filled eyes to Tom. Then her pupils widened. "EEEEEH?!" Claudia screamed, instantly using her hands to muffle her voice.

"Did I say it out loud just now?" Claudia asked with an insane look on her face.

"Eeeh?" Tom produced a hesitant moan, turning his eyes away.

"I can't believe I did that!" Claudia suddenly twisted around, grabbed a blanket from Tom's bed, and curled herself underneath it. She then refused to leave it for a long while, trembling heavily whenever Tom attempted to turn her back to her normal state.

'You are not making it any easier,' Tom whined in his thoughts. Due to how thin the blanket was, it hardly covered the curves of the girl. 'Eh, let's just get this over with,' Tom thought, closing his eyes. When he opened them up again, his eyes were full of determination.

"I have a mid-level avatar in the Hub out there," Tom started his explanation. "I will farm a bit, then buy myself a new, fresh avatar here," he announced while looking up to the sky... Or rather, up to the roof of the room.

"So you are not giving up." Claudia released a long sigh of relief. "I was worried that this loss..." She suddenly turned silent as her eyes reddened a bit. "I was worried you would give up on this game because of me!" she shouted out.

In an instant, tears started to flood Claudia's eyes. Her body started to tremble, shaking under the spams of guilt.

"What do you mean by that?" Tom asked, only capable of playing dumb. 'Who knows, maybe she is just trying to sound me off?' An alarm rang in Tom's mind right before he spilled more than he wanted.

"Don't treat me like some kind of idiot!" Claudia protested in a pained voice. "I saw how you can move. If there was really something capable of drilling a hole through half of the entire dungeon... There could be only two possible outcomes," Claudia explained her train of thought, slowly calming down as if she was confessing.

"In other words, the only element that doesn't fit is your unconscious avatar." Tom finished the girl's conjunction, confirming her thoughts. Given how she already hinted so far, it would do no good to hide the truth any longer.

"I see." Claudia suddenly deflated as if all the energy left her body. "You saved my avatar at the expense of your own, even though yours was clearly way more valuable," Claudia summed the situation up. She then fell to her knees before smashing her forehead against the floor.

"I cannot thank you enough. If there is anything I can do to help, be it a farming higher grade of stones or boosting you through the early raids..." Once Claudia started speaking, there was no stopping her.

'She is likely to keep going with all sorts of ways to repay me?' Tom thought, allowing a mischievous thought to float in his mind for a moment. 'Nah, that would be a shit thing to do!' He then scolded himself, dropping the idea of waiting for the girl to offer her body.

"It's okay. I wanted to take a few weeks of holidays even before all the shit went down," Tom said as he waved his hand away. It was as if he wanted to discard all of his problems with that simple gesture.

"That's reasonable," Claudia replied with a smile. It was a strange sight. Her tears have yet to dry out, yet now she was smiling so sweetly... "So, promise me one thing," she suddenly threw a hook.

"I'm already worried what that might be," Tom replied with reservation.

"Once you get bored or just lonely," Claudia started, placing her forefinger at the exposed part of Tom's chest, "give me a call."