The monster threw its last bit before squeezing down and lying flat on the ground in an instant. Unluckily, Claudia got soaked from feet to the tip of her head. Not only was her entire back already covered in slime's insides from slipping on it and falling to the floor, but now even her front shared the same fate.

'Good thing she managed to protect her face,' Tom thought while helping the girl up. Not minding the slime all over her arm, Tom grabbed Claudia's soft hand before pulling her out of the small puddle that made up most of the slime's remains.

"That was close," Claudia muttered as she took a few breaths before looking down at her own silly state. "Now I'm all covered in it!" she protested in a disgusted voice.

But her attention didn't last long on this topic. Before long, her eyes moved towards the wall where the 'data' stones were embedded with. "So that's the price of conquering the first floor," she said in a soft voice, staring at the shiny stones.

"Just clean yourself up," Tom said as he shook his head. He then moved towards the corridor, where Claudia left the backpack before joining the fight.

"Huh? What about the stones?" the girl asked, raising her eyes at Tom in surprise.

"Don't worry about them," Tom replied, putting a small grin on his face as he continued to rummage through the insides of the backpack. "I thought about it in advance," he added as he pulled out a portable pickaxe.

Just like the bikes of old, the handy tool Tom pulled out from the backpack didn't appear like a pickaxe in the first place. Rather than that, it consisted of three elements, two of which were straight metal tubes, while the last one was a slightly bent blade.

But rather than throwing it on air to let it assemble itself, Tom sat down and took his time to screw the parts together properly. 'Since I'm going to break the wall apart with it, it needs to be fixed as tightly as possible,' he thought while turning the two parts of the handle in the opposite directions.

Soon, Tom finished the preparatory part of the work before moving back to the boss room. His eyes were fixed on the wall housing four small stones, each of which shone with an innate light.

'So those are the stones that made the online hub crazy,' Tom thought while tightening his hand over the handle of his portable pick. But rather than dawdling on the topic, he quickly took a swing before forcing the blade of the pickaxe into the wall, right beside the first of the stones.

At a glance, his attack did absolutely nothing to the wall. But rather than giving up, Tom swung his tool again. And then again.

Soon, Tom entered some kind of zone, fully focusing on guiding his tool into the same exact spot, chipping away at the stone that held the loot in place.

'Strange,' Tom thought as he worked on loosening the first of the stones. 'I'm swinging this tool for a while, but rather than feeling hot... Isn't it kinda chilly?' he thought for a moment but ended up giving up on this problem.

In the end, they were in the dungeon. Maybe some kind of ventilation always ensured the atmospheric conditions would be perfectly suited for the explorers? Or maybe there were some strange swings in the temperature inside?

'There is no point thinking about it,' Tom thought once again, forcing all those thoughts away. Even if he never noticed such a problem while in the avatar's flesh, this kind of information didn't seem to be important at all.

"Hey!" Claudia suddenly shouted, almost managing to pull Tom out of his focused state. "Your pants!" she shouted again, this time managing to break through the mental barrier that Tom put around his mind to keep focused on the task.

"What now?" Tom asked, turning his eyes towards the girl, only to freeze on the spot. But rather than saying anything, he just stood in place, baffled by sight in front of his eyes.

"Wait, my pants?" A sudden idea struck the man, forcing his eyes down towards his own legs. And just as expected, what used to be tactical pants straight out of the army surplus store, now were nothing more but tatters of cloth barely holding up together.

'Heck, so that's the reason,' Tom thought before stealing a quick glance at the girl. This time though, he didn't take what he saw for some kind of naughty projection of his horny mind.

Sitting directly on the floor while resting her back against the wall, Claudia wasn't wearing anything, to begin with. Rather than that, her entire body seemed to be covered in some kind of ugly liquid, not hiding any of her natural charms whatsoever.

'Dang,' Tom cursed himself in his mind as he turned his eyes away. 'She really is sexy,' he thought as he grabbed the bottom of his shirt before pulling it off.

"Huh?" Claudia only sighed in exasperation. "What are you doing?" she asked as she stood up in an attempt to back down.

Then, her face froze when Tom brought his hand towards her with his very own shirt in it. 'Could it be...' she thought when she realized what could be the reason behind the damage to Tom's pants. And what that possibly meant for her.

Claudia looked down. And rather than seeing her own clothes, she saw some strange, thick liquid of color roughly the same as her now non-existing clothes. But what was even worse was that it slowly trickled down her skin, leaving her deprived of even this illusory cover!

"NOOO!" Claudia screamed as she squatted down, hiding her charms with her hands. Curling up, she attempted to make herself as small as possible so that hiding her body could be an easier task for her.

"If it's the slime's fluid that did that to our clothes, I don't think that throwing the shirt to you will be a sound idea," Tom said, keeping his eyes glued to the wall opposite to the direction where the girl was. 'As much as I want to look... I don't think this would do us any good,' he thought, fighting his natural desire off.

"Don't turn around!" Claudia shouted after taking a moment to gather her wits and calm herself down.

"Don't worry, I won't," Tom replied, using the entirety of his willpower to keep still.

Soon, he felt the girl pulling on the shirt, so he let go of the cloth without any reservation.

"It's quite small," Claudia said after a moment, probing Tom to turn around.

'This...' he stared at the girl for a moment, unsure where he should put his eyes.

With nothing to protect her legs, Claudia had no other choice but to expose them all the way to the upper part of her thighs. In fact, Tom's shirt only barely hid her crotch from sight. But even her upper body wasn't any better, with how the shirt barely hid either the shape or the details of her breasts from Tom's sight.

"How long are you going to stare at me like that?!" Claudia asked in a shy tone. She turned herself to the side and once again covered her breasts with her arms.

"I'm sorry, I just couldn't help myself," Tom apologized before turning his eyes away from the girl once again. "Now that we are in this kind of situation... I guess we can't just hunt the monsters we encounter," he said as he returned to swinging his pick into the wall.

As if to pull their thoughts away from what just happened, the first stone finally came loose. Worried what would happen if it were to come in contact with the slime's inside still present on the floor, Tom hung the pickaxe on his neck. He then grabbed the loosened stone directly with his fingers.

"Come out, you little..." Tom muttered as he tensed all of his arms and back muscles, pulling at the stone with all his might. At first, the stone still resisted, but soon, the effects of Tom's picking finally came into play, making the wall release the valued price.

"Ah," he sighed in surprise when at the same time, as he caught the stone, he slipped on the slippery floor.

Crash!

For a moment, Tom's consciousness wavered. No matter what kind of training he had, hitting the back of his head against the cold stone of the floor would still affect him.

"Are you okay?!" Tom heard Claudia shouting, but the voice reached him as if it was filtered by some kind of screen. But as he opened his eyes, he noticed three things.

Two of them hung right above his face while Claudia leaned over him, while the third one was all about his hand.

"Can you get your tits out of my face?" Tom asked politely while already focusing his attention on the third thing he saw.

Or rather, the third thing that he expected to see, but that was nowhere to be found.

"Ah, sorry," Claudia quickly noticed that in her current outfit, leaning over Tom wasn't the best idea. But before she could as much as blush, her eyes wandered to Tom's right hand.

The right hand which should be holding the stone he just extracted.

And the right hand that was now completely empty.

"That's too many thrills for one moment," Tom muttered, already guessing what could be the reason for the stone's disappearance.