"In that case... What?" Claudia asked, snuggling a bit closer towards Tom. Her face looked strange as if there was something important on her mind. "Or rather, what wasn't enough?" she added another question, gently placing her hands on Tom's shoulders.

It was a simple act of holding her hands beside Tom's neck. She didn't hold her fingers down nor resisted any notion of moving away. She just stood there, halfway between hugging Tom and clasping her hands on his throat.

"This isn't something I'm sure about," Tom shook his head. "It's something I only guessed, so I didn't want to bother you with it before proving I was right," he added. Tom then placed his own hands on top of Claudia's. "But since you insist, allow me to explain."

Tom clasped his fingers over Claudia's hands, removing them from his shoulders. He then let go of the girl's flesh, stepping away.

"If we take this stone with our bare hands, we will absorb it," Tom said, grabbing one of the stones they mined from the lower floors. Given how he didn't want the stone to disappear right away, he caught it through a piece of cloth he tore apart from his pants, the only remaining piece of clothing he still used. "But does that mean we are absorbing every last bit of its energy?" Tom asked, looking Claudia deep in the eyes.

"We are absorbing it whole. It's not like something remains once we are done," Claudia replied, cutely leaning her head to the side. "If there was some sort of residue, I could believe that we are doing it wrongly, but there isn't," she continued, stressing out her last word.

"But what if we are inefficient with absorbing the energy in this way?" Tom asked with a charming smile before throwing the stone up.

At first, the precious loot simply flew upwards. But just as it was about to reach its apoapsis and start its descent towards the ground, the blade of Tom's spear struck it squarely in the middle.

TSSZ!

A sound appeared as if an electric current snapped through the air. The stone itself flashed out, only to suddenly dim out. By the time it fell to the ground, it had looked completely different.

"Don't touch it yet," Tom advised, even going as far as to gently smack Claudia's belly with the blunt end of his spear. "There is no problem with getting a closer look, but you don't want to touch it. It will fall apart into dust if you do so," he explained the reasons behind his precaution.

As the two of them kneeled and leaned over the used-up stone, the difference between how it looked before and how it looked now was obvious and great.

Normal stone would have a gentle, blue shine. The shine would grow in intensity with every grade of the stone, making it quite simple to recognize the tiers.

But the piece that fell to the ground not only had no shine at all. Its relatively see-through, crystalic structure was all gone. Now, it looked like some kind of porous sea-born lifeform.

"It looks like some kind of weird sponge," Claudia said, quicker at finding a proper comparison than Tom could ever hope to be. "If not for how black it is, I can bet it would sell nicely in the drugstores," she added. A small shine flashed in her eyes.

"Some kind of business idea exploding in your mind?" Tom asked with a smile before moving his hand up. "Either way, this is what happens once you touch it," he said, gently placing his finger on the stone.

There was no explosion or shockwave. The dark, porous structure simply fell apart, as if someone tipped the forces holding it together off. The entire thing simply turned into dust and collapsed on itself, forming a small pile on the dungeon's floor.

But what was interesting was how it didn't vanish at all. Sure, it was a small and barely noticeable thing, but the dungeon didn't seem to absorb it at all.

'Strange,' Tom thought, noticing this peculiarity. While it wasn't his first time to use his bloodsucking ability on the mana stone, it was the first time for him to pay attention to it.

"Okay, I think I understand now," Claudia said, surprising Tom. Even though he knew way more about Dungeons Online and was way better prepared for the expedition. Yet, he didn't have a single clue as to why the stone acted the way it did.

"Am I safe to assume that you somehow dried all the energy out of it?" Claudia raised her eyes at Tom's face and asked instead of revealing what was going through her head.

"Yeah," Tom replied, nodding his head.

"Then I think I understand everything," Claudia said with a reaffirmed voice. "Just keep in mind, I might be wrong. There is no way to confirm my guess without extensive testing, but..." Claudia took a moment to let the moment become tenser, "I think by absorbing the entire stone, we are also absorbing its impurities. So the difference between the amount of energy absorbed should be then equal to the energy our bodies use to eradicate those impurities?" Claudia explained her idea, although she ended it as a question to signify how unsure she was about the entire thing.

"That would make sense," Tom replied, rubbing his chin as he thought deeply about this topic. "Also, before you ask, there is a reason why I didn't consume all the stones that I did absorb in this... more efficient way," Tom noted. But instead of just revealing the truth, he took a step back and rested his back against the wall of the corridor.

"Do you remember what I did when fighting with the boss of the ninth floor?" he asked instead of picking up where he left.

"Yeah," Claudia nodded her head. "You made use of varying strengths within the room to exploit it into giving us better quality stones, right?" she replied. Even though that was exactly what Tom did and what he admitted to doing, she still didn't sound sure at the end of her reply.

"Now, what do you think would happen if I suddenly grow insanely strong while leaving you with your natural growth rate?" Tom asked with a wry smile on his face.