Questions and Answers

Sia returned to the room with a pill and a cup of water in her hands. She sat on the bed beside Achilles and put the pill and drank a mouthful of water.

The latter could only sigh when he saw this as he accepted his fate.

After another intense kiss that nearly drove him crazy, Achilles looked at Sia and asked something he had been wondering:

"May I ask where my equipments are?"

"Oh, it's in the drawer over there." The latter reached her hand inside the drawer, revealing an ebony ring inside. She gave the ring to Achilles so that he could check his items.

He felt relieved when he saw that his ring along with everything was still inside but before he could rejoice, Sia spoke again:

"Your axe and armor are pretty much scrap metal now, I couldn't really recover them from such heavy damage."

"It's fine, thank you for helping." Achilles was not happy by the loss of his armor and weapon, but as long as he could sell those Corrupted's corpses, he would be rich again in no time.

Sia saw him grinning foolishly to himself and let out a silent chuckle at his action. She thought that he looked quite cute at this moment.

"Is there anything else you want to ask me?" She figured that Achilles must have had a lot of questions so it was better to satisfy his curiosity before he suspected anything about her.

"...How long has it been since I passed out?"

"Around a month, it took us two weeks to get you back here then you are taken care of at this place for another two."

"What was your cohort doing there that day?"

"A member of mine just successfully advanced back then, she wants to quickly reach her next threshold so we went out to help her." Sia did not lie to Achilles anything, all she did was speak a half-truth so that he would deceive himself.

A weird, barely noticeable glint flashed in the latter's eyes as he looked at the former.

'She left some details out.'

The place where Achilles went indeed had many Corrupted, but most of them were around the same rank that he was or a minor rank higher like the Wendigo, only some were an exception to be a rank higher than him.

If her friend wanted to quickly and efficiently strengthen herself, she should have chosen somewhere that creature of the same rank as she should have been.

"...Haaa, that girl is truly a scaredy cat, even though she wants to level up by her own effort, she is too scared to fight something of the same level as hers." Sia added in an exasperated voice, seemingly complaining about this girl.

Even though Achilles was a perceptive man, Sia was much more cunning and smarter than he was in every aspect. She could easily predict whether the former was doubting her words or not just by a mere glance into his eyes. Thus she quickly inserted a simple comment about this "member" to make her words sound more believable.

And just as she expected, the glint in Achilles' eyes dimmed considerably but not entirely gone. This was something she had anticipated since she wasn't arrogant enough to think he would completely be fooled.

"...I see. I still have a few more questions though." Achilles said after a second of silence.

"Go ahead." Sia nodded her head indicating her agreement.

"Why did you go to this extent just to help me?"

"...Didn't you figure this out yourself already? I'm somewhat interested in you, plus it isn't really nice to leave an unconscious man alone by himself in some place like the hospital."

...The reason was sort of acceptable, he guessed? But it was still weird for a woman he only met thrice to help him like this.

"Why was it that I couldn't detect the aura of your cohort back then?"

"We have a simple artifact that can hide our auras as long as we don't reveal any killing intent. We turned it on since we didn't hunt anything that night." Sia explained to him calmly.

"...I see."

"...Are you a strong Divine?" Achilles asked again after thinking for a while.

"...I can be considered a decent one, I wouldn't say I'm one of the best there is though." Sia answered after a moment of pondering.

"Ah, that's right!" She suddenly clasped her hands together which made Achilles startled a little.

"Why don't you join my cohort? I'm sure everyone would welcome you."

"...Sorry Sia. I'm intending to fly solo a while more." Achilles looked deeply at her, trying to figure out if she had any ulterior motive.

"...I see, that's too bad." There was no trace of regret on her face when she said those words, Achilles felt strangely tensed by it for unknown reasons.

Suddenly, a ringing sound rang out within the room, it was coming from Sia's watch. She answered the call without turning on the video since Achilles was still next to her.

As she listened to what the other side said, her expression gradually became more serious. She only spoke five words to the person before hanging up:

"Tell the others to prepare."

Achilles wasn't sure exactly what was going on but his ears picked up a few words like "Corrupted" and "active".

'What's going on now?'