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“The way you put it…” Norbert muttered, raising his hand to rub his chin as he thought. “Yeah, my bad,” he admitted. “I didn’t consider it from this point of view. But still…” he said only to shake his head.

Norbert’s head stopped. He took a deep breath before raising his face and looking straight into Mathew’s eyes.

“If you are not just hungry for another girl, then why?”

It wasn’t a question coming from an officer’s mouth. It wasn’t scrutiny coming from the former servant of the law and order.

It was but a question coming from a mouth of a brother worried about his sister and desperately looking for a way to save her from what was decided for her.

“Are we seriously going to have this talk again?” Mathew protested, raising his face to the sky to find a recipient of his whining. He then shook his head before closing his eyes and taking a few breaths.

“No, I don’t want to go into detail so let’s keep it simple,” Mathew decided out loud, lowering his eyes and looking straight at Norbert. “We have several avenues to grow stronger. Yet, we exploited all of them already. Right now, it’s simply cheaper to help someone else grow rather than forcibly pushing with our growth.”

Despite how simply Mathew laid the situation out, he couldn’t be sure that the recipient of the information would get it. ‘The chances are better than when I explained it to the girls… But I can’t really tell whether he is up to date with current gaming trends,’ Mathew thought, keeping his eyes on Norbert’s face to scan it for his reaction.

“The general cost of raising your levels increases as you go, so you need Carol because it will be cheaper to grow her strength than it would be growing your own strength by the same degree.” Norbert crossed his hands over his chest again. His left foot started to rhythmically tap against the ground as he squinted his eyes and focused on his internal thoughts.

“Still,” he finally spoke again, shaking his head before raising his eyes back on Mathew’s face. “I don’t really see why it needs to be Carol in particular.”

‘That’s a good point,’ Mathew thought, nodding his head with approval. ‘But one that I’ve thought about long ago.’

“There are exactly three reasons for our choice,” Mathew stated, looking around his group to indicate he wasn’t the only one to blame. “First, she came to us first, asking if she could be of any help. That proves she has the initiative and guts. Then, since we cooperate with her brother, I believe she is less likely to randomly stab us in the back.”

Mathew explained his reasons in a calm, steady voice while observing Norbert’s reactions at all times.

“That only makes two,” Norbert pointed out. “You said you have three reasons for picking her. What’s the third?” he asked while raising his left eyebrow up a little.

“It’s not going to be anything new for her,” Mathew finally revealed the third reason.

‘I know I could just ignore that part…’ Mathew’s lips trembled as he pressed them together in a silent bout of hesitation. ‘No, it’s better to be honest if I want to keep them by my side,’ he decided.

“Oh…” Norbert’s reply carried out all the air from his lungs, making him slump down as he stood.

It was nothing less than a miracle that the officer managed to stay on his feet.

Pac.

‘Huh?’ Mathew twitched, startled by the unexpected sound. Yet, as he looked around, all he could see was all three of his girls massaging their foreheads with the inner side of their right palms.

‘Wait, did I do something stupid?’ Mathew then reflected, realizing just what kind of motion could produce the noise from before and led to all three of his girls apparently making out with their own hands.

“Well, I can’t deny that,” Norbert finally spoke out, breaking through the awkward atmosphere Mathew unwillingly created.

“Great,” Mathew said, quickly taking the opportunity to derail the current topic. “Then how about we pay more attention to the road now?” he suggested. “I don’t want us to fall into the overconfidence fallacy.”

“What,” Nadia spoke out, lowering her hand and raising her head to look at her man. “Do you still want more cores or something?”

“We don’t have enough of them,” Mathew quickly replied, refuting Nadia’s attempts at putting the idea out as something bad.

“Even with all the cores we gathered from the huge fight from the night?” the girl then asked, opening up her eyes wide in surprise. “Wait, how many cores do we even have in the first place?”

“We only have nearly enough to get the two fortresses and then I have no idea how much we will need to go further,” he explained. “And then, we still need some cores to let Carol level up once she joins the group,” he added only to sum the situation up with a shake of his head.

“If I do recall correctly, right now we have almost two thousand. That means we need around four hundred more to get to the third fortress,” Mathew then properly gave Nadia the details she was interested in.

“Establishing a fortress cost a thousand and we have to do it twice. Then, we still need to get three merchants for the third location. So, in short, we don’t have anywhere near enough of them,” Leila joined the conversation, pointing out the obvious. “But I actually want to ask about something else,” she then added.

“What is it?” Mathew asked, taking the opportunity to change the topic from what he talked about before even further.

“Why didn’t we get the fortress up and running back in the media building?” Leila asked, leaning her head to the side as she stared down at Mathew’s face with curiosity brimming in her eyes. “I mean, we had the cores to do so…” she pointed out.

Yet, Mathew didn’t respond right away like he usually tried to do.

First, he took a breath in as if he wanted to prepare fuel for producing words. He then opened up his mouth… Only to keep them open as he looked to the side and slowly closed them down.

“Would you believe if I told you…” Mathew muttered, stuttering every other word as he spoke. “If I told you that I forgot about it?”