"So you're saying you're not the only one from your past world here?"
"Yeah, most likely."
Answering Mari's question honestly, Tom looked at the pile of bodies that were now burning.
(Still smells the same horrible way, no matter what fucking cause its for.)
After going through every single one, there was nothing to learn from them. This combined with the very intentional act of supplying them with lacklustre equipment and their tactics of suppressing enemies with hails of rock shards before hitting them with heavy artillery against lightly armed opponents made Tom feel it was way too close to his old world's tactics.
And it seemed he wasn't the only one with this opinion.
OBJECTIVE_STACK_PRIMARY_UPDATED.
FIX_THE_WORLD.
STATUS:_0.000000003103%_COMPLETE.
ELIMINATE_HOSTILE_AGENT.
HOSTILE_REINCARNATED_AGENT_OF_ANTAGONIST_CONFIRMED_OPERATING_IN_AO.
SANITISE_HOSTILE_AGENT.
NO_SECONDARY_OBJECTIVE(S)_IN_STACK.
END_OF_REPORT.
As Tom received this new set of orders a massive amount of divine mana flooded the area, it seemed that the ruthless lady of the hunt agreed with Tom's assessment and decided to take it just as seriously as him.
"That was… Her?"
"Yeah, she just ordered me to find whoever has knowledge of my old world and end them, I'm guessing it was also the same person who was behind this attack."
With the timing of the new order, Tom figured things were related and welcomed this as he had already planned to flay whoever was behind this attack alive.
(.... Wait a second.)
"How exactly was Lisa's mom captured?"
Getting a sinking feeling in his stomach, Tom realised that this strike might not have been the first time this antagonist had revealed his hand.
"... It was a brutal and cowardly attack, they raided our villages and did unspeakable things to children, women and the elderly before leaving an ultimatum for her to surrender… So she did."
"That's… Yeah, I'm really going to kill this dickhead."
Forgetting about his earlier idea of skinning this person alive, Tom now had something far better in mind.
"You guys want to go kill that piece of shit with me?"
Figuring both Lisa and Mari wanted their pound of flesh from the person behind all this grief, Tom showed he had grown a tiny bit as a person and invited them along.
"Of course."
While Lisa instantly agreed to this as it would most likely also mean freeing her mom, Mari had a more conflicted expression on her face as she did want to get payback, but she had other obligations to worry about.
And said obligations just turned up.
"Head priestess! We're here to assist and report!"
As Nick came running with sword drawn, but as he realised it was already over and his face stiffened up looking at the pyre of bodies. Likewise the other elven warriors who saw the massive pile of burning corpses together with Tom that was covered in half dried blood from his earlier wound and the person he had killed with his bare hands put a damper on the situation.
"Good work, as you can see, we've already finished up here. What's the damage back at the village?"
Glancing at Tom, Nick was clearly uncomfortable about something, but answered nonetheless.
"That first strike wiped it out, there are no standing structures left… But thanks to your early warning we have no casualties as the village was evacuated in time."
While Nick was thankful for the early warning and the lack of casualties, he was already well aware that the other villagers didn't see it this way and blamed Tom for the destruction of their village.
"That's great, we need to return to the temple so we'll take them with us and relocate them… Tom is going to go after the people behind this attack, while we guard against further retaliation strikes."
Turning to Lisa and Tom with a slightly apologetic smile on her face, Mari had made it clear she was putting her duties before anything else.
"Go kill that guy, free Clair and come back safe, I'll make sure everything here at home stays together… So please come back, both of you."
"Of course, leave the offensive to us."
While Tom's answer was almost instant, Lisa wasn't so quick to promise she would be back.
"... I'll try."
"You trying is more than enough, but please give me a chance sometime in the future."
While their relationship had improved a lot, Mari was aware she had a lot of work to do to earn back Lisa's thrust in her.
"I'll think about it. Also learning magic from you later."
Giving her aunt a quick hug, Lisa turned and started leaving but realised Tom wasn't following so she got quite red in the face.
"Aren't we leaving!?"
"No, I was planning to leave this evening… But sure we can go now."
Not wanting to get murdered in his sleep, Tom gave Mari an apologetic look before following along. Or at least he wanted to leave, but as Tom took a few steps he realised he had forgotten to do something important.
"Wait a second."
Sending a command through his neural uplink, Tom simply addressed the area with a single word.
"Brace."
"For wh-"
Although Mari wanted to figure out what was happening, she was cut off mid sentence by a large explosion coming from the direction of the village.
"I just cleaned up my leftovers, but don't worry there are no casualties and no chance of fires."
Having detonated the IED he had buried a few weeks ago to clean up any remains of the Wasp cache, Tom and Lisa left the elver village behind and didn't speak much until night hit and they stopped to camp.
"So, what's the plan?"
"... I have a few ideas, but no way of putting them into action due to a critical lack of supplies."
Having lost his PHX-13, a backpack and a few ration packs Tom's current issue was a critical lack of supplies. Centring himself, Tom knew first hand that war was expensive, way too expensive for his current supplies.
INTERFACE_CONFIRMED:_ACTIVE.
CONNECTION_SECURE.49.505_POINT(S)_AVALIBLE.
Still, to make money, you have to spend money first.
(I need a EXACTO kit for a 8.75mm rifle.)
REQUEST_CONFIRMED:NOW_SEACHING.
STANDBY.
TOTAL_COST:_20.000_POINTS
CONFIRM_TOTAL_PURCHASE_Y/N?
"Yes please."
Having confirmed his purchase, Tom caught the standardised military parcel in mid air and immediately opened it up to examine the stuff inside.
"What's this? A muzzle break and a new sight?"
Also looking inside the package, Lisa saw a few different parts that she recognized being for a rifle.
"This is an EXACTO kit for my rifle."
"EXACTO?"
Recognising that word from one of the books he had been reading while she was training, Lisa knew nothing about it other than that.
"EXACTO, or EXtreme ACcuracy, Tasked Ordnance is a system that aims special bullets and steers them into the target. This sight aims the round, and the brake programs the bullet to listen to the sight as it passes by, then the laser here apparently updates the bullet on… You don't give a shit about this, do you?"
Releasing mid explanation that Lisa wasn't paying attention, Tom resisted the urge to flick her in the face when she responded honestly.
"Yeah, I want to know what it does, that's all."
"The thing aim's special bullets, with it I can reach out and hit a 2 by 2 centimetre moving target at a range of 6 kilometres."
"Neat."
Dumbing down what he had spent the past 2 week's learning, Tom was only met by the barely enthusiastic response from Lisa.
Granted, this was because she didn't know how this upgrade kit fit into Tom's grand plan.
"With this I can hunt a lot of monsters, to get loads of points, points we can use to kill whoever imprisoned your mom and then free her. Also as I've no need for my old sight I'll give that to you."
If Tom wanted to just fulfil his new order, he would have left Lisa behind with Mari, slowly tracked down and identified his target before using a single round to turn his head into a pink mist from a few kilometres away.
But that wasn't enough at this point, plus he also needed to free Lisa's mom.
Instead, Tom's current plan was gathering up a lot of points, getting information on his target and finding out where Clair was held before forcing the king to permanently give up on demihumans.
(Still, it'll be a pain if I have to gather points on my own…)
Inspecting his M-909, Tom removed the LNX electro optical L4 sight from its mounting and presented it to Lisa.
"Are you ready to kill people and monsters alike to free your mom?"
"Of course."
Reaching out for the sight, Lisa didn't hesitate to embrace violence so she was slightly annoyed when Tom didn't let go.
"Are you sure? This pond will swallow you whole as soon as you dip as much as a finger into it… While I will be there with you every step of the way it's going to hurt unlike anything else."
"..."
Although he hadn't really spoken about it, Lisa knew Tom had demons, demons he couldn't get rid of, demons who had stained his soul red so many times it had turned black.
This was his way of warning Lisa about the path she would be embarking on.
"I'm sure, I'm tired of being a victim."
Although she had confirmed that she wanted to do this multiple times already, Tom felt Lisa had realised a bit more of the weight behind the choice she was making.
"Then get some rest, we're hunting monsters at first light to start resupplying."
"Roger, sounds like a plan."
"Tally 3 targets, 11 O'clock."
With the morning dew still clinging to the surrounding leaves, Tom's words broke through the morning air like a knife.
"... I see them."
Adjusting her new scope, Lisa steadied her breathing as she focused on the monster she had been tracking together with Tom.
"Okay then, you initiate and I'll mop up. Your ball is number 1 from the left, wind is 1, distance 1150. Fire when ready."
Also getting ready to fire, Tom focused Lisa for a moment to make sure her form was good, then zeroed in on his own targets as he saw she was getting ready to shoot.
As Lisa squeezed the trigger to fire, a few things happened in very quick succession, immediately after she fired, Tom also opened up on his first target, then a second later her shot landed in the middle of the large horse-like monster's head as Tom's first shot hit almost immediately after. The last standing monster, now smelling blood in the air, panicked and started bolting, but it only made it about half a stride before Tom's follow-up shot landed right in its ear.
"Hit, all targets down… Good work."
Making sure the trio of monsters were down for the count before calling it, Tom breathed out as he got up from his shooting position to check the surroundings.
"So… did it work?"
CORRUPTED_CREATURE(S)_DESTROYED
2000_POINT(S)_AWARDED
31.405_POINT(S)_AVALIBLE.
END_OF_REPORT.
"It might have."
Receiving a report awarding him points, Tom was still a bit sceptical if Lisa had just helped him obtain points, or if the two monsters he had just killed were worth a thousand a piece.
(To begin with, these point evaluations don't really make sense as far as I can tell…)
As far as Tom could tell, there was no rhyme or reason behind the points he was awarded by killing monsters, so it was hard to tell if Lisa had helped him without conducting a few more tests. Luckily, Tom was aiming for a softball target of 100.000 points by the time they reached the first large human city, so there was both room and time in his plans for experimenting.
"How are you not sure?"
Having only heard the bare minimum explanation of how Tom got rewarded for killing monsters by the Hunt, Lisa couldn't figure out why he was being vague as she found the entire concept to be just that.
"Not sure, it gave me less than the time I saved you from that multi headed bear in terms of raw points per monster killed… We need to try some different things before I can be sure, as I'm quite certain that the point value of monsters isn't tied to the threat they pose to people, but something else."
"Hmm, just point the way then."