"Why can't we just let him go?" Salem asked. "With his story, he's not likely to be believed."
"Yes, but what if people investigate?" Alina raised several concerns. "Or what if he brings a body back?"
"I'll just make my nanomachines consume the bodies." Salem thought that seemed reasonable. " I can probably turn their bodies into nanomachines and get some free psyche while I'm at it."
"...Alright. That seems reasonable."
"Wait....How do we get him to leave?"
"..." Alina had no answer to that.
So they waited.
...
At about breakfast time, the boy finally got tired of searching for Ghost.
"Since he's leaving now, why don't we leave him some food? The entirety of the time over here he was talking to himself, saying he needed to save himself, and asked Ghost to go with him so he could eat." Salem proposed this idea because he truly pitied the poor soul.
Alina immediately shut down the idea. "With the food, it'd be more likely he'd be believed."
"Alright then. He's leaving now. When he's gone, I'll take care of the corpses."
While the kid left, Salem designed a locust like bot that would be able to store some psyche by eating things, such as the readily-available corpses on the forest floor.
"I'm shocked by his actual lack of foresight." Salem said. "His story would be believed of he brought a corpse with him. After he tries to tell the story, he'll be scorned and made fun of. He'll regret not bringing a body so much." Salem started to find the situation amusing. At the same time he felt bad for being amused because it was at the expense of a young boy who was struggling in life.
"I suppose we can't save everybody." Salem said, sadly. "If we could, we would be able to make a utopia. But then again, when nothing's wrong, nothing's okay. Hard times make strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times." At the moment, Salem felt like dispensing random related quotes from his previous life. He couldn't even remember where he got the quotes from.
Alina gave him a few strange glances for his bunch of phrases that made sense in the situation, but at the same time didn't.
After the bodies were taken care of, Salem recycled his little cleaners and was shocked to see a notification.
---
New ability acquired: Consume.
Consume: You can now consume corpses and have a small chance of acquiring abilities or passives from them.
---
"Well thats good." Salem said absentmindedly.
"What's good?" Alina asked him.
"Oh I just got a new ability." He replied. At this point he was used to getting good skills.
Alina looked at him in shock. "How can you be so nonchalant about getting new abilities? Do you know how rare abilities are?"
"Well, for me, relatively common." Salem couldn't understand why a common phenomenon for him was something so rare for others.
'Oh. Maybe it's the fact that I have prior knowledge.' The thought struck him as funny but he didn't try and antagonize Alina by laughing.
"..."
"If they're so rare, why do I keep getting them? He asked. "What if they're based on your understanding of your class?"