Elaina's eyes were glued to the gold tooth in Roen's palm. Her throat felt dry.
She opened her mouth, her voice rasping out like it had to be squeezed between clenched teeth.
"This thing..."
She took a deep breath, trying to steady her tone, but the end of her sentence still carried a faint, involuntary tremble.
"...Where did you get it?"
The question had barely left her lips before she realized how stupid it was.
It was obviously a molar, worn at the ridges, and still faintly carrying the indistinct aura of whoever once owned it.
But like a child hoping for a lie they can pretend to believe, she instinctively wished Roen's answer wouldn't confirm her guess.
Roen looked at her as if nothing were out of the ordinary, his face unreadably calm.
"Pulled it from a corpse," he said flatly.
Elaina sighed inwardly. Of course it was.
She'd been mentally bracing for it, and yet it was still hard to stomach.
Roen, utterly oblivious to her horror, continued to explain in his usual disturbingly rational tone:
"Things like this ruin a corpse's completeness."
"Just because a body is flawed doesn't mean the life was. At least, that's how I see it."
"So I removed it."
"Gold makes a fine alchemical material, so I figured I'd keep it."
Elaina twitched as she listened to him ramble so nonchalantly.
He really said that with a straight face...
"Ruining the corpse's completeness"...?
Wasn't that just fancy talk for looting?
And not just any looting, he pulled a gold tooth out of a dead guy's mouth.
He was literally using a dead man's tooth as travel money.
Absolutely disgusting.
But… also kind of unfair.
Why did he get to stumble across corpses with gold teeth?
Perfectly good currency, buried in someone's jaw… and now casually pried out by this coffin-wearing weirdo?
Unacceptable.
Elaina bit her lip, her lovely face twisting with a strange mix of contempt… and envy.
Do necromancers just invest all their stat points in "corpse encounter rate"?
Still, these thoughts stayed firmly in her mind.
She was Elaina, the Ashen Witch. A genius. A beautiful young woman.
No way would she stoop to something as low as digging teeth out of corpses for cash.
...At least not unless she was absolutely desperate.
And even then, only from a skeleton, long gone, completely dry.
Or maybe... one that had just died? Still warm?
Well, no. Definitely not one that smelled bad.
Yes. She had standards.
She was Elaina. She had dignity.
As she repeated this internal chant, desperately clinging to her pride, reality dumped a cold bucket over her moral boundaries.
Traveling was expensive.
And that gold tooth looked… pretty hefty.
Her eyes drifted back toward it. Her gaze was a tangled web of revulsion, longing, and internal struggle.
Eventually, the longing won.
She cleared her throat, trying to hide her growing obsession with money behind a mask of indifference.
Raising her chin, she spoke with a tone that almost sounded charitable:
"Fine."
"Since you asked so persistently… I suppose I'll take it off your hands."
She reached out delicately, as if she were picking up something filthy, and gingerly plucked the gold tooth from his palm.
Then she immediately stuffed it into her coin pouch at lightning speed, like the mere sight of it might give her a disease.
It wasn't a sparkling gold coin, true, but gold was gold. Hard currency.
Worst case, she'd trade it in at a jeweler in the next town or country.
Though, now that she thought about it… jewelers were notorious for ripping people off.
A more exciting idea popped into her mind.
She could just melt the tooth down with fire magic and mold it into a perfect coin herself.
Hmm. That didn't sound like a bad plan at all.
Seeing her finally accept the payment, Roen's perpetually unreadable face softened ever so slightly. He let out a small breath, as if a burden had been lifted.
He turned to Elaina and asked:
"Can I sit on the back of the broom?"
Elaina thought for a moment, her gray hair drifting gently in the spring breeze. She pressed her lips together, brows knitting slightly.
Then she gave a slow, regal nod.
"You may. But I don't like people touching me. So you'll need to sit all the way in the back."
Her tone was firm, leaving no room for argument. Her sharp eyes met his with unflinching clarity, drawing an invisible boundary between them.
Roen raised a brow, eyeing the broom from end to end, measuring its barely-two-person capacity.
If he was relegated to the very tip of the tail, balance would definitely be a concern.
He glanced behind at the enormous coffin strapped to his back, then back at the broom's slender frame, and frowned slightly.
"Then fly slowly," he finally said, with a rare note of caution in his voice. "I don't want to fall off."
That sentence was the key.
Like a magic spell, it unlocked something in Elaina's expression.
Her lips curled up into a sly little grin. Mischief sparkled in her eyes like stardust.
"Don't worry," she said sweetly, voice dripping honey.
"I'll be very careful."
She gestured for him to mount.
Unlike before, she didn't sit sidesaddle this time. She swung one leg over and straddled the broom properly, ready for a stable takeoff.
Her silver-gray hair trailed down her back, her skirt settling neatly on either side.
Roen carefully eased onto the rear of the broom. The coffin weighed heavily on his back, anchoring his posture as he tried to keep his balance.
His expression was as calm as ever, though something wary flickered in his eyes.
"Takeoff!"
With Elaina's cheerful shout, the magic broom surged into the sky.
<><>---------------------------------------
200 P.S = 1 Extra Chapters
Leave ratings and a good Review!