The Guild employee tilted her head to the side a slight bit and looked at the small iron tag, then looked back up at the old man standing in front of her.
"I'm sorry, Sir, I'm afraid I am not allowed to simply hand such information over to you. First, are you part of the Guild yourself?" She asked, and Eisen nodded before handing her his clay tag.
"I only joined recently, so my rank is not all that high yet, but I plan on raising it a bit higher soon." Eisen explained, and the guild employee took a look, taking both the iron tag as well as Eisen's clay tag in order to scan them to see if they are real.
After a short while, she returned and handed the clay tag back to him. "Depending on the circumstances, we may be able to tell you how to contact the owner of this Iron tag. Why are you looking for them?"
Eisen sighed loudly and grabbed the small leather-bound book that he found in his pocket when first playing the game once more, in order to continue using the story that he used in the Adventurer's Guild back in Melroe. "You see, I found this Diary together with that tag. There wasn't any personal information inside that would allow me to find the owner, but nonetheless it seemed quite important to the owner judging from the contents. But those contents aren't something that everyone should see, as they are quite personal, so I would prefer to be able to bring it back to the owner myself."
The Employee opened her eyes slightly wider in surprise, and then nodded slowly. "I see. In such a situation, it should be fine, but try to keep it low-profile, okay? The owner of this tag is John Banner, and he should be at his Inn, the Silent Night, right now. He is quite keen on his privacy, and barely anyone knows anything about him, so he should definitely appreciate you bringing such an item back to him." She explained, handing over the Iron tag to Eisen again so that he may give it back to the original owner as well.
"Thank you very much, young miss. I'm sure that dear John will appreciate this gesture of yours as well." Eisen said with a smile, scratching his beard as he turned around with a smile and left the Guild building with Melissa and Caria, receiving as many unwelcoming stares on his way out as he had on his way in.
But Eisen simply ignored this and made his way toward a nearby alley, hiding behind a small wall there while changing into his suit for what was to come.
He then walked to the Silent Night Inn, where John was supposed to be staying. It seemed to be quite a long way away from the center of town in a rather run-down area compared to the rest of the town, although it wasn't so bad as to call it the slums.
Eisen stepped through the front door of the Inn and walked up to the counter, trying to think of a good way to approach this, until he managed to come up with something that should work quite well.
He stepped up in front of the lady at the counter and smiled brightly, scratching his beard with his eyes closed. "Good day. I'm looking for my grandson, John Banner. I heard he's in this Inn right now."
The woman at the counter squinted her eyes before nodding. "Yeah, he's here, although I wasn't aware that his grandfather was as well."
"Haha, I can't blame you. Young John was never one to talk much about these things. I had to ask around to find out where he was staying as well." Eisen chuckled, and the woman smiled back at him.
"He really just stays in his room up there most days. Don't even know how he's making a living anymore, to be honest, so I can see what you mean. Usually I shouldn't tell you, but since you're family, it should be fine. He's in room 12. Try knocking, if he doesn't open, I won't be able to do anything for you either. I can just relay a message if that happens."
"No, no, it's fine. I'm sure once he hears this old man's voice, he'll open up." Eisen laughed and thanked the woman, making his way through the corridor and turning the corner toward the room that the man Eisenw as looking for was staying at. He was actually quite surprised that this worked out so easily, although this may partially be simply because of his charisma stat.
At first he thought that it wouldn't do much at only 21, since 10 was probably the base for everyone despite them not being able to see the stat in their status, but maybe the base for charisma was actually 0 instead? In that case, 21 charisma may make quite a difference.
Either way, it was now time to face John Banner, one of the men responsible for breaking Kirisho's amulet and leaving her in the state she was in now. Despite the fact that she was technically somehow living, she was at the same time basically nonexistent. A version of her was there, sure, as displayed through the mist constantly filling out the large hall in the front of Ailren's cave, so her body was technically there. But that didn't mean that she really was. Her body was empty, just sitting there and doing nothing. Just existing.
But her mind was only there in fractions, her true self only becoming clear every once in a while for a few moments before returning to nothing.
That was not a sight that was fun to look at, no matter if it was within the game, or in real life.
Trying not to think about this for now, Eisen stepped up in front of the door of room 12 and tried to open it up quitely, but it seemed to be locked. Eisen looked left and right to make sure nobody was around and then squatted down onto the ground while taking off his backpack and opening it up. After commanding the Bee soldiers hiding inside of it to come out for a second, Eisen grabbed his lock picking tools and then told the soldiers to hide in the backpack again.
He looked into the lock and figured out its basic layout. Compared to the lock that Eisen found in the Goblin town a while back, this one was considerably more advanced, but it still wasn't incredibly complicated, so Eisen could quite easily open it up without much work and was pretty quiet while he was doing so.
Slowly, Eisen opened up the door and stepped through while making as little noise as possible, and noticed a man lying on the single bed in the corner of the room, asleep.
He seemed to be only wearing his underwear, and all of his equipment was on the table next to the bed. Eisen looked down at Caria as he got a small idea on how to make sure this would go smoothly, slowly stepping up to the bed. The old man poured soil from his Flame of the Earth Element onto the ground under the bed and spread a large number of nuts all over said soil. He then whispered what Caria was supposed to do to her before she quickly ran over to the bed while Eisen closed the door behind himself, locking it with the key laying on the table with John's equipment.
After turning around, Eisen saw that Caria's plant control worked out and that thick roots were growing upward onto the bed, slinging themselves around the body of the man sleeping in it.
However, John soon woke up and tried to scream out, but couldn't as Eisen stuffed a piece of cloth into his mouth while pulling a chair next to the bed and sitting down on it.
"Now then, John. Nice to finally meet you. I doubt you know why I'm here, but quite a while ago, you and some others entered a cave near the Dwarven Town Melroe filled with mountains of treasure. Inside, you found a Mist Spirit bound to an amulet. That was you, right?" Eisen asked, cutting to the point as quickly as he could so that he wouldn't punch John. This was just a topic that absolutely infuriated Eisen, making his heart ache every single moment it was on his mind while his stomach turned upside down, making him feel like he was about to throw up any second now.
Slowly, John nodded his head with a terrified expression, and Eisen quietly continued his interrogation. "You tried to kill that Mist Spirit by destroying the amulet she was trapped in, before taking its shards with you. I'm here because I want to know what you did with those shards." Eisen explained quietly, and slowly pulled out the piece of cloth out of John's mouth, resulting in him immediately starting to talk.
"You want those shards..? I have one of them with me, just take it and leave! I tried selling it because it seemed like it was made of gold, but it was completely worthless! And I just couldn't get rid of it! It's a cursed piece of shit, and it haunts me whenever I close my eyes, so just take it, please…" The man said while crying out, trying to look over at his bag to signal where the shard was.
Eisen opened his own bag and ordered the soldier bees to look for the shard, since Eisen didn't want to take his eyes off of John for even a second. After a short while, one of them returned with a small, seemingly golden splinter with different inscriptions on its outside. It apparently wasn't actual gold, but rather something like a bone, although it was basically impossible to see what kind of bone it was. However, when Eisen looked at the shard in his hand, John only stared on in surprise.
"H-Huh? You can touch it?" He exclaimed, and Eisen looked at him with a deep frown. "What do you mean with that?" The old man asked, and John slightly tensed up before swallowing deeply.
"Well, nobody else was able to actually touch it beside me… That's how curses work… If you're cursed by an item, only the one cursed by it can touch it until the curse is lifted… Does that mean you lifted the curse just now? Am I finally free?!" John asked with a loud yell of excitement, but he settled down once Eisen glared at him.
Eisen sighed loudly and looked at John, as he wanted to move on to the next part of the investigation.
"Listen here. I will take this shard with me, and you will tell me where I can find the others. Then I will release you." Eisen commanded, and John swallowed loudly as his nervosity grew.a
"O-Okay! I will tell you all I know! Back then, we took all the treasure that we could carry! We were three people in total! Our magician Kyle went on to some magic city and bought a house there, and our leader Thomas tried to pay back his debt, but was killed by the loan collectors. They are here in this town, and maybe one of them was cursed instead and has the shard with him! That's all I know, so please let me go!" John practically begged, and Eisen nodded at Caria to tell her that she can let him go, before all of the roots suddenly withered up and crumbled.
Immediately, John jumped up to grab his weapon, but Eisen was already prepared for that and already poured his mana into it and, since it was simple steel, was able to use transmutation on it, so that he managed to dull the blade to an extent that it wouldn't be able to cut butter apart, in preparation for the plan he had come up with to make sure John couldn't actually come after him with the help of guards of some sort.
After all, technically John never commited a crime, as Kirisho was a spirit which was counted as a monster. Thus Eisen had to be careful, but he already came up with something that should work quite well.
When John swung his sword at Eisen, the old man held his hand up and infused it with his Flame of the Earth element turned toward the earth part as much as possible, but only at the spot where the dull blade was going to hit to increase his defense there as much as he could, activating 'A Giant's Strength' on top of it.
Nonetheless, Eisen still felt a surge of heat spreading out from his palm where the blade striked, as was to be expected coming from an attack of a Rank 4 Adventurer. But due to what Eisen did in order to assure that he could pull this off, Eisen managed to act as if nothing just happened, grabbing the blade tightly while making it brittle with transmutation to make it shatter as Eisen grabbed it.
Next, Eisen also began transforming his throat all the way toward earth to make him sound as threatening as possible, his transformation gradually happening while he spoke. "I guess you didn't realize that the cave you were ravaging was the lair of a Dragon. That Mist Spirit was nothing but a guest, and we Dragons treat our guests well. Now I look like a liar in front of that woman, and I never lie. With that in mind, listen to me now."
While Eisen slowly stood up with his eyes closed, his hair and beard slowly transformed into his regular base element transformation as Eisen created small cracks all over his skin with the help of his regular base element before he opened his eyes with his 'Truth Seeing Eyes' activated, making them look like those of a Dragon's.
"If you ever come near that cave, or even Melroe in itself, ever again, you will die. Do you understand me?"
As Eisen was towering over the figure in front of him, John nodded slowly as he backed away into the corner, shaking out of fear beyond what Eisen has ever seen in the game as of now.
[John Banner is now terrified of you. It will be easy to control him through that fear, but it is impossible for it to ever disappear]
With a grin, Eisen turned around and unlocked the door while Caria was following him as the old man undid all of his transformations and deactivated his skills, turning around one more time before leaving the room.
"Good."