Eisen looked at Xenia with confusion, tilting his head to the side lightly. "What do you mean? How did you let Dien know? I was with you the whole time…" The old man asked, thinking about what was going on. The only way that she could have let him know was through a chat message, right? But considering that Dien wasn't a player… that would only be possible if he was Xenia's Knight, similar to how Kiron was his, and that also seemed somewhat unlikely.
Noticing that Eisen was confused, Xenia began wearing a smug grin as she held her hand forward with her palm pointed upward. "It's a Magic Letter! It's a combination of Sorcery for the process, Mana Manipulation for the letter's shape, and Scribing so that I could properly inscribe the mana-letter with the message and the Magic Circle from Sorcery. I was writing on my palm with this little stick on my way here, that's when I did it." Xenia said with a smug smile, grabbing a small wand from her pocket despite already carrying a staff.
Eisen was quite interested in the process, but it sounded somewhat abstract to him. However, Eisen did get something from this. If Xenia were able to combine a skill such as scribing with sorcery, then wouldn't he be able to do the same with enchanting? For example, wouldn't he be able to simply draw enchantment circles on the ground with ink instead of having to carve it into a surface? At the very least, it should save some time if Eisen wanted to test a few enchantments. And if it was possible to combine scribing with enchanting, then it should be the same with other skills too, right? He may be able to create a 3D enchantment circle out of wood or metal that would make it easier to place into things, and maybe a bit more durable.
With such thoughts, Eisen began scratching his beard, falling off into a deep mindest of different crafting possibilities, similar to what Xenia did when interested in magic, just that his version was faced inward and hers outward. However, Xenia saw that expression that coincidentally pointed toward Xenia's wand and misinterpreted it as interest in that item itself.
"Hehe, are you curious about this~? This is my absolute pride! You see, certain materials in this world can transform when given enough mana! And that also works with your element! So you can make tons and tons of different materials with different elements! Maybe you should look into that, and maybe you can make some cute items out of them? That takes a lot of mana though, so maybe you won't be able to do it. Anyway, for a while, I constantly infused this pure magic gem with mana that was infused with my element, and managed to make it a specialized Gem! I had a Wandmaker in town turn it into the tip of this wand, and now it's super cool, right? It amplifies the effect of my element by 5%! Pretty cool, huh?" The High-Elf immediately began bragging about this oh-so-awesome item that she had acquired, while Eisen was still in his mindset, actually just hearing the end of what she said.
After the old man finally figured out what she was talking about, he began to laugh loudly. "Haha, Elemental-Infused materials, huh? I must admit those are pretty useful. Although the Mythril I made was kind of hard to work with, in the end, it was worth it. Ah, do you want to see my specialized staff, I'm sure you'd be interested in it, wouldn't you?" Eisen replied with a grin, happy that Xenia seemed to be interested in crafting at least to an extent considering that she was talking about these materials and making awesome items out of them.
"Hm? Eisen, I don't think you understand. It takes mana worth hundreds of thousands of MP to turn a material into lowest-grade magic materials. Even I only managed to make a low-grade magic gem, so ho-" Xenia tried to explain with a loud sigh, apparently somewhat looking down on Eisen for his old age, thinking that he was going senile, when suddenly a tall staff appeared out of nowhere in Eisen's hand, before he began to explain.
"Oh, yeah, I didn't infuse it myself. I made some generators that make 2500 MP an hour, so I only needed to wait for everything to properly infuse into the materials after setting up a proper array to have the pure mana that generated transformed into my element. After that, I had some different materials that I all used to make this staff."
Completely baffled, Xenia looked at the staff, especially the weird flames floating around at the very top, giving off a very light glow. After a few seconds, she tried to touch it, but immediately when her fingers got into range, her hand cramped up. "H-Huh..? What's this? Ah, so it's just special in the way that it can't be touched by others? As expected, you probably went overboard with the materials of your element, so it doesn't give you any bonus, right? R-Right..?" She asked, genuinely hoping this to be the case. She was so proud of this item, and Xenia was supposed to be the Original of Magic, so she shouldn't be outdone by some borderline-senile old man in Magic Equipment, right?
And then, her heart sunk the moment that Eisen shook his head. "No, no, this staff is soulbound to me, that's why only I can touch it. That reminds me, I should probably tell you about soulbinding, to see if you've got a box as well… Hmm, isn't your Spirit Magic something like working with souls? So you should be able to get soulbound items sooner or later… Either way, this staff currently gives me a 50% bonus to my element."
Immediately after hearing this incredible bonus to Eisen's staff, Xenia's jaw dropped down. "50%? That much? What the hell? How?" She asked, her surprise and shock, indeed turning into curiosity and merely wanting to have a similar item as Eisen did.
"As I said, I created the materials with my element and then made this staff out of them. Once my enchanting skill reaches a higher rank, I'll be able to use ability enchantments using abilities of other people, and then I could do the same for you and make you a cool staff." The old man laughed as he placed his Staff away inside of his soul storage again, before turning around because he heard footsteps behind him.
"Hey, Xenia! What did you call me here for?" The voice of a young man asked, and Eisen immediately turned around to look at the source, while Xenia was staring at Eisen in glee.
"Ah, I see. So you're Dien then?" The old man inquired with a light but stiff smile that would usually make someone subtly uncomfortable. Confused at what was going on, the Elf with his long white hair bound into a ponytail behind his head with that seemingly unique light blue strand mixed in and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses sitting on his nose. "Yeah, that's me. And who may you all be?" The Elf asked with a frown, looking over at Xenia who was quietly standing behind Eisen.
Without trying to figure out a way to subtly go about this, Eisen stepped closer toward him. "Nice to meet you then. My name is Eisen, and I'm here to grab the shard from the amulet you and your two old party members broke. I was told John, let you know about me already."
"W-Wait, what? You are… Frost Spike!" Dien yelled out as he held his hand forward before the air around Eisen became colder and colder instantly, and before he knew it, Eisen was surrounded by numerous spikes shooting up from the ground, pointing at Eisen's throat. "Xenia, get away from him! That guy's the Golden-Eyed Demon!" The elf tried to warn her, but Xenia began looking back at him in annoyance.
"What do you think you're doing?" She asked, instantly confusing Dien. "That guy, he terrorized Ornier, didn't he?! We need to-"
"I asked, what do you think you're doing?" Xenia asked Dien once more, now not annoyed but rather angry, as she drew something into the air with her staff, before tapping the center of the magic circle, causing a hand of dirt to appear out of the park's ground, quickly grabbing and restraining Dien's whole body.
"H-Hey, what are you doing?" He asked, struggling to get out of the giant dirt hand, while being entirely ignored by Xenia who turned to Eisen, who was still surrounded by the spikes while Caria stood next to him in worry as she held Melissa, and Kiron was slowly freaking out, trying to get his Lord out of there.
With a sigh, Xenia prepared to draw another magic circle into the air to melt the ice, but before she could do that, Eisen already coated his hand in his element turned all the way to fire again and began to melt his way out of the ice quite quickly, immediately stepping in front of Dien once again.
"Don't worry. I'm not here to fight or attack you. Since you're Xenia's friend, I'm sure you're not a bad guy. I just really need that amulet's shard." Eisen explained, as he laid his head on the top of Caria's head, who was standing next to him worried, while Xenia deactivated the Spell that was restraining Dien.
"B-But… aren't you a demon? You attacked some people in Ornier, right? You threatened John, and because of you, he's been constantly holed up in his inn! You scarred him for life!" Dien yelled out, still incredibly aggressive toward the old man, who simply remained quiet and took out the screen displaying what CB-1 was currently seeing. He already confirmed that he managed to reach the right area of Melroe a little bit ago, and it seemed like now he was actually in front of Ailren's cave. With a mental command, he made CB-1 fly inside, while CF-1 climbed out of Eisen's backpack.
"First off, I had a direct conflict with three groups of people there. One group was the one through which I got known as the Golden-Eyed Demon. They attacked me after I saved a Fey-Kin boy from an illegal monster shop in Ornier, as well as released all the peaceful monsters while killing all the aggressive ones. The monsters I didn't kill were all tamed by Jyuuk, one of those that peaked in the past, except one. That's the half-dragon behind me, and he became my Knight. There was another fight before that, were I did one-sidedly attack a group of people, bu-"
"You attacked someone out of nowhere? You-" Dien interrupted Eisen, but was in turn interrupted by the old man himself as well, who quite obviously wasn't in the mood to play around.
"Listen to me and shut up. I did attack one group of people, but they were the loan-sharks that killed your other old party-member. They weren't even heavily injured, and I just made them tell me where the amulet's shard was." Eisen explained while looking down at Dien, who wore a bitter expression thinking about his old companion and party-leader. "And then, I, of course, confronted John, using my 'demonic' form. It's merely a transformation I activated with my magic element, combined with another skill of mine. I was angry, for a specific reason, which I will show you in a bit." Eisen said, as he placed CF-1 down on the park's bench that was next to them, as he looked down at the screen.
"CF-1, connect with the remote device." The old man commanded, before continuously mentally directing CB-1 as it was flying through the cave, straight toward the treasury, where it seemed like Ailren was currently lazing around again, although he was at least awake, quickly noticing the tiny intruder.
Now, from the other side of the display, a voice came through. "What is this..? This mana… Eisen, where are you?" The voice of the ancient dragon asked, and Eisen began chuckling while looking at CF-1.
"Yes, Ailren, it's me. This bat is another creation of mine that you're talking to, turn into your human form, and look into the pouch at the bottom of the bat, please." Eisen asked him, before Ailren did so in a bit of confusion, quickly grabbing the display, seeing Eisen's face shown on it.
"Oh, Eisen! How did you get in this thing? Did you learn spatial magic?"
"That's not important right now, and I'll explain it to you in a bit. First, is it possible for you to wake up Kirisho right now?"
"Hm? I am sure I can. Is something important going on?" Ailren asked in a bit of confusion, quickly bringing the display over to the large room where kirisho was currently sleeping, followed continuously by CB-1. In the short pause where nothing was happening due to the walking-time, Dien tried to figure out what was going on.
"The hell are you even doing? Who are you talking to, and who are Ailren and Kirisho?" He asked, at the same time that Ailren reached the Mist Spirit and prepared to wake her up.
With a serious expression, Eisen turned over to the Elf and held the display over toward him, to let him look at the scene unfolding right there. An old man talking to an empty, mist-filled room, before exactly that mist seemed to swirl around and thicken in front of the man, slowly turning into a figure that Dien could recognize quite well.
"Just look."
