After spending the rest of the evening with Tony and his Daughter-in-law Christie, Benjamin chose to quickly sit down in the capsule again and continue playing, so that he could deal with everything that came up when he couldn't play because it seemed like especially a day like this could be filled with many unforeseen incidents and impactful events.
Luckily, nothing major happened. Ailren had arrived in Handor, bringing Evalia with him, and the largest pre-launch group the 'Deltas' had begun playing the game. Besides that, it seemed like the old man didn't actually miss all that much, but he still wanted to quickly log in and become Eisen once again.
So, he did and quickly found himself back in the environment that he went to bed in last time, and before he knew it, a notification popped up in front of his face.
[Announcement! It has now been two weeks for the five originals, and one week for the 100 Omegas began playing the game, and now the next wave comes! In total, 5000 new players joined you in the World of Magic, and they are here to both test the many different functions, while at the same time introducing the idea of more such 'Artificial' People appearing in the world.
They will be known as 'Deltas', and in one more week, the last wave of players pre-launch will appear, before the Game really starts!
Enjoy your time!]
With a smile, Eisen quickly nodded and waved the notification away, before first looking at his side, where he now had a completely new arm, that didn't differ from his original arm in any sense whatsoever.
"Alright, perfect," Eisen said with a smile, quickly standing up from the bed in the Inn, and turning around to wait for Caria and Melissa to properly wake up while getting dressed in his crafting outfit since his Suit was now basically completely ripped up. He would need to either repair that, or make a new shirt and Jacket at some point soon, but Eisen didn't really care all that much about that right now.
It seemed like the others were all somewhere else, so Eisen stepped out of the room to look for them, and it didn't take long to find Kiron either since the Half-Dragon was apparently standing guard in front of the door.
"Good morning, Kiron," Eisen told him with a smile before the Knight quickly turned around with a bright smile. "M'Lord! You're awake again! I was afraid that it would take you much longer than usual to wake up again, considering that you had to regrow your arm…"
"Don't worry, seems like it's not too difficult for me to regrow an arm, just like I told you all before. So, want to fill me in on what's happened while I was asleep this time around?" The old man inquired before Kiron swiftly nodded and followed Eisen to the restaurant.
"Yes! A day after you began sleeping, Miss Evalia arrived at the Inn, telling us about how she was brought along by Aylrentyrth, and then rented out a room here as well. Right now, she seems to be out with Miss Xenia in town. Dien and Bree have been spending quite some time together as well, and we have barely seen her for the past two days, despite her staying close to you for nearly a whole day after that night to make sure your arm healed. Komer and Sky seem to be out investigating the situation with the new people similar to Komer that appeared all over this side of the continent."
Slowly, Eisen nodded in response to all of this as he sat down at a table in the corner of the restaurant, ready to order something to eat, when he remembered something. "Right, what happened to my arm that I ripped off that night? Did it disappear when my new one grew?"
Quickly, Kiron shook his head, saying that something entirely different happened. "We had expected at least the transformation to disappear, but your arm simply continued growing and pulsating, as if it was gaining a life of its own. Apparently, the evolved curse is quite strong as well. Miss Xenia has been trying to somehow break the curses, but it seemed as if it was simply dispelling everything that was used against it. It is currently stored in a safe location where it can do no harm."
"Wait, what? I'll have to ask Xenia about that, in a little bit then." Eisen said with a frown, wondering why Xenia didn't tell him about this yet. But Eisen chose to forget about this for now and temporarily place it on a back burner until after he finished his breakfast.
While he did so, he sent a message to Komer, Xenia and Evalia to tell them that he's awake, and asked them where to meet up, and they ended up choosing Xenia's research room, to which she was allowed to invite people after informing the Guild about this.
Once Eisen finished breakfast, the old man, together with his two tamed monsters and his Knight, made his way to the Mage's Guild, where he was promptly greeted by the same man that stood by the stairs the first time Eisen visited this building.
"Welcome, Sir. Xenia already informed us that you would be coming, so please follow me." He said with a smile, waving his hand over to the staircase leading to the upper floors, before Eisen quickly followed him while carrying both Caria and Melissa, who for some reason were especially cranky and clingy today.
A short while later, after walking past all kinds of rooms where different experiments seemed to be going on, the four of them were brought to Xenia's research room, that she apparently continuously rented out for over an in-game month now.
Immediately when Eisen stepped through the door, Bree threw herself at the old man, making him stagger ever so slightly, before he placed his hand on her head.
"Welcome back, Eisen! I was scared that the stuff with your arm wouldn't work out after all, but apparently, it really did work…" She said with a loud sigh, wiping a tiny tear away from the corner of her eye. "Sorry if I worried you guys. If I hadn't done that, the curses would have completely taken over my whole body, and that really wouldn't have been good." Eisen chuckled before the rest of the group also came to greet him.
"Yeah, you can say that again. Anyway, good morning, Eisen." Xenia said, leaning back in her chair in front of a large desk covered with all kinds of books and sheets of paper before Evalia walked up to the old man as well.
"Well look at you, ya really didn't seem like the kinda guy to literally rip his own arm off. And I've got a message for ya from that Dragon, I'll tell you later though, seems like Xenia wanted to talk to you first." Evalia exclaimed after properly greeting the old man, and then sat down on one of the other chairs in the room again, next to where she placed the Guitar that Eisen made for her a while ago.
"Alright, thanks, Evalia. So? What is it you want to talk about?" Eisen asked the High-Elf, who quickly nodded and began to explain.
"I want to talk about your arm. I really don't know what it is anymore, and it just keeps changing. It was already pretty disfigured when you brought it out with you the other day, but now you can't even see what it is anymore. And I tried analyzing the curse that was formed through all the other curses layered on top of each other, but it's so high-grade that I can't even figure out what it's called. And in the end, it's your arm, so I didn't want to actually start with a serious attempt at reversing or breaking the curse." She explained, and Eisen stayed silent for a bit as he thought about what to do, before coming to a conclusion.
"Well, you can go ahead and try to reverse the curse, however much you can. And Kiron said it was pulsating before, does that mean it's actually alive?" He asked while Xenia showed him the small table where the arm was currently laying on. At this point, it somehow seemed to resemble a huge malformed black heart, with really nothing that could tell someone what it was before.
"No, it's not really alive, it's just… reacting. I don't know if it's waiting for something, or if it's slowly turning into something else, but it's just doing that all the time. It hasn't been changing for the past day, so I'm guessing it's done with that for now, but I could very well be wrong." She explained, while Eisen continued to look at the cursed arm, or rather mass, with a frown.
If this technically originated from his own body, he should surely be able to see what this is, right? And in fact, it did seem as if Eisen was able to see the information for it.
[False Demonic Mass of Yin]
[Description] This is a mass of flesh originating from the Demon Candidate with the title 'Golden-Eyed Demon' that was given a large amount of cursed energy, transforming it into a Mass of Yin, a thing that can be called the source of all that is bad.
In order to complete this Mass of Yin, it is necessary for the source of the Flesh to truly turn into a Demon of Yin.
Immediately, Eisen opened his eyes wide after reading through this notification, hoping that what he just read was a joke.
"Xenia, this isn't cursed. It's more like it is a curse in of itself. My arm turned into a 'Mass of Yin' after being cursed so heavily. And as long as I won't become a complete demon, it will stay the way it is now, apparently." The old man explained to her before Xenia looked at him, confused.
"Wait, what do you mean? A 'Mass of Yin'? What's that supposed to even be?" She asked before one individual, especially knowledgeable in many different specific areas, raised his voice.
"The first Monster was born from a 'Mass of Yin'… It's the counterpart to the 'Mass of Yang', through which the first person was born, at least in stories. I don't know if that's really how everything went. Either way, a Mass of Yin is something horrible, it really is, but nobody can really say what it does, or rather will do once it's completed…" Sky explained with a deep frown on his face, worried about what was lying in front of them there.
"Well, we don't need to worry about that. I'm not planning on becoming a demon. Until we figure out what to do with this, should we just store this somewhere where nobody can get to it?" Eisen suggested, before Xenia quickly nodded, grabbing a small metal box from her desk.
"This is an 'Imprisonment' item. It's specifically made to seal away things that give off eery energy like that thing, so I bought it the other day just in case it was something like this. It definitely wasn't anything good, after all." She explained, handing the cube over to Eisen.
"Here, you just need to hold it towards it and pour your mana inside, while thinking about what you want to seal. Only the person that seals the object will be able to open it again, although you can't use it again once you've opened it. And it's your arm, so you do it." Xenia said with a carefree expression, throwing the cube over to Eisen, who quickly caught it and sighed loudly.
"Alright, then maybe that's the best choice for now. I'll see what we can do about this. If it's not useful for anything, and really just harmful, we'll get rid of it somehow." The old man said, holding his arm forward, and doing just what Xenia told him in order to properly seal away the Mass of Yin.
