As Eisen looked at the amulet in his hands, those three words kept reverberating in his mind. 'Who Are You?'. The last words that he had heard from his wife.
He didn't know why, but for some reason, he felt just as scared now as he did back then. Maybe it was because he had a chance to make up for what he couldn't do back then, or perhaps it had a reason that Eisen himself couldn't figure out, but no matter what, the old man knew that he wanted this to work.
Eisen lightly held the amulet forward, doing just what Ailren told him to do, concentrating on the gem, or instead what was inside of the gemstone, and called out to the Spirit.
"Kirisho, wake up."
As Eisen said this, the gem suddenly began to faintly glow in a way that even surprised Ailren, as the light spread out toward the base of the amulet, enveloping it slowly, before a mist came pouring out of the gem that gradually formed into a body.
And then, what Eisen saw was Kirisho, standing in front of him with tears in her eyes. Her whole face seemed a lot healthier, despite still being as pale as snow, and overall, the energy that she gave off was that of happiness.
"Thank you, Eisen, thank you. You promised that you would help me, but until the end, I was not sure that you would be able to. Thank you so, so very much."
[Quest Complete - Stolen Shards]
[Description] A group of adventurers destroyed the amulet in which the Mist Spirit Kirisho was sealed, taking the shards with them. This left Kirisho in a state that only barely allows her to exist consciously. You want to help, and thus the Ancient Gold Dragon Aylrentyrth asked you to find the adventurers, and as such hopefully the shards of the amulet, with the help of one of the adventurers' identification tag.
Find the stolen shards and combine them to restore the amulet.
After you found the first adventurer of the party, you got the shard from him and got him to tell you where the others are, while making sure that he would be forever terrified of you.
One of them died, and the shard was taken by a criminal loan shark business, while the other went to live in a town of magic.
Once you took the shard from the criminals as well, you went to find the last of the Adventurer Party, who told you that the shard was taken by yet another criminal organization.
You have now found all of the shards and reunited them with the Heart of the amulet.
[Reward] Kirisho will be able to live a normal life again
[Failure] Kirisho will continue living the life she currently has
[Hidden Bonus rewards to the quest 'Stolen Shards' have been found]
[Bonus Rewards] A large amount of experience; Any 'one' wish to be granted by Kirisho
[You are now level 99]
Immediately, Eisen ignored these notifications, waving them to the side as he looked at Kirisho and the amulet in his hands.
"I see, so it worked after all…" Eisen muttered with a soft smile, happy that this was enough to complete the quest and properly help Kirisho.
Slowly, Kirisho stepped up to Eisen, grabbing his right hand with both of hers, and smiled at him. "I don't know what I could ever do to thank you. I truly don't. Please, tell me whatever you want, and I will fulfill your wish to the best of my ability."
She exclaimed while looking up at Eisen, before the old man simply shook his head, confusing Kirisho momentarily. "I don't want a wish. I didn't do all of this to get something in return, but to make sure you're happy. So, if you want me to tell you my wish, it would be that...that you make sure to enjoy this chance I've given you to the fullest."
With a surprised expression, Kirisho nodded at Eisen slowly, smiling as she grasped his hand even tighter. "Thank you. I promise to you that I will never forget what you have done for me." Kirisho leaned in closer toward Eisen with these words, pushing herself up on her feet that were hidden beneath her mist-robes, and gently placed her lips on Eisen's cheek.
"I will forever be your ally, Eisen, never forget this." She told him, as she quickly stood up properly again, taking the amulet that Eisen was holding into her own hands before the old man smiled softly.
"I won't forget, don't worry. But there's something else that I want to talk to you about regarding you and your amulet, Kirisho." Eisen explained, turning back around toward the rest of the people currently gathered there.
"Kirisho's amulet is cursed. We, as in my companions and I, figure that it was for a specific reason. That the people that trapped Kirisho in the amulet in the first place wanted to create and item to subtly control other people through fear, as long as they could control Kirisho herself. But I guess before then, Ailren picked the amulet up and brought it to his cave. My friend is a great magician, she's another one of the people that peaked, and she offered to break the curses that have been placed on it," Eisen explained slowly. Before Kirisho tilted her head to the side and Bol and Ailren looked at each other with frowns.
"I was aware of it being cursed, yes, but I was not aware of it being such a serious matter. After all, I have spent a lot of time with Kirisho, and never experienced the supposed effects," Ailren explained before Eisen quickly nodded.
"That's quite obvious, isn't it? There's no way that an item with a curse on it that could affect an Ancient Dragon would be able to be so easily found. It would make any regular person that touches it to go insane immediately, wouldn't it?" Eisen said, which seemed to make sense to the two Dragons, who quickly nodded before Eisen turned back to Kirisho.
"It's your choice, in the end. I can bring you to my friend if you want and have her break the curse," Eisen told her before Kirisho slowly nodded.
"Yes, please. I don't think it has any effect on me, but if it can hurt those around me, I would rather not be inflicted with such things," Kirisho responded before Eisen smiled at her.
"Then don't worry, I'll bring you to her as soon as possible." The old man promised before she smiled softly in response.
Ailren chose to mention something else, "Wait, how could there be a peaked one in this town? Especially the Peaked Magician she should give off enough energy for me to feel in my sleep," he said with suspicion before Eisen sighed loudly.
"Well, I'm not the only peaked person that lost their experience. Actually, all of the originals did. Apparently it was a ploy by the Evil Dragons to create artificial beings. The first wave of that were the Omegas, and now the second wave recently arrived, the Deltas. And they're probably not the last either." Eisen quickly explained, before then going into more detail when he noticed that Ailren and Bol were staring at him in confusion.
After Eisen was done telling them about everything, the two Ancient Dragons looked at each other in worry. "So basically they're creating evil beings to wreak havoc in the world? Is that what it is?" Bol tried to sum up, but Eisen immediately shook his head.
"Oh, no, that's not the case at all. Maybe that was the plan, I'm not sure, but not all of the artificials are bad people. There're some exceptions, sure, but for the most part they're good kids. One of them is actually a companion of mine now. It's going to become a little chaotic, sure, but I doubt anything majorly bad will happen for now." Eisen responded to them before Ailren spoke up again.
"I see, thank you for letting us know about this, Eisen. That is surely going to be helpful information. But either way, there was something else…If you said that all those that peaked had their experience stolen, does that mean that the young lady you had me bring here was one of those that peaked? I thought you were joking when you said that the five that peaked were meeting here, but you were speaking the truth…" Ailren whispered before Bol opened his eyes wide in wonder.
"All five of you are going to be here, I see. Quite interesting." He said with a slight smile before Eisen laughed lowly and opened up the notifications that he didn't read through before. The quest didn't say anything special, but Eisen was quite surprised to see that the Quest had given him enough experience to level Eisen up to level 99.
Quietly, he thought it through, until slowly nodding and muttering to himself. "I guess it makes sense. I did spend quite some time on this quest and had to travel long distances. On top of that, I faced someone as strong as that Shaman, so maybe this is a proper amount of experience after all," he sighed, before then looking at the notification that was hiding behind all the others.
[Level up Quest – Road to 100]
[Description] You have reached Level 99 and as such, have gained the right to work toward achieving level 100.
These are your requirements as calculated by your actions so far:
-Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Enchanting and Alchemy Skills at Rank 3 (3/5)
-Racial Skills at Rank 3 (Complete)
-Occupation Skill Crafting Space at Rank 3 (Incomplete)
-Mana Manipulation, Flame of the Earth Magic at Rank 3 (0/2)
-Woodworking, Cooking, Drawing, Tool Connection, Soul Engineering, Truth Seeing Eye at Rank 2 (3/6)
-Learn Farming, Mining and Masonry Skills
-Gain Title Champion II (Incomplete)
-Using Soul Engineering, give a form to a soul (Incomplete)
[Reward] Level increased to 100
[Failure] Not possible
After Eisen looked through the list of requirements to level up to 100, he stopped for a second, thinking about what Jyuuk told him about his requirements. As far as he said, he only needed to get a few skills up to Rank 3, but in Eisen's case, he needed to get 10 of them up to that rank. Maybe that was simply because his skills were already Rank 3 for a large part, and others quite close to ranking up again anyway, and simply because of that, Eisen thought that this wasn't such a big deal in the end.
Getting his Tailoring and Leatherworking skills to Rank 3 shouldn't be that hard either, and his Crafting Space, Mana Manipulation, and Flame of the Earth magic skills were relatively close to Rank 3 as well, so that would naturally happen anyway.
As for the skills he needed to get to Rank 2, that wasn't hard either. Maybe he needed to make a few larger meals for people to increase his Cooking level, and then create more sketches of items he wanted to manufacture for his Drawing skill. And he would be using Soul Engineering for the last requirement anyway, so that would be a good chance. However, giving a form to a soul wasn't anything that Eisen was able to do yet, at least not with the soul that he tried altering with soul engineering before. But maybe that was different from the soul of a monster of a lower rank. All of those that Eisen had seemed to have a too high soul-strength for him to work with, so he would need to ask Jyuuk to get soul stones of a few low-rank monsters then.
And as for the 'Champion II' title, it seemed like that issue was already being taken care of by Bolremgar.
"Ah, right! I need to give you my trial!" Eisen told Bol. "Alright, then listen here, Eisen! You're already walking on the Path of Yin right now. So, using the demonic transformation you talked about, I want you to start walking on the Path of Yang!"