Back home, Benjamin sat down on his armchair with a loud sigh. At Prime Industries, everyone continued playing around with all kinds of gadgets and cool machinery for quite a while, so the old man felt somewhat exhausted. It now became evening, the last evening of everyone here being together, actually, since Melody would make her way back home and take Kyle with her on Friday. And not only those two would be leaving, but Natsuo, Christie, Lyla, and Lola would be on their way as well.
As this was the case, while the kids went to bed early and the teenagers chose to sit around outside a little while, in the meantime, the adults decided to talk a bit. After all, it would be a while until they would all be together again.
"So you're staying here indefinitely?" Natsuo asked his brother with a smile, who nodded in response. "Yes, exactly. I got a call the other day that the company I'm currently working for is officially shutting down, and Samuel gave me a date to start my internship today. He said that there are pretty good chances for a full-time hire. According to him, I'm just hopping through the different sections for a few weeks to see if I fit in anywhere, and if I do, then I'm in." Tony explained before Benjamin leaned back in the armchair.
"And of course, you can stay here however long you want. It takes a little while to drive there, but it's not too far away. Once you get the job, which I'm positive you will, I'll help you look for an apartment near there as well, but it's fine to stay until then."
"Thanks, Dad. And I know you, Sophia and Benji are excited to play the game, but I'd appreciate it if there's always one person with the kids while I'm gone." Tony said with a slightly embarrassed smile before Benjamin nodded again. "Actually, I'm not sure how necessary that is. There's enough toys or games for them to play around with, and I'll have Rover and his mini-bots placed around everywhere to watch them. Samuel explained that I could constantly have a display showing what all of the bots are seeing, and since everything feels faster in the game, I can react quite quickly and be offline immediately or send either Sophia or Benji to take a look. If you want one of us always to be there, then that's fine though." The old man explained, and Tony answered with a frown before Rover activated at the mention of his name and rolled over to the group.
"Yuppy! You don't need to worry, Tony! I come from a long line of Baby Monitors!" Rover said in a half-joking half-serious tone, making the worried man chuckle. "Alright, that's fine. But really, make sure to pay attention then, okay?" Tony asked his father, who immediately nodded.
"Of course, I won't let anything happen. So, Melody, Natsuo, when did you guys want to leave tomorrow?" The old man inquired before the two of them answered quite quickly.
"The best would probably be to go tomorrow morning right off the bat," Natsuo answered before Melody nodded as well. "Yeah, I promised his father that Kyle would be there by tomorrow evening."
"I got you, alright. I'll pack you something for the trip, so-" Benjamin wanted to say as he slowly stood up from the armchair, but was immediately stopped by his children.
"No, Dad, you won't. Your hand is still not better. Focus on that please, alright?" Tony told him, with the support of his siblings. With a loud sigh, Benjamin then slowly nodded at them, still standing up with a look at the clock.
"Got it. Well, how about we get to sleep now so that we can wake up early tomorrow then?" He suggested with a smile, already stepping toward his room.
"Alright, goodnight, Dad…" Natsuo muttered out slowly as he watched the back of his father while he walked away, his stature smaller than he ever seemed.
---
Slowly, Eisen took a look around after logging back on into the game. He did so a bit earlier than planned, so they were still on their way to the mining town. Quietly, Eisen sat there and held his right arm while staring forward, noticing the three boys sleeping on the fold-out bed by laying next to each other.
"Eisen, no sad!" Melissa exclaimed as she stumbled along the ground and leaned against the old man, while Caria also looked at him with worry in her deep black eyes. "Is Eisen okay? Caria and Melly are worried…" The young Myconid muttered out and placed her hand on her master's.
With a light smile, Eisen pulled his hands away and placed one on either of his tamed monsters' heads. "Don't worry, both of you. I'm fine." He told them and stood up quietly so that he wouldn't wake his apprentices and stuck his head through the window at the front of the carriage, passing the completely white figure of Komer sitting and 'sleeping' next to that window.
"Good morning, you two," Eisen said as he looked at Sky and Bree before the two of them turned around in surprise as Kiron peeked down from the roof curiously as well. "Oh, Eisen, up already?" Sky asked while looking up from his book, and Eisen nodded his head.
"Seems like it, huh? I hope the trip wasn't too boring so far." Eisen asked apologetically, but the two Fey-Kin shook their heads. "Not really, no. But we will arrive there soon, just so you know. We could already see the town in the distance, so it's just another 20 or 30 minutes." Sky explained, and Kiron added something from above.
"The trip itself went without much trouble as well, M'Lord. We encountered a small group of monsters once a few hours ago, but nothing since then." The Half-Dragon explained, and Eisen looked up at him with a smile.
"I see, thanks for letting me know. I have something to tell you about later, but it's better to do that when we're there. But Sky, did you manage to figure out the carving on the box yet? You copied them onto some paper, right?" Eisen inquired because he was getting more and more curious to find out about what the box was, especially what was inside of it.
However, Sky swiftly shook his head and looked at the book in his hands again. "No, I haven't the slightest idea. I managed to decipher the combination of Iötum and Dvergun, and it somewhat formed words, I guess? I mean, they look like words, and some of them are similar to what we use in the common language, so I was able to guess what some of them mean, but it doesn't make sense at all even then…" He explained, showing Eisen the pieces of paper where he wrote down his notes before the old man opened his eyes wide and grabbed it out of the Fey-Kin's hands.
"Are you fucking kidding me? That is Spanish!" He exclaimed before turning around immediately to see if he accidentally woke up his apprentices, but since they still seemed to be sound asleep, Eisen looked back at Sky with a bright grin, while Sky himself looked at him confused.
"What do you mean? What's 'Spanish'?" Sky asked as he tilted his head to the side, but Eisen simply continued to smile. "It's a language that I remember. I know a whole lot of different languages that you may not know. Anyway, I can read this. Those carvings were a mixture of three languages, Iötum, Dvergun, and Spanish. A kind of weird combo, though."
"Ah, so it's the kind of thing where you just remember some things from your past without knowing why you know them?" Bree asked with an excited smile, and Eisen swiftly nodded.
"Mhm, something like that. Anyway, what's written here is quite simple… It's 'Feed me a pound of each these magic metals, Gold of Fire, Silver of Earth, Iron of Air, and Bronze of Water.' Huh. 'Silver of the earth' is probably Mythril. And I guess the others are just infused version of these metals." Eisen muttered out before he looked back at the Fey-Kin in front of him.
"Do you know anything about them?" Eisen asked, and Sky swiftly nodded. "Mhm. Those would be White Gold, High-Iron, and Orichalcum. They are a lot rarer than Mythril, and they aren't as absorbant of elemental mana as Silver is, so they only appear in specific areas in very uncommon situations. For example, White Gold with the Fire element in volcanoes, and High-Iron with the air element on a floating island, and Orichalcum with the water element somewhere in a deep underwater cavern. But even at those places, finding those would be super hard. But you could probably make an infuser or something, right?" Sky explained before Eisen slowly nodded.
"I think so, maybe. I'd like it if I could do that without needing to rank my Enchanting skill up even more because that's going to take a while. Hmm…" The old man moved his fingers through his beard in thought as he activated his Truth-Seeing Eyes and mana-sight to look at the gems that he brought with him for a second. He didn't specifically look at them yet, but now that he did, he noticed that there was some coloring to them, meaning that they had elemental mana inside of them.
"Hmm… Maybe I can extract the mana from these…" Eisen muttered to himself, but Sky tuned in. "That would be pretty wasteful, though, right? Surely we can find some enchanters that can help us in Handor. Wouldn't that be easier?" He asked, and Eisen slowly nodded at him with a loud sigh. "Sure, we can do that instead. Don't need to do every single step. Anyway, good job, Sky. Thanks for the help with this." Eisen said, and Sky looked back with a smug expression.
"Of course, I even got the Linguism skill from this. It's barely Rank 1, but at some point, it's going to translate everything for me into the common language!" Sky explained, and Eisen responded with a loud laugh.
"Huh, really? It seems like you're our group researcher then, huh?" He asked before Sky looked into the open air for a second and then slowly began to nod. "I like that title… But yeah, I guess it fits somewhat. As long as Xenia isn't around… Anyway, as I said, we'll be there soon, so maybe you should get everything ready?" Sky suggested, and Eisen nodded before sitting back down with his two tamed monsters, which he somewhat neglected lately.
And they also always had to deal with having to sleep whenever Eisen was offline, so he did feel a little guilty and wanted to sit down with them alone for a while. "Alright you two, you've been working on some spells, right?" Eisen asked with a smile before Caria immediately nodded.
"Mhm! Caria can do this now!" She exclaimed and held her pale hand forward with the palm pointed up, before some mana poured out from it and turned into the shape of a small, pure white flower. "Hmm, so you can make that just through mana?" Eisen asked, and Caria nodded her head once more with a proud grin.
"Yup! Caria is pretty amazing, isn't she?!" She laughed out, before Eisen pat the top of her head. "Yes, you are! Can you make other things as well? Trees, for example?" He asked, before Caria thought about it for a second, turned around, and began to try it out.
In the meantime, Eisen looked at Melissa. "And what about you? Did you learn a new skill?" He asked the small empress bee, before she furiously nodded her head up and down, squeezing her eyes shut as she pressed her palms together.
While Eisen was trying to figure out what she was doing, Melissa swiftly pulled her hands away from each other, revealing a tiny white bee that was floating in the air. Or rather, in this world, it was tiny, but in reality, it was just as large as a regular bee would be. With a happy grin after she looked away from the tiny floating thing, Melissa looked up at Eisen, who now also pat her head. "Good job, Melissa! You two did great!"
