A few hours later, after Benjamin spent a beautiful, calm day in town with his grandchildren, the small group made their way back to the house once they picked up Sophia from the Barber's, where she had been spending some time with Kim. After the barbecue, it seemed like Sophia felt a little bit awkward, considering that she kissed Kim in front of a pretty large crowd to prove a point, but Kim didn't seem to mind in the slightest.
Kim invited Sophia out on a date to the mall in the next week, which was the reason why the teenage girl couldn't stop giggling like she was supposed to be in an insane asylum. It seemed like they were getting along pretty well, and who knows, they may end up as a couple pretty soon.
While Sophia would need to go back home at the start of the next school year, since Kim already plans on starting to play World of Magic as well, it wouldn't be too big an issue to have a long-distance relationship, since the capsule made any distance seem either infinitely large or infinitely small.
Either way, Sophia was feeling super happy. Katy and Sean were acting quite similarly after their grandfather bought them some icecream, and Benji was feeling hyped up when he started talking to Benjamin about what the old man found in the game, and what he was thinking about making. When Benjamin mentioned the idea of turning to Dungeon Core into a Golem Core for a walking Dungeon, the teenager actually had an even more exciting idea.
"Wouldn't it be even cooler if you somehow turned it into Monster Core thing? The monsters in the game do have mana crystals, right?" Benji asked before Benjamin looked at him in surprise, trying to figure out whether that would be possible.
"Hmm, turning the Dungeon Core into the equivalent of a Mana Crystal… I mean, maybe Jyuuk has some ideas about that. But Dungeons do have ranks just like monsters do, so maybe it would be possible to make a Dungeon that can level up as well?" Benjamin muttered to himself, feeling somewhat unsure of how good an idea this would actually be, and how hard it may be to actually do it, while Benji was thinking about the more essential aspects. What it would be called.
"The Growth Dungeon! Or the Monster Dungeon! Nah… Bob? Hmm… The Living Dungeon, maybe?" Benji asked before Benjamin simply shrugged. "Who knows? That might not actually be possible, so we should try and figure that out later. But if it works, that does have a pretty nice ring to it." Benjamin told his grandson, as he was already thinking about the others' reaction to this idea.
---
A few hours later, Benjamin went to lie down in the capsule earlier than planned for a few reasons. First, he wanted to get an early a start with the ship as soon as possible, since he preferred to get this over with before the regular player base started playing and then suddenly made everything harder and more annoying to deal with.
Second, he didn't have anything else to do. Tony finished some of his important calls to figure things out with his old company, and whether they would need him to return soon or if he could stay with Benjamin for a while longer, so he could take care of Katy and Sean himself for a while. Of course, he didn't just spend the rest of his day with Benji and Sophia, since those two needed a little bit of time to themselves as well. And so, since he didn't have anything else better to do, he might as well play the game, right?
Lastly, Benjamin simply felt a little bit tired and wanted to lie down for a while. And to not waste any time, while his actual body rested, Benjamin chose to slip into his in-game body and became Eisen again.
When he woke up in the carriage, he noticed that he was still tightly hugging the Dungeon Core inside of the carriage. And as Caria and Melissa also slowly woke up, Eisen swiftly greeted Aulu with a smile, rubbing his hands through her brass fur.
Stuffing the core into a backpack that was just barely large enough to hold it fully, Eisen put that backpack on and made his way outside, where he swiftly activated his size-increase. After all, Eisen still had the goal of somehow gaining a better familiarity with this 'form,' on top of the fact that he simply felt weirdly comfortable like this.
Nobody seemed to care too much about his size, although he did get a look or two every once in a while. And that did make sense. Titans were a rare race around this part of the continent, but it was still so that the vast majority of people, especially in a large town like Handor, saw a good amount of titans.
That is if they were people that belonged to this world.
"Holy shit, Drag! There's a fucking giant over there!" Someone yelled out, hitting his friend's shoulder who swiftly turned around in response. The one that yelled this out at first was a relatively young, as well as a bit short, with pitch-black hair and similarly colored leather armor, the friend whose shoulder that boy-in-black hit was in classic mage-robes. He seemed to be a lot taller and skinnier than his friend, and he had a staff with a bright red crystal at the top, which made Eisen think he was probably a pyromancer.
Then, another man turned around. He was utterly average in looks for the most part, although on the upper end of each scale. Meaning that he was on the top end of height, build, and looks. He probably wouldn't stick out in a crowd in any way, simply because he had no major noticeable features, beside his full plate armor, kite-shield and one-handed-sword.
"A Giant?! Those are wicked beasts, are they not? We must defeat this evil creature to save the townsfolk!" The average-joe yelled out, pointing his sword forward at Eisen, which confused him quite a bit, even making him look around to see if he meant him.
"Oh fuck, here he goes again…" The Wizard called Drag, sighed loudly, before looking at the short boy-in-black. "Dark, can't you just use stun-poison on him?"
"Drag, you literally want me to stab one of my best friends in the back just to avoid being embarrassed?" The short boy Dark asked, nearly offended, and Drag nodded his head without a change in his expression, leaving Dark to shrug. "Eh, I guess. Oye Dier, take a look at my cool new dagger!" Dark yelled out to his friend, who simply clicked his tongue and moved closer to Eisen, who was trying to figure out if they were just a trio of very, very dumb street performers.
"Not now, Dark! We need to save the townsfolk from- Ouch, dude, what was that for?" Dier's repetitive speech was quickly interrupted by Dark stabbing his dagger into a small opening in between the pieces of his armor, only causing the warrior some damage, although not actually stunning him, which confused Dark for a moment, before Drag slapped his face in disappointment.
"Dark, did you forget to put the poison on your dagger again?" He asked before the short boy quickly looked at his small blade before scratching the back of his head embarrassedly. And after rubbing his side with annoyance, Dier turned back to Eisen and jumped at him, swinging his sword down at him. "Die, fiend!" He yelled out, although Eisen simply caught the quite slow blade with his fingers, which he had just reinforced with his element slightly so that he wouldn't take too much damage, and to increase the friction so that he could stop the blade more easily.
Surprised after noticing this, Dier looked up at the old man in front of him, who simply sighed out loudly while rubbing the bridge of his nose annoyed. "Kid, let me guess, you're a Delta." Eisen sighed loudly, not able to activate his truth-seeing-eyes to actually check since so many people were watching him. Although, even then, he didn't need to do that either.
"H-Huh? This Monster knows our Origins! And my one-hit-kill attack didn't work against it! Flee, comrades, flee!" Dier tried running away and yelled out toward his friends, who were standing there trying to figure out whether or not they should pretend they didn't know him. But for some weird reason, Dier couldn't move. Possibly be due to the fact that Eisen was holding onto his armor so that he couldn't.
While this was happening, a small group of Guards came running over after hearing the commotion. "Is everything alright? We heard about some kid attacking a Titan?" One of them asked directly noticing and understanding the situation. So that nothing would escalate, Eisen placed his enlarged hand on Dier's shoulder, pressing down on him so that he still couldn't run away, while talking to the Guard with a bright smile.
"Don't worry — just a misunderstanding. I'm nearly level 100, and this boy is just a Delta that recently appeared, so his level as well as his I.Q. isn't so high. He obviously wouldn't be able to injure me in any way. But still, if you're alright with it, would you mind leaving the task of lecturing this youngster to this old man?" Eisen explained with a smile, and the Guard sighed loudly. "I see… Sure, go ahead. If he didn't do any harm, then I guess it's fine. Just make sure he doesn't do it again, yeah?" The Guard said, before turning around and telling the other guards to leave together with him.
Now that this situation was over and the crowd dissolved, Eisen looked at the boys with a loud sigh, shaking his head in disappointment. "You three better stop doing something like that. If you see something you think is a monster inside of a town, with literally nobody running away or even remotely scared, maybe think a bit more about what to do. Also, please take notice of the literal little girls sitting on my shoulders. I shouldn't even look too threatening like this, right?" Eisen lectured them. Also, all of that was mainly pointed toward Dier, before the old man squatted down to whisper into the warrior's ear. "And most importantly, maybe at least check if I'm another player." The old man sighed before immediately feeling a wave of goosebumps all over his body as a sign that he had just been appraised.
Immediately, Dier opened his eyes wide in shock as he read the information. "S-Sorry, I didn't know that you- but wait, that isn't even a- how?" Dier protested, trying to figure out what was going on, while both Dark and Drag came up behind their friend, looking up at the 3-meter tall man in front of them.
"Excuse this moron, sir. He's our friend, but he's as stupid as it comes." Dark apologized before Drag seemed to look at something else behind Eisen for a short moment.
"Erm, Sir? I know you said we should make sure that we don't accidentally attack people that look like monsters, but… How can we know if there's someone like that?" He asked, pointing at a particular person standing a little distance away from Eisen, staring in his direction with squinted eyes to seemingly figure out if it was him. Surprisingly, it was Brody, with his dark black-greenish skin, two horns on the top of his head as well as large tusks coming out of the bottom of his mouth.
"Yup, even him. He's actually another P." Eisen explained, merely using the first letter of the word 'Player' instead of the actual word, waving over toward his young friend, who came running over to him with a grin on his face.
"Oh Eisen, who are these kids?" He asked, surprised as he looked at Drag, Dark, and Dier before the old man replied with a laugh. "Just some Deltas. So, Brody, anything interesting happened while I was away?" Eisen asked the Demon-Orc halfling, waving at the three boys to say goodbye as he stepped away from the 'Triple D's.'