"Hmm, so you want to build actual huts in here?" Evalia asked after she heard the start of Eisen's explanation, and the old man nodded his head.
"Yeah, that would be pretty cool, wouldn't it? Like, having this area as a little supply village, and then the actual dungeon starts deeper down." He suggested once more, and Evalia thought about it for a moment and then nodded her head.
"That sounds like a good idea, yeah. I was thinking somethin' like that as well — just the front as a safe space, and then this area like a dark, overgrown tunnel. The first idea was to make it a 'Forest' theme, but I was thinkin' in stages. This floor a stone brick tunnel, the next level a similar tunnel just far more overgrown with trees'n'plants everywhere, and then for the third, we can clear out a super big area." She explained before Eisen slowly nodded his head and smiled.
"Sounds good to me. But can we already make three floors for the dungeon?" Eisen asked with a bit of surprise in his voice, and Evalia swiftly nodded her head. "Mhm, right now we can make three floors, excluding the core room of course." The young artist answered as Eisen smiled and then looked at the space behind them that was continuously growing larger through Xenia's magic which she used to keep excavating more area.
"Alright, let's figure that all out then. Tomorrow, I'm getting started on the Core Guardian, and when it's finished, we should be able to speed things up a good bit." Eisen explained and then made his way back to the door, telling the others to keep experimenting if they wanted to, although they shouldn't do anything crazy or permanently break anything.
And then, the old man stepped out the door and made his way to his chair, where Caria and Melissa were already sleeping, before picking the two small girls up and logging off.
---
Slowly, Benjamin climbed out of the capsule and sat down on a chair he had in his bedroom for a while, to catch a slight breath, before he stood up and made his way to the bathroom across his door to take a look at the mirror because he felt like something was off. And there definitely was.
"I've gotten thinner, huh..?" He muttered to himself as he looked around his face and body for a little while. His clothes and facial hair would cover that change up a bit, considering that he hadn't lost that much weight, but he noticed that his body was slowly losing in mass, and Benjamin was sure that wasn't a good thing in the slightest.
While Benjamin was splashing some water into his face, he heard a knock by the door. "Yo Gramps, Dad said we're going grocery shopping in a bit, you want to come with?" Benji asked through the door, noticing that his grandfather went in there a little bit ago, and the old man dried his face up and opened the door as a response.
"Sure, I'll be ready in a few minutes," Benjamin told his grandson before walking back into his room and getting dressed to go outside, and on his way to the living room, he heard the landline ring. As he wasn't quite there yet and didn't want to let anyone wait, Benjamin yelled to those that were sitting in the living room.
"Can anyone get that?" He asked, and soon enough, he heard the ringing stop as Sophia answered the phone.
"Hang on a second, I'll ask." She said as she took the phone away from her ear and then covered the microphone up with her other hand so that the caller couldn't hear her speak.
"Grampa, some guy called 'Greg Lennings' called, do you-" She asked, and immediately Benjamin's eyes shot open as he rushed over to her and practically ripped the phone out of her hands before taking it outside, passing Tony on the way. He also heard Sophia say the caller's name, and his face immediately lost all color.
Both Benji and Sophia were quite confused at what was going on and wanted to follow their grandfather, but luckily, Tony wasn't absent-minded enough to just let them do that and held his hand in front of the door leading to the garden.
"Sorry, leave your Grandfather alone for a little while… yeah..?" Tony asked the two of them, who turned their heads and looked at each other confused before just nodding in agreement, returning to the couch burdened with worry.
In the meantime, Benjamin was holding himself back from crushing the phone in his left hand. "Why are you calling here?" He asked with a severe tone, obviously saying that he didn't want to talk to whoever was at the other end of the line, while that person began to laugh.
"C'Mon, why so mean? Can't I check up on-" The man asked while the connection crackled a little bit, making his words impossible to hear for a little bit before they were audible again a few seconds later. "-'re acting like I killed someone!"
As he was grinding his teeth, Benjamin breathed in and out a few times to calm himself down enough to talk to the man that infuriated him even more than Michael did just by breathing and living. "Shut it, Greg, you know just as well as I do why you shouldn't ever call here again. There are dozens of reasons why you shouldn't, and I doubt there's one actual reason to call me that you don't know the answer to yet. I'm not giving you any money, I'm not interested in any bullshit deals, and I'm also not-"
"Hey hey, calm down!" Greg interrupted on the other side of the line, coughing deeply after doing so, before starting to speak again with a little bit of slurred speech that lasted for a few words and then disappeared. "I'm not calling for anything. I just wanted to let you know that I'm in town for a few days and wanted to see if you want to grab some lunch for old times' sake! You don't always have to make me out to be worse than I am, b-"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence. I swear to god, if you even think about crossing the border to this town, then this won't end well for you." Benjamin responded immediately in a threatening a voice as he possibly could muster at this or any other given moment.
But it seemed like Greg didn't care about that. But Benjamin knew he wouldn't care, he never did. "Too late, already staying at some random shitty hotel here in town. I met someone that seems to know you here! His name is-"
"For Fuck's sake, Greg shut the hell up and listen to me. You will not come close to my house, and you will not come close to my family. If I even smell a hint of that rancid, stinking sewer water you call Cologne, I'm calling the cops over here. There's more than enough reasons for them to arrest you. So I suggest you hang up the phone, sit down in the car you came here with, get your ass comfy in the buttprint of the man you stole that car from, and then drive as far away from here as fast as you can. Do you understand me?" Benjamin said loud and clear, not being able to help himself but end up screaming his lungs out at the end. Tony heard it, his grandchildren heard it, and probably Greg heard it not only through the phone but even through the window of his hotel at the other side of town.
"…" On the other side of the phone, Benjamin could still hear Greg's unhealthily loud and uneven breathing, although he stayed entirely and utterly silent otherwise. Benjamin figured, or rather hoped, that was it, but Greg was always the kind of person to exceed his expectations. "Well, you're a bit of an asshole right now, you know that?" Greg said with a solemn tone in his voice.
Even after all he had done that Benjamin was trying his hardest to forget him over, he was still acting like he was the victim. Everything had to revolve around him, and if anyone or anything went against the flow that Greg was trying to create, he reacted like this.
"All I ever wanted to do was to help you! You've been stuck in those shitty, hot rooms all your life, doing what? Work? C'Mon man, you know just as well as I do that you're just not made for that stuff! You're just like me! So how about you calm down, I come over to your place, and we hang out a bit, yeah? You still owe me that bottle of 85'er Whiskey, remember?" He exclaimed, and Benjamin just knew that he was wearing the cheesiest, dumbest grin on his face as he was saying that, thinking that he was 100% correct like always.
"You're insane; you need help. Never contact me again, and just leave." Benjamin answered quite clearly and hung up the phone, feeling like just throwing it across the yard, or sprinting into the smithy to smash it with his hammers.
But he didn't. He stopped himself and closed his eyes, simply breathing in, and then breathing out, before turning around and stepping back inside while blocking the number that the call came from.
Extremely worried for both his Grandfather and Father who was clearly shaken up, even though Tony didn't talk to Greg in the first place, Benji stood up and grinned broadly, hoping to change the topic. "Alright you two old bags, come on! We need to get groceries! I'm driving!" He exclaimed as he pointed toward the door with keys in hand, trying to force everyone to think about something else.
And seeing this as a chance to do just that, both Tony and Benjamin swiftly engaged and made their way to the front door, before the group of six made their way to the local superstore of all things to shop for a bit while Sean and Katy were immediately trying to sprint toward the toy isles accompanied by Benji who was secretly, or rather not so secretly, just as excited as they were as well as Sophia, who now had to babysit three idiots while Tony and Benjamin did the actual shopping.
After a little while they managed to already get about half the things that they needed to get for the next week and then reached the cereal aisle, where Benjamin noticed a woman with a small girl sitting in the shopping cart next to her trying to take a cereal box to put into her car, but she was rather short and didn't actually reach it.
So, instead of watching her try to climb up there to grab it, Benjamin wanted to do them a favor and grabbed it for them, extending his left arm toward it and pulling it off there, handing it to the small girl. "There you go, little lady," Benjamin said with a broad grin as he leaned forward a little bit.
And then, the girl began to laugh a bit and swung the cereal box around widely, before it slipped out of her hand and directly hit the old man's right arm. It wasn't a hard hit, it was thrown by a toddler after all, and the cereal box really wasn't heavy or hard either, but Benjamin felt a pain compared to the pain he felt when the burning hot coals dug themselves into his skin a few years ago.
Benjamin tried to hide it as much as possible while the mother thanked him for his help before she turned around and made her way to the next aisle. And once she was out of sight and he confirmed that it was only Tony there with him, Benjamin squatted down to the ground, trying not to scream his lungs out over the pain that he was currently feeling in his right arm. He even buried his teeth in his left lower arm just to somehow keep his mouth shut and distract him from the pain, but to no avail. Seeing his father in that condition, Tony squatted down next to him and helped him up.
"Dad, I think we really should have you checked out. Do you want me to bring you to the hospital?" He asked with incredible concern as he was trying to prop Benjamin somehow up while the old man was losing some of his strength in his legs, but Benjamin just shook his head.
"No, not yet. We just need to get home; I'll lay down in the capsule, and forget about the pain for a while. Let's just make an appointment so that we don't have to sit in the waiting room all day, yeah?" Benjamin suggested, and knowing that his father wasn't to be fought with over things like this, he reluctantly agreed.
"Fine, but we're going home right now then. Let's check these things out for now. I'll call Benji and let him now." Tony said as he and his father slowly brought the shopping cart to the front to pay while he took his phone out of his pocket and chose to call his son who was probably running around somewhere at the other side of the store.
Quickly, the group paid for everything, and everyone made their way back to the car and then home, constantly worried for Benjamin. And soon enough, they finally reached the house again, and Benji quickly jumped out the door after pulling the parking brake to help his Grandfather out.
But on their way to the door, they bumped into the last person that they especially didn't want to run into, it was Greg, showing a broad smile on his face as he saw Benjamin, despite his current condition.
"Hey there, Big Brother!"