With a broad grin on his face, Eisen turned to the other originals and crossed his arms, before nodding his head, "Good that I waited for all of you to be here. I'm pretty sure we all need to do something for this. Next would be Evalia with some form of art, then Brody with a feat of strength, after that Xenia with some form of magic, and then me with some crafting, I'm guessing." The old man exclaimed with a grin on his face, before Evalia nodded her head with a light frown.
"Erm… It was 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there is some that can not be seen by any eye', right…?" She asked rather confused, and Eisen slowly nodded his head. "Yeah, that's just a rough translation, though." The old man explained, before Xenia nodded her head quietly and then stepped up to the box.
"I have a pretty good idea what it wants from me…" She muttered out, before slowly opening her mouth and starting to sing a short song, or rather just the chorus of one. And quite coincidentally, a line nearly identical to the one that Eisen said appeared in it. And after that, the eye slowly blinked a few times before it began to twist around its vertical axis before practically popping out of the socket and starting to float in the air. And then, the eye grew arms and legs, and ended up looking a lot like a small toy, while everyone looked at Evalia rather surprised.
"I was aware you were great at improv, but coming up with something like that out of the blue to fit the line, good job." Stahl said with a smile on his face as he looked at the young woman from across the table, somewhat expecting some kind of quick or witty response, but instead, Evlaia just nodded her head quietly.
"Well, Anyway… That worked, but what is this now?" Jyuuk asked with a frown that he had on his face ever since the thing with the box asking for something like the rose settled into his mind for some reason. And before anyone else could even respond, Brody already tried to cut the small thing up with a knife, but instead, the knife was stopped at its 'skin'.
"Just the next thing we need to do. And that 'Feat of strength' the old geezer mentioned must be that I cut this thing apart, right?" He asked with a frown on his forehead and his eyes not wavering from the thing floating in the air.
"Wait a second, I have something to give you… Try it out while you're at it, I guess." Eisen said with a light smile, although he didn't really understand why exactly Evalia, Jyuuk and Brody were so serious all of a sudden.
"Fafnir, open the gate to the dungeon, and Sigurd, could you get the weapons I made for brody?" The old man asked with a smile on his face, but the Core Guardian immediately smiled smugly. "Hehe, there's no need for that!" Sigurd exclaimed, before disappearing into a mist and re-appearing a few moments later with the weapons that Eisen made for Brody in its hands.
"I can jump in and out of the Dungeon without the gate being open!" It exclaimed with a smile on its face, so Eisen placed his hand on the Dungeon Core Guardian's head and rubbed the metallic red hair. "I see, good job, then. Thanks for getting these." The old man told the Core Guardian, who happily nodded its head before turning toward Brody.
"I made you five metallic weapons made with a Steel-Maroon Alloy, and two regular wooden weapons, although the monkey-stick has a few bits of the alloy at its ends as well." Eisen explained, and confused, Brody tilted his head to the side.
"The Maroon-Steel weapons immediately start draining mana from you if your regeneration isn't high enough. But you don't have mana, so that doesn't matter." Eisen explained with a smile on his face, and the Demon-Orc nodded his head with a grin before grabbing the Jian, the sword, and holding it in both of his hands.
"Thanks. Maybe it works with this…" Brody said as he pushed his teeth together and slashed at the thing floating in the air once more, and then again and then again, but every single time the blade was just stopped without damaging to thing's body.
"Come on you little fucker! Just break already!" The Demon-Orc yelled out as he continued swinging the blade at it, seemingly desperately, and Eisen slightly sighed. "Brody, it's okay if you can't do it yet. Maybe it requires a certain Strength Stat to be able to be destroyed." The old man pointed out, but it seemed like Brody just didn't care at all.
He ground his teeth together further before shaking his head. "I don't give a fuck, I'm not leaving this room before that thing's gone." Brody exclaimed from behind his pressed-together teeth, and then something else, something rather unexpected happened.
Brody's body turned completely white, as white as snow, while the blade in his hand turned completely black. For a little while, it seemed like Brody was preparing for something, and the black in the blade and the white in his body slowly seemed to start 'Glowing', while the white-ness spread even to Brody's clothes and the floor he was standing on, while the sword seemed to let out a deep black smoke.
And then, all of a sudden, Brody's foot slightly inched forward just a tiny bit before the small, toy-like thing floating in the air split in two, right down the center, before the black and white shattered off of Brody's body as if they were a thin layer of glass covering his whole body, before the Demon-Orc Collapsed down onto the ground, seemingly out of exhaustion.
And the only way that Eisen knew that someone could get exhausted like that all of a sudden was through Mana-Exhaustion, so Brody probably used up all of his energy in that one move.
In the meantime, while everyone was looking at Brody to make sure he was alright, the figure that had split in half turned into the next 'Task'. One of the two halves turned into a book, while the other half turned into a pen as it was Xenia's turn now.
But everyone but the High-Elf didn't notice that yet.
"Brody, are you okay?" Eisen asked with a deep frown, trying to help the Demon-Orc up, before he simply nodded his head. "I'm fine… That's just a Limitbreaking Swordsmanship 'Move'… It's called 'Perfect Balance Slash'…. A pretty lame name, I know…" Brody said with a wry smile as he sat down on his chair and relaxed a bit.
"It's basically a finishing move. It's REEEAAALLY strong, trust me… But in return, it puts me at zero, and I can't fight afterward anymore… Even my HP is in the double digits right now…" Brody explained with a light grin on his face, seemingly just happy that he was able to break whatever that 'Toy' that was there before was.
"Right… But-" Eisen said, wanting to ask about what was going on, before Jyuuk turned over toward Xenia. "Are you alright? What's going on? Do you have a panick attack?" He asked with pure worry in his voice as he placed his hand on the back of his shaking nearly-girlfriend, trying to comfort her.
And Xenia slowly nodded her head and stepped up to the book and pen, grabbing the letter to write something onto the cover of the book. The moment that Eisen saw this, he was utterly confused, however.
"'Timothy Charles – Notes'…" Eisen slowly muttered as he read what was on the book, and then looked over toward Xenia confused, before the book began to change its shape again, showing that the young woman wrote the right thing onto it.
And what happened next really just shocked Eisen. The book itself turned into another small wooden box, while the pen turned into a note. The old man slowly stepped up to both of those items and then first picked up the note.
'Your Choice. Continue or Stop' the note read, and there was nothing else on it at all. Confused, Eisen took a look into the box, finding nothing but seemingly freshly-cooked rice inside of it. And then, the note dropped out of Eisen's hand as he just stared at the small container confused, before Sky stepped up to the old man and tilted his head to the side.
"Rice? Does the box want you to cook it or something?" He asked curiously, but Eisen just shook his head slowly, before looking at Fafnir.
"Open the gate." He told the young living dungeon in the shape of a dragon, who slowly did as told and jumped off the chair and then up into the air before the door leading inside of the dungeon appeared directly below it. "Sorry, we need to go right now. And when I say 'Go', I mean Jyuuk, Evalia, Brody, Xenia and I. Nobody else. Just us." Eisen said, even turning toward his tamed monsters to tell them not to come, before he looked at Sigurd. "And if possible in any way, don't listen to what's going on in the Core Room." Eisen said in a commanding tone, before the Core Guardian looked at the old man confused, but nodded its head in the end.
"Y-Yeah, I can… But why-" Sigurd asked, but Eisen shook his head. "Don't ask. Just wait out here, all of you." Eisen told them before opening the door to the dungeon to let the other originals inside and then grabbed the 'Puzzle Box' together with the Cooked rice and the note that he had dropped to the ground before following the others into the dungeon.
Immediately he created a doorway to the core room and then closed the exit out of the room off so that nobody could follow them. And the moment that the Core Room's door closed shut, Brody turned toward the old man.
"What the fuck! What is that shitty box?!" He yelled out angrily, and Eisen shook his head slowly. "I have no idea… But… No, I just really don't know… Jyuuk, what did you notice about the flower thing?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk scratched the back of his neck.
"Well… You were probably asking for it to make an item, but that the box asked for that couldn't be a coincidence… I'm not legally allowed to tell any of you this, but I trust you, so keep this to yourselves… I am working on a government project right now, it's still top-secret at the moment." Jyuuk explained before he sat down on one of the steps leading up to the Dungeon Core, placing his chin onto his palm.
"The project is about just what the box asked for. I'm supposed to create a method to create near-perfect preservation by making a living being's body slow down to near-death, although it would still allow the being to act as if in peak physical condition. Basically, you're alive, but you're also dead. But you're also neither, so you're practically rejecting both. But until now, the furthest we got was being able to preserve different flowers in that way…" The Beastperson explained quietly, before shaking his head.
"No, but that can't be what that meant! Maybe the box figured out that I just did that and then asked for the flower? I mean, Prime Industries couldn't have known about it in any way… As I said, it's a government-project…" Jyuuk muttered out quietly, but then Evalia spoke up next.
"You can say that again! That line you said was from a song I came up with as a kid, called 'Eye of the Beholder'. I never brought it out because it didn't feel good enough yet, and literally nobody knows that the idea for it even exists!" She exclaimed, and everyone slowly turned their heads over toward Brody, who already knew what he was supposed to say.
"That thing… Erm, my Father had a rough past and had a tattoo of an eye on his chest from that time… He then turned that tattoo into a ridiculous fucking one-eyed thing, which was exactly what that was out there… When someone left the group that my father was in, others would hunt them down, kill them, and then cut the eye-tattoo in half… Same with my father, so I kind of figured what I had to do…" Brody explained, growing more quiet and quiet, and next, Xenia spoke next nervously.
"M-Mine was similar to E-Evalia's thing… The L-line that Ei-Eisen translated was similar to-to an important l-line my father wanted to shape his n-next book around before he di-died… It was only in the note-notebook, and I never showed it to any-any-anyone…" The young woman explained, while Jyuuk, who had noticed she wasn't doing well, stood up again and continued trying to comfort her, while Eisen was the next that spoke up.
"The note gave me a choice. I don't know what that choice is exactly, but… This box here is the kind of container that Kuchikamizake is made in, from cooked rice… My Wife was a shrine maiden when I met her, and she used to make Kuchikamizake back then. I still have the bottle of the one she made when I first met her down in my basement. Only my children and grandchildren know about that. I never talk about my wife with anyone else, and nobody that isn't a fully-armed swat-team can get into my basement in any way." Eisen explained, and then looked around at the others with a confused expression.
"What is going on here?"