"Did Prime Industries hire PI's to look into stuff like that?" Brody asked with a frown and leaned against the wall, before he noticed that Jyuuk looked at him confused for a little moment, so the Demon-Orc sighed and look at him. "Private Investigators, dude." He explained, so the Beastperson slowly nodded his head.
"Oh… I mean, it's possible, but… None of my research ever left the building I'm working in, and I never spoke about it with anyone… Except if they went ahead and stole the documents illegally, I doubt it's possible…" He answered, but Evalia tilted her head to the side.
"It's Prime Industries, they literally have some of the best technology in the country… Maybe they hacked into the servers or something?" She suggested, but Jyuuk shook his head. "No… The document storage is analogue for that project… There aren't any servers involved…" He answered, and then turned his head to look at the young woman directly next to him.
"And even then, Xenia said that that line was from one of her Father's notebooks… And she told me that he never released any of the stuff inside of that in any possible way. Except if they broke into her apartment and looked through the notebook, it would be impossible to find that line…" Jyuuk explained, and now Eisen spoke up to try and get the thoughts in his mind together.
"So… There's three possibilities to this… One, this is some kind of sick idea of a surprise that the higher-ups at Prime Industries prepared for us in the form of this Puzzle box. Two, they are trying to somehow threaten us, and are trying to tell us that they are able to find out anything that they want, even if it seems impossible. And three… No, that's… That's too ridiculous…" The old man said, although he shook his head at the mere thought of the last possibility, but the others wanted to know what he was trying to say.
"Speak up, you geezer. What're you sayin'?" Brody asked as he stepped up closer toward him, and Eisen moved his fingers through his beard, trying to figure out what was going on.
"The Third possibility… This isn't a game…" Eisen said, although he felt ridiculous just thinking about that possibility, and the others also didn't seem to be too conviced.
"Alright, sure. I know you maybe don't really know about it cuz you're a million years old, but technology is amazing these days. The game can read our thoughts anyways, so maybe it just read some of our most prominent memories. Makes more sense, right?" Brody said with a laugh, and Eisen slowly nodded his head.
"Right… That would make more sense… Sorry, I guess I'm just kind of not really used to this kind of thing. It feels way too real…" The old man chuckled, before looking at the box.
"Although I find the order rather weird. First it asks for four different magic metals, and then immediately afterward it asks us about very private things? Let's say that what Brody said happened, and it just read our memories, why the hell would it make a jump like that?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk scratched the back of his neck.
"Well, maybe it wants to 'Lead' us in some way? Maybe for the first step it needed to make sure you reached a certain spot with magic items and materials… Then, it needed to make sure that we were all together to unlock the box?" He suggested, so Eisen slowly nodded his head.
"Maybe… Well, I guess we'll see in a bit…" Eisen said with a sigh before grabbing the small box filled with rice and increased his size so that he could fit all of the rice into his mouth at the same time, and then did just that, emptying it into his mouth.
"Errm… Didn't Eisen say that he was supposed to make this… kuchikamizake thing? Why is he eating the rice?" Evalia asked confused, and as Eisen's mouth was full, the old man couldn't answer and explain and instead looked over toward Jyuuk, hoping that he could explain.
"Oh, well, Kuchikamizake is made by chewing cooked rice and spitting it back out into a container…" Jyuuk explained, before Evalia's mouth twisted in slight disgust as she looked over at Eisen, who just nodded his head and slowly spat the white liquid out.
"Mhm, that's how it's made." The old man replied, before placing the container now filled with the chewed-up rice onto the top of the puzzle-box, before the container slowly lowered itself into the box and that same box reacted once more, turning itself into a flat platform, before a pole appeared from the center of the round platform and turned into a blackboard, with five sheets of paper pinned to the front of it, each one with a different symbol on it, the five symbols on the 'Original' necklaces.
"I guess that's that, then, huh?" Eisen asked with a light smile on his face, grabbing the piece of paper with his own symbol on it, before the others slowly did the same with the sheets of paper apparently meant for them, although none of them could read what was written on their respective sheet.
But once the five of them were picked off of the blackboard, that same blackboard collapsed into itself and then turned back into a box, although with a slit at the top, probably to take the pieces of paper back into itself.
"Alright… Can any of you read your notes?" Eisen asked as he turned to the others, but they all shook their heads before the old man took a look at the writing.
"Hmm, the languages are all different… Let's go and ask Sky about it later…" The old man said with a light smile, and just before he opened the door to exit the dungeon, he turned over to the other originals. "And all of you, before we know what's actually going on, don't mention how the tasks relate to any of you to anyone." Eisen told them, and they nodded their heads before following the old man outside.
There, back in the Meeting room, Eisen turned to everyone else, and all of them seemed to be incredibly worried about what just happened. "Sorry about that, the note said we had to go somewhere absolutely private immediately." Eisen told them with a smile, lying to them without even blinking.
"Oh, alright… We thought something happened." Stahl replied with a wry smile on his face, and Eisen shook his head. "Don't worry, everything is fine. But Sky, we need to figure out some things. We unlocked the next 'Layer' of the box and then got these notes here. All of them are in different languages." The old man explained to the Fey-Kin boy, before the originals handed the notes to him.
Curiously, Sky took a look at the pieces of paper before scratching his cheek. "Eisen, yours is the same combination of Dvergun and Iötum as before… Xenia's is ancient Elvish, Jyuuk's seems to be a variation of the ancient language of Beastpeople… Evalia's note is written in the Ancient language of Humans, and the last one is… Hmm…" Sky muttered quietly as he took a closer look at Brody's note, although he wasn't sure what exactly he was seeing.
"Erm… I'm guessing it's a mixture of Orkish and the ancient Demon-Language. Because Demons are very long-lived, the latter is still spoken sometimes so it shouldn't be hard to figure it out, but I'm not sure if there's any written compendium about the Ork language…" The Fey-Kin boy explained while scratching the back of his neck, and Stahl swiftly spoke up.
"Oh, there's a Priestess of Uria on the ship, she might be able to help…" He explained, and the others looked at the young man surprised. Xenia would have said this before, but she was still feeling a bit shaken up about everything. She was surprisingly fragile, now that Eisen thought about it. Quickly, noticing that the others didn't catch on, Stahl continued, "Oh, Uria is the Goddess of Monsters…People with her prayer skill can communicate with non-vocal monsters, and they can learn different monster languages more easily. There are some Ork villages that speak the 'Common' Language, but I'm sure you're talking about the actual 'Orkish', as in what not-so-intelligent orks use, right?" Stahl inquired, and Sky nodded his head swiftly.
"Yeah, that's my guess so far at least! I'll go and talk to the priestess!" Sky said excitedly, but Eisen shook his head and stepped forward.
"No, no, you try and deciphher the other notes, and while you're doing that, I'll go and meet her real quick." Eisen explained before just smiling at them all and stepped out the door without waiting for an answer or waiting for any sort of reaction.
Eisen didn't even take his monster girls with him, and just stepped down the stairs without any hesitation.
And his goal was a quite specific one, the small chapel that was constructed near the living-quarters of the ship, where Eisen luckily met nearly all of the different priests, priestesses and nuns that had come together for joint prayers, which he was more than glad to see, because this was perfect timing.
After waiting for their prayers to be done, out of simple respect, Eisen stepped to the front of the altar they had created and prepared to speak to the priests. "Good morning, all of you." Eisen said with a smile on his face, before everyone looked at him with bright smiles.
"Good morning, Lord Eisen. Is anything wrong? You don't come here often like this." One Priest, the former head-priest of the church in Handor, inquired and smiled, before Eisen crossed his arms. "Haha, I didn't expect to be so easy to see through. Well, I do have two inquiries right now. For one, I would need the Priestess to the goddess Uria to assist us with something related to the Ork Language." Eisen explained, and the young woman stepped up soon after being mentioned and nodded her head.
"I am glad to help, Lord Eisen." She replied, and Eisen nodded his head with a smile and then moved on to the second topic, the reason why he actually came down here himself.
"Thank you. And the other thing is that I, quite simply, would like you all to tell me if there is any way to talk to Gods directly." He asked, and the Head-Priest tilted his head slightly and shook his head.
"Not a simple one, at least. There have been few people that directly conversed with gods, and those that did were Arch-Popes or Heroes." The Priest explained, before Eisen scratched the back of his neck and then sighed loudly.
"Is there really no way to go and talk to them?" Eisen asked, and slowly, the priest turned around and looked at the others for help, and one of them stepped forward and spoke.
"Actually, I think there might be a way, and it could be on the islands we are heading toward." The Priest explained, and then swiftly continued after noticing that Eisen wanted to hear more.
"The Islands, according to what you yourself told us, are directly connected to different gods, right? There should definitely be a way to contact them there, or at least send them a message. As they have already spoken to you before, you must have a connection to them in some way, so they might respond to you."
Slowly, Eisen nodded his head and just ended up grinning in response to that idea, before he crossed his arms, "Alright, that's a good idea. I'll come and talk to you again once we reach the islands in a few days then." The old man explained, before slowly exiting the room again, and then went back to the main deck with the Priestess of Uria behind him, and then slowly muttered to himself.
"Well… that didn't help at all… Something has to be going on here, I just know it."