"So, both of them are doing better than you expected?" Eisen asked, trying to sum up what Xenia was trying to tell him, and the High-Elf immediately nodded her head.
"That's an understatement, but yeah! I mean, whatever Croco is making when it comes to sorcery seems to be on a little bit larger scale, but that's why she's a 'Crowd Controller', she's supposed to be able to do a lot of large scale magic. And actually, considering that her staff literally let's her fly around, she'd be able to pretty easily create truly giant Magic Circles, wouldn't she..?" Xenia muttered to herself in thought, and the old man just chuckled in response.
"Well, let's just see about that when we get to the islands. I'm sure there's going to be a pretty good chance to test their actual combat capabilities out there." He pointed out, before crossing his arms with a smile on his face.
"Now, should we get to business now?" Eisen suggested, and Xenia slightly tilted her head to the side before nodding swiftly, "Oh, right, the blessings..." She muttered to herself before turning around in thought, looking around the room as she did so, and then grabbed a few different materials before pulling a chair into the center of the room, "Sit down, I need to reach your whole arm properly." Xenia explained, and Eisen nodded with a smile and sat down on the chair, while thinking about how happy he was that she was able to distract herself enough to not be stuttering all the time anymore.
And then, swiftly, Xenia grabbed a small paintbrush and dipped it into a small pot with white paint, before starting to explain. "So, this is Blessed Paint, and I'll use this as a base for everything else. Basically, I'll be painting your whole arm with this now, and then we need to wait for it to dry. That should be able to contain and pull all of the blessings I'll put on you later directly onto your arm." Xenia said while Eisen just nodded his head, watching as Xenia did just what she said. And when the old man was trying to grab another brush and help out, the High-Elf stopped him.
"Nope, I'm painting this onto your arm while using Divine Energy, so as long as you don't have the Prayer skill and enough saved Divine Energy, don't even try." She told him with a frown, and Eisen just sighed and nodded his head, and instead chose to just take a look at the two Golems standing next to him.
"Hmm... You two, show me your hands, please." Eisen told them, and the Golems immediately did as asked, holding their enchanted hands forward so that Eisen could take a look.
And while Xenia was still painting his left arm, the old man used his right arm to properly test the flexibility of the three-dimensionally-enchanted fingers to make sure that everything was working without issue. Basically, it was just a little bit of an in-depth test of their hands. They were the most fragile thing about these two, so Eisen wanted to make sure nothing could go wrong.
After a little while, Xenia then tried to get Eisen's attention again, telling him that she just finished up everything on his arm.
Curiously, Eisen then took a look, while Xenia got the next few things before pulling up a table next to the old man while the pain began to slowly dry.
"Alright, this on here is a small-scale ceremonial circle... Place your arm onto it, please, with your hand directly in the center." She explained to him, so Eisen did as asked and laid his arm onto the table with the different light-red drawings on it once the paint dried.
"Now, let's go for it. Do you know how blessings work exactly?" Xenia inquired, but Eisen simply shook his head, prompting her to begin explaining.
"Well, for the most part, Blessings are of divine nature, put into existence through wonders cast by priests. Those are the blessings that affect your stats and abilities while not doing anything to your body. But then, there are more intrusive blessings created through Witchcraft and Shamanism, which will end up changing your physical body in order to create those stat- and ability-increasing effects. The changes aren't usually all that major, but they show in the same way as Curses do. Sometimes through sudden markings all over your body, changed eye-, hair- or skin-colors, or smaller growth that might take the shape of bone-like structures." Xenia explained, and then began to cover Eisen's arm in a few different plants, or poured some potions over it, before grabbing a small box that she had laying next to her, placing her hand on it and then she muttered something quietly to herself that Eisen himself couldn't understand.
A few moments later, when she was finished, she placed her hands onto Eisen's arm and grasped it as tightly as she could before turning to the old man with a wry smile. It seemed like she was rather nervous about this part of everything, although she was weirdly collected, as in that Eisen didn't understand why she was so collected all of a sudden.
"Ah, and just so that you know, in order to make sure that the blessings would be aggressive enough to try and take your body over, I chose the ones that would change your physical appearance the most. It's all staying in your arm, but even then, it might be a bit tough to look at." She explained, but Eisen just shook his head with a smile. "Just keep going, I'll be fine." He replied, so Xenia nodded and began with everything. It took a bit longer than what Razer did back in Handor to his right arm with all the curses, but that was to be expected, really. Razer had a specialized occupation that let him literally throw around numerous curses all at once, while it was just a part of Xenia's specialization.
But even then, it seemed like this was all far more efficient than Eisen expected it to be. Immediately after the first blessing was cast, Eisen's hand grew in size immensely, turning relatively monstrous despite being a blessing for some reason.
And instead of staying as it was, the rock on Eisen's arm slowly turned into layers of bone, while the golden lines that were already running all over Eisen's body were slowly growing to cover his whole arm quite tightly.
And after a few more Blessings, Eisen could barely recognize that that mass was actually an arm, because the growths caused by the different blessings were all impeding on each other immensely, basically crushing Eisen's arm.
"Heh, seems like there really is too much of a good thing, huh?" Eisen asked with a chuckle, and Xenia just looked at him with a frown and a wry smile, seemingly not in the mood to laugh just as much as Eisen was.
"Right... Well, anyway, it should get there pretty soon... The way you described it, the curses went out of control when your arm was in a similar state as this, right?" Xenia asked, so the old man moved his right hand through his beard with a nod.
"Mhm, as far as I remember at least. It already seems like it's extending above the center of my upper arm a little more than it's supposed to." The old man pointed out, so Xenia sighed in relief, happy that this would be over relatively soon.
And as such it was, actually a good bit quicker than either Eisen or Xenia thought it would happen. Immediately when Eisen saw the notification he was waiting for appear.
[Warning! Your Left Arm has become a unique entity oversaturated with curses. If these Blessings are not removed or the arm not removed from the main-body, you will be taken over and turned into a monster that will mindlessly slay those around you. In that case, the player will be seen as dead, and will respawn at the last place of sleep after penalties have been applied]
"Alright, perfect. But in both cases I'd turn into a monster that will kill everyone, huh?" The old man muttered to himself as he slowly stood up, practically ripping his hand off of the table, before grabbing one of the knives in his Leather apron. After all, it would be far easier to cut it off compared to ripping it off, at least as far as Eisen was concerned.
"So, do you want to watch this?" Eisen asked as he turned toward Xenia, who seemed to be rather unsure if she wanted to see it for research purposes, or if she wanted to look away for mental purposes, and in the end chose to go for the latter while Eisen stabbed the knife into his arm, just above where the blessings stopped. It was a bit tough to get through his rock-skin, but after a little while, he managed to do so and then just cut through the skin underneath without any issues.
And when he reached the bone, Eisen simply placed the Knife to the side, grabbed the lower half of his left arm and just cracked through his bone with a few swift motions. Immediately, Eisen got a notification telling him that the problem was resolved, but that he now had one less arm until he slept.
At the moment, he was losing a lot of HP due to the blood loss, but Eisen managed to resolve that by just covering his stump with his element and drinking a health potion. And now that he thought about it, Eisen was actually rather glad that he didn't bring his monsters with him, because that wasn't a sight he wanted children to look at. And last time when Eisen ripped off his right arm, Caria and Melissa were pretty angry with him already, so maybe it would be good to not let them see all that much of this.
"Xenia, I'm done." The old man exclaimed, so Xenia slowly turned around and took a look at the bulky arm that Eisen was holding in his right hand, before scratching the back of her neck.
"Alright, good. Place it down here, I'll keep watching it for a little while to see what happens... You better go catch some shut-eye and get your arm back now." She suggested as she spointed at another table with a small mana-crystal plate, where Eisen placed the white arm which was already starting to change its shape while convulsing in weird ways.
"And then when it turns into a Mass of Yang, we'll just need to figure out how to combine the two of them, if possible at all. And what that's even going to do for us in the first place." The old man said with a smile and stepped toward the door, properly saying goodbye to Croco and Supp as well as Xenia before making his way out of the room.
On a straigth path, Eisen then walked up the stairs into the meeting room, where he was immediately faced with multiple people looking at the old man confused.
"Oh damn it, Eisen, not again." Brody said with a somewhat annoyed sigh and then crossed his arms, "You went to see that Koro kid again, right? Did he pull some crap on you or something?" The Demon Orc asked, but Eisen shook his head trying to calm the others down.
"No no, don't worry. Xenia and I were trying to make the mass of Yang by using my left arm as a base to cast numerous blessings on it, and then I cut my arm off. It should be changing into a mass of yang as we speak, actually." The old man explained as he sat down on his chair tiredly, looking around at the room with a wry smile.
"But at the very least it can only get better. I mean, I doubt I can beat my record of losing limbs twice in a day."