It didn't actually seem to take all that long in order to find the right place, and while the castle was surprisingly large, it wasn't like it was a labyrinth. The layout was quite straightforward, so Eisen managed to deduce the place where the crystal would be relatively easily. It would most likely be in the safest place that it could be, which was in the catacombs underneath the castle.
These, however, were in turn a bit more confusing, as they were supposed to be. It seemed like they were supposed to be an emergency escape route designed to confuse intruders. But luckily, with the help of some of Xenia's magic, they managed to find a quite large room pretty quickly, and it was directly in the center of the Labyrinth-like catacombs.
And there, to everyone's surprise, they didn't just find a room with a place that the town core could be placed at, but they found a second core, although this one was far, far larger, just barely properly fitting into the room while floating like it was, despite the very high ceiling.
When Eisen slowly set his hand onto the crystal, he got a notification that confirmed what he thought it was.
[You have found a Country Core. In order to create a country, you need either 10 Towns of any rank or 1 Rank 7 Town]
"Hmm… Interesting." Eisen said with a smirk, and then turned to the others. "Well, I was told this would be here somewere. This is a country core, so once we took over enough of the Islands, we can create a Country here." The old man explained, and the others looked at him quite surprised.
"This is way too easy, isn't it?" Jyuuk asked with a wry smile, but Eisen just shrugged lightly, "Better than being too hard to actually figure out." The old man pointed out, so the Beastperson just kind of nodded in response.
"Alright, for now, let's try to find a good place to set the Town Core up for now. It's probably supposed to be placed somewhere here as well." Eisen muttered to himself as he looked at the area that the town crystal was floating above of, before finding a small slot in the floor, which seemed to be the perfect place to put the Town Core into.
And so, slowly, the old man did just that, and it seemed to fit like the town core was taken out of this spot in the first place, which it, to be quite fair, might have been.
Slowly, Eisen just began to smirk and poured his mana into the Town Core, guessing that this would be how they could activate it, before a notification appeared in front of the old man again.
[In order to create a Town under the leadership of the Guild <World's Peak>, the Guild has to reach Rank 1]
With a frown on his face, Eisen began to let out a deep sigh and turned to the others, scratching the back of his neck as he did so. "Well, apparently we can't create a Town just yet. We first need to have the Guild reach Rank 1, and for that we need a Guild Core…" The old man explained, before Brody began to grind his teeth annoyedly.
"Why the hell do so many things need cores?" He asked, but Eisen just smiled at him. "Don't worry, it shouldn't be too tough to get one if we work toward it." The old man said, before picking the Town Core back up. It might be safe here, but Eisen really didn't want to risk anything, and as such rather just took it with him for now.
"Let's try and see if the others found anything interesting." Eisen pointed out, so the other Originals agreed and the five of them made their way back out of the catacombs, before Eisen all of a sudden got a notification, saying that Komer messaged him. Surprised, he switched to the Chat-Screen.
[Komer] Ground Floor, opposite side to the entrance. Secret door. Treasure room
With a light smirk, Eisen waved the notification away and looked at the other Originals again. "Seems like Komer found the treasure room, let's go take a look." He explained to them, so Evalia raised her eyebrows surprised.
"Oh, a Treasure Room? Really? I wonder what's in there…" She muttered curiously, and Brody just shrugged and held his arms up behind his neck. "Prolly nothing. The place is completely run-down, so I doubt there's anything left."
"Well… Let's see about that." Xenia replied, "How would Komer have known that it's a treasure room otherwise?" The High-Elf pointed out, so Brody slightly frowned and then nodded his head with a smile.
"Fair enough. If it's a treasure room, I hope they have some awesome ancient relics there. I mean, what Eisen makes is probably at that level already, but there's still a difference to a real, ancient piece of maigcal treasure." Brody said with an excited grin, and Jyuuk chuckled in response to that.
"Never took you for the Fantasy Geek type." The Monkey laughed, and Brody responded with a light punch to his shoulder.
"Good thing I ain't one. I'm a historical-weaponry geek." He replied, so Jyuuk just returned another smirk, the meaning of which somehow stayed hidden to Eisen while the others all seemed to understand it.
"Aha… youngsters these days…" Eisen laughed with a smile on his face, but the others just turned their head toward Eisen and raised their eyebrows in unison.
"It feels somehow weird being called a 'Youngster' by Eisen…" Xenia pointed out, and Brody slowly nodded. "Ya got that right… The Geezer may be a Geezer, but he ain't givin' off that kinda feeling." The Demon-Orc added, and Xenia, Jyuuk and Evalia nodded immediately.
"Right?! Eisen, are those just your genes, or do you have some kind of miracle moisturizer? Like, one of those 'It will make you look 10 years younger' creams, just that it actually works?" Evalia asked curiously, and Jyuuk nodded his head quite curiously as well.
"I mean, we are working on a side-product like that because my research team was asked to, but we didn't actually finish it yet, so it was really surprising to hear so much confirmation that you really look like that." Jyuuk pointed out, and the four others, including Eisen, now ended up turning toward the Beastperson in turn.
"If you cause a Zombie Apocalypse, can you warn me beforehand, by the way?" Evalia asked with her head tilted to the side, "I want to have a little time to hide out in Eisen's Bunker basement…"
"What do you mean 'If you cause a Zombie Apocalypse'? In the first place, we didn't even enter the animal testing phase yet, and pathogenical spread of internal diseases in near-to-impossible from plants to living creatures. Some plants can be disease-carriers by having the pathogen on their outer layer, but what we're making is directly integrated in the plants themselves, so that's basically impossible." Jyuuk replied, and Xenia looked at him with a wry smile.
"Babe, I swear, if you actually do cause the Zombie Apocalypse, you'll be the first fodder to the Zombies." She said, and immediately, Evalia concentrated on another fact about what she said, "Oh~? You're at the 'Babe' phase already~?" She asked with a curious smirk, and both Xenia and Jyuuk looked at each other nervously with slightly flushed cheeks.
"S-Sorry, it slipped out…" Xenia apologized, but Jyuuk shook his head, "It's fine, don't worry. We never really tried actually hiding it like Stahl and Evalia." The Monkey-Beastperson pointed out, and now it was Evalia's turn to get flustered.
"Wh-What? I don't know what you're talking about…" Evalia said and tried to look away in surprise, so Brody just laughed loudly, "Wow, for being a world-reknown Actress, you're a really shitty liar, aren't you?" The Demon-Orc laughed, but Evalia just ignored him.
"Oh shut it, as if you're always in peak condition for a fight!" She exclaimed, and at that point, Eisen started to remember a story that he heard about a few years ago.
"Hmm, actually, wasn't there that one time where you got your wisdom teeth removed and on your way home beat up some burglars?" Eisen asked, and Brody smirked and crossed his arms with a nod, "So you've heard about that, huh?"
"Haha, yes, I was at a hospital that day and all that their TV's could get in were some news stations, and nearly all of them were showing the same report about the 'High Hero'. Especially the interview afterward was pretty interesting." Eisen said with a light laugh, and Evalia looked at Brody with a confused, wry smile, immediately turning away from him afterward.
"Right, well… Not everyone can be a musclehead like you and react that well in every situation." Evalia said slightly embarrassedly as she scratched her cheek kind of nervously, but Eisen swiftly placed his hand onto the top of her head. "Don't worry, I'm pretty sure everybody knew about it already. And you don't need to be scared or nervous because of anything. I'd be delighted to have a Granddaughter-In-Law like you." The old man chuckled, and for a moment, Evalia calmed down and smiled at him softly, although she then quite swiftly realized what he was saying and began to smile like an idiot out of nervosity.
"Wh-What, Granddaughter-In-Law..? We're not at that point yet…" She replied, so Eisen just continued smirking.
"Oh? 'Not Yet', I see?" He asked, and Evalia just buried her face in her hands while walking over toward Xenia, swiftly being comforted by her.
"Well, let's keep speaking about this later, I think we're here now… Komer said to go to the room directly opposite to the entrance, and that there'd be some kind of hidden room here…" The old man said quietly and then swiftly activated his Mana-Sight, before finding a very light residue of mana on one of the bricks on the wall, figuring that it was there due to an enchantment being activated.
Slowly, the old man poured his mana into that spot, and just as he expect, it was sucked in by an enchantment which quickly spread the mana out into different parts of the wall, before a spot of it basically crumbled to pieces, just to reveal some stairs leading further down.
"Huh… Interesting." Eisen said with a light smile, and swiftly, he and the other Originals made their way from the relatively inconspicuos room into the room that seemed to be hiding at the end of the stairs.
And there, he found Komer sitting on the ground, surrounded by literal mountains of coins and gems.
"Ah! All of you! This is amazing!" The young merchant exclaimed as he waved his arm toward the coins, "You have no idea how much money there is here! Just the coins should be at least one Crystal coin! And there's not just regular money, there's a lot of different precious crystals and gems, and all of them are worth a good sum of money as well! There's some high-quality materials to work with here as well, and some weapons, tools, and so on!" Kiron exclaimed excitedly, so Eisen just looked at him with a smirk and nodded his head.
"I see, interesting. Did you coincidentally find a Guild Core around here?" Eisen asked, and after a little bit of thinking, Komer nodded his head and jumped up, walking through the relatively large room to head to a place where a lot of different crystals seemed to be gathered, pushing a few of them to the side before grabbing a purple, nearly pink, crystal and throwing it over to Eisen.
"Yup, here it is. There's some things that I can't figure out otherwise as well, because I couldn't even inspect them yet. I placed those that I found to the side over there, if you want to take a look. You can probably inspect it with your eyes."