"Jyuuk, can you take a look and see if the plants are normal?" Eisen asked with a frown as he looked at the tiny golem core in his hand, before just crushing it between his fingers, and the Beastperson swiftly nodded his head and moved toward the nearest tree, although nothing seemed to be off with it.
"At the very least the ones around here are all normal, but I don't know about what it might be like deeper in the island." He pointed out, so Eisen slowly moved his fingers through his beard and looked at the others with a light smile. "Well, then let's just see about that. If any of you find anything interesting, let the others know about it. And be careful, Golems can basically take any shape, and if even critters are ones, then who knows what other things might be Golems." Eisen told them, and the others nodded their heads before everyone slowly split up into their groups.
And now, Eisen stood there again with his own group, his five golems inside of the boxes in his own backpack. He figured he shouldn't necessarily have all of them out at all times, so he would just pick the right ones for different situations, although for the most part, Ranger and Tank might come in the most useful.
"Alright, we need to be really careful from now on. Kirisho, you try and stay at the back of the group with me, Golems won't show any reaction to your mist. Everyone should try to use attacks that cause a lot pressure to a single spot, even if it doesn't do a lot of damage. As long as it can clear up the space around the Golem Core, everything will be fine." Eisen told them as they all began moving, and everyone in his group started listening closely to what the old man had to say, and before they all knew it, it seemed like they already faced their first proper 'Opponent', a boar seemingly completely made of dirt, similar to the squirrel, although this boar had some grass growing on its back.
While trying to dig up some ground with its hind-hoof, preparing to sprint forward toward them. And when it just began moving like that, Eisen got a rather good idea. For enemies like this, it would probably be enough to deal with them in such a way, so Eisen quickly turned toward Bree and asked her to get ready with her hammer, although she was supposed to use the pointy side instead of the flat side.
Slowly she nodded her head and held the hammer like Eisen told her to, while the old man took his own hammer out as well. While positioning themselves so that they could easily dodge, Eisen told Bree to hold the head of the hammer down toward the ground and just loosely hold the end of the handle. And just when the boar got into their range, the two of them stepped to the side and Eisen slammed his own hammer directly onto the flat surface of Bree's hammer to cause a sudden increase of speed, while the tip of the hammer penetrated into the boar's dirt body, directly hitting the Golem-Core like Eisen wanted, and in response, the Boar just crumbled to dirt while the shards of the Golem-Core were just laying there.
"Well, this might have been a bit unnecessary, but at least we know that this kind of thing works pretty well damage-wise." Eisen muttered to himself before looking at the notification in front of him.
[You are now Level 150]
"Hmm, even this guy gave that much experience?" The old man asked surprised, before looking at the others with a smile on his face.
"Anyway, I wanted to try this out as verification for later, let's just move on for now. Dirt-Golems shouldn't be hard to deal with." Eisen suggested, before they started moving again, and Eisen looked at the Paladin next to him to find out a little more about his combat style.
"So, you fight by cloaking your body in divine energy, right?" The old man asked him, and the Bronze Half-Dragon nodded his head surprised. "Oh yes, by doing that my whole body gains a little bit more strength, agility and endurance, even if just slightly. But for the most part, I can use the Divine Energy as a weapon of sorts. And because Divine Energy cannot be completely stopped by regular defenses, I have an advantage against heavy-strength opponents. On top of that, whenever I get hurt, a little bit of Divine Energy is used up to start healing me, although it can only do so when it comes to lesser injuries. Not like the one I currently still am suffering of." The Half dragon explained, looking over at his shoulder that was still covered in bandages, and Eisen nodded his head in reply.
"Well, it seems to be healing pretty well, so by the time we're moving over toward the Island you grew up on, you should be able to use your arm like normal. And that is a pretty interesting way to fight, by the way." The old man chuckled, and the Paladin replied with a smile on his face as well.
"I'm surprised you were able to notice that, by the way. Most are unaware of the way I fight even after combat is over." He replied, before Kiron just smiled smugly, re-adjusting his giant sword on his shoulder.
"Of course he noticed, Grandfather has the eyes of a Dragon, after all." The Crystal Dragon pointed out, before the Paladin just tilted his head to the side confused. "The Eyes of a Dragon?" He asked, and Eisen nodded his head in reply.
"Yes, I got something called 'Truth-Seeing Eyes' after becoming a Dragon's Champion." The old man explained while swiftly activating his truth-seeing eyes to demonstrate, and coincidentally, just at that time his proficiency seemed to have been pushed over the edge.
[Truth Seeing Eyes reached Level 100 in Rank 2, Upgrading to Rank 3]
[You can see one's true form]
[Due to Ranking-up your Truth Seeing Eyes Skill, you gained +1 INT and +1 WIS]
"Huh..." The old man muttered to himself, before just waving the notification away, and then looked back at the Paladin.
"Anyway, here, for the most part I use them to see Mana, but I can use them for a lot of different things. Right now, I got the ability to see someone's true form, actually." Eisen told them, before slightly curiously looking at everyone in the group, although none of them seemed to show any difference, with the exception of Kiron.
It was something of an 'Overlay', and while, with this ability active, the 'true' form seemed to take priority, he could still focus on the 'False' form, so it was rather easy to compare the two of them. First of all, Kiron's true form seemed to be just slightly different to how it was right now, with just a few minor differences. In his true form, Kiron was simply a lot more human. For example, his feet were a lot smaller and more human, he didn't have claws at all anymore, not even on his hands, his general body-shape was more like that of a person's as well, but the biggest difference was that Kiron's wings were hidden.
Was this what he looked like before having his strength stolen from him? After all, that apparently also changed his form back to what it was at the rank his strenght was equal to.
Well, that's something that time would show. He was slowly gaining his strength back again, after all. Either way, Eisen was feeling pretty happy about seeing what Kiron looked like originally. Although, while Eisen was thinking about that, another Golem appeared in front of them, but there was something weird about it.
Eisen still had his 'True Form Sight' on, and when he then looked at the Golem, which seemed to be just another dirt-golem outwardly, Eisen for some reason saw something else. He saw a humanoid figure standing there in place of the dirt-golem, although it had no details to it at all. It was just a blank, paper-white figure with no clothes, eyes, mouth, or anything on it, really.
"What?" The old man muttered to himself while the others began to fight the Golem to destroy its golem core, and when that core shattered, the humanoid figure disappeared with it.
"What's wrong?" Sky asked with concern on his face, and Eisen just shook his head slowly, "Nothing, really, I'm just wondering what exactly it was that I just saw. It looked like a person at first glance, but it really wasn't one. Sigurd, can you come out for a second?" Eisen asked as he looked at Fafnir, before the small Core Guardian swiftly appeared out of a cloud of mist.
"How can I help you?" It asked, and Eisen looked the Core Guardian up and down before shaking his head, although just when he wanted to say that it was nothing after all, he did end up seeing something. There was a small connective line between Fafnir and Sigurd, as if they were supposed to be a single entity, which they technically were.
"I just wanted to confirm something..." Eisen muttered to himself before pulling his backpack off his back and taking out one of the boxes out of it, and then swiftly opened it up to make Ranger appear in front of him. And then, Eisen also saw something else again.
It was himself, somehow. A figure, similar to what his Mana Doubles looked like in their pure-mana state, although there, weirdly enough, seemed to be three different 'States' for Ranger. Once where it was just Ranger's current outer appearance, then the one where Eisen could see himself, and then another version of Ranger, with only a few minor differences, like scratches all over his body and a more expressive face.
"Well, just ignoring the fact that you're supposed to be the reincarnation of another golem, I'm just going to guess that looking at a Golem Like this shows its 'Owner'." Eisen muttered to himself as he looked at Ranger, and then swiftly put the Golem back into the Box.
"Alright, so it seems like we can find out where these Golems are actually all coming from with this new ability." Eisen said with a smirk on his face, and the Paladin Half-Dragon opened his eyes wide in surprise.
"Is that so? That was always a mystery that even my father was curious about. I travelled through here on my way toward the 'Central' island as you call it, and the golems sometimes seemed to just appear out of nowhere." The Half-Dragon admitted, before Eisen slowly nodded his head in reply.
"Well, good to know we have someone here that's been here before. But well, for now, let's look for another golem." Eisen said with a smile before stepping along the path in front of them.
And it didn't take long to find more of them, and their bodies kept getting stronger and tougher the closer they got toward the center of the island, and then finally, the first humanoid golem appeared, and at roughly the same time, the area seemed to become more artificial as well.
That meant that the path seemed like it was properly made to be walked on, and the general structure of the area seemed pretty artificial, although Eisen wasn't entirely sure what it was that made him think that.
Either way, when Eisen now took a look at this new, humanoid golem made of rock, he could swiftly see the same figure as before, and this time it was much clearer than before, and seemed to have actually a few dents in its head that might make it look like a proper face.
And so, they continued on along this same path, trying to find golems that gave Eisen a clearer image on who their creator was.