"Alright, so everything's set up properly?" Eisen asked to confirm just one more time as he stood right next to Sigurd and Fafnir at the place where they would be opening the Dungeon later on. "Yes yes, just go on already. The sooner you go, the sooner you'll be back, right?" Sigurd pointed out with a sigh, and Eisen just nodded with a slight smile on his lips.
"Mhm, that's right. Then go on, open the Dungeon, Fafnir." Eisen said as he smiled toward the small Living Dungeon, before he did as asked and jumped into the air, making the large gate appear underneath his body.
"Then we'll be off. Go and see any of the others if something's wrong." The old man suggested, and then swiftly turned around while Sigurd disappeared inside of the Dungeon.
"Alright kids, get on Cabarum." Eisen said as he quickly picked up Caria and Melissa and sat them down on top of the Mechanical Horse's back while Sal climbed on top of him himself. For now it was fine that Cabarum was out here, since the path wasn't that rough here yet, and later when Cabarum couldn't walk there anymore, Eisen just had to place Cabarum into the specially-made box he made to store him.
"Now then, Aulu, walk in front of us and alert us if there are any monsters." Eisen told the mechanic wolf lady, who quickly barked and turned around to sprint off just a little bit.
"Then let's go." The old man suggested as he looked at the others, and quickly snapped his finger to tell Cabarum to start walking as well while Sky and Bree were walking next to him, and a little while after they started moving, one of the Fey-Kin siblings already spoke up. "Now then, where are we going first?" Sky asked, and Sky quickly turned his eyes to the side to access the mental map he made with Visualization and stared at the first cross that Eisen marked down on it.
"A hunting area with average Rank 4 and 5 monsters to let the three of them level up some." Eisen explained, so Sky slowly nodded his head in response and looked back down at his book, "Gotcha. Then I'll save my mana for that." The Fey-Kin suggested, but the old man next to him shook his head.
"It's fine, you can take a break then if you want to. I won't say no to some help, but it's not really necessary as long as we don't overdo ourselves. We're going against some of the weaker bunch first anyway to get Sal to Rank 4." Eisen said, so Sky shrugged.
"Eh, that's fine. We'll just have to see later then."
"Yup." Eisen replied with a smile on his face on his own, and then just looked forward along the path in front of them.
It seemed like there were some players running around this area, but it wasn't that big a deal. Most of them were just looking for new areas to level their skills up at, or looking for new monsters to get their general level up further, so they didn't pay too much attention to Eisen and that group, even if they did stick out a fair bit.
"Soo..." Bree said after a little while as she looked up at Eisen, "What do you think this Dragon will be like?" She asked curiously, so Eisen moved his fingers through his beard in thought as well.
"Well... Can't really say, but I have a feeling she's going to be calmer than Bolremgar. She's a Silver Dragoness, so she's probably got a pretty big exposition for magic... So I'm guessing she would be pretty intelligent." Eisen smiled as he looked down at Bree, who just nodded her head excitedly. "Ooh yeah, and I bet she's also pretty... pretty!" She exclaimed, so Eisne just slightly chuckled in response.
"Mhm, I bet she is. But we'll just have to see. She probably likes puzzles, considering how she made a map and riddle like this so that people can find her."
"Ooh, I like riddles! But they're so hard, because sometimes I don't know if I just don't know enough monsters..." Bree muttered quietly as she fiddled with her fingers nervously, "Like, what walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? I don't know, maybe some quadrupedal monster that likes to change things up? But the answer was 'A Person'? What kind of riddle is that, that doesn't make sense!" She exclaimed with frustration in her voice, but Sky next to her just sighed deeply and shook his head as if in disappointment.
"'Four legs in the morning' is when you're a baby crawling around, 'two legs' is when you're a child or adult that can walk, and 'three legs' is when you're old with a walking stick. The 'Morning, Noon, and Evening' mean the start of life, the middle of life, and the end of life." The boy explained, and Bree looked at him surprised.
"Whaat? That's the reason why? That doesn't make sense! Nobody has such a short lifespan..." She complained, but Eisen just chuckled as he looked down at her with a wry smile, "It's a Metaphor, Bree." The old man pointed out, and Bree looked back at him with an embarrassed expression. "Oh, right..."
"Hmm, but just curious, that reminds me of something... Is there a monster that's like a raccoon, just with a lion-head?" Eisen asked, and Bree closed her eyes in thought for a moment before shrugging.
"I don't know, maybe.... Why are you asking?" She inquired curiously, and Eisen just smiled at her. "Nothing, it's fine, just curious." The old man told her, and then looked back forward.
For the next little while, they talked about this and that, just to pass the time while they were walking, and enjoying the sight of the mountains around them as they started their climb up one of the mountains, while Eisne kept updating his mental map a little with the help of his mana copy skill to copy and analyze the area around him.
And that went on for roughly the whole day, and around late afternoon, they finally managed to reach the hunting area that Eisen wanted to go to first. It was basically just a quite large plateau on top of the mountain with different layers to it, each of those layers holding quite a lot of monsters. Eisen figured that it was a quite good place to hunt, considering that it was relatively open and the monsters didn't seem like tough opponents either from what Eisen heard.
"Now then, let's get started. Sal, you come first." Eisen said with a smile as he quickly increased his size and held his arm out toward the young Monster. "Alrighty~!" He exclaimed, and Eisen slowly let him down onto the ground as he looked at Caria and Melissa as well.
"We'll be back in a bit, and then you two can hunt a little as well." The old man explained to them, but first just went on alone with Sal, while Bree was walking behind a bit behind them to give them the necessary support that they might end up needing, while Sky stayed there together with Cabarum, Aulu, and the two monster girls.
"Alright, bud, now go ahead and tie down that one over there." Eisen said as he pointed his hand over into the distance toward a lonesome monster, so the young Spider just nodded his head and ran his hand over his abdomen to grab some thread and then started to create a quick Magic Circle with his arms as a base, while Eisen just watched for now.
Soon, Sal sighed out deeply and just pressed his arms together slowly, as if smashing the web that he just created inbetween them. Although it seemed like it was something very different that he had come up with.
"Oh?" Eisen muttered quietly, before Sal grabbed the smashed-down web and bundled it up into a ball, before handing it to Eisen. "Throw it there." Sal said as he pointed at the Monster that Eisen had told Sal to tie down, so the old man just sighed and nodded his head.
"Sure." He answered, and quickly did as asked, throwing the spider-thread ball against the monster through a simple pitch, and the moment that it hit it, the ball started to glow and immediately exploded outward into hundreds of threads that each slung themselves around the monster to tie its legs against its body, causing it to just fall onto its side.
"Well then... These seem quite useful, huh?" The old man chuckled and quickly summoned his sword as he walked up to the monster and swiftly stabbed into its throat in a way that it wouldn't instantly die, and then told Sal to finish the monster off himself, which the young Spider swiftly did.
It seemed a bit gruesome from the outside, telling what, at least from the hips upward, was just a young boy to kill something so easily, but... That's just what it was. And Sal didn't really seem to mind it all that much either, considering that he had been asking to level up here.
Either way, soon, Sal managed to finish that monster off without an issue, and gained a couple of levels from that before Eisen and Bree quickly started to take the monster apart into whatever could be needed from this one in particular.
Once they were done collecting the claws, fangs, and mana crystal, they just continued on forward and repeated something similar for another monster. And then for another, and then for another. And that went on and on until Sal finally reached Rank 4 by continuosly killing monsters so much stronger than him just level-wise.
When he evolved, he once again grew in size, like Eisen expected, but something else changed. It was like a proper humanoid body was slowly splitting off of the spider body. Basically, now he looked like a boy with the upper body covered in regular skin and extremely humanoid complexion, and the lower body covered in a spider-like carapace. That meant that his two front legs also looked like properly humanoid legs now, although he still had a regular spider-like body 'stuck' to his back, meaning that he still had a spider-like abdomen and six large spider-legs behind him, but Eisen figured that within the next evolution, even that all might disappear from what it all looked like so far.
And so, with a smile on his face, Eisen rubbed his fingers through Sal's hair. "Then let's go get your sisters and go level up some more, huh?" He suggested.