Eisen ended up just going to bed on the couch and then spent a little bit of time speaking to the others about general new developments. It seemed like Brody just finished his level-up quest and was now getting started on his next task, which required him to learn a specific technique from a specific place on the island-group, so he was currently travelling back there for that very reason.
The old man was pretty curiou about what kinds of things these tasks could end up being. The 'technique' that Brody was supposed to learn was obviously something specially chosen for him to do, so the others woudn't get the same task.
Either way, there was not much reason to try and speculate about it without the possibility to find out. The second task from the notes could entail literally anything and everything that one could think of. Eisen would just need to hurry up and keep hunting monsters to find out.
It might be useful if there was some sort of field dungeon around this area of the continent, but it was hard to find monsters that were challenging for Eisen as he was getting close to level 300 anyway. He was pretty sure there wasn't even a single actual dungeon that would let him level up inside of it on the continent.
They really had to go to the islands afterward if they wanted to continue getting stronger. Once they would end up going to the Giant country, they would be able to find more challenging monsters, hopefully.
Slowly, the old man stood up from the couch he was sleeping on and turned around to take a look at the beds, where the three monster children swiftly stood up and stretched.
"Sigurd, get the gate ready please." The old man said with a deep sigh as he watched the last bit of metal disappear from his skin, and then made his way over toward the place where they said to always place the gate when it was needed. And the very moment he was stretching his hand out to grab the doorhandle, the gate constructed itself there and Eisen actually had something to pull on.
The moment he opened the wooden door, he was met with a bit of sand flying into his direction, since it was apparently a pretty windy morning. Once he stepped outside, Eisen took the chance to stretch a little bit. Most of the travellers that had been camping at this oasis last night seemed to have already departed, so he freely increased his size to the maximum before activating his demonic transformation.
Eisen swiftly jumped into the air and used his wings to bring him up as high as possible as everyone else also got out of the dungeon and Fafnir slowly woke up as well.
The Lizardfolk from yesterday said that Zortady usually slept near this Oasis during the day, but it was clear that he wouldn't be sleeping within sight. He was apparently not someone that appreciated social interactions, so Eisen thought that it wouldn't make sense for him to be close enough for people to actually find him within a couple minutes of looking.
Well, most people didn't have the abilities that Eisen had either. Being this high in the sky, Eisen was able to look through the area for miles. And with his mana-sight combined with truth-sight, Eisen was able to make sure that he could look through any sort of sight-obstructive magic that Zortady may have cast to protect himself from being seen.
Since natural-mana had a pale color when compared to the mana dwelling within living beings, Eisen was also able to swiftly see all the beings that were currently gathered in this desert. And soon, although it was actually harder than Eisen would have thought, he thought that he saw something in the distance that could be the mana of a steel-dragon.
Eisen dropped himself down toward the ground again and deactivated his transformations before asking Melissa to make her bees search the area that Eisen specified to see if there really was some sort of dragon over there.
In the meantime, the old man helped the monster children onto Fafnir's back before sitting down there himself.
"I think we found something... It's really shiny and big, but the bees said they're too scared to approach." Melissa explained to Eisen. With a slow nod, the old man just asked Fafnir to run into that direction, "That's probably it, then. I would be surprised if your bees weren't afraid of approaching a Rank 10 monster."
"Well, we're not afraid of approaching Rank 10 monsters either though." Sal pointed out, and Eisen lightly shrugged, "Melissa's bees rely on their instincts a lot more than you three do. You all are too smart for that, after all." The old man replied, before Melissa, who was sitting right in front of Eisen right now, looked at the boy in front of her with a wry smile.
"Two thirds of us, at least." She said quietly, and with a loud gasp of surprise, Sal turned his head around and looked at his sister in shock, "Caria, what are you doing? You shouldn't speak like that about yourself." Sal told her with a light smile.
"I mean, it's nice to see that you're accepting the truth, but yo-" Before Sal could finish speaking, Caria started loudly laughing as thin roots came out of her fingers and wrapped themselves around Sal's neck.
"Haha, oops. Seems like you're right, my instincts are kicking in. " She explained, but swiftly let go of Sal when Eisen told her too.
With a deep sigh, he looked at the two of them and placed his hands on their shoulders with a firm grip, "Could you two stop with your banter for once? I know you don't like that you're sitting this close to each other all the time, but if you continue, I'll have to leave either one of you or both of you with Sky and Bree the next time I have to be somewhere quickly like this." The old man told them, but with shocked expressions, they turned around and looked at Eisen.
"Please don't!"
"Yeah, we'll be good!" They both protested immediately, so Eisen slowly shook his head with a light grumble, "Let's hope so." He said, and then formed his lips into a soft smile, "Because I like having the two of you around, you know?" The old man pointed out, and then stretched his hand over their heads to reach Melissa, who seemed to feel a bit bad after hearing Eisen speak to Caria and Sal like that.
"Don't worry, the same counts for you. But you're always a good girl anyway, so I don't have to worry about you as much." Eisen explained, before Melissa started lightly giggling and hiding her face with the sleeves of her hoodie.
For now, Eisen just kept looking forward for a while, until he noticed a blinding shine in his eyes, and immediately had Fafnir slow done. With his hands in front of his face, Eisen could somewhat figure out what exactly was going on right now.
The Steel Dragon was laying in the sun, and his extraordinarily shiny scales were reflecting the sunlight perfectly toward all directions. Eisen was pretty sure that Zortady's scales had to be at an insane temperature, really.
With a bit of curiousity, Eisen stepped off of Fafnir's back and chose to approach Zortady by foot. And the moment that the old man wanted to open his mouth to greet him, Zortady managed to do so before Eisen.
"Yes, yes. You're already a Champion and now want to take my test. Considering that this is the test before your fifth champin title, your test is going to be a bit tougher, is that alright with you? If not, I don't actually really care." Zortady explained, getting right to the point while he didn't even open his eyes.
With a quiet grumble, Eisen simply agreed, "Sure. Then tell me, what is the trial?" He asked, and Zortady quickly explained.
"In this area around me, there's three different types of sand mixed together. I want you to split the sand up into their specific type, combine the sand-crystals together with Alchemy, and then use those larger crystals to make an item for me. You can't directly mix the crystals with each other again, however. And if I can extract even a single grain of the wrong type of a specific type of crystal, you fail the trial." Zortady pointed out, and Eisen looked at him with a confused expression.
"That's a joke, right?" Eisen asked with an annoyed grumble, but it really seemed as if that wasn't the case, so the old man just shrugged and got started.
"Fine." He muttered and waved the notification that appeared in front of him away while Kirisho's mist started pouring out of her amulet while she looked at Zortady angrily, "What kind of trial is this? Does he want you to sort the sand crystals by hand?" She asked, but Eisen immediately shook his head.
"Of course not. It's just a really lazy, way too easy trial. I'm a bit disappointed, actually." The old man explained as he continued stepping away, and then looked at Fafnir.
"Sigurd, get me the high-density crystalized mana, please." Eisen said, before the Core Guardian appeared in front of him with a large crystal the size of its own body in its hands.
"Here you go!" It exclaimed, before Eisen quietly nodded his head, "Thanks. Oh, and some mana crystals as well, if you can?"
"Of course!" Sigurd replied, and as he received the mana crystals, Eisen thought it over again a bit, "Well, to be fair, it should be pretty hard to use method if you don't have the Magic Item Creation skill." He pointed out, before practically scooping away a part of the high-density crystalized mana and placed it into the crystal tub that he made and immediately started decompressing it a bit until it filled out the whole tub.
"Steel." Eisen said, telling the mana to act like metal, and then immediately started liquifying it.
Eisen quickly scooped up some of the sand and dropped it onto the metallic-mana-liquid. And from then on, Eisen slowly started to extract a little bit of the steel-mana at a time while decompressing the whole liquid to make it less dense bit by bit.
He had great control over all this just because this was his own mana, so that's the reason why he chose to use this instead of actual steel.
Soon, some of the sand crystals started dropping down to the bottom of the liquid, until only one specific kind was left over. Eisen scooped that up with his hand and immediately started combining them with each other before placing that larger crystal to the side. Like this, it was actually rather easy to split one of them up. And the rest could be done with the sand currently at the bottom of the bowl.