Benjamin stepped out of his bedroom and stepped toward the livingroom area again. Right there, Benji seemingly just got back from a run and was sitting on the couch while eating something proper.
"What's up?" Benji asked with a smile on his face, and Benjamin slowly sat down right next to him, "Well, beside me finally being a king, not much." He explained with a laugh, making Benji just stare at him for a few seconds.
Benji placed down the plate onto the coffee table and swallowed what he had in his mouth before moving over a bit to get a better look at his grandfather. "What?"
"Yeah, really just a little bit ago we set everything up. I'm a King, and the others are Dukes."
With a slight groan, Benji rubbed the bridge of his nose, "Already? Shit, I wanted to be there and watch..." The young man pointed out, before Benjamin slightly smiled, "It wasn't that interesting, really. We just all had to push mana into the country core under the castle in Prototype and that was it. Nothing shifted, there weren't any cool lights, it was all just notifications." The old man pointed out, and Benji leaned back on the couch with a shrug.
"Would have still been cool to see though. Ah, and by the way, take a look at this..." Benji said and pulled out his phone, before quickly connecting it to the TV and making it play a video. It was just a forest of tents and carriages at the start. Of course, inbetween those tents and carriages, people were walking around, trying to trade or just screwing around with each other.
At first, Benjamin didn't think much of it, but then he saw a certain mountain and tunnel right behind it. The camera started traveling through the tunnel, and Benjamin slightly groaned, "Those are the players gathering at Melroe?"
"Yup. Insane, right? Well, it gets even more insane." Benji explained and sped the video up a little. The moment that the video revealed the town, Benjamin knew what his grandson was speaking about. Not only was the town completely filled with numerous players, there were construction-sites all over town. It seemed that at an equal distance to each other, the players were building some kind of construct to help them in the fight. And at that point, Benjamin became outraged.
"They want to turn my Melroe into a battlefield? What the fuck is Belrim even doing?" The old man muttered as he pushed his teeth together, seething of anger.
"...It gets worse..." Benji pointed out, and Benjamin just stared at the TV screen. And the next thing Eisen saw was even more outrageous. The Belrim that Benjamin thought to have simply ignored all of this happening was actually one of the main perpetrators of this whole thing, it seemed.
And to top it off, he was talking to some seemingly quite high-level players, but still not as high-level as Eisen and the others, about whose fault this all is. And the ones that he named were none other than the 'Five Originals'. With a deep groan, Benjamin started to shake his head in annoyance.
"Well, at least I'll be there to take care of all this soon." Benjamin pointed out as he leaned back on the couch. It would be of no use to just jump up and sit back down in the capsule now, since he still had to recover a bit by sleeping for a while.
"And you'll most likely have something to level your Demonic Blade up with, huh?" Benji added, before Benjamin looked over toward him, "What do you mean? I'll try to solve this without having to kill anyone if I can. I'm hoping that this will be the case." The old man said, but Benji just looked at him with his brows raised as if what he just said was completely ridiculous.
"Come on, just think about it. Hundreds of people are gathering to somehow kill an ancient dragon in some kind of epic battle. Do you really think they'll just leave after being told that Ailren's a good guy?"
The young man's words really made sense, but Benjamin would still prefer it to not have to solve it like that. He didn't mind if he had to do it, of course, all the Artificials would return in due time, after all, but still... Killing hundreds of players wouldn't necessarily do good in trying to convince people that 'World's Peak' were the good guys and Merc and Cial were the bad ones.
Benjamin crossed his legs and closed his eyes, trying to think of a way to properly get through this. And then, he slowly remembered something quite useful, and then just started to smirk.
"Benji, it's your turn again later, right? You and Evalia are coming with me. I could make use of your Demon Alter-Ego for a little while." The old man announced, and just started to think this through some more.
---
Eisen stood there and just waited for Stahl and Evalia to come over while he himself was finishing up the item that he would use to actually transport them all. Really, it was just a wooden box clothed with some thick, soft cloth on the inside. It was large enough to just fit five people, Stahl and Evalia, as well as Caria, Melissa and Sal. Of course, Eisen didn't go anywhere without those three with him.
Either way, connected to the wooden box were some straps that Eisen could properly attach to himself and then reinforce with his element to make sure he wouldn't drop the box ever.
The three monster-teens were already inside of the box, ready to go, but Stahl and Evalia were only coming over right now.
Although it seemed like Evalia wasn't necessarily too happy about it, "Tell me, why exactly do I need to come? I was going to level up some skills of mine a little more. So why-"
Immediately, Eisen interrupted her and waved his hand to the side, activating his new 'Crafter's Being' skill to share the visualization of what he needed her for, and Evalia slowly but surely nodded her head, "Alright, I'm in. That's awesome." The young woman said with a broad smile, and Stahl just looked at his grandfather with a light, nervous frown, "You really want me to do THAT? I mean, how am I even going to get that large? We already tried something like that, it's still really hard for Evalia to manipulate everything in a way that it actually looks real."
Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Eisen pushed his hand into a pocket of his apron and pulled out a thin metal bracelet with some gems set into it and enchantments all over it.
"Right, ability enchanting... Nevermind then. So Evalia will just take care of the special effects?"
"That's the idea, yes. I'll explain it a little more once we're there, we still a couple of days left until the actual 'raid' is set to happen, so we have plenty of time."
"Really? How fast do you think we can travel over there?" Stahl asked curiously, and Eisen just smiled at his grandson a little before crossing his arms, "A little faster than the ship, I'd say. Now, come on already."
Eisen stepped aside and opened up the door to the large wooden box, or rather the small wooden room, and let the two of them get inside.
"Alright, Serio, Girland, while I'm off, Xenia, Jyuuk and Brody have all my authority, alright?" The old man said while looking at the two Core Guardians, both of which quickly nodded.
"Of course."
"As you wish, my King."
With that, Eisen just increased his size to the total maximum and then activated his Draconic Demon King transformation, before picking up the box and then having his elemental properly attach the straps to Eisen all over his body. Once that was done, Eisen reinforced everything as much as he could to make sure the box couldn't fall down during the flight. And while the Elemental Spirit dove back into Eisen's body for now, the old man jumped up and started to fly into the direction of the harbor for now.
He tried to slowly get up to his maximum regular speed, at which point he already reached the harbor, and then started to turn his body into flames, which were represented as crystals in this form. Eisen's body was now being completely covered in golden crystals, until it looked like Eisen was just a man sculpted out of those crystals.
Of course, Eisen could have done this close to instantly, but he didn't want to increase his speed too rapidly, since that would mean that the five inside of the box wouldn't be too comfortable. It might even be pretty dangerous, considering that Eisen's maximum speed like this was comparable to a small airplane.
And so, the old man started traveling inbetween the islands and the continent one more time, this time completely while flying. It was actually a pretty nice sight to see the ocean from this sort of angle with nothing around him at all.
Especially the sight of land coming closer and closer after a few hours was something to behold, somehow. Eisen could immediately see the Starlight Building towering over all the others in the harbor town, and the old man proceeded to just land on top of the roof there, where Komer was already waiting. Eisen had sent him a message that he was getting closer, after all.
"No need to even get rid of your transformation, just lower that small house strapped to your chest a bit." Komer said, and Eisen just smiled in response and did as asked before Komer opened the door up to give the special fate contracts he was asked to make to Stahl and Evalia.
"Seriously though, why do you need this kind of contract? First time I had to roll them up into scrolls like that. It's pretty cool, but it still makes me curious."
With a slight laugh, Eisen just winked at Komer, "Don't worry, you'll find out soon enough. Just make sure to watch the news."
"Right... Well, just try not to fuck up. The repercussions for a contract like that are literally a hundred times worse than normal. Don't set a reward that you can't give them."
"I know it, don't worry. Well, thank you, anyway. We're going to head off to meet Ailren now." Eisen replied to Komer with a smile on his face, and the young Fate Merchant quickly nodded his head.
"Got it. Also, if you can... Could you record your view for me? I would really like to see what a fate contract like that looks like after it's been activated. It's sure to be amazing, right?"