Eisen couldn't help but smile as he watched the full event unfold from nearby. It was obvious that everyone would accept. After all, their was little reason not to. In the face of enough money to live off of for the rest of one's life, there weren't many people that wouldn't put their pride into the gambling pot.
And the players especially didn't have much to lose. Sure, five levels were a bit annoying to get back especially for the higher-level players, but it wasn't the end of the world even if they did die five consecutive times.
Since a Fate Contract required reward and penalty accepted by both parties, it was completely fine to have such risk- and worth-less penalties. Well, at least to other people it might seem worthless, but in the end, to Eisen the death of the players and the humiliation of the people of this world was worth much more than that amount of money, so that might have also played a part in letting this contract be properly accepted the way it was.
Once everyone signed the specific contract they were supposed to, Stahl simply rolled them back up and placed them away for now. They weren't supposed to be activated just yet, after all.
The performer simply bowed forward a little with a broad smile, "I thank you lesser beings for allowing me to lay my eyes on something so beautiful." He exclaimed, before simply standing up straight again. A lot of people had turned on new torches to properly see Stahl in this scenario, but rather quickly, all of those flames were extinguished again. And while everything was covered in complete darkness for another moment, all that Stahl had to do was activate the invisibility ability of his shirt while shrinking down as much as possible with the little mana he had left right now.
And so, before anyone managed to get a new light source going, Stahl already started running through the crowd, until he reached a place where he could easily get rid of any sort of transformation. He quickly changed his occupation to his combatist one and then casually made his way through the crowd to get to where his grandfather was waiting.
With a satisfied expression, Eisen quickly picked Stahl up and brought him back to the top of the mountain together with the others.
Once they were up there again, Stahl couldn't help but smile brightly, "Hehe..." He laughed lightly, and Eisen slowly looked down at him with a bit of curiosity.
"What? You have this much fun tricking people?" Eisen asked, and Stahl slowly shook his head, "No, no, that's not it. But... I got a demon title just now! I'm now a Demon of Yang, the Contract Demon! Wait, contract demon..?" Stahl muttered, "Does that mean I'll have to keep making contracts like this one...? I mean, I wouldn't particularly mind, that does kinda fit, but..."
"Haha, don't worry, young one. I am quite positive that the way you are referred to will change tomorrow when the time comes. After all, that is when everyone will find out that you are not simply a benevolent one." Aylrentyrth said reassuredly when everyone entered the cave again, and Stahl slowly nodded his head.
"Eh, either way, I can work with this. It would be cool if it changes tomorrow, but being a Contract Demon might also be pretty neat. Ooh, maybe that would give me the ability to be summoned by people that want to form a contract with me!" The young man suggested excitedly, although his excitement was quickly overtaken by something else.
"Well, who cares? I think you just looked really cool out there either way~." Evalia pointed out with a bright smile directed at Stahl as she clung to his arm, and Stahl just lightly smiled back at her, "Thank you. But let's be honest here, without those cool as hell special effects at the beginning, nobody would have believed that I was really some superior being."
"Yup, I'm amazing, right? Praise me more~." Evalia replied with a lightly cheeky grin, all the whilst Eisen couldn't help but laugh a bit. He stepped into his Shop that was still standing in the center of Ailren's treasury and then took a look at all the items he made for tomorrow.
"Holy... Erm, are you sure that you want to stop the raid, and not join it? This all looks like it may even be able to kill an Ancient Dragon..." Stahl pointed out, looking at the mass amount of special mana-based explosives that were laying around here.
With a slight laugh, Eisen just shook his head, "Of course not. These most likely wouldn't be able to even put a scratch on Ailren, let's be honest. Wait, maybe if I used them to blow up the cave while he was inside, maybe..."
"Eisen..." Ailren muttered quietly, slightly worried at why he was thinking about ways to kill him, but in the end the old man just turned toward him, "Don't worry, I was joking. No, these are to fulfill the contract. Or well, to fulfill the failure conditions of the contract, rather. You remember what those were, right?"
Stahl didn't have to think that long about this either and simply nodded his head without hesitation, "Of course I do. One, if someone is unable to continue the raid, that means an individual loss and only that person gains the penalty. Two, if the leaders of the raid announce it to be over, the penalty will be applied to everyone that signed the contract. Three, if the town is destroyed before the raid target is killed."
"It was worded a bit more inconspicuously, but yes, that's exactly right. These explosives are something meant to ensure one of these conditions to be fulfilled." Eisen explained, and everyone immedaitely stared at the old man in confusion.
"You're not saying... That you wish to destroy Melroe by your own hands, are you?" Ailren asked with a deep glare, and Eisen slowly picked up one of the explosives with a smile on his face. He pushed his mana inside of it and threw it onto the ground in front of them.
"You tell me." The old man said. This obviously led to even more confusion, but before anyone could really react, the explosive already blew up. And soon, the whole room was filled with colorful confetti.
"What..?" Stahl asked confusedly, "These aren't real?"
"Of course they're not. I'm not aiming for the third condition, but the second. You see... the raid leaders don't care about the contract. The official raid leader isn't a player, but Belrim, the lord of this town. And he would definitely care more about this town surviving than the pride of some or the life of other that can't actually die. Even if he finds out about the contract, when we make him think that we will actually destroy the whole town, he will quickly give up the raid for now, causing half of the second condition to take effect." Eisen explained quickly, although this explanation made room for another question.
"What is the other half of the second condition?" Evalia asked, and the old man smiled, "One of the two raid leaders. You read the contract out loud to everyone and then let them read it themselves if they wanted to, so it was hard to hide fine-print anywhere. But there was one small trick inside of the contract. As this raid is technically run by Melroe itself, the official 'raid leaders' according to the contract are the current Lord Belrim, as well as someone holding a 'honorary title' of second raid leader in such situations." Eisen explained rather quickly, and while Evalia and even Ailren were confused, Stahl just started to laugh.
"The second person is the town's founder." With a quick nod, Eisen told his grandson that he was absolutely correct.
Eisen knew that he was the one that founded Melroe, and as such, he was able to play around with this kind of thing. Honorary titles for dead people weren't necessarily that rare when people went to war or on raids here, so it was something that people usually just skipped past when they saw it and didn't really care about.
Of course they wouldn't assume that the founder of the town was still alive, it wasn't necessarily widely known that he was one of those that peaked, after all.
"Ah, don't touch that." Eisen said as he pulled Stahl's hand away from one of the explosives, "What? There should be more than enough to trick them, let me just take a look at how you made it."
"That's one of the real ones." The old man sighed, "I'm going to activate that one and throw it into the air to really announce to everyone, 'these are all explosives'. There's just three of those though, although I'm just going to use one."
"I see... Then that's good, at least. I thought you were going to wreak a little havoc after all." Ailren pointed out, and Eisen just looked at him with a light frown, "Who do you think I am? Why would I do that?"
"Because you know you can repair it pretty quickly and you get really fucking terrifying sometimes?" Evalia suggested. Eisen slowly turned toward her with a frown that was a little stronger, "Yeah, but I wouldn't destroy the town for something like this."
"Gramps, you're going to literally kill more than a hundred players tomorrow. Five times each. And have another few dozen people bow down to you. You realize that, right?" Stahl asked, and the old man slowly thought about it for a while and in the end just shrugged.
"Fair enough, I can't argue anymore."