Eisen stood in front of all the Ego-Houses with his hammer in his hand. He figured out that against the ego-items, using tools rather than weapons was a rather useful solution. The others could still fight them like they normally would, but Eisen may have had a little bit of a benefit over them.
Either way, Eisen increased his size and activated his Draconic Demon King transformation, now towering over most of the buildings that could be found in this town. The moment that one of the buildings swung its hand against Eisen, the old man replied by swinging his hammer against that hand. The moment they came into contact, the hand made of stone bricks shattered into pieces immediately. After all, the force created by both the ego-house's and Eisen's movement like that was incredibly strong.
Meanwhile, while Eisen was taking care of the house from out here, the others went inside of the house to take care of it and hold it off. Because after some quick scans by Eisen and Bree as well as some scouting done by Melissa's bees, they managed to figure out that the soul core was really floating inside of the house, which was still hollow somehow. There seemed to be more ego-items inside of there made out of whatever furniture was inside beforehand, but they didn't necessarily seem like they had much strength.
So, despite their many numers, it should be relatively easy for the others to take care of them. And in the end, it was just like what they figured. Within a few hits of anyone that went inside, the chairs, decoration, and beds shattered into pieces.
Soon, the group that went into the house reached the soul core, and since it wasn't capable of moving and everything else seemed to be taken care of, they just attached some of the magic bombs Eisen made, actually specifically to do damage to materials instead of actual living beings in preparation for this island, and then made their way outside again. Only a few bees stayed behind for now to hold off whatever other ego-item may have stayed hidden inside there that could mess with the bombs.
Once everyone got out, the bees left through one of the destroyed windows, and Eisen blew the bombs up remotely.
A few moments later, the ego-house in front of him just stopped moving. Parts of it that were slightly damaged crumbled off, and the whole thing in general wasn't structurally sound anymore, but it didn't just crash together like Eisen expected. Using his element, he strengthened it a little bit to make sure it wouldn't randomly fall over, and then shrunk down to speak to the others that just came out of the ego-house.
The first to speak was Sky, who was ready to 'report' what everything was like inside of the house, "So, like you thought, basically everything in there was an ego-item, but I don't think they had any soul cores themselves? They might have just been seen as part of the whole house and became mobile together with it." One of the two fey-kin siblings explained, before the other one continued with the rest.
"Mhm, and they didn't really change shape that much either like all the other ego-items, it was more like what happens when you turn things into golems, I think! They kept their shape, but were simply able to move!" Bree added. Eisen started moving his fingers through his beard in thought and then slowly nodded his head, "I see. That's good to know. For now, none of the buildings should get really too troublesome then. But in the distance, I could see some ego-houses with signs attached to them, and some that were even larger than me, like mansions. Not to mention the castle in the center of the town..." Eisen said with a slight sigh, and Komer immediately understood what Eisen was getting at.
"Ah... If we end up encountering some weapon shops that we can't really get past, it might be dangerous. Having dozens of swords or spears flying toward us would be pretty annoying to handle." Komer said, "Not to mention armor shops. There we'll probably see proper enemies again, if there are any full suits of armor inside."
"There's that, but of course, there's still 'regular' ego-items around here. There are the ones just walking the streets, but we don't know if the items inside of the shops were turned into the regular ego-items either. It might be easier to just try and blow the whole house up at once." Eisen pointed out, but he quickly heard a bit of resistance against that plan.
Kiron looked at his grandfather with a wry smile, "I don't think we should. Wouldn't that not only piss the other ego-houses off even more, but also make it harder for us to move around here? We can be glad that not every single house was turned into an ego-house, or else we'd already be doomed..." The Half-Dragon pointed out. The old man couldn't really deny that, but it was still rather troublesome.
"Right. Then we'll just have to try and get through it like this. Well, what was the actual soul core inside of the house like?" The old man asked, and Bree quickly replied.
"Ah, it was kind of... you know, like a ball of bricks just floating in the center of the master bedroom, you know?" The fey-kin girl explained, and Eisen slowly nodded his head.
Right now, it was important to try and get as much information as he possibly could while trying to figure out a path where they would be basically forced to fight the houses as little as possible. It would take a fair amount of time to take care of each house, especially once they reached the area where the size of the houses would start to increase. And it seemed like the closer they would be getting toward the center of town to the place that was basically a castle, the higher the density of the ego-houses became as well.
Not to mention that their strength, quality, and the amount of the regular ego-items would indubitably also increase together with that density.
Eisen thought it was bothersome, but there was no real way to avoid it in the slightest. Soon, the group started making their way further into the town, trying to sneak around as much as possible by making use of Kirisho's mist to hide their presence, and just fought the enemies that they really had to fight.
That wasn't because they were unsure if they could beat them, but because they wanted to avoid being exhausted or injured too much before they reached the big bad in the center of the town. Because Eisen was pretty sure that it would be an even bigger bother to fight than the giant upper body that was made up of the castle, many times larger than Eisen was.
And then, they reached the first shop. It was like Eisen had thought it might be... It was seemingly filled to the brim with ego-items that were streaming out of it. There were some of those 'lesser' ego items inside of it as well, so fighting against these houses would be incredibly bothersome. But just when Eisen was thinking that, he noticed the sound of something in the distance. It was the sound of something crashing down, and just a few moments later, Eisen could see the figure of a certain Demon-Orc flying through the air in the distance. Of course he wasn't really flying, it rather seemed like he was kind of pushed back like that after the attack of one of the ego-items, probably one of the ego-houses.
Eisen quickly sent Brody a message in response to seeing him like that, and the Demon Orc seemed to look around for a few moments, and then saw Eisen soon after. He jumped back toward the enemy that just attacked him and probably took it down soon after, and it didn't take long until Brody and his companions, which currently included Morrom as the craftsman of the group, reached Eisen and his own group.
"Good timing. We were startin' to run into some trouble on our own." Brody said with a laugh, and Eisen slowly nodded his head, "I get what you mean, yeah. But I'm sure you would manage even without us." The old man replied, and it didn't take a long for Brody to look back at Eisen with a smug grin.
"Heh, yeah I would." The Demon-Orc replied, "But either way, it's good that we could meet up here. These damn buildings are pretty troublesome, huh?"
"Yeah, just, how have you guys been dealing with it?" Eisen asked, and Brody slowly turned around and looked at Morrom, "This guy's got some pretty useful stuff with him. Gloves that take anything apart you touch, bombs that compress a huge boulder into a fuckin' marble, and shit like arrows that bore themselves through rock and then literally come running back to you on itty bitty legs. It's friggin' awesome! Can I keep 'im?" Brody asked with a broad grin, and Eisen sighed slightly, although he was still smiling.
"If Morrom agrees, you can probably hire him. But either way... It seems like you guys basically just blew all the houses up, didn't you?" Eisen asked, and Brody simply nodded his head as if it was obvious, "Yeah, what else were we supposed to do?" He asked, and the old man slightly sighed.
"Go into the house and destroy the soul core that's floating in there. That way you won't completely make it crash and pull the attention of other ego-items toward you." The old man pointed out, before Brody slowly tilted his head to the side.
"Really? That might have been a lot easier, then." The demon-orc pointed out, and Eisen just groaned a bit, "How did you not think of that right away?" Eisen asked, "Well, either way, since you were able to seemingly rather easily beat them just like this, you should be able to just breeze through everything from now on. Using the items Morrom has with him, we should be able to get it done pretty quickly."
"Gotcha. Then, should we just team up for the rest of the way till we get to the big guy?" Brody suggested, and Eisen immediately nodded his head, "That's exactly what I was thinking as well. I think that's the best choice for now. Especially because there's a lot more ego-items around now." The old man pointed out.
"Should we get going? Or try to meet up with the others as well? For the other buildings that are to come, it should be pretty useful to have more people with us, even if it's just to make it easier to look for the soul core inside of the house."
"Sounds good to me. Let's message them. We should have at least one person that can get messages in every group right now, I think."
"Alright. Then let's go."