"Good day! How can I help you?" The Core Guardian asked with a broad smile on its face, and Denmir slowly turned around toward Eisen, "Exactly, how can it help us right now?" The dwarf inquired, and Eisen slowly looked at the guardian with his arms crossed.
"For now, priority is to reconstruct town. The ego-items are all under control now as well, hopefully, so we should be able to use them as raw manpower as well. First things first, I'm pretty sure we would need to reconstruct things like living areas, workshops, and farming areas. But those will most likely be outside of town." Eisen pointed out, and then slowly turned around toward Hephaestus.
"Do you remember where the farmlands were?" The old man inquired, and the ego-item slowly just shrugged.
"I don't have a clue where anything was. We could just ask the townsfolk though." Hephaestus suggested, and Eisen slowly raised his brow in response to what he just said, "The townsfolk? What do you mean?"
"Hm? Well, I didn't fuckin' kill them, who do you take me as? To start it off with, the souls I used are either from elderly townsfolk that died of natural causes, or of the soul stones that we had in the material storage in the castle. I ain't a fucking monster." The ego-item said, and slowly turned toward the three monster-kids, "No offense."
"Offense taken, but move on anyway." Sal replied. The next moment, he felt a slight slap from Brody on the back of his head, and turned around with a light glare, while Denmir slowly looked at the ego-item as well.
"So there are people still alive here? Why didn't they stay here in town?" Denmir asked, and Hephaestus slowly shrugged, "What do I know? The boss stuff is weird, and when this place actually turned into a field dungeon, stuff changed? People were forced to move out or something? I don't fuckin' know, let's just go. I have a rough idea where they are." The ego-item explained as he just turned around, ready to simply leave the castle and walk over there.
Meanwhile, Jyuuk came up to Eisen and whispered into his ear with a light frown on his face, "I didn't find anything like another town with my monsters while scouting. Are you really sure we can trust him? Maybe he just used us to get out of the boss room?"
"I doubt it." Eisen replied, "It seemed pretty genuine to me... But what do you think? Is there a possibility that he's telling the truth?"
After a bit of thought, Jyuuk closed his eyes and nodded his head, "Honestly, it would make sense if there was another place for the people that used to live here. After all, we didn't find anything like physical remains of anyone. No blood, flesh, bones, anything. And this place shouldn't have been a field dungeon for more than a few years. And the ego-items obviously couldn't eat the remains, so there should have been something left."
"So then why are you doubting him?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk just slowly looked at Hephaestus' back, "Because we didn't find anything like active farmlands, intact structures, or even paths anywhere around here. Even if we did find anything man-made, it was usually overgrown and ready to crumble to dust with a quick breath. Maybe the townsfolk simply built a ship and left. It is the island of craftsmanship, after all." The monkey-beastperson suggested.
But Eisen wasn't entirely sure. They would still have to see. It did seem like Hephaestus knew something that the others didn't know, so they would simply need to wait and follow him.
"Hephaestus." The old man said, and the ego-item slowly turned around, "Yeah?"
"What kind of place do the townsfolk live in now?"
"How the fuck am I supposed to know that, are you an idiot? I just know where they are, not what it's like." Hephaestus replied with a light glare and a tone as if this answer was just blatantly obvious, and Eisen sighed as he took some steps forward to follow him.
"I think everyone besides the five of us and our direct groups should stay here. Denmir, you especially. Make yourself familiar with the town system and the town itself, and try to help the core guardian out however you can. Focus on the things I mentioned before."
The dwarf in question looked at Eisen with a light smile and nodded his head. He seemed to be incredibly grateful that he was given a chance to prove himself like this. Eisen was technically Denmir's idol, after all, even if they were now pretty good friends.
They all made their way out of the castle again and gathered in front of it with everyone. They split up into two groups, one group that would stay here and use any manpower available to them to try and reconstruct the town to the point where a few people would be able to stay here, and one group that would go ahead and head out toward the town with Askr's help.
Due to the wood-giant's mere size, the group was able to make their way out of town at great speeds, which they could also thank the largest of the three ego-wall snakes, which had now been turned into Lamias, for. It had really just left behind a literal path of destruction while slithering around through town. But at the very least, that literal path of destruction was a direct path leading into the direction where Hephaestus was saying hte townsfolk settled down after the town had fallen.
Askr simply sprinted forward toward that town, with Hephaestus simply staring at the receiver-screen for the wood-giant's eyes so that he could properly instruct Askr on the path he should take. Only a few minutes later, Hephaestus stood up.
"A'ight. We're here." The ego-item said as he made Askr stop running. Everyone was a little bit confused, as they had been looking at the screens as well and didn't see anything that remotely seemed like a town. Instead, they were just standing in front of a small forest patch built around what seemed to be a relatively shallow hill.
The group made their way outside and approached that forest, following after Hephaestus, who simply walked through there as if he owned the place. The others were a bit more careful due to the 'natural' ego items living here on this island, like the bugs or critters. They weren't too dangerous, but even they could cause a fair bit of damage if you accidentally pissed them off.
Either way, the group made their way through this seemingly relatively small forest, until Jyuuk slowly noticed something. He was more than just surprised to see this, but he was slowly staring at the hill in front of them, "There's... people living inside of the hill?" The Monkey Beastperson muttered, and Eisen slowly turned toward it and activated his mana-sight. There really were moving clumps of mana inside of there, and actually right in front of them was a relatively large spot of concentrated mana. Eisen switched to his truth-sight and soon saw what was going on.
Right in front of them was something like a hidden passage. There were parts that were hidden through something like illusions, it seemed, but for the most part it seemed to have a direct mechanism. The only parts that were hidden through magic were the parts that were needed for the activation. Like the buttons or dials.
It didn't really seem like such a complex mechanism as far as the old man could tell. He approached one of the buttons and took a closer look at the carvings that he could see. He soon understood exactly what was going on. The old man pushed his mana into the first button, then the next, twisted some dials around, pulled on some small levers, and soon managed to figure out what exactly was happening internally with each activation of the different parts of this mechanism.
And so, the old man managed to quickly figure out what exactly he had to do in order to open this up. In the end it was actually rather easy and simple to do, though. Just pushing mana into some of the buttons while pulling two of the levers at the same time. Most of these things didn't do anything and were probably just decoys for intruders with the basic intelligence to understand such a system and the ability to see through illusion magic.
Either way, once Eisen opened it up, slits appeared all around the slope of the hill right in front of them. One after another, those slits ended up just dropping into the ground, creating a small stairway that was leading into the hell, which the group quickly took advantage of.
But the moment that they stepped inside, they were met with some more defensive systems. And this time, they were a bit more classic. Two large, brutish golems carrying large and heavy weapons that were pointed directly at Brody, who was taking the lead just in case something like this was going to happen.
Without too much to worry about, Brody grasped onto the weapons that were held toward him and twisted them around a few times to make even the golems let go of them, before using the large blunt club-like weapon to disarm the other golem.
It all happened pretty quickly, astonishingly though, but before anyone knew it, Brody was holding the two golem cores for these golems in his hands. He didn't want to destroy them as a sign that they were actually here with peaceful intentions.
But next they knew it, a man in armor opened up the door on the other side of this 'entrance' room, "Who are you? Why are you here?" He yelled out loudly, trying to question them immediately. Since it was a person, the one that would come in most useful here was Evalia. She could win a fight with words alone in a battle against other people, after all.
"This island has just become part of our country, Asgard. The town you used to live in has been liberated by us, so we would simply like to invite you back. A town without its people is barely a town to begin with, now is it?" Evalia asked with a slight smile on her face, steadily approaching the man on the other side of the room.
Through the large helmet, it could be seen that this person was staring at Evalia rather intensely even now, there was no doubt about that, but just so slightly, the vibe of the gaze was changing. Not by much, but enough to show that instead of being angry at the group, this man was now open to conversation with them.