Eisen pulled his head to the side and managed to dodge the incoming arrow that Brody shot at him. Of course they were blunt arrows, but it still would have hurt if he had been hit right in the center of the face, not to mention that it still would have caused a considerable amount of actual damage to his HP.
But at the same time, that was one of the few ways for Eisen and Brody to cause enough damage to each other to make 'giving up' viable. After all, this was the last type of fight they would go through for the day, and both of them were a little bit tired at this point in time.
The biggest problem was that Eisen didn't even have the Archery skill. He could still shoot the arrow normally, but of course, Brody had an immense advantage due to the fact that the system was assisting him in this fight. Well, Eisen was using a specialized bow that would give him an incredible benefit to Archery while Brody was using a very, very basic one to even it out, but there was still a large difference of raw skill between the two of them. Eisen pulled back the bowstring and pointed the arrow's tip slightly into the air so that it would properly reach Brody.
Both of them had a small area that they could freely move in, so either way, Eisen definitely would miss again, but at the very least he didn't need to deal with Brody running up to him and shooting at his face from point-blank distance.
Just like the old man thought, Brody moved just slightly to the side and it was already impossible for Eisen's arrow to hit him. But then, Brody did something else. Eisen wasn't entirely sure if it was just out of boredom or because he had an actual plan, but the Demon Orc shot at the arrow flying through the air with his own, sending Eisen's arrow flying back toward the old man.
Meanwhile, he already loaded up the next arrow and shot it toward the first one after changing his own position in his 'field', and fixed the course of that first arrow as well so that it was shooting at Eisen again.
And the arrow that Brody just shot was slightly buried into the ground, since it seemed to be a normal arrow with a regular tip. While Brody was loading up a third arrow, Eisen tried his best to quickly dodge the two arrows flying toward him at once right now.
They were slower than normal arrows would be, so it really wasn't all too hard to just take a step to the side and let them fly by. But this meant that Eisen wasn't able to ready up his own bow while moving around like this, although Brody just shot another arrow toward him. It was weirdly low, until Eisen noticed what exactly Brody was aiming at. It was the arrow that he shot into the ground before.
The arrow bounced off of it and changed its direction, flying directly toward Eisen's legs. As he was already standing right in the corner of his 'field', he couldn't really do much instead of just jump over it, but then, something else that Eisen didn't expect happened.
The arrow that was stuck in the ground before was pulled out of it just a little bit, and while it was flung through the air, Brody shot another blunt arrow at it. While it wasn't fast enough to cause any actual damage to Eisen, it was fast enough to cut through Eisen's bowstring that he wasn't paying attention to while he was dodging the arrow from below while he was mid-air during the jump.
And with that, there was no choice for Eisen but to really admit one thing, "I lost." He exclaimed with a loud laugh, while Brody sighed in relief that it was finally over.
"Seven to zero, old man. This enough for today?" Brody asked, and Eisen slowly looked down at his hand before he nodded with his head, "Seems like it. Thanks for the help, Brody."
With a smile on his face, Eisen just stood there as the metal that first appeared on his fingertips spread out over his whole body, and he found himself to be in the same black space as he had already seen twice before, with two orbs of golden light floating in front of him, while there was a single orb of white light.
Eisen stretched his hand out to the white one and then watched as the world around him changed. And soon, the old man stood in an open field, with two people not too far away from him.
"Oi! You old bastard, fight me, will you?!" One of them said. And to Eisen's surprise... It seemed to be a younger Brody. He spoke in a similar way as he did now, but this version of him was obviously just around 15 or 16 years old. On the other hand, the Eisen that was standing right in front of Brody seemed like the regular Eisen that this old man knew about.
This was probably their first meeting, meaning that the former Eisen had already peaked at this point, "Sorry, I don't have time to play with you. I'm here to look for a material, stop bothering me." He replied swiftly as he looked around, "I heard that after Demons die, their skeletons turn into special crystalline structures, because even in death they absorb and attract mana. It's pretty-"
But before this Eisen could finish speaking, Brody already kicked him into the center of the back, and then stared at Eisen confusedly when he didn't even budge. Instead, the former Eisen simply sighed and slightly turned his head toward the actual Eisen as he was standing there, simply watching.
"This is going to be a long one. Go ahead and relax while watching." He sighed, and the current Eisen just looked back with a light frown while the former Eisen turned around to look at the young Brody.
"Kid, what do you think you're doing?" He asked, and Brody just stared up at him, "Following my lifetime quest. I'm supposed to 'peak', whatever that means! The others in my village already can't beat me! You're supposed to be someone that 'peaked', right? I heard that an old fart that peaked is travellin' 'round here, that must be you, eh?"
The former Eisen looked down at Brody with surprise, and his eyes slowly glittered in a golden light for just an instant before the old man opened his eyes surprised, "Ah... so I wasn't the only one then. Heh... 'Find him'... What a dumbass quest, you should've at least told me who I'm supposed to look for." With a broad smile on his face, Eisen looked back at the young Demon-Orc, who was simply confused.
"You know what, kid? Have it your way. Show me what you can do. Show me what it means to be someone that's worthy of peaking." He exclaimed, and young Brody just grinned broadly, showing his weirdly cute small tusks in the process.
"You've got it. Then here I come!" With that, Brody jumped up at Eisen, immediately kicking him into the side of his head head and stabbing a dagger he seemed to have hidden right into his face at the same time. It seemed like in this world, Brody already had experienced killing people or monsters at that point in time. Although he obviously never went up against someone like Eisen before. Because instead of the dagger being pushed into Eisen's skull, it simply shattered into multiple pieces while Eisen himself didn't budge in the slightest. Brody, however, seemed to have injured his leg while kicking Eisen like that.
The old man sighed loudly as he caught the shards of the dagger while pulling the rest of it out of Brody's hand before he even reached the ground. Without hesitation, the old man enclosed his hands around the dagger, both of which he seemed to have increased in size considerably to actually fit them. That was new, Eisen had never seen location-specific size-changes before.
Either way, the old man then ended up pulling his hands away from each other again, and was then instead holding a small, high-quality dagger that he proceeded to hand to Brody, "Here you go. Don't know where you got that, but the man that made it should be ashamed. It's so badly made..." Eisen sighed before proceeding to hold his hand forward.
"Well, anyway, as I said, I don't really have time to play with you. It's evident you can't fight me seriously yet, so let me end this." And then, Eisen proceeded to snap his fingers. Just that created an immense gust of wind that then sent Brody flying, probably damaging him quite immensely as well.
"Ergh... Seriously? This is how weak kids like that were?" Eisen asked with a wry smile and then stepped over toward the young Brody, before Eisen pulled out a small leather satchel out of nowhere. And out of that satchel he pulled a single die-sized cube that he placed onto the half-unconscious Brody's chest.
That cube then proceeded to fold open and spread out around Brody, healing him and fixing him up perfectly. A few moments later, Brody was in peak condition, and then had a small Automaton-Bird sitting on his shoulder.
"I will stay in the area for seven days. Whenever you tell it to, that bird will send you here. If you want to come with me, then follow it before I leave. I'll show you how to become truly strong." Eisen explained to him, and Brody looked up at the old man before grinding his teeth and just running off, followed by the metallic bird.
"Eh, fair enough." Eisen sighed, "Trygan, stop messing around. Come on." The old man said and turned around. The current Eisen immediately ripped his eyes open in response to hearing the name of his apparent dragon-son, but before he actually saw him, the world around him changed. But not back into the black space, but into something else.
Another open field, where the former Eisen and a still quite young Brody were standing in front of each other. It seemed to be a few years later though. This time, when Brody jumped at the former Eisen, there seemed to be the real strength and power of high stats behind it, albeit not all too high, apparently.
The former Eisen was still able to easily defend against Brody without even moving anything but one of his hands. And just like this, Eisen started travelling through the centuries just to see the memories of the former Eisen fighting against Brody in short duels.