"What just happened?" Brody asked with a deep frown as he stepped up closer to the Incarnation, "This is some sort of trick, right? You're just gonna repair yourself and attack me now... Right?" The Demon-Orc asked with confusion, but before he knew it, the rest of the Incarnation simply fell to dust and a simple notification appeared in front of Brody, announcing that the Island Boss of the Island of War had been beaten.
"Oi, you've gotta be fucking with me!" With a deep frown, Brody ground his teeth together and stared at the pile of dust. Slowly, Eisen walked up to him. He placed his hand onto the Demon-Orc's shoulder, "There is no trace of mana there anymore." He explained, and Brody slowly turned his head toward him, "Then what, I just fucking killed it? Seriously...?"
"Actually..." Evalia started, "I think he may have done that deliberately. We don't know if he was actually telling the truth... It would make more sense if he didn't, and had to be killed somehow."
"And why the fuck would it kill itself then? There literally wasn't a reason to lie about that in the first place."
Eisen looked at the upset Demon-Orc, "Would you have been able to kill it just like that? I know that our subconscious has an incredible influence over us, and if it really was your armor before, you probably would have held back. And it probably wanted a proper fight with you."
Brody slowly squatted down and looked at the pile of dust with a deep frown, "...Right..." The Demon-Orc grumbled, "Because that totally makes sense..."
Eisen turned his head and looked at the others with a slightly concerned expression, before turning back toward Brody while having the dust-pile right in his sight. And inside of that dust-pile, Eisen noticed something, and he slowly activated his mana-sight again.
The old man squatted down next to Brody and grabbed his wrist before pushing it into the pile of dust. It may seem like something somewhat grim, since this was basically the Incarnation's corpse, but there was a reason to do this. Something that Brody also quickly noticed when he touched something hard inside of that dust-pile.
He grabbed that small, hard thing and pulled it out, just looking down at it. It was a ring. Immediately, Eisen inspected it.
[Ring of the Warbringer][Artifact]
[Rank – 0][Level – 0]
[Description] An artifact. It is the remnant of a former armor-set with a soul imbued into it, which ascended and became chosen by a deity. After passing on with goodwill toward the one that killed it, it chose to change its physical form into this ring that has to bond with the one that gained its favour, while its soul passed on to the heavens.
Eisen raised his brows with a light smile on his face, before turning toward Brody, "Put it on." The old man suggested, before Brody looked at him with a frown, "Seriously? Why would I put on a ring that I found in what are basically the ashes of someone I just killed? I can't even see its status..." The Demon-Orc groaned, but Eisen just looked at him with a light smile. Seeing that Eisen was serious, Brody just sighed and did as told, pushing the ring onto his right hand's middle finger.
With his mana-sight, Eisen was able to see some sort of energy, something similar to mana, but still different, push itself through Brody's body. It mixed with his energies and completely changed its nature to be a match to those energies. But either way, it seemed like the ring became a part of Brody's body just now.
"The fuck was that? Felt like goosebumps... Did someone appraise me or somethin'?" The Demon-Orc groaned before looking down at the ring, "Right, it's this, right?"
With a sigh, Brody grabbed the ring with his fingers and tried to pull it off, but all that happened was that his skin underneath the ring was being pulled along with it. Like the ring had fused with his skin, "Erm..."
"I see, so that's what bonding is, then?" Eisen asked curiously, and Brody stared at him with a deep glare, "The fuck you mean?"
With a slight laugh, Eisen looked straight at Brody, "That ring is a gift from the Incarnation. Basically, it turned itself into that ring, although its soul isn't in there. It's an artifact-item, actually the first one that I've ever seen. It probably has some pretty unique aspects to it."
"'Unique aspects' my ass! It's just gonna be a friggin' bother to deal with while I fight! It's gonna get stuck on shit for sure!" Brody complained, "I guess it's cool that it wanted to give me a gift 'n all, but this is just..."
But all of a sudden, as Brody was speaking and trying to get the ring off of himself, it started to grow thinner and thinner, until the black metal was as thin as paper. And it didn't stop there. And at some point, it simply disappeared in Brody's skin altogether, and all that was left was a small, intricate pattern like the one that was on the ring itself, which was now just a black tattoo on Brody's middle-finger.
The Demon-Orc grabbed the spot and rubbed it, not noticing anything wrong there, before sighing deeply in relief, "That was a close one... Complainin' does work after all, eh?" Brody laughed slightly before he stood up properly. He looked at his finger and smiled.
"You might be right, our subconscious really does a lot, eh?" Brody said to Eisen, who just slightly smiled, "Guess we gotta get going with the town core as well. I'll become the Lord for now 'til we've got someone else to take over for me or until we get to the island of combat. For now we've gotta get everything else done, right?" The Demon-Orc pointed out. The other three originals walked up to Brody and Eisen, and the group started to talk about their plans for the near future.
First, they would start by making use of all these monsters here to somehow create a proper town, as well as send some of them to the warships that had to be somewhere at this island, so that the ships could be brought to the island of craftsmanship to have them completely rebuilt so that Komer could get his fleet of passenger and transport ships that could continuosly travel back and forth from the central island and the harbor town. That was the main focus, really. They did also need a couple that would go on some kind of direct route inbetween the islands to make travel there possible, but again, the main focus was to bring people to Protoype to start things out properly.
Finding the town core wasn't all too hard either, since it was just floating in the large, central tent of this huge camp, so Brody chose to quickly set it up here. It could be moved around to other places later when they had other, better structures, but it was fine for it to be here for the time being. Eisen took out the core guardian at the same time as well so that they could immediately set it up here, but at that point, they all realized something.
"Erm... Can I even do this? You need to use mana, right?" The Demon-Orc pointed out, and Eisen raised his brows immediately, "That... is a good question, I don't actually know. I mean, you can try, right? Maybe cores like this were actually set up so that they would work not only with mana, but also other types of energies?"
"...Let's hope so... But I'm definitely gonna need help with the core guardian, right?" Brody pointed out, and Eisen quickly nodded his head, "Yes, sadly, they can only be activated with mana. I'll activate it for now. But don't worry, priority-wise, it's going to listen to you over anyone else anyway, since it's made to change its 'focus' to the owner of the core that it connects to." The old man explained, and Brody slowly nodded his head.
He placed his palm onto the Town Core and pushed one of his energies inside, and luckily, the core started to glow in a bright light and quickly accepted the energies for the activation. Brody picked out a good name while Eisen activated the Core Guardian.
It quickly connected to the town core and properly turned into the Town Core Guardian of the town of <Incarna>, as Brody called it in honor of the nameless Incarnation of War.
The originals stepped out of the tent, just to see something rather surprising. Before the group got here, the monsters had been mostly split up into different villages so that they could participate in war-games against each other all the time. It seemed like the heads of each of those villages were gathered here and were bowing to Brody. Well, the bipedal ones were bowing, quadripedal ones simply laid down and lowered their head.
"You are technically the master of the combat-based sub-guild, so things related to the military are for you to take care of. So it's good that they already seem to have some sort of respect for you." The old man pointed out, and Brody just looked at all of these monsters in front of him with a wry smile.
"Sure... For now, stand up, all of you. Gather together the injured and treat them. We'll 'recover' the dead for you." The Demon-Orc said, "This 'war' is over for now. You are now part of Asgard's military. Erm... Dismissed, or somethin'."
Immediately, the monster-chiefs went on their way to take care of their tasks, although it seemed weirdly surprising that they just accepted all of this so easily. They tried to speak to someone before that they could ask about the treaty they wanted to form, but the originals were just brought to the tent so that they could found the town.
It seemed like all the monsters simply switched over to their side the moment the Incarnation of War was dead. Either way, it worked out in the end, so it was all good.
First things first, they had to make sure that everyone was really alright, so Jyuuk quickly sent some of his beasts to go get the members of the Originals' army so that they could come here, including the 'Dead', which were now walking here on their own in the form of Zombies, Death Knights, and other sorts of undead.
For now, everyone chose to do their own thing, with Eisen trying to see if the equipment, like tents, weapons and tools, were really up to par, and attempted to figure out who made all of these things, considering that while they weren't of high-quality, they were still well-kept.
Either way, there was still something else that Eisen was constantly thinking of. Since they now took over these two islands, there was something that Eisen was supposed to do next that he should prepare for. He should go to heaven, and to hell.