Chapter 116 Tattoos
Eisen looked forward and began to smile while the Monkey-Beastperson Jyuuk jumped off of his Stag's back. "Hello there, Jyuuk! Thanks for getting here so fast!" He laughed, while Jyuuk came closer and noddded while smiling softly.
"Of course. I was passing by anyway, and Tsurishika became a lot faster after becoming rank 4." Jyuuk explained before Eisen looked around him and the Stag in confusion.
"Erm, talking about monsters, where are the others?" He asked, and Jyuuk chuckled softly before he pulled up his sleeve, revealing his, surprisingly hairless, arm that was covered in different tattoos, each representing one monster that he had tamed, beside Tsurishika. "I can explain this to you later, just know that they are always with me. But what about you? Have you changed to being a tamer? Because there's a lot of monsters there…"
After Jyuuk asked this, Eisen slowly nodded and then looked over at the group of monsters behind him, before carefully explaining the situation. How he had met Komer, and then chose to see what his brother was up to, before then finding the Monster Shop. Eisen only glanced over most things, since it was only really important for Jyuuk to know the rough situation to get what Eisen wanted from him.
"All these monsters here are actually quite harmless, at least for now. That's why I didn't want to kill them. But I can't tame any monsters anymore right now, so I wanted to see if you can tame some of them." Eisen asked, and Jyuuk seemed to think for a while before nodding in the end.
"Yeah, I can definitely tame them, I just can't have them out all the time. These tattoos are 'storage' of my tamed monsters, and as long as there's space on my skin left, I can store as many monsters as I want, but I can only have about ten out at any time." He explained before walking over to the group of monsters together with Eisen and took a look at them.
"These are all really interesting monsters though. An Aerial Carp, an Earth Bull, oh, and a Hobgoblin even!" Jyuuk said excitedly as he smiled at all of the monsters that had been nervously backing away the closer he came.
"Don't worry, all of you, Jyuuk is a good guy. I can't tame you, but I trust him enough to let him tame you, so you should as well." Eisen smiled softly, and immediately the Monsters began coming closer to Jyuuk on their own, seemingly all offering themselves to be tamed by him after being prompted to do so by Eisen.
One after another, the monsters then disappeared in a stream of light before new tattoos appeared on Jyuuk's skin, until all of them were gone with the exception of the Hobgoblin, since Eisen asked Jyuuk not to store him until his wounds were healed at the least to an extent.
"Thanks for that, Jyuuk. So, tell me, what have you been up to?" Eisen asked curiously as he sat down, leaning against the same rock as before.
Jyuuk nodded and sat down cross-legged in front of him, before he began to talk about everything. "Well, at first, I basically spent most of my time in the dungeon in Melroe, and then later I was simply grinding up my skills for a while. I had to bring three skills up to Rank 3, Taming, Necromancy and Plant Control. And then I had to bring a few to Rank 2, which were Soul Arts, Herbalism, Beast Connection and my Magic Element 'Circle of Life'. I also needed to have a certain amount of beasts tamed and then had to create a very specific type of undead, which was quite hard to find."
After explaining this, Jyuuk demonstrated some things that he learned. First, since the skeletons that he had been making with Necromancy were so weak, he decided to strengthen them with Plant Control so that the bones were practically tied together. In the end, everything acted somewhat like plant-muscles to the skeletons and strengthened their overall performance. When Jyuuk was capable of creating zombies, he also integrated plants into them to patch up whatever parts of their bodies were unusable.
Later, Jyuuk began to literally control souls to an extent, using them in direct combat. It wasn't anything great, but he was able to coat his weapon in beast's souls while also strengthening his own body, although the latter part was still hard to get a grasp on, since it usually needed very specific beasts.
Since this was all the case, Eisen chose to later ask Jyuuk if he knew anything about those soul orbs that Eisen picked up, but first let him finish showing what he could do now.
When it came to Jyuuk's element, Eisen was especially curious, as those seemed to be usually pretty unique, and so was Jyuuk's. It seemed to allow Jyuuk to do a few different things. In combat, it would very rarely let him instantly kill something that was weaker than him, while also at the same time resurrecting creatures that recently, in the last ten seconds, died.
Other than that, it basically just supported Jyuuk's skills, which meant that it was easier to turn things into undead or allow him to more easily control plants, while also letting him strengthen his tamed monsters.
From this information, Eisen was able to come to a conclusion. "That's pretty interesting… So that means that elements are supposed to be mainly supportive to your other skills. At least that's the case for me, you and Evalia." He muttered, and Jyuuk shrugged in response.
"That's possible, yes. We can ask Xenia when we meet her how it works exactly, right?" Jyuuk suggested, and Eisen nodded in response.
"Yeah, we can do that. For now, though, let me introduce you to these two. The boy there is a Fey-Kin, Sky, and that over there is Kiron, a half-dragon. I'm sure you know about the Crystal Dragon King. That's his father. Oh, and I completely forgot, but this here is Melissa, the second monster I tamed. She's a Queen-Bee." The old man smiled while Jyuuk bowed forward as a greeting.
"It is nice to meet you again, Sir." Kiron said while bowing forward in return, and Jyuuk looked at Eisen in confusion.
While chuckling softly, the old man then explained. "He's met the five that peaked before, so don't be surprised."
"Ah… And about Sky, you said he's a Fey-Kin? Like-"
"Yes, exactly. Like Bree. We're going to meet them now, so if you want, you can come with. I doubt you want to just keep going toward the Wasteland instantly, right?" Eisen asked, before Jyuuk nodded in response.
"I will come along, yes." Jyuuk smiled as he walked over to the Hobgoblin that he had just tamed and held out his hand. "Come on, I'll let you ride on Tsurishika, Gobu."
"I still can't believe you called him Gobu…" Eisen sighed out loudly while he was shaking his head and grabbed Caria's hand while placing his backpack on his back again.
"You better believe it, it's a great name!" The Monkey complained while Gobu the Hobgoblin slowy stood up, and Jyuuk picked him up before setting him on the back of the Stag next to them, and then summoned six different birds, Aotori and her children. While they all looked quite similar to each other when Eisen first saw them, now, they were all kind of different to each other, even though there were still some similarities.
Aotori grew in size quite a lot and looked as if she was basically made completely out of Ice, while the other four blue eagles each seemed to have watery, flowing feathers, although they had slightly different colors, sizes and forms in general. While one of them was thin and lean, another one was large and bulky.
And then there was Akatori, the only one of the six birds that was fire-based instead of water-based. He seems to have turned into something like a phoenix, although a lesser form. That was the best way that Eisen could describe the small bird, as it didn't seem to be a real phoenix yet, just a bird with feathers of flames. But it was quite obvious what the future evolutions would turn it into.
"They really have changed, huh?" Eisen asked with a soft laugh, and Jyuuk nodded as the group slowly began to make their way toward the town.
"Yeah, they have! They are all at Rank 4 now, although just at the start of it. They've barely been leveling up lately, seems like it's starting to get harder now. And I myself have only managed to level up once again as well, so… Anyway, I like having the six of them fly around a bit just in case something is going on so that I can just see what's happening around here with my Beast Connection." Jyuuk explained, reminding Eisen once more of the Beastperson's skills.
"Ah, I meant to ask you… When I was killing the Rank 5 and above monsters in the shop before, I found these 'Soul Stones' in them near their mana crystals. You have that Soul Arts skill, so do you know what this is?" The old man asked while pulling out one of the eight soul stones that he gathered and handed them to Jyuuk so that he could take a look.
"Oh, yeah, there are literal souls in these. Or at least fractions of them. I can gather them because of my Soul Arts skill, but monsters from Rank 5 and above have these naturally, because their souls are stronger than usual. I'm pretty sure that Rank 5 and 6 Monsters only have 'Blank' soul stones, and only then do they keep part of the Monster's characteristics." Jyuuk explained as he was trying to recall what he tried finding out himself.
"The soul stones that I can pull out do have a small fraction of the monsters' charactersistics already so that I can use them for fighting."
"Blank, huh… Do you know what you can use these for, then?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk shrugged.
"I don't really know, no. I only know what I can use them for, but not what others do. I'm sure they can be used to craft somehow, though, but I don't really know how. I know that's why you're asking."
"I'm sure I can find out somehow. It would be pretty interesting to say the least. Although Materials should be hard to get…" Eisen sighed out loud, but Jyuuk shook his head. "Well, I've got a few Soul Stones for you if you want to experiment a bit."
Surprised, Eisen looked over at the Monkey-Beastperson with a smile. "Really? Thanks! Don't you need them yourself, though?"
"I need a few, but I've got my favorites that I keep using."
"Well, if you don't need them, I'll gladly take them! If I can start making some good things with the soul stones, I'll let you know." Eisen laughed lowly while placing his own souls stones into his bag.
While looking over at Sky who was nervously following the group, Eisen opened his friends list and chose to quickly message Komer so that he would bring Bree back to the Inn and to their room so that they knew where to meet up and had a little bit of privacy for when Eisen would introduce Sky and Bree to each other.
The only other spot would really be the carriage, but with this many people, it was slowly getting a bit crammed.
Smiling at the thought of how Bree may react, Eisen slowed down to walk next to the Fey-Kin boy and nudged his shoulder. "Hey Sky, are you excited?" He asked, and in surprise, Sky lightly jumped before carefully nodding.
"Y-Yeah, I really am… What if my sister doesn't like me?" Sky asked carefully with a timid voice, and Eisen placed his hand on the boy's shoulder.
"I wouldn't worry about that. I'm sure, no, I know, that she will love you."
"Really…?" The Fey-Kin looked up at the huge man next to him while smiling softly, tears in the corners of his eyes.
Eisen held Sky's shoulders and stopped him as he was walking, squatting down in front of him to look into his eyes while gently smiling. "Of course."