Chapter 317 - Unlocking the First Layer
"What's that supposed to mean?" Brody asked confused at Stahl's question, and the young man tilted his head to the side confused. "Wait, that's not it? Then why did you write that down..?" He inquired slowly, before Eisen slowly shook his head.
"It's from a dream… I think I told you all about the last dream I had with the Giant version of me in it, and this time, it was trying to tell me something again, just this time more directly… I guess? I don't really remember what exactly happened though… But I think that it was trying to tell me the word 'Lion', and then drew that kind of mask onto its face…" Eisen explained, and once more, Brody just sighed and asked, "Yeah, but again, what does that mean?
"Oh… It's something that my Wife used to say… It's similar to the 'Wolf in Sheep's Clothing' saying, just in a weirder way. A Raccoon is supposed to be a mischievious animal, sometimes representing criminality due to the 'Mask' on its face. And that the Raccoon is wearing a Lion's mask means that it's trying to pretend to be chivalrous and good, even if it's not. I guess I know why I wanted to figure that dream out now, huh…?" Eisen said with a smile on his face, before Jyuuk looked at him confused.
"Erm… Why, exactly?" He asked as he scratched his cheek with a wry smile, and Eisen just chuckled. "I've been thinking a lot more about my wife lately. So maybe I just wanted to hear that sentence really badly again?" Eisen suggested with a light smile on his face and then simply ended up sighing. "Well, either way, it was just a dream." He added and then leaned back in his chair, finally able to somewhat relax his mind again, before he looked at the still-offline Xenia and Evalia.
Eisen hoped the the former was able to think about his suggestion a little bit so far as well, but he wouldn't pressure her. It was up to her if she would take Eisen's offer or not, and he would respect her decision, so he guessed that he just needed to wait.
"Well, I guess if you're fine, then I can go train now, right?" Brody asked with a grin on his face, but Eisen shook his head nearly immediately. "Actually, no. Wait a little bit until Xenia and Evlaia are back, I want to unlock the first layer of the Puzzle Box with everyone here." Eisen explained, and the Demon-Orc sat back down with a broad grin immediately.
"Huh, I wanna see that. Guess I'll wait with ya." Brody replied as he leaned back in his chair, and Eisen looked over at Jyuuk with a smile on his face. "And while we're waiting, I wanted to ask you to do something." Eisen said with a grin, before the Beastperson tilted his head to the side again.
"Yeah, what do you want me to do?" He inquired, before Eisen just smiled. "Well, first of all, I know that you've managed to support your undead with the help of your plants, so you're already kind of mixing necromancy and plant control… But can you do that even more directly? Like, use necromancy to grow something?" He asked, and Jyuuk immediately opened his eyes wide.
"I mean… Maybe I can… I haven't ever tried, but… Necromancy is using the energy of death to your advantage to breath new life into things that stopped living… And pretty often, dead things are used as a source of nutriets for different plants, so… I guess I can try…" He muttered to himself and then pushed his hand into his pocket before grabbing a small seed out of it and then closing his eyes.
"Hmm… It doesn't really work… The Essence inside of it is basically opposing the Necromantic energy…" Jyuuk muttered quietly, and Stahl slowly spoke up with an idea of his own, as he was the only other person in the room that really understood what he was talking about.
"Well, how about you try to actively replace the essence then?" He suggested, and Jyuuk thought about it for a while before slowly nodding his head. "I can maybe do that if I momentarily halt the death of the plant with my element… But otherwise, even a tiny bit of life essence will completely reject necromantic energy…" The Beastperson slowly muttered to himself, before he stopped for a moment and covered the area around his hand and the seed laying in them with his element to control the natural flow of life more easily, before starting to manipulate the life essence within the seed to pull it out completely.
As it was a seed, there didn't seem to be much essence inside anyway, luckily, and Jyuuk could swiftly work on that process, immediately pushing necromantic energy into the seed by trying to turn it into an undead version of itself. Technically, as it didn't have any life essence anymore, it was already considered dead by necromantic energy, but it didn't physically die yet due to the help of Jyuuk's element and his fine control.
And then, a few moments later, something sprouted out of the seed, and a small dark red rose, its color closing in on black, grew out of it. The thorns on the side seemed more like actual small needles than regular thorns, and the whole flower gave off a slightly eerie feeling.
"It worked…" Jyuuk muttered to himself quietly as he took another look at it. "It's dead, but it's also alive… That's amazing!" The Beastperson exclaimed, and Brody tuned in as he had something he didn't understand. "Wait, isn't that just a regular undead then?" He asked with a frown, but Jyuuk immediately shook his head.
"Oh no, not at all! A regular undead is neither really dead, nor really alive. It's something inbetween. This flower here is both dead and alive!" Jyuuk exclaimed excitedly before grabbing his Necronomicon out of his soul storage and summoning one of his undead.
"I need to use this on them…" He muttered out quietly before placing his finger on the overgrown Zombie's forehead, causing all of the plants on its body to wither immediately. "Erm… Eisen, I'll do your thing in a bit… I just kind of want to 'Practice' a bit first, alright?" Jyuuk asked with a light smile on his face, continuosly staring at the undead in front of him, before Eisen just chuckled in response
"Knock yourself out. It most likely won't take long to do what I wanted to ask you for anyway." Eisen said with a smile on his face, and Jyuuk immediately nodded and burrowed through his bag to find the right seeds, and then began to reassemble the Zombie's overgrown body again.
Compared to before, it simply looked a lot darker and more menacing in every sense of the word, although at the same time, it apparently got a lot stronger as well. So this was only better in any way!
Jyuuk continued to do this for the other undead in his arsenal, and even one after another called the Undead Sailors up into the Meeting room to change them, although he saved the Overgrown 'Mother of Spiders' Zombie for later, as it required a lot more time to properly work out, and as the two halves of the body were literally only kept together with the help of the plants, Jyuuk would either need to do everything very, very carefully and slowly, or create a huge mess by splitting its body up again momentarily.
So Jyuuk rather preferred waiting for a little while, although, before he could actually help the old man behind him with whatever he wanted him to do, Xenia and Evalia both ended up waking up only a few minutes apart from each other. A little while ago, Komer and Alnico came into the room as well, curious about why all the originals were sitting there together again.
"Alright, so everyone's here, huh?" Eisen said with a smirk on his face, still sitting on his chair while covered by his monsters, including the living dungeon and its core guardian before he extended his arm forward and held his palm up. Nearly immediately, a small, ornate box appeared on it which the old man quickly placed on the table in front of him before looking at the four different pieces of metal.
"Let's finally unlock this thing and take a look at what's inside." The old man muttered with a smile before the others could even really react, as they either just woke up or just entered the room, because he simply couldn't help himself. He had forgotten about it for a while, but in the end, Eisen was still really curious what was inside of this box.
It probably wasn't the only 'Layer' that the box had to it, but as long as they were able to figure out what they needed to do next, the old man would be happy.
Slowly, Eisen placed the pieces of metal onto the necessary spots, and nearly immediately the box reacted. It nearly immediately 'sucked' the metal into it, and then… nothing happened.
For a short while, at least. Just a few moments after Eisen began to think about whether or not he did something wrong, the lid of the box split open into four parts that simply dropped to the side to create a flat surface, two times as wide and long as the box was, although pretty flat in comparison. But that wasn't all, as now the four walls of the box began to move, and another layer of them suddenly appeared and folded upward, doubling the box's height, before doing the same again to make it four times as high as it originally was.
It was still open at the top, although that also changed pretty soon, and triangular walls folded up from the side of the box and formed the top.
"Wait… that's it? It turned into another box?" Brody asked with a wry smile, and Eisen nodded his head curiously. "It did, yeah. Sky, come over here for a second." Eisen told the young Fey-Kin, who he had called up here just so that he could see what would happen. After all, he was the one that decyphered the languages on the outside of the box.
With an excited grin on his face, Sky then practically sprinted up to the table and tried to look at the box that was now much bigger compared to before, and took a look at the carvings on the outside of it.
"Hmm… Seems to be the same writing as last time… Wait, it's just going to take a few minutes…" Sky muttered out quietly, and then took a piece of paper and wrote a few letters down, and after the first few words that were formed, Eisen could already see what language this was. It wasn't spanish like last time, it was French.
And once Sky managed to finish writing the sentences, Eisen could immediately translate it.
"'Life and Death, what Combines both but rejects either?' That's one sentence… Then the next one is 'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but there is some that can not be seen by any eye'… Then 'Unfathomable strength is impossible to reach, so Surpass Impossibility'… After that the sentence is 'The Power to surpass anything is but a small part of the world'… But the last one is simply 'Create or Destroy'." Eisen explained with a frown, although he immediately figured out what the first one wanted from them.
"There's a small hole in the center… Jyuuk, give me that Rose you just made…" He told the Beastperson, who nodded his head confused and did as he was asked, and Eisen swiftly placed it into that small hole.
Immediately, it fell to dust and the hole disappeared and was replaced by a small slit, which opened up quite soon and revealed a small eye as it was just staring in front of it, and the old man began to grin broadly.