Chapter 362 - Guild Core
"Hm? The Halti..? I'm not entirely sure why you went for that, sorry. But around that time, one of the people that you had been collaborating on some projects with passed, so that might be a reason for it. Or maybe it was just entirely coincidental, and you simply wanted to save on the material cost by creating smaller bodies." Serio suggested, and Eisen slowly nodded his head as they all made their way through the garden, although the two spheres that Eisen once more heavily distracted him.
"For God's Sake- What is actually going on here?" The old man asked with a frown as he annoyedly grabbed the two spheres from his back before Serio looked at them in surprise.
"Oh, Masses of Yin and Yang?" He asked, and Eisen turned toward him in response, "You know about them?" The old man inquired, so Serio simply nodded.
"Yes, of course I do. They are materials that can only scarcely be acquired, but it is nice to see that you still take an interest in them even after losing your memories. But why did you not combine them yet?" Serio asked the old man, who just replied with a frown. "And how exactly do I do that?"
"Ah, right… You have created a small ceremonial place for that somewhere here in the gardens, but Constant will most likely have to clean everything up further until you can properly make use of it." The Core Guardian pointed out, so Eisen slowly nodded his head. "Alright, good to know. Do you have any idea why they are vibrating, though?" The old man asked, but Serio simply placed his hand against his chin and smiled.
"As far as I remember, those vibrations are supposed to help find a suitable ceremonial place. The faster the pace of vibration, the closer you are." The Guardian explained swiftly, so Eisen replied with a sigh.
"Got it… It would have been pretty nice to find out about that earlier." The old man muttered to himself before Serio nodded his head.
"Hmm, have you already found the Servants' Quarters? It is quite dirty here, so we could use someone to take care of that." Serio pointed out as they entered the castle again, but Eisen shook his head. "No, we haven't found the 'Servants' Quarters' yet, as far as I'm aware, at least. Were those servants other Core Helpers?" Eisen asked, but immediately Serio shook his head.
"They were made up of both First Generation Guardians, as well as Kobolds, Lizardmen, Ratmen or Goblins, who coexisted in this town with the First Generation Guardians. Compared to them, the Town's Populace was only made up of 5% of Guardians, so we only had one in each area of work to instruct the others. Because Guardians have an indefinite lifespan, that was the most suitable arrangement." Serio explained, so Eisen moved his fingers through his beard in understanding.
"I see interesting. But can't you find those broken-down Guardians for us? You should be able to see everything going on in this town, right?" The old man asked, and Serio did nod in response, but he seemed to do so somewhat reluctantly.
"Usually, yes. But my Core has been reduced to a Rank 0 state, as I aforementioned, and as such, I am incapable of making use of such functions. The Core Helpers are assigned to a certain place through 'Relay Cores lesser versions of regular cores, which work semi-independently to the core they belong to. As such, they have higher control over those areas, and have Omniscience and Omnipresence that one would usually expect a Core Guardian to have due to that fact." With a smile on his face, Serio walked through the hallway of the castle next to Eisen, Bree, Fafnir, and Sigurd and explained all of this.
Especially Sigurd seemed to be interested, considering that it was really only now hearing more things about those that were like it. "Hmm, then we should probably fix that soon. We have to first activate a Guild Core so that we can activate the Town Core, but that shouldn't take too long. There should be a Guild Core within the Treasury. We'll find a good place for the Guild Core, then we'll bring the Town Core to the room in the catacombs, and then after that, we'll work toward activating the Country Core." Eisen explained to the Town Core Guardian next to him, who swiftly nodded his head.
"Ah, that is a good idea. There is indeed already a place that you had used in the past to hold meetings with other people of Importance, and you had placed the Guild Core you were using at the time there. I can show that place to you later, it is rather tricky to find your way there." Serio explained, and in response, the old man began to chuckle.
"Yeah, I already figured out that this castle has a bunch of hidden paths and functionalities." He pointed out, so Serio nodded. "Of course, there were many that wished to infiltrate this place, after all. They were never able to do so, but you always liked to prepare, 'Just in case'." The Core Guardian explained, so Eisen just smiled at him and continued on walking through the castle, until they reached the room with the hidden passage meant to give them access to the Treasury.
And swiftly, they stepped down there, and Eisen immediately began to fill Jard's body up with the Potion-Blood that he brought with him. And after the first one or two liters, the Core Helper's eyes slowly opened up, even if just halfway.
"Hey there, Jard." Eisen said with a smile on his face, and with his eyes still closed, Jard began to smile slightly and spoke in a tired voice. "Ah, good morning, Master Eisen…" Jard replied and slowly tried to raise his hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes, although that didn't really seem to help much.
And then, the old man swiftly began to explain the situation to Jard, who scratched his cheek after hearing about everything. "That's right, someone came in here… I tried fighting them off, but they were a lot stronger than me… But at least they didn't manage to steal any… thing…" Jard began to say, although his expression suddenly seemed to just freeze. It was only when Eisen fully filled Jard's blood back up, so the old man thought something was wrong, but he was still surprised to see what happened then.
Jard immediately disappeared in a small cloud of mist and teleported to the place where Komer was sitting before, staring down there angrily. "What kind of little fuckwart touched the money?! We're missing 13 Platinum, 87 Gold, 49 Silver, and 3 Copper… In the first place, who the fuck made such a mess here?!" Jard yelled out in a completely different manner to before, as if he changed personalities immediately, and Eisen swiftly interjected to calm him down.
"I'm pretty sure that was a companion of mine. He can compress coins, so he might have accidentally taken a few of the coins from here." The old man explained, and immediately the wide open and angry eyes on Jard turned back into their tired version.
"Aah… So that was it… If it was a Companion of Master Eisen, it's fine… But could you tell that companion of yours to come here and help me sort through the coins? I can't sleep in such a messy room…" Jard explained with a soft smile while he then began to transport himself through the room, starting to sort all of the different items and coins out into neat piles of coins, crystals, gems, or even various tools or weapons, changing the whole room to look absolutely incomparable to before.
It had less of a 'Treasure Room' feeling like seen in movies with mountains of treasure, but it had changed to a properly sorted and neatly organized space instead, just the way Eisen liked it. He was still confused over what just happened, however, and slowly turned over toward Serio.
"Sorry for the late explanation. But as this is the room with the most precious items in the whole town, it had to be properly protected. So you created Jard in a way that he could 'save' his power for intense outbursts of energy later. Through that, however, his personality may have become rather peculiar. Usually, he is quite sleepy and calm, but when something is off, he becomes a hot-blooded maniac." Serio explained, so Eisen just slowly nodded with a deep sigh.
"Well, at the very least, this part of the castle is properly protected then, huh?" Eisen asked with a laugh and then turned toward the place that Jard was currently standing at. "Could you possibly bring me a Guild Core, if there's one in this room?" Eisen asked, and before he even knew it, Jard transported himself to the other side of the room, picked up a small crystal, and then teleported himself to stand directly in front of Eisen.
"Here you go." Jard said with a tired smile, before immediately transporting himself back to work. "Alright, then I'll let the others know to meet us somewhere central… I think the best choice would be to establish this place as a proper town again and then use the Omniscience you gain through that to find First Generation Guardians. We're already working toward gaining the trust of some Monster-Lords to make it possible to make sure the Monster-Portion of the populace starts acting properly again." Eisen explained and happily looked at the Core before opening his Friendslist to send the four other Originals a message, before looking at Serio.
"Where is the entrance to the room you mentioned?" Eisen asked, so Serio just smiled and nodded, "Just tell them to meet us at the bottom of the highest tower." He suggested, and Eisen then swiftly did just that before the group made their way there.
It didn't seem to be that far away from the entrance to the Treasury, so they ended up there first, and one after another, the others joined them at the bottom of the Tower, and Eisen swiftly introduced Serio to them. And when all of them were there, Eisen turned toward Bree, Fafnir, and Sigurd. "If possible, could you three maybe try and help the others look for more Core Helpers? That might really save a lot of time." Eisen pointed out, and without any hesitation, they quickly made their way off and left the five Originals alone with the Town Guardian.
"Why did you ask them to leave?" Jyuuk asked with his eyebrows raised, and Eisen just began to move his fingers through his beard. "We might end up speaking about Player-Stuff, so I didn't want Bree to hear. And I didn't want Bree to be the only one that I was sending off, so I asked Sigurd and Fafnir to go with her. On top of that, they're probably actually going to be a great help looking for the other Guardians and Core Helpers." The old man pointed out, so the Beastperson just slowly nodded his head in response.
"Ah… Got it." He replied, so Eisen just smiled and turned toward Serio.
"Now then, how do we get into that Guild-Room?" Eisen asked, considering that this was supposed to be the bottom of the tower even though there weren't any stairs, and Serio replied by tapping his foot a few times onto the ground in a specific pattern before the ground that they were standing on began to shake a little bit.
"Excuse me, it's been around 100 years since it's been last used." Serio apologized, but before long, the central platform of the circular room began to move up with the six of them standing on top of it, slowly lifting them up into another place above them where a hole seemed to have opened up as well.
And inside of there, Eisen raised his eyebrows in surprise, seeing another broken-down Core Helper sitting on one of the chairs around the table. "Hm? There was a Helper just for this room?" Eisen asked, surprised, "Or was that one of the First Generation Guardians?" The old man inquired, but Serio swiftly shook his head.
"Oh no, not in the slightest. This one here is at the same grade as me, she is a Core Guardian. More specifically, she was your Guild Core Guardian, but… The old Guild Core seemed to have shattered."