Chapter 374 - Fluke
The group continued on walking through the weirdly artificial area, before they started finding a path made of stone bricks, which they chose to swiftly follow, because beside the Golems themselves, this was the most advanced type of structure that they had seen on this island.
Although, before long, they could see something else in the distance, so Eisen swiftly activated his Mana-Sight to try and figure out how many Golems there were this time around, although the old man was rather surprised when he ended up seeing not a single Golem Core at all, instead just a small dot of red mana, as well as a cluster of green mana, the type of color which seemed to belong to nature mana.
"Be careful, I think there's a person there. I don't know who it might be, so be careful." Eisen warned the others, before he once more looked at the cluster of green mana, noticing another small dot moving around the area toward Eisen and his group.
And when Eisen deactivated his mana-sight, he could see what that small dot was. It was a small mechanical ball, just rolling around on the ground in their direction. It stopped basically directly in front of them and then stopped moving, before Eisen looked at it with a frown, once more using his mana sight to look at it, and then he noticed that there was a thin thread of mana connecting the mechanical ball to the cluster of green mana.
With a smile on his face, Eisen chose to just pick it up and then immediately took a look at what it was constructed like, simply because he was rather curious and he wanted to somehow bring whoever was sitting there behind the rocks to come out. It might be a bit intimidating if a group of armed inviduals came up to you all of a sudden, after all.
But before Eisen knew it, the ball split up into five parts, each part clinging to one of Eisen's fingers, before extending a little further to cover the old man's whole hand, pulling it together into a fist before heavily increasing in weight, pulling Eisen's fist down to the ground without allowing him to move at all.
"Now, that's a bit of a surprise." The old man chuckled before the others in his group quickly came up to him out of worry. "Eisen, what happened?!" Bree asked, but Eisen just winked at her with a smile. Eisen could feel that the inside of the sphere was heating up a lot, but because of Eisen's racial skill, it didn't do anything to him at all. Instead, Eisen swiftly just decreased his size and replaced the part around his hand with the hardest, densest rock that he could make with his element, before slowly pulling his hand out of it, careful not to make any sounds that might let whoever controlled this thing know what was going on.
And then, Eisen swiftly activated his demonic transformation and began to increase his size to his new maximum, switching into his new leather-apron and wool-pants behind a wall made of his element, before using his wings to go for a strong jump to then land on the other side of the rocks.
Of course, Eisen figured it would be best to go for the Yang-Side of the transformation, and looked basically like a rock-statue slowly being painted in gold. And not only the person that Eisen was now facing was surprised and confused at what was going on, but Eisen himself was also rather surprised.
Because right there in front of him sat a young man, at least Eisen figured he was young, who had tree bark-like skin covered in moss in a few areas, as well as metal plates covering different parts of his body, although mainly in the areas that seemed vital for different type of movement. His arms were nearly completely made of metal as well, and one of the metal plates belonging on the inside of his left lower-arm was currently opened up, and the man was fiddling with some crystal wires and gems inside of there which were placed on top of his flesh, something that Eisen was surprised to see he had considering that he basically looked like a living tree otherwise.
"What the-" The man muttered confused, and grabbed one of the boxes next to him before throwing it on the ground in front of Eisen with a lot of force.
The box split open, and before Eisen knew it, the earth underneath his feet opened up in a box-shape, before the square hole closed itself shut at the same height of the ground again. Although, there was one part that the man didn't take into account. Eisen's height.
Instead of taking his whole body in, it only reached up to Eisen's legs. And the old man was able to get out of there pretty easily by once more just slightly decreasing his size and pulling himself out, before increasing his size again.
"You done?" Eisen asked with a wry smile, still looking at the man with a bit of curiosity, although it seemed like the man still had something against speaking to the giant golden demon in front of him, trying to hurry up and put the metallic panel back onto his arm. When he did so, a bit of cracking came from his hand as everything settled down, and the man quickly pushed his hand against the ground, creating a spear of rock that just pushed itself into the direction of Eisen's face.
"What do you want?" The man asked with a deep, raspy voice, but before he knew it, the rest of Eisen's group had already arrived and surrounded them, all pointing their weapons at him.
"For one, I would kind of want you to stop doing all of this." Eisen said with a wry smile and quickly used his transmutation to counter the man's transmutation, because what he just did wasn't magic, despite the way it looked.
Seeing that he was currently stuck in a situation with near to no escape, the man just sighed and leaned back against the rock behind him.
"Fine. Now then, what else do you want?" The man asked with a frown, before Eisen sat down on a bench that he made with his element, swiftly replacing the small fire in front of them created using a flame gem with a campfire created using his element as well.
"Well, I still want to ask you something else, but before then it would be nice if you could stop pretending that thing behind you is just a regular rock." The old man told him, before the man clicked his tongue and crossed his arms.
"Damn, didn't expect you to see even that." The man said with a frown and snapped his metallic fingers while standing up, "Wake up." He commanded, before the rock that he was leaning against before slowly started forming cracks before turning into a very, very roughly humanoid figure. It had giant forarms and tree stump-like legs, and just two small holes as eyes. It's torso seemed to have a lot of different compartments, and a little bit of sound from inside of those compartments could be heard in response to different materials in there moving around.
But that wasn't all, because when the Golem finally stood up completely, the rock surface on the outside began to crumble away, revealing a flat metallic surface underneath.
"Huh, so you're using a Golem to carry your materials and luggage around, huh?" Eisen asked with a slight smile, before the man nodded his head in reply. "Yeah, what about it."
"Oh, nothing much. But well, except one thing, maybe." The old man said with a straight expression, his Yang-Demonic Form slowly morphing to his Yin-Demonic Form. "One of those liquid tanks has Guardian Blood in it, doesn't it?" Eisen asked as his bright golden eyes became darker and darker by the second, as if they were a clear void that was sucking in all light around it.
"What, you mean that potion? What about it?" The man asked, while the others slowly realized what Eisen was thinking.
"Where'd you get it?" Eisen asked, slowly choosing to increase the heat around the man, who seemed to be slowly starting to freak out about it.
"Why should I-"
"Answer me." The Demon asked, with a clearly pissed off expression before he turned toward the Paladin to give him a signal, and the half-tree half-metal man crossed his arms in response, as if trying to shield himself off the pure heat a little bit. "I stole it from another warforged. What about it?"
Slowly, Eisen turned toward the Paladin, who nodded his head at Eisen in response, before the old man looked back at the warforged in front of him.
"Where is that other warforged?" Eisen asked next, and the man just frowned in response and shook his head. "No clue. Was leaving the island when I got here."
Once more, Eisen turned toward the Paladin, and after getting a nod from him as well, Eisen sighed in response and deactivated his demonic transformation, although he stayed in his increased size, simply because he felt surprisingly good and calm as tall as this.
"Fine." Eisen said annoyedly, before turning toward Fafnir, and in response Sigurd already appeared before the old man could say anything.
"You ever seen anyone like it?" Eisen asked the Warforged, before he slowly shook his head in response, although he was rather curious and leaned in closer toward Sigurd.
"I… Haven't… But this is a Golem, isn't it? It seems quite life-like… Although I don't understand why it's so tiny, what kind of uses could it have like that? It surely won't-" The man said with a curious frown, although Fafnir quickly stepped up between them and opened his mouth just so slightly to gather some of his dark-red flames in there, immediately making the Warforged step back immediately.
"Oh, I'm far more useful than some half-baked Golem-Wannabe like you." Sigurd said with a frown, crossing its arm in response, before the Warforged opened his eyes wide in surprise. "It even has intensive voice settings! You have to tell me who made this… Wondrous creation!" He exclaimed, but Eisen just picked him up by one of the metal plates connected to his back and pulled him away from Sigurd.
"Then that would be me. But more importantly, let's talk about who you are and why you're here." Eisen asked him, while the others also slowly settled down, noticing that he wasn't as big of an issue as they thought he was, before the Warforged smirked at the old man in front of him.
"The name's Fluke. Just heard that this is supposed to be an island of Golems, so I figured it might be worth coming to take a look. As your Golem there just said, Warforged are Golems in a sense. I wanna strengthen myself, so that's why I came here. What about you, who the hell are all of you?" The Warforged asked, and Eisen just slightly frowned before shaking his head.
"First, Sigurd isn't just a Golem. It's an Ego-Golem, with proper thought, a life, a soul, all that stuff. So don't treat it like an item." Eisen told him, and then crossed his arms. "Would you believe me if I told you that I'm the one that first created the Warforged as a race in the first place, and that I'm now here to turn this group of Islands into a country?" He asked, but Fluke just replied with an annoyed sigh.
"No, I wouldn't." He said, so Eisen just shrugged. "Then I'm just a random Half-Giant you don't have to concern yourself with. These are my companions. Now, I have a last question for you, and then we'll leave you alone. Did you find any ruins?" Eisen asked him, and Fluke nodded his head.
"Mhm, the ruins of the Great Golems. They're a bit further north if you wanna go there." Fluke told them, and with a smirk, Eisen nodded his head.