Published at 23rd of August 2020 11:56 pm

Chapter 658: Death of the Craftsman

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Eisen took a closer look around the room to make sure that he didn't somehow completely mistake what was supposed to be going on here. But the more he looked around, the more he figured that this place was really some sort of escape room.

"What is that? An 'Escape Room'?" Ambriel asked with a light frown, "Is this not just the wrong place? It seems like someone's living space."

"No, it's not the wrong place. We're exactly right here. An 'escape room' is like a room-scaled puzzle where the whole goal is to leave just that room. I assume that we'll be able to find the clue toward the next thing I need to do as long as I finish this within an hour." Eisen pointed out bluntly as he looked at the clock slowly ticking down above the wooden door that just slammed shut.

"Fine, let's just do this, then." The old man muttered. He looked around the place and started to try and figure out where to actually start, using his 'Crafter's Soul' skill to properly analyze everything that he could see here. Every openly visible enchantment and mechanism, as well as some of those of magical nature that Eisen was able to spot with his mana-sight.

Soon, he figured out roughly where a few points of interest could be found. It seemed like the thing that he really had to aim for was an adjacent room that he could only access after entering some random 5-symbol code onto a panel.

Eisen took a deep breath and tried to figure out if he saw some sort of symbols inside of this room already, and was quickly able to spot something that seemed to be of help to him. It was five different hexagons, while one of them, the second from the right, had the rune for 'Flames' written inside of it.

Immediately, Eisen understood the rough format of how he would end up finding these symbols and how he would then learn how to order them. It seemed pretty straightforward, really. And so, the old man got started. He had to hurry up, considering that he had to solve this whole thing alone.

Sure, Ambriel was here as well, but for one, he would never try and help out anyway, and Eisen was pretty sure that he wasn't allowed to do so in the first place. Mystor gave this task to Eisen alone and not Ambriel, after all.

But that didn't matter, since everything seemed actually rather straightforward at the start. Eisen managed to find two more of the five symbols rather quickly. They were the runes for 'Melting' and ´Craft'. Eisen assumed that the whole array of symbols would end up being blacksmith-themed from just the three initial runes. And at that point, something weird popped into the old man's head. It was the same thing as when he encountered something that would end up triggering a memory for him later on. And it wasn't any object in particular here that triggered it.

Rather, it was a feeling that built up slowly within the old man that had been triggered within his conscious mind the moment that he figured out that the theme for the runes was 'Blacksmithing'.

And this feeling only got stronger the more that he looked around this room. As if this space had an important meaning to him that he couldn't remember. As if Mystor was really just trying to guide him into remembering a certain array of events.

Since it was practically impossible for Mystor not to know about how Eisen remembered things at this point, considering that he never particularly tried to hide it and even openly spoke about it a couple of times within the divine realms, he was sure that this was the case.

"...Then let's bet on that for now." The old man muttered to himself. He took a deep breath as he sat down on one of the nearby chairs in this room. Although somehow... sitting on this chair felt wrong. Eisen stood back up and walked over toward a spot in the corner of the room, a spot that seemed as if it was drawing him in. The old man squatted down in that corner, and slowly forced himself to drift off to sleep for just a moment.

And next he knew it, the old man found himself in the space where all the memories that he had recovered so far were gathered. In total, those memories numbered exactly 34. Eisen managed to speak about more and more things with his former self through these recovered memories, and of course found out a lot about himself and other people from his past.

Of course, this meant that his body was changing even more in the other world. It wasn't initially obvious, but at some point Eisen simply had to test it out and couldn't hold it off any longer. He tried to punch a metal block with all the force he could muster.

Obviously he didn't break or bend it in some violent way because he became stronger. No, the discovery that came out of that was that his hands were able to take a lot more pressure, considering that he hadn't been injured after doing something like that.

Michael had been there at the time, and after seeing the old man punch that metal block without any sort of hesitation and consequence made him feel quite mixed feelings about whether or not he would have wanted Eisen's body to have changed in this way before. For one, it surely would have made and sort of amputation completely unnecessary because the arm would have surely been in peak condition no matter what.

But on the other hand, if Eisen's hand had been this sturdy while Michael had been slapped by him, Michael probably would have needed surgery to reattach his jaw soon after.

Either way, it seemed like the body of 'Benjamin' was changing more and more every single memory he recovered, but these changes seemed a bit stronger every fifth memory that he did recover. So once he would step out of the capsule the next time, his body would have made a small jump compared to what it had been like before.

But now, Eisen just had to deal with this, no matter how scary the idea of his body slowly ceasing to be that of a human was in the end. Eisen chose to simply recover his 35th memory as he stretched his arm out forward to the new one that just appeared in front of him.

The scenery around Eisen slowly changed, and he found himself in the practically exact same room that he was just in. At first, Eisen thought that he maybe accidentally interrupted recovering the memory, but then he realized that there were a few key differences. Certain things had been added to aid this place becoming an escape-room earlier, but now, all those things were gone. This was the original room that the escape-room had been based on.

Since Eisen woke up in the same corner that he fell asleep in, this whole situation was a little bit confusing at first. But no matter that, Eisen pushed himself off the ground and moved into the center of the room, before one of the two doors suddenly opened up. It was the 'main entrance' it seemed, the same place that Eisen had entered through before.

This time there seemed to be some sort of corridor connecting to that door, and a version of Eisen, one that seemed to have peaked already, walked through the room with a blank, somewhat sad expression. He wore a black suit and had red rings under his eyes while walking up to the other door, the one that Eisen had to open up later. Here, it just seemed to be a closet, though. The Memory-Eisen pulled a box out of it and brought it over toward one of the chairs that he quickly sat down on, and slowly reached down to open it up. But before he did, the memory-Eisen stopped and pulled back.

"Well, before I do that... Is there anything in particular that you want to know this time around?" The memory-Eisen inquired, and the old man slowly thought about it for a bit and then shook his head, "Do you remember anything new that you could tell me?"

The memory-Eisen slowly leaned back in the chair and nodded his head, "There is, but I don't know if you want to hear about it yet. It's actually directly related to this whole situation. I feel like you should experience it yourself though. Do you want to hear it anyway?��� The memory-Eisen asked, and the old man in front of him slowly nodded his head, "I do. Just tell me what you can. That's how we've been doing it so far already. Stop playing around, and just get it over with already." The old man said with a light glare directed at this fragment of his former self.

The memory-Eisen slowly stood up from his chair and walked over toward the real Eisen, looking him right into his eyes. A stab through the heart by the stinger of a monster that you wanted to harvest venom from. A plague that nearly killed half of this world's population at the time. Childbirth due to a child born with something of a 'recessive' gene of sorts that allowed it to receive the size-change ability at birth. And angry mob that-"

"What are you trying to tell me?" Eisen asked with a deep frown, and the memory-version of himself raised his brows, "Wow, I thought we were smarter than that. I thought you would have figured it out by now."

"...I think I have. I just want to be wrong. So explain it."

With a deep sigh, the memory-Eisen turned around, "You know exactly what this is about. You'll remember it soon anyway, so I'll stop speaking about it for now. This is the sort of memory that triggers the recovery of a new one that you can access. That one should be all about this."

"...Just tell me now what you're talking about."

The Memory-Eisen looked back at Eisen and then turned his head away as he sat back down on the chair, "I remembered the deaths of those that we loved deeply in this world. Right now, we returned from the funeral of the one person you married after peaking. Don't worry, this time she died peacefully because of old age, and did so without regret."

"...But why are you saying this memory is not about that? Then what else is this about?"

"Hm? Oh, it's simple. It's the memory about how you found out that you not only stopped aging, but were completely immortal." The memory-Eisen stated, and then immediately shifted back into the actions of the memories while the real Eisen stood there and watched everything unfold in front of him.

He watched himself open up the metal box, he watched himself take out the special blade that had been placed into it. It was glowing in bright red and had three specific runes written on it that Eisen already recognized.

Flames. The blade was glowing due to heat created by the runic enchantment.

Melting. An enchantment meant to protect the blade from melting due to the first enchantment.

And Craft. This blade was specifically made to damage craftsmen.

Those were the three that Eisen recognized already. The other two were 'poison' and 'death', two that were completely disconnected from what Eisen expected the pattern of the escape room to be. This was a weapon specifically meant to kill a craftsman as quickly and with as much damage at once as ever possible, while leaving behind a body that was in a decent state at least.

And the moment that the old man saw himself place the tip of the blade against the center of his chest, he already knew which craftsman it was made for.

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