Chapter 814: The Gift

"Brother? You"ve got a brother?" the current Grandour asked, and Eisen nodded his head with a smile, "Yep. And to be honest, he"s not the only sibling I have. Though, I don"t remember them at this time, I know they exist. My father took multiple wives over his lifetime. Giants live quite long, after all," the old man explained.

He stood up and walked toward the window at the side of the room, which faced the statue that was holding up the roof of the mountain.

"I was the oldest. And obviously, the one that left the greatest mark in history, but if they"re all like my brother and I, then I doubt their achievments were anything to scoff at either. Silber, specifically, found himself close to nature. To all living things. And as such, he chose to learn from them. And amongst them is-"

"A mountain gobbler," the Irngrad repeated, "So it really was that..?"

"Mountain gobbler?" The desert giant chieftain asked, and the cloud giant chieftain let out a deep, annoyed sigh, "A monster that lives in slumber for most of its lifetime. As they sleep, they feed on nature"s mana to keep themselves alive. I"m guessing what they"re referring to is the crystal tendril they use to do so."

"...During some mining operations, we"ve come across multiple of these. A few of them had been broken before we were told about it, but it didn"t seem to lead to any issues," the Irngrad explained, and Eisen turned around, trying to suppress his glare, "They were destroyed?"

"Only some of them... and then new ones grew somewhere else."

Eisen"s eyes widened surprised, "They"re still actively expanding? That... is an active ability. Either consciously or subconsciously... he"s still making more?"

"At least that seems to be true for when we found the first tendrils. This happened thousands of years ago, so I can"t promise that he"s still in that same state..."

The old man scoffed at the Irngrad"s words, "I"m sorry, but Silber ended up like this nearly a hundred thousand years ago. Just a couple millennia won"t budge him anymore."

"So..." the Bralfam started, "You wish to cure his curse, and replace his burden with pillars? What if they can"t hold the load?"

Eisen smiled, "Well... If anything can make pillars to hold a mountaintop, it would be me, right?"

"Hold on, what I still don"t get is how he got that large... and what about the arrow? Who attacked him? And why the h.e.l.l was the mountain carved out? I just- what?" the desert giant chieftain rubbed the bridge of her nose, trying to make sense of the situation properly. Eisen thought about it for a moment, but simply shrugged, "I don"t know.

I can"t remember how he ended up like this yet. But I"m sure there"s going to be a great explanation when it comes down to it."

Eisen walked through the room, stepping behind the seat of the cloud giant chieftain. He placed his hands on the giant"s shoulders, leaning forward, "Ain"t that right, Samuel?"

The room turned silent. Everyone was looking at the cloud giant chieftain. He made a confused expression at first, though that soon disappeared, "Ah screw it, what do I care?"

The cloud giant chieftain, or rather, Samuel who was controlling him, stood up from his seat, "Right, you got it. Seriously, you"re just kind of a p.r.i.c.k at this point, huh?"

"Your words hurt me. Who"s that upstanding young man who first came to my home, eagerly listening to my stories?" Eisen asked with a laugh, and Samuel shrugged, "He died the moment he first stepped into this world and realized the power he was dealing with."

The old man frowned as he stood in front of Samuel, "Listen, just tell me what you"re doing this time? I already know you"re skewing the rules we set up, so if you"re thinking about doing something else in that other world-"

"You can"t even say the name of your original home?" Samuel laughed loudly, looking at the giant chieftains, "I was watching the whole time, by the way. Did you know that this guy cleverly omitted an important fact? He"s not even from this world either. He"s from earth, just like I am. Over there, he was just an old man growing weak and senile, but here, I turned him into a G.o.d.

And this is how he thanks me? Can you believe this guy?"

"You trapped me in a prison and forced me to do your bidding for a hundred thousand years. What, am I supposed to be on my knees?"

"Yes!" Samuel replied, yelling loudly. His voice reverberated in the halls of the meeting room, "I gave you immortality! Power! You had everything you wanted! Women, men, reverence! You have people that will kiss the ground you walk on!

On earth, you were just some random guy that only other craftsmen ever heard about, but I gave you actual purpose... and this is how you thank me? Trying to ruin everything I... WE have worked for? If you hadn"t tried to trick me, we could have become G.o.ds on earth together... but now..." Samuel looked at Eisen with a deep scowl.

The cloud giant chieftain"s face was practically made for this expression, so it was quite easy to express disdain.

The ground shook. s.h.i.+vers ran over Eisen"s body as his head snapped to the side, while a ma.s.sive wave of sound was shoved into the old man"s head, "What did you do?"

"Just doing you a favor. Now you don"t have to waste your time looking for a cure," Samuel smiled, "Now, I better get out of here. I"d rather look at this from the outside."

With those words, the body of the cloud giant chieftain collapsed. Blood was pouring out from his ears and nose. It was as he had feared; he had kept resisting Samuel"s possession so fervently that his whole body suffered from it. But that wasn"t something that Eisen could worry about right now.

"You... was he telling the truth?" the Bralfam asked, "Are you from that other realm as well?"

Eisen turned around toward the giant chieftains, who were just staring at him intensely, "...I lived there for 70 years. I lived here for a hundred thousand. My soul is more here than there, and my body there is changing to be like mine here.

It doesn"t matter who I was, it just matters who I am," Eisen replied, closing his eyes angrily, "But if you"re not happy with that, we can talk about that later. Right now, we can"t just keep standing around."

"What"s going on? What did Samuel do?" the Irngrad asked, rus.h.i.+ng toward the window as well. He didn"t even have to get all the way there to freeze up completely, "No, he..."

"Yeah. He cured my brother"s curse."

The grandour stuttered, "But... but then..."

"Just shut up and get moving," Eisen frowned, jumping out of the window. He spread out his demonic wings and flew out away from the castle. As he did, he pulled up his status window to look at his friend-list. Jyuuk and Xenia were online. Evalia and Brody weren"t. He could apologize later.

This was something Eisen promised only to do in total emergencies. Ever since he had become the King, and the other originals had technically become his "retainers", Eisen had gotten the ability to summon them to his location. Not against their will, of course, they still had to agree. But they would know that if Eisen summoned them, it was an emergency deserving of the situation.

The old man held forward his hand, trying to summon Xenia and Jyuuk onto his palm. He waited for a few seconds, each of which seemed way too long. In the meantime, he had landed, and began to spread out his Demonic Domain onto the city. That way he could manipulate the s.p.a.ce better, and he could summon some Demonic Sp.a.w.n to help protect and evacuate the townsfolk.

By the time his duplicates appeared by his side, two small people appeared on his palm.

"Eisen, what"s going on?"

"What do you need us to do?"

Xenia and Jyuuk looked up at the old man, and Eisen pointed forward, "The statue was a cursed giant, and Samuel removed the curse. He"s crumbling, or buckling, or shrinking; whichever it is, the mountain is about to collapse onto the city."

The two other originals looked around. They could see the first chunks of the mountain start dropping down onto the city below. Just those relatively small pieces, which ended up being larger than boulders, would cause unbelievable death and destruction. Without further ado, Xenia started to cast a spell and Jyuuk immediately jumped off Eisen"s hand.

From the beastman"s body, a ma.s.sive bird appeared and quickly started carrying him around the city. He pulled out a book as well, starting to flip through it, and numerous beasts and monsters started spreading out around him, flying through the air or dropping down onto the ground.

Once Xenia stopped casting her spell, her body lifted off Eisen"s palm as she flew through the air. She shot out needles of magic that attached to the falling boulders, slowing their fall, if not fully stopping them. But even the ones that did reach close to the ground were blocked by a ma.s.sive barrier that had spread out thinly.

"When will the others be here?!" Eisen yelled out toward them, and Xenia quickly replied, "Brody only just logged out, said he needed to eat. Evalia"s been gone for an hour already, but she should be back soon as well! Just keep an eye on the friendlist!"

The old man clicked his tongue. With the support of the other two as well, Eisen would be feeling a lot better. Though even then, this situation was still nigh-apocalyptic. He simply needed all the help he could get.

After all, the world was literally crumbling into pieces above him.