Chapter 816: Pain

Eisen ground his teeth together. He was in pain. So, so much pain. But he could get through this. He had to. If he didn"t, then all of these people would die.

Since he was taking regular damage, Eisen had to regularly chug some health potions instead of the mana potions, leaving him in a constant cycle of destruction and regeneration. But even then, he couldn"t just leave it at this. He had to do more. From his item storage, the old man took some cubes of mana crystal.

They were incredibly compressed to a degree that made them impossible to use at this point. It was just the most efficient way to store them.

The old man watched as Bai turned into a small needle in his hand. As his teeth ground down on the metal casing of the potion barrel, he started enchanting the compressed crystal. It was a simple enchantment. Not all too much was needed to make this efficient for his use.

It wouldn"t be particularly stable in the long-run, and would need to be replaced as soon as possible, but it was the best thing he could do right now. The enchantment would have a single real function; expansion.

Instantly upon activation, the crystal would decompress and enlarge. It would go as far as it could, basically turning into a foam instead of a crystal, wrapping itself around the surface it was thrown on. As soon as he finished the item, Eisen threw it as far as he could. It hit the surface of Silber"s body, still wrapped in stone, and was activated.

Seeming like an explosion of dust and smoke, the crystal bubbled outward and grew along the crumbling stone surface. But it was just a fraction of what was needed, and Eisen definitely didn"t have enough to cover it all, so he had to continue having his demonic sp.a.w.n and duplicates build up a solid layer of stone around the statue"s "skin".

Eisen proceeded to create more and more of these "crystal foam grenades", as they were dubbed by the system, as many as he could. But even that was too slow for Eisen.

The crystal foam was too weak to carry up anything at all, so Eisen had to go and manually strengthen it. He used alchemy to once more compress the foam down into thinner crystal stuctures, wrapping it more closely around the statue"s exterior. But soon, Eisen ran out. This wasn"t enough. If Silber fell unconscious now, everything would fail.

And then, Eisen glanced to the side. Jyuuk was approaching on the back of one of his eagles. But he wasn"t alone. Caria, Melissa, and Sal were with him.

Since he had to keep chugging the potion, he wasn"t able to complain, but Jyuuk just shook his head before Eisen even had the chance to try, "They made me bring them. Listen, a lot of people have been evacuated, and Xenia is taking care of the most important debree. I"ll help here."

Slowly, Eisen nodded. There was still a lot going on, and even after the Mountain Gobbler"s death, the rocks and buildings hanging from the ceiling were going to keep falling to the ground. Jyuuk dropped Melissa and Sal onto Eisen"s shoulder, but Caria stayed with him.

The young girl seemed extremely worried for Eisen and would have rather stayed with him, but she knew that she could help more if she was with Jyuuk right now. The two of them flew around the G.o.d of the mountain. Eisen could see a thin fog of mist spread out from Caria, sticking to the statue. And from there, Jyuuk took over.

He accelerated the growth of Caria"s mushrooms, making them quickly spread over the exposed surfaces. In the meantime, Sal had started using his magic to produce as much thread as he could. He was actively catching some of the falling rocks in with his magic, breaking them apart quickly.

But Sal couldn"t control these threads well enough as is, especially while concentrating on creating ma.s.s amounts of them. So instead, Melissa had released every single one of her bees that were strong enough to carry the threads, making them fly around the statue to wrap it in a coc.o.o.n.

Eisen looked around frantically. At this rate, the statue"s sh.e.l.l would proceed quickly, but it wouldn"t be enough. Once Silber collapses, it would just be hollow and fall apart soon. And so, Eisen flew over toward Silber"s ear. Right now, the body of the waking Mountain Gobbler was shaking in response to Brody"s attacks from above.

The way things were right now, it wouldn"t take long for him to kill it. It was barely alive right now anyway.

Eisen pulled the barrel from his lips and started to speak. A stream of blood and liquified flesh poured out of the old man"s mouth as he tried not to vomit out his garbled insides. Sal and Melissa looked at him worried, but Eisen just wiped the blood from his mouth, "Keep... going... we can"t... we can"t stop..."

Soon, the two did as Eisen asked them to. They were scared, and Melissa was already sobbing, but it was the only way right now. The old man turned his attention back to Silber.

"Once... Once the Mountain Gobbler is dead... use the... the crystal strands, they"re still... there, right? Use them...

and syphon its blood... into... into the sh.e.l.l..." Eisen forced out through a broken throat with an even more broken voice, "I... I"m sorry... for asking you... but you...

need to..."

Eisen didn"t know if Silber heard. If he had, and if he still had the strength to, then maybe Silber would be able to do so. And if none of those things were the case... then Eisen really didn"t know what they were supposed to do. It would be near impossible to save this city. Though...

the old man glanced down through blurred sight. The city was already practically ruined at this point. So many deaths, and even more injured. While there were giants running around, trying to protect the non-giants as much as they could, and Jyuuk"s roots and Xenia"s magic protected them all immensely... that wasn"t enough. None of this was enough.

b.l.o.o.d.y tears began to stream down Eisen"s face. Samuel went too far this time. This was absolutely inhuman. Eisen didn"t know what happened to make him like this... but it didn"t matter anymore. This couldn"t be redeemed.

There was no way to solve this amicably. Deep down, Eisen still held out hope that it could be solved through talking, and that they could prevent deaths somehow. But that will was lost now. It wasn"t even that Eisen thought Samuel "had" to die. He did, of course, but it was more than that. Eisen wanted Samuel to die.

He wanted Samuel to die a long, painful death. He deserved nothing else than that at this point.

Eisen"s right eye began stinging painfully. He tried to keep it open for as long as he could, but it was as though the blood had glued it shut the moment he blinked. His legs had felt numb a long time ago, and his arms were shaking. He wasn"t able to hold Bai anymore either, so there wasn"t much he could do but watch anymore. At least it was worth it.

A full half of the G.o.d of the Mountain"s outer sh.e.l.l was replicated with Eisen"s "Blazing Core of the Mountain" magic. It would fall apart once Eisen fell unconscious later, but at that point, hopefully the Mountain Gobbler"s blood would be there doing the rest.

Right now, Eisen was just concentrating on keeping his wings flapping. He couldn"t fall with Sal and Melissa by his side.

Before long, the potion barrels fell out of Eisen"s mouth as well. He couldn"t tell how much time had pa.s.sed after that. He was barely able to see anything anymore either. The rough outline of things, maybe, but colour had faded long ago too. Sound was m.u.f.fled, and a high-pitched ringing shot through his ears. At some point, he heard Jyuuk"s voice call out to him.

The only thing Eisen was able to do now was grab onto Melissa and Sal, and shove them over toward the beastman.

"Take... them..." Eisen muttered, though he didn"t even know if his voice could really be heard, "I"ll leave... the rest... to... you..."

And with that, Eisen felt deep cramps in his wings and he fell. It was a long drop, so Eisen wouldn"t be surprised if he just died on impact, but that would be fine. He was immortal in this world, so it didn"t really matter that much.

In the middle of his fall, a message appeared in front of the old man"s eyes. He couldn"t read it, but usually, the contents of the message should roughly be conveyed to him without having to read. At least, that had been his recent experience with the system. But even that didn"t happen. It just felt grotesque and foreign. As though it just wasn"t supposed to be.

And that was when Eisen"s mind went blank.

---

Benjamin came to in the capsule. His body was aching and cramping, and blood was covering his face even on earth. With his deep connection between the two worlds, it seemed the immense overuse of magic was far too much for his body even here.

He shoved the capsule open and pulled himself out, vomiting onto the ground. It was hard to keep himself from slipping in the blood as he propped himself up with his single arm. After a few moments, the old man had regained some of his composure. His body had been damaged here, but it wasn"t too bad.

Slowly, he looked up, trying to get toward the door to clean himself up. Even if he logged back in right now, he would be either unconscious or simply dead altogether. So there was nothing he could do but wait until one of the others woke up.

Benjamin stretched out his hand toward the doorhandle, as his eye twitched painfully. A surge of migraine attacked him as his body froze. Something was appearing in his sight.

[Co§g&at(=?ons" %o} !a/e l]a%ned *+e S%i!l!]