Before the group knew it, they made it to the Island of Craftsmanship. Everyone made their way outside and got Askr off the ship. Everyone that was set to fight on this island came out of the dungeon, and immediately once the two of them were outside, Jyuuk and Melissa started scouting out the island as much as possible.
So far, nobody could really notice any sort of ego items that went out of control and was as such relaxing, but Eisen was actually rather curious about something else. The old man stepped up to one of the trees here because he noticed a small beeshive hanging on its branch.
Eisen stretched his hand out and caught one of the bees in his hands, and couldn’t help but grin in excitement when he saw this. He already somewhat hoped for this to be the case. It was how things worked at the island of golems, after all, so there was little reason why this kind of thing shouldn’t be a thing on the island of crafting.
It seemed like every living creature, up to the bugs, was an ego-item. The ones representing the animals probably just weren’t the kind that went out of control as far as Eisen’s guessing went.
"Interesting..." Eisen muttered quietly as he took a look at the bee-item in his hand. For now, he copied its body completely and then transferred it into a larger, colored visualization that he could take apart however he wanted.
"I see." The old man said with a grin. It seemed like for one, there really wasn’t any golem core in there, but there was a soul just directly set into the item which somehow animated it at this level. But otherwise, it was a rather skilled construction.
The wings were thin but durable, its whole body was made of metal that was far too light than one would expect, but most notably, there was something like a small vial in its abdomen that was connected to the stinger. It was filled with a little bit of liquid, which Eisen figured to be the bee’s simple venom it made use of while stinging other beings.
Although, Eisen was actually pretty curious about what kind of venom it was, because usual venom shouldn’t have any sort of effect here on this island. Sure, for people and regular living, breathing creatures, but it seemed like those were a bit of a rarity here these days.
With a bit of thought, Eisen turned back toward the metallic bees and considered catching them again to see if they maybe had some kind of corrosive acid in them instead. He was using his demonic influence to keep them off of him right now without even really fully transforming, but the bees were still a bit pissed at him. Understandably, he just randomly grabbed one of their own. Either way, for now, Eisen couldn’t really do anything about these guys. He should rather try and look for more creatures to inspect. These bees would be here even after they took over the island, after all, so it didn’t really matter that much whether or not he took a look at them now or later.
"Alright, all of you, be careful. It seems like any living creature on this island is actually an ego-item, at least that’s what the patterns on the other islands suggests right now. Make sure you have enough food and water before heading out. We will give each group a few of Melissa’s bees, so if anything is wrong, you just need to turn to them and let them know that you need our help, like that we’ll know immediately as well and another group will try to see if they can come and help you." The old man suggested to everyone, and it didn’t seem like anyone really had anything to say against this idea. Eisen looked at the groups in front of him and was rather satisfied with how they were split up. Despite the restrictions that these ego-items gave them on the creation of well-balanced parties, as far as the old man concerned, the parties weren’t badly balanced at the very least. Not perfectly, but not horribly either.
"Got it. So, Jyuuk, how’s the state of the place?" Brody asked as he turned toward the Monkey Beastperson, and Jyuuk quickly started to explain to them the ’areas’ there seemed to be depending on what kinds of item types there were.
There was just one problem, "I found the town already, but if we go on a straight path from here to there, the ego-items are just a jumbled mess, no real type." Jyuuk explained. With a light smile on his face, Eisen looked into the direction that Jyuuk was pointing into, "Got it. Then we’re taking that one." Eisen said clearly, turning toward his Knights behind him. They had a pretty good balance, and Eisen didn’t want to split them up, so it was good that there was a place like this. Other than those five and Eisen, the old man’s group would of course include Eisen’s three tamed monsters, Sky and Bree, Kirisho, as well Komer.
The group made the decision that for now, it may be a good idea to have Askr just as backup and extra protection for the ship. He would basically be this place’s bodyguard, and if there was any situation where anyone really needed help, Eisen would command Askr to rush over there and take care of it, something that the wood giant should be able to do more than easily.
"Alright, then split up, everyone." Eisen said with a smile on his face, and one after another, all the groups went on their way, taking different routes across the island to see which path would be the quickest to get to the town of craftsmanship.
And once the others were gone, Eisen went ahead and led his group on a straight path toward the town. For the first little while, there wasn’t really anything around that was worth taking notice of on a combat-side of things. There were some animals that Eisen was pretty curious about, because he would have liked to see what kinds of items they were and how they were constructed internally, but it didn’t matter too much to him either. He just mana-copied them for now and would take his time looking at all that stuff later once he had the time.
But then, roughly 15 to 20 minutes after they started walking, it seemed like the group came across their first ’monster’. It was a bipedal, humanoid monster. It was seemingly a metallic kind based off of a sharp weapon, so probably a sword. It seemed quite rusted all over the place, and generally in a bad condition, but as far as Eisen could tell, its arms and legs all had edges to them that would definitely be capable of cutting apart a lot of things, including all these people here.
But of course, that didn’t really happen. Instead, the moment that this mad ego-sword ran toward the group, Morgus the black half-dragon used his giant metallic pillar to counter-attack. The sharp edges that were leftover from this ego-item’s days as a sword were immediately blunted, while the others chose to try and attack it to an extent as well. Of course, Caria and Sal were really just tying the monster down, but also Bree and Sky were properly involved in this fight in particular.
Bree with her warhammer and Sky with an inkheart summon that was wielding a similar large, heavy and blunt weapon to Morgus and Bree. Both of them were doing a pretty good job, and in general, it didn’t take long until the ego-items durability was completely reduced. All that needed to be done was destroy the part that actively held the core of the soul, which Eisen was able to find rather quickly and without any issues, so they were able to take this crazy ego-item down pretty quickly.
The next ego-item they stumbled across, actually not too long after encountering the first one, was seemingly a leather armor that went mad. It was obviously an armor for a person, but it was hunched over and running like some kind of ape. The space inside of the armor was completely filled out with more mass that just seemed to be leather, and parts of its body all around seemed to be somewhat ripped apart and not in a good shape in general. It didn’t even have anything like a head either, instead it had a lot of small eyes all over the chestpiece and a gaping, awkwardly placed and angled mouth at the left side of its torso. It was like its mouth was running from its belly-button to its left elbow, and all the teeth were weirdly leather-like as well.
But luckily, since it was made of leather, it wasn’t any different to attacking other monsters. Just this time, Morgus and Bree couldn’t really attack, as blunt weapons relied mostly on damaging things deeper inside of the enemies’ body, like shattering their bones or ripping apart their organs if possible, without necessarily actively breaking apart the skin too much. And since this ego-leather-armor didn’t have anything like bones or internal organs, they had no way of doing proper, effective damage to it.
Instead, Eisen and Kiron took the lead on this one, cutting into its body that was nothing but a thick mass of leather while supported by the others in any way possible. Arrows, magic, anything that could help was thrown at these ego-items.
The only one that wasn’t really doing anything was Komer, because compared to the others here, he was actually kind of underleveled. He was trying to find good opportunities to attack the monsters to get at least a little bit of experience, but in the end, it seemed like too much of a risk to use his coins on something that seemed like an easy win anyway.
There actually seemed to be another item that Komer really wanted to try out, although he didn’t reveal what it was to Eisen yet. Maybe they should just try and capture one of the next ego-items and have Komer try and attack using his Fate Items.
Although, he may not even do that there. It would be too awkward if he ended up getting the bad results in that case. It seemed like he was more than just prepared for it for when he was in actual combat, carrying as many healing and mana pills and potions on his person as absolutely possible.
And while Eisen was looking around for a next ego-item, he was actually rather surprised. Or confused, even. At first he thought it was a hallucination caused by him thinking of Komer’s potions, but in the end, he was right. What was walking there in front of them was a humanoid figure made of glass that was completely filled to the brim with a blood red potion.
It was an ego-potion.
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