By the time the group made their way closer toward the ego-castle and were ready to get to bed for tonight, they had taken over four more ego-mansions. With all five of them, they would surely be able to hold down the ego-castle for a while, or so Eisen hoped. The old man wasn’t entirely sure if he should bet on it, though. He couldn’t say what sort of abilities the ego-castle even had.
Either way, for now, the old man chose to go to bed as well so that he would get enough rest to take care of everything tomorrow with the others. But to Eisen’s surprise, instead of his view changing to the inside of the capsule, Eisen stayed in a black void. He remembered this feeling pretty vividly. This was a dream over here, and not the normal type.
A little while after Eisen managed to somewhat put his thoughts together in this space, he found a small white light floating in front of him. Eisen stretched his hand out toward it and touched it with the tips of his fingers. The moment he did, the white light grew and stretched itself out throughout the black space, completely replacing it in a matter of seconds.
But it didn’t just become a black space, like Eisen had assumed it would be. No, instead, it was the interior of a workshop, and in front of him stood... Eisen himself. He was sitting on a stool in front of a workbench, but right now, the actual Eisen didn’t have a good view on what the dream-Eisen was doing, so he took some steps forward and looked over his own shoulders.
And what Eisen was seeing there, was surprisingly nothing but just a soul. It seemed like the dream-Eisen was currently using Magic Inscription on it, writing weird, complex formulas down into the mana and changing the internal structure of the soul itself. The old man wasn’t entirely sure if it could really be called a normal soul anymore after this.
A few moments later, the mana for the magic inscription disappeared, and Eisen looked at the soul with a curious expression. Both the real Eisen and the dream Eisen did.
"Here you go, little bud. Have some ’Steel’." Dream-Eisen said with a light smile on his face. With just a few small movements of his fingers, he made a small nugget of steel appear in them out of thin air, although it didn’t seem to be some sort of magically-created steel.
Dream-Eisen held it up to the soul, and to Real-Eisen’s surprise, it actually started moving. It was floating right toward the steel nugget, and even started feeding on it. The steel was slowly being taken apart by the pure white, mist-like soul. It was wiggling happily for a few moments after it ate the whole nugget, and Dream-Eisen just started to smirk at seeing this, "Heh, you like that, don’t you? Did you remember what it was like?" He asked, and once more moved his fingers around.
In front of him, five different small metal nuggets appeared. Gold, Steel, Iron, Copper, and Mythril, "Can you find the same kind right here?" Dream-Eisen asked. And the soul didn’t hesitate much, and soon floated over toward the small steel nugget, once more eating it happily.
"Perfect! So you can remember it now, huh? Good job, little guy. Now, I want you to eat all of these now as well. He made an incredible amount of more metals, whether they were magic metals or normal ones, or whether they were rare or common types.
It seemed like the Dream-Eisen was just continuosly trying to teach the soul what different types of metals were like. But not only metals, since it seemed like the Dream-Eisen was currently picking up some leather. But just then, the Dream-Eisen and the soul simply fell apart into thin mist, just to appear again on the other side of the room where the tools were hanging.
Now, it seemed like the Dream-Eisen was doing the exact same thing it did with the metals with all these tools. Hammers, Knives, Pipes, anything that you may need while crafting something, really. It didn’t really take long until this version of the dream-Eisen and the soul fell apart again, just to change to a scene of Eisen standing in front of the forge, hammering onto some metal while the soul was watching. It was obvious that the Dream-Eisen wasn’t really trying to make anything, but was just hammering for the sake of hammering, as if trying to show off the basic movements and techniques.
And before Eisen knew it, the soul actually started to replicate the movements Dream-Eisen was going for. Or rather, the movements of Eisen’s hammer. The same speed, the same direction, and even the same form. Yes, it actually slightly altered its form to be similar to the hammer that the Dream-Eisen was holding, all the whilst still just being a soul.
At that point, Eisen actually slowly understood what was going on. Dream-Eisen was in the process of creating an ego-item, but was doing so using a completely different process than what Eisen had been thinking of so far. Real-Eisen just made tools or weapons that knew of nothing yet, and counted on them to learn what was going on as they were being used, but the Dream-Eisen was creating a soul that knew about everything that it needed to know before even being turned into an item in the first place. As if Eisen was trying to raise the Ego-Rank of the soul beforehand.
Soon, the scene changed again, and the Dream-Eisen was currently holding a small rock in his hand. It was really just the same size and shape as a chicken’s egg, really, but it seemed to hold a lot of minerals inside of it. And not only minerals, but also a lot of crystal structures, meaning that it was probably artificially created by Dream-Eisen.
The old man held it in his hand, and then simply ’offered’ it to the soul, similar to when Eisen was trying to give a form to souls through Soul Engineering. The egg-like rock was taken apart, and the soul, that had weirdly grown to be as large as a child would be, simply condensed and turned into that exact shape before floating in front of Dream-Eisen. But it seemed like the soul itself was rather weird. Usually, when Eisen gave souls a form, the part that would take on that form would be the soul nucleus, the ’hardened’ core in the center of the soul. The mist-like substance would still be floating around it without exception. But this time, it was as if that mist had condensed and hardened itself, turning into the egg’s shell as it was keeping the nucleus inside of it safely.
And then, Eisen watched as the Dream-Eisen slowly scooped up that ethereal, white egg with his hands and stepped over toward the large sliding-door behind him. Dream-Eisen pushed the tips of his toes into the small gap that had formed between the door and the wall and just pushed the door open using it, revealing the space behind it. And to Real-Eisen’s surprise, it was revealed that he had been thinking in completely wrong dimensions all along. He thought that the Dream-Eisen was just at his regular size, but no. Instead, he was simply in a truly enormous structure that was perfectly fitted to him for an enormous size.
And right outside the door was the outside of that structure. Numerous corpses of monsters of any kind were piled up there. The bodies were intertwined with each other, at least if they still had parts that even could be intertwined in the first place. Right next to that pile was another one, just made up of an extraordinary amount of materials at a scale that Eisen had never seen. And then, right next to that pile, was a mountain of items. Tools, weapons, anything, really.
All of the items, monsters, and materials were at a normal scale, it seemed, but the mountains they formed even towered over Dream-Eisen in that enormous form of his. And before Real-Eisen knew it, the Dream-Eisen just let the soul-egg float over toward the centerpoint inbetween all three of those mountains.
Bit by bit, it seemed like that soul started pulling in anything in sight. It grew in size the more it took in, but its shape stayed the same. At some point, which seemed to be just a few moments after the egg started feeding on everything, the three mountains were completely gone without a trace of them ever having been there in the first place.
Then, the giant Dream-Eisen stepped up to the Egg, which had grown in size to be the exact same height as himself, and to his surprise... Dream-Eisen simply stepped inside of it. He disappeared into that ghostly shell, and all of a sudden, it took on a physical form instead of just that of a soul. The egg-shell hardened, and the whole thing shrunk down more and more, until it was once more just the size of a chicken’s egg. But this time, at a normal scale. It could be held in the hands of a normal person.
Real-Eisen slowly turned around at hearing a noise, and saw the body of Dream-Eisen slowly put itself together again from the ground up. That was probably Eisen ’respawning’ after actively dying inside of that egg. So he basically really gave his life for it, even if that action wasn’t really as impactful as it may sound.
Dream-Eisen stepped up to the door that Real-Eisen was still looking down from, and stopped there. And then, he just turned his head toward Real-Eisen.
"I’m glad to see you’re finally remembering some things. I guess that island woke up this memory in particular, huh?" Dream-Eisen chuckled, and without another word shrunk down to go pick up the egg that he just created. But before Real-Eisen could ask his dream version anything, everything faded again, and Eisen found himself back in the black space, with nothing but that white sphere floating in front of him. And slowly, the white sphere turned golden from the inside, and Benjamin woke up inside of the capsule.
---
The old man slowly stood up from inside, pushing open the capsule. He felt weirdly tired, more so than usual. Benjamin made his way into the bathroom to clean his face to wake up a bit more. The moment that the cold water touched his face, he felt a deep stinging in his head, as if someone just stabbed his brain with a kitchen knife.
It hurt for a few moments, but then, as if the pain was a lie, it all disappeared. And Benjamin slowly stared into the mirror.
Just now, instead of just learning vague concepts, Benjamin recalled his first vivid memory from his time as Eisen.
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