Chapter 731 The Country of Giants
Eisen continued working on a bunch more items that had been requested to him for the few hours that Girland allowed him to take on requests. He was pretty happy with the items that he had made until now. They were high-quality and turned out perfectly. They were a bit boring and repet.i.tive, sure, but that was fine.
The old man kept finis.h.i.+ng as many items as he could, and then placed them in the "delivery packs", just special spatial gems capable of holding a single small item, and then gave them to one of Melissa"s bees. They were able to travel at extremely high speeds, but were rather weak otherwise. But even so, they were the perfect delivery drones, especially once Eisen made sure to help them find the person they should deliver the item to.
Basically, he gave the bees a GPS by having a small gem that would be attracted by the "mark" put onto each customer"s hand placed onto their backs. It would pull them there just so slightly to help guide their path. And then, the customer would be given a small pre-recorded message from Eisen so that they knew who it was, and after being given the item, they would pay in coins. Coins that would be combined into a single one and then taken in by the small spatial gem, just to be brought back to Eisen for the next delivery.
It was a pretty straightforward system, but not one that was perfected yet. The bees could rather easily be killed and have everything they were carrying stolen, so they couldn"t really be used outside of Asgard.
It would be too dangerous there. In any place on the islands, there was constant surveillance due to the Town Core Guardians, so even if someone did end up trying to kill one of the bees, there would be proof for that immediately.
Eisen really just worked on the items as much as he could during the trip, that ended up taking four full days. The old man would continue working on more items on the way back and once he arrived at the islands again, but for now, he had to take care of something else.
And that "something else" was the trip throughout the actual country itself. The country of giants was a rather unique place. Whether it was because of some sort of special ambient magic that gathered here in this place, or utter coincidence, but everything was many times larger than usual. It would be like someone shrunk Eisen down as he was walking through this country.
Of course, since he could increase his size, it wouldn"t be that bad, even if he couldn"t reach the full size that was normally known for giants.
He was still rather close to that point, though, and it seemed like it wouldn"t take all too much longer until he was able to get there. Eisen hoped, at least. He should get to the "Capital" of the Fire Clan in a few days, though.
It would have taken just a day if Girland didn"t stop him from just flying. But at the end of the day, she did have a point. A King appearing in another country casually, wearing nothing but a leather ap.r.o.n and wool pants?
Eisen didn"t know much about Giant culture, but if he wasn"t careful, this could be seen as disrespectful to them. And that was literally the opposite of what he wanted. So instead, in case he would end up meeting any Giant during his travels, he wore his suit that was once more fused with his "King"s Armor".
And they would all be travelling in specific groups. For one, Eisen had his Dragon Knights directly with him. He had Fafnir right by his side, as well as Caria, Melissa and Sal. And of course, Kirisho was also there.
Beside those, there were the "servants" that Girland wanted Eisen to bring. A few more people, monsters, and guardians, totalling an extra dozen heads. And every single figure walking beside him that didn"t count to those groups... was a golem.
To be more specific, Armor Golems using Haunted Armor created by Jyuuk a while ago. They were far more capable than most other Golems. Not physically stronger, but they rather had more dexterity and technique behind their movements. And since they were supposed to be Eisen"s guards, that was a rather good thing.
Although, Eisen kept all 5 dozen of them inside of the dungeon, except half a dozen to accompany him just in case there were any tough monsters to fight that they needed extra help with for some reason.
There was little reason for Eisen to have all of them out there. They would just end up making travelling more of a bother, as far as he was concerned at least.
The first thing that he did was turn toward his five half-dragon knights.
"Kiron. You and Morgus walk in the front as the first line of defense. Melissa"s bees will be spread around anyway to warn us of any danger. Argon, you"re probably the fastest on your feet amongst you five, so you stay in the center of the group where you can react to anything you need to. Rudia and Selena, you try and stay toward the back, but make sure to keep some of the armor-golems behind you." The old man said. He tried to make sure to split everyone up in a somewhat logical way that would be the safest and most efficient for anyone involved.
He then turned his head toward the giant wooden golem right behind him, Askr, the Golem made from that enormous Ironbark tree. Askr would be walking in the very back, for obvious reasons. Eisen didn"t want Askr to block everyone"s path.
As for the others – they could fit in wherever they felt like they could be useful. The base was built with the five Dragon Knights, and everyone else would be there to fill in some gaps and support them. After all, that was the easiest way to deal with this for now.
Of course, Eisen wouldn"t hesitate to fight a little bit as well, he did also need to level up some soon. It wasn"t the most important goal in his life anymore, but it was certainly up there. Eisen"s main goal for now was to meet the current Grandour so that he could fulfill the "Quest" given to him by the red notification that Eisen had been hiding out of sight for quite a while now. It was still there, Eisen just couldn"t see it anymore.
After all, Eisen had now completed his part of the note-quests given to him by the puzzle-box, so he only had to wait for the others to complete theirs as well so that they could all continue along that route. It shouldn"t take them too long, though.
Either way, it seemed like Eisen would end up being the first to complete the quest given to him by the red notification, simply because the others weren"t in a rush to complete their own.
But that didn"t matter for now. What did matter, however, was that Eisen wanted to quickly reach the town of Giants where the Grardour was living. With that goal in mind, the group quickly stepped off of the s.h.i.+p, which quickly turned around and made its way back to the islands on its own due to the undead crewmates keeping it running.
And soon, they stepped off of the beach into the jungle-like forest in front of them. And really, that was all it was supposed to be. A forest. A regular sort, with nothing much to it. At least from the perspective of a Giant. From the perspective of everyone else, this place was a jungle. Even the gra.s.s was scaled up, and so were the usually tiny bugs crawling around.
The group quickly came across a colony of giant ants that could be compared to small dogs or cats in size. And these weren"t even the "monster" version of ants living here. Certainly, those would be even larger, there was no doubt about that in Eisen"s mind.
Either way, the ants didn"t seem overly interested and as such were easily diverted through Kirisho"s mist, definitely a rather useful ability to have. One that Eisen thanked Kirisho for every time it came in useful. The more the group made their way into the center of the giant country, the more they happened to find monsters.
Like for example a giant wolf, and there was even an enormous squirrel messing with the gorup for a while. They were honestly more annoying than anything. Of course, they were stronger and had much, much more health and defense than before, but at the end of the day, they were still beaten relatively quickly. Especially considering that all their weakspots became many times easier to hit. And since Eisen made a few special arrows, drill-arrows that would dig into the monsters flesh just to explode within them to damage their internal organs, for Rudia to use, most of the monsters that only had hide were beaten easily.
But then, there were the more magic-beast sorts of monsters at some points. As well as giant humanoid monsters, like giant versions of Goblins or Kobolds. The actual Goblins and Kobolds that were here were rather shocked at this sight, since it wasn"t something they expected seeing on this trip.
But honestly, neither did Eisen. It seemed like the theory of some sort of wild magic having increased the size of everything that was here was the most probable reason for why everything was so huge here, the closer that Eisen and the others got a look at all these monsters. After all, even if some proportions were off every once in a while, for the most part the monsters were just scaled up to be many times larger than normal.
That meant that those materials were also scaled up as well, which Eisen was quite grateful for, but he still couldn"t help but think that both Jyuuk and Xenia would love it here. Jyuuk because of the unique wildlife that could be found here, and Xenia due to the unique magic flowing through this part of the world.
He would definitely bring them with him the next time he came here. And hopefully, Eisen would be able to make it that they could create free travel between the Giant Country and Asgard so that they could just come here on vacation, rather than Eisen having to make up some sort of dumb reason why they would need to come on the side of diplomacy.
Either way... Whenever a slightly "tougher" enemy came around, either Eisen in his Giant form would take care of it, or Askr would, with the support of the others of course.
And just like that, it didn"t take long until they reached the first settlement.