BXBX NOVEL Chapter 463 - Gliding Through
"I get it, we’ll be on our way. We have to get back to Melroe soon anyway." Eisen pointed out as he turned back to Marcear, and she soon smirked back at the old man. "For that, I think I can be of a little help. It will not lead you directly there, but I have hidden away a secret passageway that leads to the foot of the mountain. It should be just a day’s walk to Melroe once you get down there." Marcear explained, so Eisen raised his brows. "Really? That would be really helpful, actually, thank you." The old man said with a smile, and Marcear simply chuckled as she made her way over toward a large rock in a corner of the room and pulled it away with raw strength instead of magic. The loud sounds this produced even ended up waking the others, so they walked up behind the old man as he looked down the steep tunnel in front of them.
"Hmm, is it like this all the way down?" The old man asked, as it seemed rather tiring to walk down this path, because it was too steep to actually walk on and you practically had to climb, and Marcear slowly nodded her head.
"So it is, yes." She explained, and Eisen sighed lightly as he took a closer look and then just sighed. "Well, nothing we can really do about it, then." The old man said, before he got a little bit of an idea, and quickly increased his size to the maximum that he could and at the same time activated his demonic transformation, which came to a bit of a surprise to Marcear.
"Oh, I was not quite aware that you were capable of such... change." She pointed out, and Eisen just lightly smirked, "It would be weirder if you expected it, wouldn’t it?" He replied as he sat at the edge of the steep tunnel and looked at the others. "Alright, now everyone, please take a seat on my lap or arms." The old man told them, and they simply did so without an actual moment’s hesitation, although Marcear herself was rather confused, before she watched as Eisen’s body became covered in flames, even more than were already covering him. "Is it too hot for you guys?" The old man asked, the tone of his voice slightly raised through the transformation, although he quickly got confirmation from the others that they were fine, and he then looked down at Sal.
"Can you bind everyone to me, Sal? Caria, you please with some vines as well, if possible. Don’t want anyone to fall off."
"Wait, you don’t mean to-" Marcear muttered quietly, and Eisen just looked at her with a wink as he looked at the tunnel in front of him, "I do. Thanks for the Scale and Your mana, and of course also your Gift. It was lovely to meet you." Eisen said with a smile and then slowly shifted his weight forward once everyone was tightly secured to him. And once it was inevitable for him to fall forward, he simply jumped away from the edge and started quickly gliding through this tunnel.
It was meant for a Dragon to quickly fly through, so it was obvious it was large enough, and it was surprisingly straightforward as well, meaning that once Eisen got the rough hang of it, he could really just keep his body slightly tilted in one direction. This tunnel was obviously artificially excavated, so it made sense to be easy to fly through. Although, Eisen wasn’t actually flying, he was just gliding while flapping his wings as much as possible to keep his body up with all of the extra weight on him right now.
"I feel sick..." Sky muttered quietly after a little while, and Eisen looked down at him with a bit of a smirk, "Don’t throw up on me, please." The old man laughed, and Sky simply grumbled in response. He was obviously not enjoying this as much as Bree and the three monster children.
But luckily, it was over actually pretty quickly, because they soon reached the end of the steep tunnel and everything became more flat than before, so Eisen chose to slowly land there as carefully as he could handle, which was still rather rough, actually.
And when he finally stopped and both Sal and Caria removed what they used to keep everyone on Eisen’s body, the old man noticed a notification in front of him.
[You have traveled a long distance gliding with extra weight, so your wings have grown in strength]
Surprised, Eisen waved the notification away and flapped his wings a few times, and soon noticed that his feet were slowly being lifted off the ground, albeit just barely. He would be able to fly like this, but he might be able to keep his body in place in the air for a little longer, so that was nice.
"Interesting." Eisen muttered quietly, and then looked around at the others, placing his hand on Sky’s head as he was calming down from that wild ride just now. Thinking that they deserved a little break, Eisen grabbed one of the boxes he had in his apron and took Cabarum out of it, "Come on, for the rest of the way, you can stay on here." Eisen said as he looked at Sky, so the Fey-Kin boy just slowly nodded his head.
"Thanks..." He grumbled while the old man quickly helped him sit on top of the Horse’s back, and then put the three monster kids and Bree behind him as well. Cabarum’s back was incredibly large, a lot larger than a regular Horse’s, so they all had space there as long as they tried to sit closely together. Of course, that meant that Bree couldn’t carry her backpack on her back for this, so Eisen took that task over for now, quickly throwing it over his shoulder.
He had deactivated his Demonic Transformation, but he still had his size increased to the maximum, so Bree’s backpack didn’t actually look as ridiculously large on his back right now. It seemed surprisingly heavy to him, though...
Either way, in addition to Cabarum, Eisen also got Aulu out to have her walk in the front and react if she noticed something troublesome, and then the group got moving again and made their way through the flat part of this tunnel, before finding the exit. It was hidden pretty well, this time around with a spell that covered the opening. And on top of that, there was a rock-wall right in front of the opening, so it was very hidden either way. Nobody would voluntarily go back here, after all, since there was just no reason to.
Swiftly, the group started making their way through to the front of the rock wall and then along the path that didn’t seem to be that far away, and then started making their way back to Melroe.
And Marcear was right, it would only be roughly a full day’s walk away from here, like she thought, although that was only the case if you were really walking. But instead, Eisen was currently rather jogging, and at his size, that was like running for other people. Of course Cabarum and Aulu could handle that speed as well, so it really only took them a third of the time to get back to the area around Melroe, which still meant that Eisen had to jog for quite a while, and he pulled quite a lot of attention toward him doing that as well, and most people they encountered simply stepped to the side immediately as they saw the Giant Man and Horse with the children on its back approach.
And when the sun started going down, the group finally made their way back to Melroe. They were currently on the other side of town to where Fafnir and Sigurd set up the Dungeon, unluckily, but like this they could get to the Inn on their way and see if Parc and Rouge made their way to town already.
It took a little while for them to get through the gate, because some random player was causing some trouble, but soon they could get inside and made their way through the town, soon reaching the place they were looking for, and after everyone got off of Cabarum’s back, the old man put the Horse and Wolf Automata into the box again.
He had a soul, so Eisen felt a little bad for doing this, but the Inn seemed to be rather full again, so he didn’t want to walk inside with both of them when he really didn’t want others to pay too much attention to him... Although maybe that meant that he should wear some other, less noticeable clothes sometimes...
Either way, the old man opened the door and stepped inside, quickly followed by the others, and then walked to the Inn’s front desk that was currently manned by not only Gralmar, but two workers that were taking care of the onslaught of room requests.
The moment that Gralmar saw Eisen, he started to smile brightly and pointed at the stairs, "Thank god you’re back, please just go take care of that business upstairs. We recently expanded, so we have more rooms... There’s some trouble in room 268, I’m pretty sure, but I can’t do anything about it..." The Dwarf explained as he pulled Eisen closer, "It has to do with those Knights of yours..." He added quietly, and Eisen raised his brows immediately as he turned around.
He quickly rushed up the stairs followed by the others who didn’t fully know what was going on since they didn’t hear what Gralmar told Eisen, but soon, the old man found the trouble that Gralmar was speaking about while activating his Mana-Sight.
Inside the room, he noticed seven figures, two that seemed to be humans, and five that quite obviously weren’t humans. And in front of the room, a group of players was standing, just knocking on the door with heavy hands, trying to get inside rather aggressively.