Chapter 700 - The Thing in the Tower

Eisen looked at the man in front of him with a deeply worried expression. He didn't know what he was supposed to do with all this information. Was he supposed to get angry? There was no way that he could get any more furious than he already was. 

The old man wondered what kind of people would be here in this realm. He figured that it would be mostly people that tried to directly attack one of the gods or those that killed many others in the name of a god, although that was completely not what the god wanted. That was the kind of thing that Eisen expected.

He was a bit surprised that there were so many towers here, since there were more people here than Eisen had initially expected. But then again, these people here couldn't ever reincarnate, so it made sense that there were a lot more people here, since they were probably gathered for a very long time.

But now that Eisen heard the story of this man, of this individual with a past that Eisen didn't expect, he realized that there were a certain sort of people that were put here on top of the kind that Eisen already expected.

It was the sort that found out about Earth in one way or another. And that meant that there had to be people here that were brought down here because a player revealed information to them.

After hearing this man's story, Eisen fulfilled his part of the promise. He said that he would tell the man some things about Earth, and so he did. He gave him some information about it, things that would make him feel like his life's work wasn't completely wasted. And then, Eisen did something that he didn't know whether or not he was going to regret this or not. 

He opened up his item storage and quickly took out a special sort of material. The old man pulled a chunk of it off and formed it into a fist-sized bubble, pressing it into the hand of the damned soul in front of him.

"If you want to live a new life, hold this bubble tightly and pour your mana inside. It will be like you're falling asleep. And when you wake up, you will be in the mortal realm again, with a new body." Eisen told the man. He didn't know what exactly was going on. He was blind after all, and could now only see the connection between the two worlds.

"Well, either way, I will try my best so that at some point, you will be able to be reincarnated at least. But if you want to live as yourself in a world filled with those coming from the other world, you shoud come with me." The old man said.

Still, the man had no idea what he was supposed to say in response, "You... Have the power to do that?" The Soul asked, and Eisen slowly nodded his head.

"I do, yes." Eisen replied. After a bit of thought, the soul stared down at the bubble, although he still wasn't able to see it. He was able to feel it in his hands, at least, "Can I have some time to think about that?"

Immediately Eisen replied, "Of course. I will come back here when I have finished that which I have to do in this realm. This will only take a few hours, though. So tell me the answer when I'm back.

And so, Eisen turned around and left this tomb. Eisen knew that he wouldn't be able to take everyone out of this realm like this man, but with his ability, he should be quite some help with figuring out some more things about what was actually going on in this world, and the progress of whatever Samuel was trying to do.

If he was really attempting to bring magic to Earth, then there had to be some sort of sign in the 'connection'. And on top of that... Using this man's abilities, they may even be able to manipulate the connection somehow. Right now, Eisen was pretty sure that they were still being observed most of the time. The most important things that everyone spoke about were done either in real life, or in the Guild-Room in prototype's castle. But if they were able to connect to this world without directly going through the connection established via Prime Industries, it may be possible for them to escape Samuel's control. At least more than now.

For now... Eisen had to find nine more people to speak to. And so, instead of flying away and trying to look for another random tomb, Eisen figured he should just choose the tomb right next to this one. He stepped in there and through the wall of flames, finding another person tied up on the ground, thick chains around their ankles and wrists that were holding them in place, with barely any freedom of movement.

And just like that, Eisen sat down and listened to the story of this eldery woman.

Over and over again, nine more times, Eisen heard stories that were nearly all about curiosity and overstepping 'boundaries' that nobody beside the gods even knew about in the first place. They were trapped here because they in one way or another figured out proof that there was some other world beside this one. The Gods did anything they could to stop anyone from ever truly finding out about this, going so far as to trap the literal souls of people in eternal damnation. It didn't make sense to Eisen, truthfully. Well, to an extent, it did. He understood why this was happening at least, and that was because Samuel was a piece of shit, basically.

On the other hand, Eisen didn't understand why these souls weren't just instantly reincarnated instead of being kept down here forever. It seemed like somehow, just by making contact with that 'Connection', something was ingrained in the souls of these people that they might be able to remember in a future life.

That was the only explanation Eisen could come up with. And if that was the case, the souls of every single player already received this marking on their soul.

Eisen didn't know if this was deliberate or not, but he did know that there was something that he had to test out when he went to meet that other soul later on again.

Right now, Eisen was on his way to the place where the system was guiding him so that he could complete the quest with Heresy, the Goddess of this Circle of Hell. The old man ground his teeth angrily at how the majority of these people were brought here for breaking a taboo that nobody could have ever known about in the first place.

It was truly sickening, really. And then, Eisen landed at a tower that was many times larger than the others. But so were the actual tombs themselves. Or rather, the singular 'Tomb'. That was the first time that a single tower had only one opening like this in its, at its very foot.

Eisen landed in front of it, seeing a young woman standing in front of it. She wore a white, puffy dress and had her face covered in veils, as if this was some sort of wedding-dress. But on top of that, she had some blood-red cloth covering her eyes completely.

"Finally you are here." Heresy said in a cold tone once Eisen landed with Satel right behind him. He looked at the deep, huge tunnel in front of him.

"What is this place?"

"A place that you ought to see, that is what it is." The Goddess explained swiftly, although her whisper was nearly overheard by Eisen. Her tone and general behavior was somehow weirdly meek and proud at the same time. But Eisen didn't care about that at all. Instead, he just started walking into the tunnel, something that surprised Heresy greatly.

She turned toward Eisen with her head lightly facing the ground, "You do not wish to know any more?"

"It didn't seem like you would tell me anyway. And I have a rough, itching guess at what it is anyway. This isn't my first time seeing this place after all, now is it?" Eisen guessed bluntly. The weird itch in the back of his head was enough to let him figure that out. Heresy quietly nodded her head and chose to follow Eisen into the center of this enormous tower.

The tunnel seemed to be a lot longer than the thickness of the tower would have made possible, though, but Eisen knew that such a thing wasn't anything that you could be sure of in these realms, so it didn't surprise him all that much.

Soon, the fires became more intense, although everyone still seemed to be fine with it. There was no way that a Goddess would be damage by flames in her own realm, and Eisen had a basic resistance against flames in such a scenario, as long as they weren't used against him for combat-purposese. Even then he had a bit of a resistance against them, though.

Surprisingly, the Guide-Devil Satel was the one that was most affected by these flames. Eisen expected Devils to be immune to flames, but that quite obviously wasn't the case at all. They soon reached a thick wall of bright flames that Heresy temporarily opened up a path through, just to make it a bit easier for everyone to proceed.

After Eisen stepped through this wall of flames, he saw something that he really didn't expect to see here. It was a pure mass of metal, inscribed with numerous different runic enchantments. And from inside there, Eisen could see a source of mana through his truth seeing eyes. Someone was sealed in that block of metal. And a quite huge figure at that. A huge, humanoid figure. At first, Eisen really didn't connect it, but soon enough, he realized what the problem really was. He felt a hollow space open up in his stomach, one that made Eisen want to throw up immediately.

Images shot through his mind as Eisen stepped closer to this mass of metal. But at some point, something like an invisible barrier stopped him from approaching any further. No matter how hard Eisen tried, he couldn't get through.

"What is this? Heresy, who is trapped in there?" Eisen asked with a deep glare directed at the Goddess. She turned her head to the side as if she felt too uncomfortable answering. But that was already somehow enough to confirm what Eisen thought to be the case.

He stared at the mass of metal and ground his teeth to the point where they nearly shattered apart, "You're in there, aren't you... Father?"