"But... how is this possible? How are you here right now?" Solomon asked, looking into his younger sister's teary eyes. Maria rubbed the tears away and looked back at the man in front of her, "Eight years ago, I was here during that invasion of the monster horde... I was somehow kept alive until now, and then, Eiro came here... He saved all of us, Solomon..."
"I know, he's... he's like that... Maria, I'm so sorry that I didn't come here earlier, if I had known that you had been captured, I-"
"No, don't... it's alright... Until a few days ago, I was practically dead after all... The things that those vile demons did to me..." Maria held her hand in front of her mouth, trying to stop herself from throwing up, as Solomon continued to hold her in his arms.
After a few minutes, Solomon slowly turned around toward Eiro, letting go of his sister to approach his friend.
"Thank you, Eiro. I... I just don't know what to say... Thank you for reuniting me with my family. You keep doing this, first you save Charles, and now Maria? How can I ever thank you?" Solomon asked, and Eiro scratched the back of his head, "How about you act a bit more leasurely when thinking about the fact that I stole a whole island?"
With a laugh, the King nodded his head, "Of course. I was already coming around to it, honestly. We will still need to speak about this some more later, but for now... we need to bring everyone down from this island. Do you have any suggestions, Eiro?"
"Yeah, actually, I do. There are quite a lot of children amongst those that survived, and with the exception of a few, they are all orphans. So, I was hoping for you to give me ownership of the orphanage on the nort side of town. Or at least, allow me to supervise what happens there to an extent. These children have clearly suffered enough already." Eiro pointed out, "As for the adults... plenty of them have training as adventurers, and used to have rather sturdy bodies. Most of them are at least above average on the raw stat side, so we should try to help them recover physically for the next few months, and then help them reintegrate into society. If you want, I can supervise which jobs they will enter when it comes to it." The Demon suggested, and Solomon lightly frowned.
"So you're saying that you will take responsibility for all these people? You're clearly stressed enough already, I don't want to do that to you as well."
"Don't worry, I'm already in charge of a whole village of monsters, checking in on these people every once in a while, if they even want me to, is simply compared to that." Eiro replied, "Oh, speaking of, I need to bring this island to the mountains later as well... There are some monsters here that I want to integrate into the village to try and expand it. It's going to be easier to move them there using this island." Eiro pointed out, and Solomon slowly nodded, "Fine, do that. But we really need to talk about what to do with this place. We can't keep it above the castle forever. On a cloudless day, it's going to stick out quite a bit, don't you think?"
"Right, yeah, I was going to speak to Armodeus about it, he should be able to help me out. And at the same time, we have a Dragon of truth and the ruler of the ultimate domain of truth here, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to figure out a way to obscure the island from sight."
Hearing himself be mentioned, Lognir swiftly stepped in, "You say that, but I doubt that it would be possible to do something like that. Controlling how well you yourself blend into the world is different to controlling how well something else blends into the world, not even mentioning something as huge as this island."
"We should be able to figure something out though, I hope. I mean, I do still have the Ace of Cups." The Dmeon pointed out, and Lognir crossed his arms in thought, "But would it not be a waste to use such a legendary chalice to hide this place? It is one of your greatest assets, a tool you carry with you in case of an emergency, is it not?" Lognir pointed out, and Eiro shrugged a bit.
"That's true, but I'm hoping that Armodeus will figure out how to create a duplicate of the Ace of Cups somehow, that way we should be able to manage something without having to rely on the base item, you know?"
"That does seem like it could work. Truly, that Dwarf is rather impressive, even being able to create duplicates of artifacts."
"I know, right? Armodeus is pretty great." Eiro said with a somewhat smug expression, since his friend was talked about in such high regard, before he turned back toward Solomon, "Anyway, do you know of any place where we can just have them recover for now? A place with some decent beds and food?"
"Hm, yes, I do think something does come to mind. There is a side-building to the royal castle that is currently vacant, which we can surely house some people in. So we will take care of them for now, and after everyone settled and calmed down a bit, we will see what else to do." Solomon suggested, and Eiro immediatly smiled back at him.
"That sounds like a pretty good idea. There's a few dozen people here. Should we get started now to bring them all down there? So that we can get it done first, and then I can bring all the monsters to the village to figure things out there." Eiro pointed out, "Maybe I'll find a good place to 'hide' the island near there for now. Nobody climbs the mountains due to the monsters roaming around the peak, so I might be able to figure something out over there." He suggested, and Solomon simply sighed in response.
"Fine, try to figure that out for now. I'll take care of everything else. Oh, and you said you took some things from Zaragon? You can have them for now, but I trust that you will let me view them later to see if there is anything that can be of use to us."
"Ah, about that, there definitely is something. I'll show you when we get inside. The others are waiting over there." The Demon said, pointing down the hallway. They quickly made their way to the room where everyone was currently sitting and resting, although they all jumped up the moment the door opened up.
Solomon stepped inside, seeing all those starved, weakened people. They were crippled, bandages covering their bodies. The King slowly took a few steps forward, before lowering his head in front of the people in this room.
"I apologize that you were only just rescued a few days ago. My name is Solomon Sigurd Skyhart, I am the lord of the kingdom of Skyhart. From today on, you will all be safe under my and Eiro's personal protection. You will be brought down to the city shortly, but before you leave, I do have something to ask of you." Solomon explained to them, "Even though this is a promise you already made to Eiro himself, I wish for you to pledge yourself to not speak of the true nature of this man next to me. Publicy, Eiro is not a demon, but a human. More specifically, a baron of the kingdom, and a close friend of mine. For his and his family's safety, as well as your own, I wish to ask you to keep silent." The King told them bluntly, something that everyone of course quickly agreed to.
Both Eiro and Lognir confirmed that they were speaking the truth. But even that was only a truth for now, since their thoughts on this topic could very easily change in the future. Everyone got ready to leave, while Eiro swiftly showed Lognir to the mechanical dolls and the weapons that had been stripped from them.
The moment the dragon saw it, he couldn't believe his eyes, but of course he knew that it was the truth.
"How could this... Is this truly Adamantine? This is a metal even more precious than gold, unable to be shapen but by the greatest of metal smiths! And you say this 'Zaragon' held ownership over so many of these?" Lognir asked, holding one of the weapon in his hands, while Eiro just stood there, stunned at what the Dragon had said.
"Erm... yeah, he did... I have no idea where he got all these things... but he definitely had all of these, and could somehow freely control them." Eiro pointed out, "And this metal is really that strong?"
"Of course it is!" Lognir exclaimed, picking up the thinnest weapon of them all, a small sword. He grabbed it in his hands, as something changed about his body internally. His muscles turned into something far stronger than that which a person could have. They turned into a dragon's muscles. Lognir was trying to strengthen himself as much as possible for this.
And then, Lognir started to try and bend the metal. He curved the sword, soon doing it so much that it had turned into a shallow 'U' shape. Any other blade would have already snapped at this point. But that was not what Lognir was trying to show off.
He kept on and on as he tried to push the blade further together, but no matter what he did, he wasn't able to. His muscles were strained, and even soon started do be damaged to the sheer strain that they were under.
This dragon's muscles tore before the blade even chipped. And when it was clear that Lognir would be unable to damage the sword with his current strength, he simply let go of the blade, and it returned to its normal form, not showing a hint of ever being bent.
Truly, this was an incredible material.
