“Now comes the last test, Eisen. The first one was to test your body. The second one was to test your skill. And this last one is to test you. Your dedication, your personality, and how far you are willing to go.” Ailren explained and slowly stepped forward through the room waving at Eisen to follow him, who quickly did so after commanding the Automaton to follow him.

“And what would that kind of test look like?” Eisen asked curiously, looking at the back of the Ancient Dragon in human form while looking behind himself every once in a while to make sure the Automaton was following properly.

It took a while, but they soon found themselves in front of the mist-filled room directly in front of the entrance to the treasury.

“Walk inside. Your test is waiting for you.” Ailren said with a calm voice, his fingers interlocked behind his back.

Eisen nodded slowly and excitedly walked into the mist, leaving Caria with the Automaton next to Ailren, since he didn’t know what would wait inside. After walking a few dozen steps forward, Eisen saw something through the mist, that was unusually thick right now.

It was bright pink hair, bound into two twintails. Or rather, one full twintail while the other was hanging rather loosely down the side of the girl’s face. Shocked at this unexpected sight, Eisen ran forward to get a closer look, and found exactly who he thought to be there.

It was Bree. She was kneeling on the ground, with her arms and feet tied together behind her back and her mouth gagged. Tears were streaming down the side of her face, while she was trying to yell at Eisen, asking him to help her.

Immediately, he stepped forward, trying to tie her loose, but before he could, Ailren’s voice echoed through the hall. “Do not do that, Eisen. What do you think your test is?” The Dragon asked, his voice coming from everywhere around Eisen, but at the same time from nowhere exactly. It was truly as if dozens of Ailrens were suddenly all around him, talking at the same time while moving around randomly.

Eisen hesitated slightly, this alone already nearly breaking his heart. Seeing his friend and companion down there on the ground like that was just horrible, even if this was simply a game! To Eisen, this would probably be the world he will spend most of the rest of his life in, so it would turn just as real to him as it was for the original inhabitants of this world. While kneeling down in front of Bree, the old man asked with a calm face.

“What the hell are you talking about? What kind of test is this supposed to be?”

Suddenly, Ailren’s voices began to laugh in a sinister way. “How I said, this is to test you. Your dedication to our cause. Your dedication to me and my brothers and sisters, and to our king Trygan.”

Eisen continued trying to untie the ropes that bound Bree, but whatever he did, they only seemed to become tighter instead of loosening up. “Again, what are you talking about?” He asked in a voice even calmer than before, as anger started to well up inside of him, wanting to explode outward the moment he heard the Dragon’s answer coupled with sinister laughter from multiple sources at once.

“Kill her.” Some of the voices said in unison while the others simply continued laughing, until they suddenly stopped. No sound was coming from anywhere, and they stopped as suddenly as if someone simply paused a soundtrack. A few seconds of complete silence later, a devilish voice spoke out. It was Ailren’s, but at the same time, it wasn’t.

“You’re simpler than I thought, Eisen. I thought it would be easy to figure out. This is your companion, isn’t she? The friend that has been accompanying you for most of your adventures, as far as you can remember, right? So what would be a better way for you to prove your dedication?”

Once more, laughter broke out around Eisen and Bree, and one after another some of them began to talk, each one saying only one sentence and then continuing their routine of horrid comedy.

“What would be better?”

“If you don’t want to kill her, then what else could you do?”

“How about we have you slaughter everyone else in Melroe instead?”

“Every one of those people that helped you out…”

“Just imagine it, Eisen…”

“All those people screaming for help while you slice them up.”

There was a short break while cold sweat began to drip down Eisen’s back, as he simply knew this wasn’t the last of what the voices had to say. And he was right.

“That would be simply beautiful, would it not?” The last of the voices asked, before it began to laugh again, being joined by more and more every single second until it sounded as if a whole stadium filled with people was laughing together.

That was, until Eisen responded. “No! Stop it! Be quiet, Ailren! I’m not doing this! To hell with your damned tests!” He yelled out angrily, trying to look around and see if he could find Ailren somehow.

But before Eisen could do anything else, another, single one of Ailren’s voices began to talk. “Oh? You’re a feisty one, are you not? You would give up all of the benefits you could gain through simply killing one sinle Fey-kin, only to preserve her life? What a joke.”

In front of Eisen, a figure emerged. It was a young woman. Somehow, Eisen thought she was incredibly beautiful, with her long black her that reached down to her hips and the overall aura she gave out, even though he couldn’t directly see her facial features through the thick mist.

“You could have whatever you want, Eisen. All the women that are needed to please you for the rest of your life, or treasures even more numerous than those in this cave.” With those words, glittering gold coins started to rain down onto the ground around Eisen, while the young woman seductively moved around him, only ever so slightly touching his body with her fingertips.

“You could rule the world, Eisen. You could be a king, with everyone at your feet. Just imagine it for a second. Millions of people just celebrating you for simply existing. It sounds beautiful, does it not?”

Cheers started to roar out from all around Eisen, as if he was literally surrounded by tens of thousands of people, all screaming at him happily. Some of them seemed to be saying something, but Eisen couldn’t make out what those things were.

Slowly, Eisen closed his eyes, and slowly muttered out. “All of this could be mine…? If I kill Bree…?”

The old man stumbled toward his friend, his companion, the one that kept helping him out simply because she wanted to. A small blade was suddenly lying on the ground in front of her body, and she was shaking her head in horror the closer he approached.

With shaking hands, Eisen picked up the knife and moved behind her. He held the knife in front of the center of her back, and muttered out a few simply words before making his decision. “I’m sorry.”

And like that, he moved the knife quickly but carefully, to make sure he would finish this quickly without any further problems.

It sounded to Eisen as if something ripped in half, before he looked at what was lying in his hands and threw it to the side. When he heard the soft sound of the first rope landing a few meters away from him, the second followed soon after, and the gag was removed by Eisen as well, of course.

“I’m sorry, Ailren, but screw you. I would never kill a friend for something like that. Who do you think I am? And more importantly, who do you think you are?”

Complete silence was Eisen’s answer while his anger only grew. He tried to walk forward to find one of the walls that could lead him to Ailren’s position, while continuing to yell out. “Where are you?! Why are you doing soemthing this horrible? Ailren, get over… here… What?”

Eisen began to stutter slowly as the mist around him dissipated and he looked at Ailren’s humanoid form standing there with a bright, happy smile on his face while clapping his hands together.

“Magnificent, Eisen! I could not have said it better myself! I knew you were the right person for the position of champion!” He chuckled happily and walked a few steps forward toward Eisen before lowering his head. “I am sorry for tricking you like this. Your friend is not here, don’t worry. She is still safe and sound down in Melroe.”

Eisen looked around with wide open eyes at the place where Bree just stood. “But, she was just… Ailren, I’m confused… What is going on? Was this magic?”

“Well, dear Eisen, as I said, this was a test of dedication. But not to ‘the cause’ as the mist whispered to you, but dedication to your friends and companions. Many would have immediately faltered in the face of such promises. Follow me inside again, okay? I will explain everything in more detail shortly, and of course give you what you deserve for passing my tests.” Ailren chuckled and turned around before slowly walking back to the treasury, leaving Eisen to stand there in confusion while waving away the notification that told him that he passed the last of the Ancient Gold Dragon’s tests.

He was embarrassed. Eisen acted as if this was such a huge deal, but he forgot a simple thing at that moment. Without keeping that thing in mind, he reacted as he would in real life, but in here… Magic existed. Maybe someone with more knowledge about these fields would have been able to see through it, but not for one moment did Eisen consider Ailren to be tricking him somehow. Was he too trusting? Or maybe he had some kind of hidden disdain for Ailren that made Eisen somehow immediately believe that he was capable of something like that? Eisen didn’t think so, but something was definitely wrong. But Eisen didn’t want to think of something like that right now.

With a soft smile, happy that everything was alright after all, Eisen moved his hand to his heart. He was somehow feeling incredibly… agitated. It wasn’t because he was tricked. Eisen wouldn’t brood on something like this for more than a few seconds. He was far too old for thoughts like that.

It was something else, as if somehow a mixture of anger, sadness, and happiness. But just where did that emotion come from? When did he start to feel it? And why of all things would he start feeling like this in the middle of that test?

Somehow, he felt as if he just met someone that he has longed to see for years and years on end, but was always disappointed when trying to recall their features, their face. And when Eisen finally realised what it was that made him feel this way, he squatted down onto the ground, looking to the roof of the cave without seeing the rock and simply seeing the empty void that was hidden beyond it. There was something that Eisen felt was off since he started playing this game. Maybe it was because he was so used to feeling it, that he simply didn’t notice when it was gone.

The old man moved his hand to his ringfinger and moved his fingertips across the place where his wedding ring had been for the last 45 years. This made him realize what made him feel this way all of a sudden.

That figure, that oh so beautiful young woman that he saw just now… right down to her posture and her long black hair…

“She looked just like Hanako…”