Chapter 239 Skeleton Sailor
After Eisen placed the different scales down on the ground in the meeting room, he took a look around at the different things that Jyuuk and Xenia worked on so far. There were numerous bottles filled with liquids Eisen didn't recognize, and the various organs that they brought before were looking quite interesting now. Two of the eyes now had a somewhat golden color to them overall, while iris was utterly pitch black. The stomach was enchanted all over, and its color had also changed to be a slight bit darker, while the different parts for the ears were also quite finely enchanted. And then, the rolled-up special muscles that they somehow gathered had a slightly red-brown color now.
Eisen also took a look at the bones, each one of which had also been enchanted and then placed back into the Health-Jelly solution that Eisen put them in before.
"Interesting. I guess we can start getting to work soon then." He muttered to himself before noticing some steps behind him. "Yes, we can! We have the new bone-marrow you asked for, the organs we had have all been enhanced as much as possible, we have some new blood… The bones are also ready… We only need the rest of the organs now, right? Like lungs, liver, and that kind of stuff." Xenia said with a grin, before Jyuuk stepped up behind her with a big smile on his face himself, shaking his head.
"Not at all, actually! You know, last night after the others happened to fall asleep, I made my way to a more… shady… part of town." Jyuuk explained, placing his hand on some covered-up boxes in the corner.
"Jyuuk, what did you get?" Eisen asked with a frown before Jyuuk scratched the back of his head. "I went to a shop dealing in monster parts." He said embarrassedly, and Eisen immediately crossed his arms in confusion. "What do you mean? Guilds like the adventurer's guild buy those things up, don't they? So why did you need to go to a 'shady' part of town?"
"Because there aren't any shops directly dealing in monster parts in regular parts of town. I don't know why though, but you can only find them on the black market in this town. I saw regular shops with them in there in other towns, but not here." He explained, before uncovering the boxes. "Well, that's also a reason why we should leave quite soon. Anyway, I managed to buy all of the parts that we need. We need to enhance them a bit before then, but it should be possible to do that pretty quick with some enchantments, right?" Jyuuk asked, and Eisen looked over at Xenia, who nodded her head.
"Yeah, probably. And by the way, I'm pretty sure that the lord, or rather his assistant, has prohibited the open sale of monster parts in this town. Guilds can still buy them up, but that's because the town can easily control them into doing what they want." She explained as she stepped over to the boxes and took a look inside before Eisen nodded with a smile.
"Alright, let's do this then. The others are helping everyone settle in, and we'll be off in a few hours once everyone is here." Eisen told them as he walked over to the table with the different bottles, before turning to Xenia. "Which of these have the bone-marrow? I'll fill the bones up while you're working those things out." Eisen suggested, and Xenia pointed at the bottles the light-brown thick 'sludge' inside of them.
"That one there. We mixed the bone-marrow that you got from the bones with some of the rock-slime, forest-slime, as well as some regular alchemy materials like mana-crystals and different herbs." She explained, and Eisen slowly nodded his head as he grabbed one of the bones and sat down on a chair before getting to work with filling the hollowed-out bones with the new substance.
"By the way, what are those things in the bag there?" Jyuuk asked curiously, pointing at the bag with the scales before Eisen grinned.
"Just take a look, you'll figure it out." He chuckled at them, and Jyuuk curiously opened the bag and pulled out one of the dark-red, lightly enchanted metal scales. "Did you make these out of the eggshell?" The Monkey-Beastperson asked, surprised as he looked it over, and Eisen nodded his head.
"Mhm, I did. I extracted the metals with low reactions from it and alloyed them with the red dragon's crystals to make 'Red Dragon's Alloy.' I turned that metal into scales, carved 'Red Dragon' on the underside with Kanji as an enchantment, and then on the front carved the patterns that Bol showed me today."
"And that way you made Dragon scales?" Xenia asked, surprised before Eisen simply nodded once more.
"Basically, yes." He answered, and then the group of three got to work. Eisen one after another filled the bones with the new bone-marrow, while Xenia and Jyuuk worked together to enhance the new organs that Jyuuk brought over.
Shortly after both of these tasks were finished, Eisen stood up and walked over to the door, lightly stretching as he did so. "Let's get downstairs for a bit, yeah? We should probably get going soon." Eisen explained, and the two others swiftly agreed. On their way downstairs, Eisen could see that his grandchildren logged on again as well, and were now hearing from Brody how he had to carry them back to the ship.
"Come on, don't be too hard on them. It was their first day." Eisen told Brody with a light laugh before the Demon-Orc halfling simply sighed out loudly. "Even then, they should have noticed that they became sluggish, shouldn't they? And this is to make sure this doesn't happen again." He answered before Stahl looked over to his grandfather with a smile.
"Yo, Gramps! You been working all night?" He asked, and Brody looked around, confused, and pissed off at being utterly ignored, while Eisen simply replied with a smile. "Yes, I was a bit busy. I'm going to sleep a bit later, but for now, we need to see if everyone is here, and then we're going to leave." Eisen explained, and Stahl excitedly nodded his head.
"Awesome!" He exclaimed, while Eisen simply smirked and made his way over to the small wooden 'bridge' leading onto the ship to talk to Komer, who was making sure that everyone was there and that they had everything they needed.
"Oh, hey, Eisen! If you're here to ask about the situation, then I'm happy to tell you that everyone's here and we have 'literally' everything that we possibly need on the trip that we can get from here." Komer said immediately as he saw the old man step up to him, who simply nodded.
"Yep, that's actually exactly what I wanted to ask you about. So everybody is here? Seriously everyone?" Eisen asked, and Komer nodded his head. "Yeah, they're mostly down in the sleeping area right now. So you said you want to leave soon?" Komer asked, and Eisen responded quite swiftly, "Yes, within the hour if possible." He explained, and Komer looked to the side for a moment, probably at the time, and then nodded his head.
"Alright, I'll let the Harbor-Manager know. Although, shouldn't we talk to the Lord about this as well?" The young merchant asked, but Eisen shook his head. "Not necessary. I already told him that we're leaving whenever when he visited us at the start of the project. And thanks for your hard work, kid." Eisen told Komer, who smiled and nodded before turning around and getting everything ready before Jyuuk came up to Eisen.
"Soo… whos going to sail the ship?" Jyuuk asked, obviously with something in mind, and Eisen shrugged. "Anyone that trusts themselves to, I guess. Why are you asking?" The old man asked, and Jyuuk waved his hand to the side before a whole crew of different skeletons appeared in front of him, with one standing in the front with a crack in his skull around his left eye socket and a leg missing, that was replaced by vines Jyuuk created.
"Because I would have a crew for you!" Jyuuk grinned broadly, and Eisen looked at him in surprise. "Oh, really? These guys can sail?"
"Yes, they can. These are skeletons from a shipwreck I found only a few hours from here, and because of my necromancy rank, they can keep some of the abilities they had when they were alive, and for all of them, it has to do with sailing. The one in the front here is a 'Skeleton Sailor'" Jyuuk explained, and Eisen couldn't help but whistle impressed.
"Really? Huh, interesting. Well, we don't have a regular system for ships like this when it comes to steering, but we at least have something that they should be able to use. But what about when you're asleep?" Eisen asked with a frown before Jyuuk simply grinned.
"You know, when I visited that crypt in the wastelands, I didn't only get my necromancy-related occupation. I also got this!" Jyuuk exclaimed and held his hand forward, showing Eisen a small ring around his left ring finger.
"And what is that?" Eisen curiously asked before Jyuuk swiftly explained. "It's a ring that lets me store my mana throughout the day to use specifically for keeping up my undead while I'm asleep. It probably won't work for high-rank undead, but as these are just Rank 0 and 1 skeletons, I can keep them up for long enough with this. I could be away for a whole week, and these guys could still keep doing their job. They won't be able to fight long while I'm asleep, so we need others to take care of that, but they can at least do the tasks related to sailing pretty easily, as they still have those skills." Jyuuk explained before Eisen slowly ran his fingers through his beard.
"Oh, is that so..? Interesting… Couldn't you have told me about them before?" The old man laughed lowly, and Jyuuk smiled back at him.
"Well, it was supposed to be a surprise, sorry." He chuckled, and Eisen took a look at the different vine-overgrown skeletons. "It's a damn surprise, alright. The crew is just perfect, Jyuuk, great thinking!" Eisen said with a smile before he leads the Monkey-Beastperson and the skeleton sailor to the control room, while the rest stayed down at the main-deck.
"So, do we need to tell them what they need to do, or can they do that themselves?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk swiftly nodded. "They can do it themselves, don't worry. This Skeleton is basically a 'Captain' to them, and he has a crystal in his head that lets him at least somewhat think. He can figure stuff out by himself and then directly command the skeletons under him, but for complicated things, we'll need to give them commands." Jyuuk explained, and Eisen slowly nodded his head with a grin.
"This is cool; I have to admit. Anyway, I'm going to tell you when we're leaving the harbor, and then we can see how good your skeletons are." The old man said as he winked at Jyuuk and made his way back to the front deck and asked the others to get everyone to gather around him.
Currently, Eisen was at his regular size and non-demon form, preparing to announce to everyone on the ship what was going to happen now. While he was thinking about what to say precisely, Alnico came up next to her grandfather and leaned against him with her elbow.
"Hey, Grampa. What're you thinkin' about?" Al asked with a smile, and the old man looked down at her and crossed his arms. "Just about what to say now. Do you have a rough idea of what you want to do on the ship while we're traveling?" Eisen asked, and she just shrugged.
"I honestly don't. Evalia said I could hang out with her a bit and she would teach me some stuff about music skills. And you know, I kinda have a date this Wednesday…" She said with a somewhat wry smile, as she didn't tell anyone about that yet, and Eisen looked at his granddaughter with a wide grin on his face.