Chapter 295 - Dark Mana
After Eisen finished changing CF-1's body into a version that could be used during the Dark-Elemental mana retrieval, the old man continued and started working on something else that he would be using for it.
"Alright, I have a few Dark Elemental Gems here…" The old man muttered to himself, and Stahl and Komer, who had chosen to stay and watch for a while, looked at the old man in surprise.
"Why do you need those?" Komer then asked curiously, before Eisen turned around and grabbed some mana crystals. "Well, I'm going to make a mana crystal that can properly conduct Dark-Elemental Mana, and then turn that into Magic String, and then attach that to the enchantment that you two made. And also, I'll be using them to make proper Elemental Mana Batteries, like you also did with the other batteries." Eisen explained, so Komer nodded his head in understanding.
"Gotcha…" He replied, and then, Eisen did just that. He swiftly merged the dark elemental gems with some mana crystals, and then turned those into magic string that would be able to properly conduct mana while being relatively 'mendable' and easy to use in such a situation, while being a quite strong type of string. The type that he made was actually quite thick, because he didn't want it to be able to just suddenly rip up.
And after the Magic String was done, Eisen swiftly created the mana batteries that he needed and hooked them up to one end of the string, before hooking the other end up to CF-1.
"Alright, we should still have a little bit of time before we get in range of the Mana Source… Until then…" Eisen said to himself, before grabbing a small needle, which he swiftly cleaned and sterilized, as well as a few Health Potions, heating the tip of the needle up with his fingertips, before then pressing a small piece of cork to the back of his ear, simply pressing the needle through it. And of course, everyone was watching in surprise.
Stahl knew that his grandfather had earrings, but he didn't expect him to just pierce his ear all of a sudden like this!
"Huh? What's wrong?" Eisen asked as he looked at especially Komer's expression, and the young merchant looked at him with a wry smile. "Wh-What are you doing..?" He asked, and the old man just returned a frown.
"I pierced my ear? And now I'm putting a mana crystal piece inside of it so that I can easily stretch it out to the level of the tunnels I'm used to." Eisen explained right as he was doing just that, simply using transmutation to fill the hole with mana crystals, and then repeated the same thing for his other ear.
"And… What do you need those health potions for?" Komer asked, and Eisen just shrugged.
"Just testing something out, really. I want to keep slowly drinking them to have my ear-lobes repeatedly heal and get used to the shape they're at while I'm slowly increasing the size." The old man explained, before he placed one of the open health potions against his lips, slowly letting it pour down his throat as he placed his fingers against the two mana-crystal pieces, slowly letting them extend as the potion took effect.
And so, after a few minutes, Eisen's earlobes were at the size that he was actually used to!
"So, why exactly did you do this all of a sudden?" Stahl asked, and Eisen replied with a smirk. "For one, because I like wearing them, and I haven't been doing that at all for a while. Then, because I have an ability that lets me store my tools inside of this type of accessory. And at last, for a little bit of a last surprise for a special someone." Eisen explained, and then went over to the Forge that he created with his element beforehand, swiftly throwing in a small steel ingot. He wouldn't ever do this kind of thing in real life, but in the game, his ears were most likely able to take such weight without issues.
After they heated up properly, Eisen turned the pieces of metal into small rings, also preparing bases for other parts such as other simple earrings as well as other rings or different types of accessories while he was at it. And when they were done, Eisen looked at them with satisfaction, after making sure they were able to actually fit properly wherever they were meant to go, and then made the forge disappear swiftly.
"Hmm, why aren't you putting them in yet?" Komer asked confused, and Eisen just smiled. "Because they aren't done yet. I want to have Evalia carve something out of them, and then work further with that in some other ways." The old man explained, before the two young boys nodded their heads, and Eisen swiftly picked Caria and Melissa up after carefully setting Sal down on his thumb, and then asked Stahl and Komer to bring CF-1, the Elemental-Mana Battery, as well as the cable connecting the two of them.
And then, they all made their way to the main deck, where the others also already seemed to be waiting.
"Huh? Eisen, what did you do with your ears?" Brody asked surprised, and the old man replied with a laugh. "Just making some accessories. Evalia, here they are, by the way. You remember the designs we talked about before?" The old man asked, and the young artist nodded her head as she received the different rings and parts, before smiling at the old man. "You got it!" She replied, before looking at Eisen's ears.
"Yeah, I think I'll make the tunnels first…" Evalia said with a light chuckle, and Eisen nodded. "Thanks, I appreciate it. So… Are we close enough now?" Eisen asked as he turned toward the black area that really wasn't all that far away from them any more, and Xenia replied with a nod.
"Yes, now we just need to put whatever you made into the water and somehow get it to the Mana Source…" She explained, and Eisen just shrugged as Stahl brought out CF-1.
"We just need to have this guy swim there. And best of all, we can watch everything happen." Eisen explained, before setting his three tamed monsters down properly, and then grabbed CF-1 from his Grandson, before holding it over the railing of the ship.
"Anything else we need to do before I put it into the water?" Eisen asked with a smile, but the others simply shook their heads, so Eisen slowly began letting the fish into the water by the magic string, and when he was inside of the water, Eisen had CF-1 connect to its screen, and then began to command it to get closer to the Mana Source, which they were able to quite clearly see with the Mana-Sight Eisen had installed on it.
"Oh, it's working already!" Eisen exclaimed a bit surprised as he looked at the Mana String with his mana sight, noticing that it was completely dyed in black. "Wait, already?" Xenia asked a bit surprised as she placed her Mana Spectacles on her nose, seeing that Eisen was right.
"Well, then maybe we just need to stay here like this for a while and don't need to risk anything by having CF-1 go further in?" Stahl suggested, but Eisen shook his head quite swiflty. "No, this is far too slow. It would take a few hours to fill the battery up at this speed. And we have about a dozen batteries that need to be filled up. Getting right to the center of the source would probably be the quickest." Eisen explained, before the others nodded their heads and kept staring at the small screen in the old man's hand.
"Hmm… Surprisingly, nothing is happening, huh?" Eisen muttered as he looked around, truly surprised that none of the monsters the others spoke about were attacking CF-1 yet, but all he could notice now was a deep sigh coming from the players.
"You had to Jinx it, didn't you..?" Stahl asked, and just as he was saying it, the mana string simply snapped, and Eisen looked at it with a frown. "What weird timing, huh… CF-1, come back." Eisen commanded, wanting to re-attach the string, but before he knew it, the screen in his hands went completely black.
"Wait, what just happened?" The old man asked confused, and Brody crossed his arms as he looked at the water. "Some monster swallowed the little guy…" He pointed out, and Eisen simply rubbed the bridge of his nose annoyed.
"Great… Now I have to go get it, don't I?" Eisen asked before stepping up closer to the Railing, while the others just looked at him confused. "Wait, what do you mean? We have more than three quarters of the amount of dark elemental mana we wanted, so isn't it fine?" Evalia asked, but Eisen shook his head.
"It's not. I don't want to waste the Maroon…" He explained, before leaning against the railing and grabbing a piece of a mana crystal, and transmuting it into another shape which he could bite down onto, before carving something onto one side of the mana crystal.
"What are you doing there?" Xenia asked curiously, before Eisen just shrugged. "I'm making a mouth-piece so that I don't need to worry about air underwater." He swiftly explained, before Jyuuk spoke up in response.
"Eisen, down there, you won't need to worry about air rather than the monsters down there… They're about Rank 3 or 4 on average, I would guess, and there might even be a few Rank 5 ones in the area…" The Beastperson explained, but Eisen just smirked.
"Well, if that's the case, then I'll just need to worry about that when anything happens, won't I?" Eisen responded before he finished the mouth-piece, and then grabbed the two mana batteries that weren't filled up yet, and then activated his demonic transformation and then began to carve into his arms at the places that weren't covered by the fullbody craftsman's enchantment, and then swiftly increased his own size to the maximum that he could.
"I'll be right back." Eisen explained, and before anyone could say anything, he already dropped into the water, from quite a height at that.
"What the hell just happened…?" Stahl asked confused, but none of the others could really answer that question. And then, just a few moments later, the deep black water in the distance began to bubble and boil, while pitch-black steam rose up into the air. It seemed like a quite bright light shone through the water while all of this was happening, although nobdy could tell what exactly happened.
And another few minutes later, they noticed a pair of large golden horns push up through the water surface, while giant wings pulled the Demon's upper body out before flapping a few times to dry themselves off, and the old man appeared with a completely flaming body while he was holding CF-1 by the Mana String still attached to it.
And while the whole scene itself was already quite surprising, what was even more surprising was that it seemed like Eisen was standing directly on the water surface, although quite soon, it was shown that it was rahter quite different, while the body of a large sea-monster appeared directly underneath Eisen's feet, with its body completely burnt in numerous places.
With a light grin on his face, Eisen then simply jumped off of the back of the dead monster while utilizing his wings, letting him nearly instantly cut the distance between himself and the ship in half, before he then dove back underwater, and a mere moment later he shot back out the water directly next to the ship and with the help of his wings, managed to grab onto the railing before pulling himself up at it to appear right in front of the others again.
"Alright, now we just need to worry about the Light Elemental Mana."