Chapter 312 - Changes in their Bodies
A little bit later, while everyone was working on making a few different items made of wood, Eisen started working on the wooden parts of the different items, as well as items completely made of wood as well. He had a few different magical types of wood ready, as well as normal types of wood. And so, Eisen swiftly got to work on the different handles for Brody's items.
He wanted to start working on the Scythe first, because then he would be able to completely finish up the items meant for one of the originals, but he had some other plans for the handle which he needed Jyuuk's direct help with, just so that they could figure out something interesting that would interact amazingly with the Beastperson's movement.
So instead, Eisen started working on some other items. And the handles that the old man made for the weapons weren't all that complicated either. Again, as he didn't need to place enchantments on the wood, because Brody was unable to activate them, he was saving quite a bit of time. It felt a little underwhelming, however, as Eisen had been using different types of magic or enchantments to push an item to new heights, but now he couldn't do that.
At least that's what Eisen's thoughts were for about a second, until he realized that this just made it another challenge!
Even if he couldn't directly use anything directly magical in the process of making this item, as the Maroon even turned magical materials back into regular materials, there were surely a few ways to push this item even further!
And the old man had a rather good idea for that already, and he had a potion that was quite fitting for everything as well, a potion that was simply made to increase basic stats. Luckily, even Maroon didn't make potions useless, so the old man could swiftly change a few parts about the potion and then applied it to the finished handles to treat the wood properly, making it quite literally seep deep into the wood before attaching the handles to the Maroon-Steel alloy parts of the items.
Even then, the items ended up rather disappointingly simple, but at the very least they had some interesting effects to them, and due to applying the potion to the wood beforehand, it seemed like the stat bonuses were a slight bit higher as well, which was something that the old man was quite happy about.
And so, just like that, after wrapping the handles in some leather, Eisen had finished the four weapons with metal in them meant for Brody. The Batons were completely metallic all the way through, so those were already finished beforehand, but now the Chain Whip, the Jian-Sword, the Dagger, as well as the Spear were now completed, and Eisen could set them to the side happily.
To take a little bit of a break before moving onto the purely wooden items that Eisen wanted to make for Brody, the old man chose to take a quick look at the items that everyone was making out of the different types of wood that Eisen had given them, especially making sure that Koro wasn't experimenting in any way, and he was especially impressed with the growth of the Kobold once more.
The Woodworker-Kobold had also grown to a height similar to the Blacksmith-Kobold', but overall, its body had become a slight bit slimmer compared to its brother and it had a better dexterity in its fingers, while its fur had become a nice hazelnut brown.
Such great changes over a short amount of time were truly amazing to look at, so Eisen was sure that the Tamer occupation would become incredibly popular once the game launched. He himself gave his tamed monsters quite a bit of freedom to do what they wanted, but as he noticed from Jyuuk from him experimenting with creating an eagle 'infused' with necromantic mana, people would surely come up with amazing ideas to create all kinds of curious monsters that were never seen before, with unique abilities that Eisen would just love to see. At the very least, he was incredibly interested in how the basic Kobolds' bodies would change after he gave them different tasks, because the Blacksmith and Woodworker Kobolds had changed so greatly as well.
Either way, not only the exterior growth of the Kobold impressed Eisen, but also the growth of its abilities, considering that there was once more a clear gradient in quality between the different wooden items. The first one was barely recognizable to have a shape in any way similar to what it was supposed to be, while the last one was at a level you might see from a low-tier hobbyist. Of course, it wasn't nearly as good as a professionals' yet, neither was the work of the Blacksmith Kobold, but the Kobolds grew far, far quicker than Eisen could have ever imagined. It seemed like the Goblins and Lizardmen were making amazing progress as well.
There was an amazing exterior change in the latter especially, as they ended up adapting to what Kiron looked like in different ways. For one, they all grew to be around Kiron's height, some of them shorter, and one of them even about half a meter taller than Kiron, but they all had in common that their scales had changed a slight bit. They still had a red tinge to them, but overall, they became similar to Kiron's scales.
They were similarly pale with a hint of red in them instead of the hint of blue in Kiron's scales, although the red in the Lizardmen's scales was still quite a bit stronger. They seem to have become generally more gem and crystal like as well, although more like a well-polished rock than an actual crystal. Either way, it was obvious they were trying to copy Kiron.
But even the Half-Dragon apparently gave them different tasks, such as one being the 'Head' of the operation and instructing the others on what to do exactly, while of course still doing work himself, and the others doing different tasks when it came to general 'brunt' work, and only the one that was far taller than Eisen was the one that had only learned how to lift stuff, and that increase in strength seemed to have drained its mental strength, as it was more like a robot now instead of an actual living creature.
And as for the Goblins, they all seemed to have uniformly changed and were still looking generally the same, with maybe a few differences here and there, but overall they had simply grown a little bit, their stature became healthier, their jaws aligned with each other to get rid of the overbites, and they generally became a lot more human-like, basically. Xenia, Komer and Sky made the choice to get them some clothes as well, and that seemed to only help their physical changes turn them more human-like even more.
After Eisen returned to the workstations after taking a look at the progress of the other groups, as well as telling Sal off for trying to create a giant cobweb in the tunnel that would end up as the 'Ruin-Maze' area of the dungeon, he gave his group the next task that had to do with woodworking, after telling them a bit of in-depth, boring theory, while he himself continued with the items that he himself still needed to make.
Once more, Eisen continued with Brody's weapons, although he really only had two basic wooden ones in mind at the moment. The monkeystick and the bow. He was aware that there were many different bows as well, so he had asked Brody what kind of bow he would like to have, and in the end chose a simple longbow.
The Monkeystick itself was rather simple as well, and Eisen finished it rather quickly as it was nothing but a straight staff, but he figured it was a good idea to add a few other pieces to it, like some of the leftover Maroon-Steel which he already shaped properly yesterday. All he needed to do then was to attach the two rather small caps to the ends of the Monkeystick, and then that part was finished.
Then came the bow. As mentioned, Brody wanted a longbow, and left the specific choice of the type to Eisen, so he figured he'd just go with his gut and not make any specific type of bow, but just follow the general rules of bowmaking and then see where he'd end up.
First, Eisen grabbed some of the wood that he had already prepared for something like this, and he already carved it into a thick stave beforehand with the rough length that the bow was supposed to have, and then, with Bree's help, dried the wood out to the ideal point.
And then, all that he needed to do was carve the wood into the shape that he wanted it to have, a quite simple, just ever so sligthly rounded shape, basically, with the thickest part obviously being in the middle. He already made sure to get the rough size of Brody's hand down so that he knew not to make the part that would end up being held either too thick or too thin. After he got the oak wood into the right shape, he smoothed everything down and then carved two notches at either end of the bow at the right angle so that he could properly attach the string that he prepared for this, the Magic string. And as he wouldn't be adding anything with Maroon to the bow, it was fine to use magic string as well. It was simply a very sturdy material that was quite unlikely to stretch beyond the point that it was at from the beginning, except if you enchanted it to be that way.
And after Eisen tightly attached the magic string to the two ends, he chose to swiftly get a helper to pull on the bowstring a few times so that Eisen could see how the wood was bending. After all, if you made two different bows in the exact same shape, they would most likely end up bending a little differently due to the natural differences in density in different parts of the wood. And in order to fix that, and to ensure that the bow would be able to bend perfectly in any situation, Eisen would have just scraped a few layers off of the bow's back, the side which would end up facing the target, and then tried to see if that fixed the behaviour of the bending. Although, that was only if Eisen's natural intuition failed him and he messed something up in the carving, which really didn't happen all that often, or rather ever.
That's why he skipped over that step when he created the bow to put Komer in his place when they first met as well, because such things usually never happened to him. So of course, they didn't happen this time either.
But then again, that also meant that the last two items that Eisen wanted to make for Brody were done as well, and as such, he placed everything to the side and just moved on to the next items.
More specifically, now Eisen would be working on the item that he wanted to make for a certain High-Elf. Luckily, as Xenia was able to quite easily reproduce the infusion-enchantments that Eisen himself was using to create Flame-Of-The-Earth items, the old man was able to use materials that were perfectly attuned toward the young woman's element. And on top of that, Eisen also had some more of the Margon leftover, and although he didn't want to use all of it, as he wanted to create a second Core Guardian for the Town Core they would hopefully find on the main island later.
But even then, just the little bit of Margon that Eisen was going to use for Xenia's staff would push it to an incredible, incredible level and power her magic up immensely.