Chapter 326 - Keeping It Together
For a few moments, Eisen and Jyuuk stared at each other confused, before the Beastperson looked at the old man with a wry smile. "Who exactly were you talking about just now?" He asked, and just then, his concerned expression nearly immediately changed to a light smile.
"It was probably just you playing around a little with your backstory, right? You do like to do that a lot." Jyuuk pointed out, and Eisen nodded his head with a chuckle. "I guess I'm getting carried away a lot lately, this happened more than just once today." The old man laughed, before Jyuuk nodded his head and looked at the two metal plates that the old man was still holding.
"But either way, I wasn't aware that that was how you use mana string! I'll let Xenia know about it, so she might come by to take a look at it tomorrow." Jyuuk said with a smile and then slowly turned around, leaving the room as if he was skipping along his path.
And then, Eisen looked at the spinnerets with a smile, before placing them over to the side to just use them for some other stuff later. For now, he had to get started with making the parts for the first Golem's hand.
He ripped at the two pieces of steel just to see how stable it was, and noticed that it was actually rather hard to split them up again.
But then, the old man remembered the Maroon he had in one of the boxes in the corner, which he swiftly grabbed and ran over one of the steel plates, nearly immediately absorbing the mana that made up the mana-string, causing the lower one of the two small pieces of steel to drop down onto the table in front of Eisen, who just nodded his head with a smirk.
"Alright, that's a thing to remember, then." He said with a light whistle before throwing the two pieces of steel into the forge to turn them into the first parts for the first steel-finger.
When the small chunks of steel started glowing a bright yellow, Eisen grabbed them back out of the fire and grabbed his hammer from next to him. For a moment he wanted to take the one from his earring, but considering that Eisen was working on a pretty small part while in his regular size, that would be a bit overkill and really not a good idea in the slightest.
And soon enough, using his Mythril hammer, Eisen managed to shape the different pieces of steel into the shapes they were meant to be, adding more and more into the forge in order to heat up the materials that he needed.
After a little while, the old man had all the different pieces laying in front of him. There were of course the parts for the fingers together with their respective joints, but there was also the main centerpiece for the palm and back of the hand together with some other parts that were meant to be added in different places around that centerpiece to allow for proper, smooth movement of the hand.
Eisen was actually rather impressed, as this was part of Evalia's designs! Through practicing animation and by watching people she would draw sometimes that often, she was rather familiar with that type of intricate movement, and wanted to make sure that the Golems' hands didn't end up too stiff to do anything.
And Eisen appreciated that a lot! He didn't make this kind of item that often, at least he didn't do so in the past hundred years or so as far as he could remember, and-
"Stop… that…" The old man muttered to himself as he grasped the worktable in front of him dizzily, although that swiftly disappeared again and turned into ecstacy, letting Eisen continue on as normal. Of course, this didn't end up just passing by Eisen's monsters either.
"Eisen… Caria, Melly and Sal are worried about you… Are you okay?" Caria asked with a frown, before Eisen turned down toward the young Myconid and nodded his head. "Of course I'm okay, don't worry sweetheart. I'm just a bit too old for my own good, so this kind of thing happens sometimes." Eisen expained and winked at her as he placed his hand onto the tip of her cap, but Caria just slowly nodded and sat back down on the bench, a little bit away from the hot fire of the forge, and kept playing with Melissa and Sal, although she seemed to be less excited compared to before, and kept turning her head to look at Eisen all the time.
And while that was happening behind the old man, Eisen himself just looked back at the parts in front of him, happily grabbing the first steel-marble that would act as a joint between the tip of the index finger and its center-piece, before intricately concentrating on the item in front of him, because that was necessary for this kind of small item, considering that Eisen then started to use transmutation to create a 3D enchantment in the center of the small metal marble, pushing the excess-materials out of it instead of keeping them inside.
It took a lot longer than Eisen would have liked it to, but soon enough he managed to complete the 'Magnetism' enchantment that he wanted to create for the exact parts that the metal-marble would connect to, so that it wouldn't stick to other pieces at all.
And then,with a small enchanting needle, Eisen began to carve onto the outside of the marble to finish it off, before pouring his mana inside of it to initially activate it for this first test. Just a few moments later, two thirds of the index finger of the first golem's right hand were connected to each other, but soon fell apart again as the enchantment wasn't constantly supplied with the mana it needed to function.
Eisen was aware that his Golemancy itself would take care of this issue already, just keeping the body roughly together properly all the time even if the enchantments weren't active, but the old man had another plan for all of this, although he could only really execute it when he finished the whole hand.
And so, Eisen continued with his plan for another little while, until he finished the last joint of the whole hand and received a notification in response.
[Enchanting reached Level 100 in Rank 3, upgrading to Rank 4]
[You can now use Ability-Enchanting with other People's Abilities]
[Due to Ranking-up your Enchanting Skill, you gained +1 INT and +1 WIS]
[Notice: All Rank 4 crafting skills allow you to control the rank of the item you create using that Skill]
With a bright smile on his face, Eisen then nodded his head excitedly, happy to be able to finally create so many more interesting items for everyone now, before the old man turned back toward the items on the table in front of him, because he would explore the possibilities of these two new abilities tomorrow. For now, he wanted to try out how his idea would work out.
First, Eisen activated all of the enchantments inside of the joints at the same time, and before he knew it, the whole metal hand snapped together like it was supposed to, although it was still simply hanging low instead of being 'Stiff' like Eisen would have liked it to be.
And for that, Eisen grabbed one of the Mana-String Spinnerets and poured his mana inside of the enchantment to create a bit of Mana-String, and then tried to pull on it. It was a bit hard for him to repeat the same thing he did before for some reason, so maybe that was just beginner's luck.
Either way, after a bit of fiddling around with it, Eisen managed to do everything as he did before, even replicating the copy of the needle again.
And when Eisen was then ready to work with everything, he swiftly ran the mana-needle into the part of the hand where the arm would later be 'attached' and then began to run the string through the palm and toward the tip of the index finger, before snapping the string apart again at the tip of the first finger. It was for some reason relatively easy to do this like this, but when it was actually attached to some of the objects, it really wasn't.
It was truly fascinating to Eisen! Either way, the old man repeated this whole thing again and again for the same finger, and soon enough, while the four others were still hanging low, the index finger had a bit of 'Stiffness' to it like a real finger would. After all, even if you let go of every control over your hand for a moment and just let it hang, your fingers wouldn't twist in unnatural ways and would stay relatively 'straight' against the palm.
Happy that the old man was able to replicate this rather easily with the help of the Mana-String, he repeated this again and again for the other fingers, until the whole hand was finished and acting like an actual hand would.
And to his luck, the mana-string didn't seem to activate the enchantments either, which the old man was afraid of for a moment. After all, he didn't want the mana-string to be absorbed immediately, that would be counter-productive after all.
Eisen continued playing around with the hand a little bit, trying to see how far the fingers could really be moved, and was happy to see that it was quite similar to a human hand's movements, although a really dexterous one. For example, the fingers could move about a tenth to a third, depending on where exactly on the finger it was, further than normal into any direction before there was the type of resistance that would usually make you think 'If I continue, I'll break the finger'.
It still looked rather weird to see all the fingers pulled upward like that, but it was within reason. And like this, Eisen managed to even fix one of the biggest worries he had with all of this. Like this, he would be able to create something similar to the 'Muscles' that he placed onto his Automata's bodies, without in any way influencing the design or structure of the Golems' bodies toward the negative.
"Perfect. First part is done then, I guess." Eisen said with a smile on his face before placing the metallic hand, which was designed to look somewhat like an armor's gauntlet, to the side and unsummoning the workstations that he made with his element, and then picked his monsters up with a smile.
"Let's go to sleep for now." Eisen said as he smiled at the three of them and made his way up toward the meeting room, where Sigurd and a sleeping Fafnir seemed to already be waiting for him.
"So, how did the 'Safe Area' end up?" Eisen asked the Dungeon Core Guardin, who simply smiled brightly and crossed its arms happily.
"It's amazing! It's really, really amazing!" Sigurd exclaimed with a smug nod, obviously proud to be the guardian of its dungeon, "After you left and the Kobolds finished up the room, the option to make a 'Recovery Room' appeared in the dungeon Menu! So even the system recognizes it to be a good idea~!" It explained happily, and Eisen nodded his head with a grin. "Good to know, yeah. Well, I'd hope to be able to extend on it a little more at some point. Not on the first floor, but depending on how far we go, maybe add a whole small area with an Inn for people to sleep or eat in for a night, depending on how deep the dungeon goes. It can only help us, right?" He suggested, and Sigurd immediately nodded.
"That's a great idea!" It exclaimed, before Eisen chuckled and sat down on his chair with his size increased, before all of his monsters, including Fafnir and Sigurd, sat down on his lap, and the old man slowly dozed off into sleep.
And as he had expected, within his dream, he soon found the Giant Version of him waiting, although something was different now.
Up until now, whenever Eisen was dreaming, he couldn't hear anything at all, as if he had gone deaf. But now, he heard everything that was going on. The fire cracking on the other side of the room, the wind outside the building they were in, and most importantly, the breath of the Giant Version of him accompanied by a chuckling sound.