Chapter 331 - Tank
"Eisen, are you sure this is the right thing to do?" Rouge asked nervously as he looked at the old man after he had closed and locked the door to the Workshop, and Eisen simply nodded.
"I am." He replied, before slowly making his way back to the meeting room, where he sat down on his chair with a deep sigh, looking around at all the concerned faces around him. "Listen, I won't budge on this. He messed up one too many times, he can't pull that kind of stuff and think he can get away with it." Eisen explained, and then just shook his head disappointedly.
"I thought he could be a really good apprentice, and an amazing craftsman in the future. He can still pursue that for all I care, but he won't be doing that anywhere near us again." Eisen told them, before the others looked at each other somewhat nervously, before the old man just shook his head and leaned back in the chair.
"I'll be back up in an hour, should be enough to heal my hand." Eisen pointed out, before he swiftly dozed off into sleep while feeling the stares of everyone on his arm.
Slowly, Eisen felt himself be surrounded by darkness. At first, he figured that he would return to talk to the Giant Version of himself again, but instead, that didn't seem to be the case at all. Instead, he was simply floating in an empty space with pure blackness around him. He probably wouldn't be able to wake up considering the time that he went to sleep, as it was one of the times where the capsule would be pumping another dose of the medication into his body, but he didn't expect to just… Be there.
Eisen hought he would just wake up immediately after closing his eyes, ready to get back into the Dungeon, but he ended up spending a whole hour inside that dark, empty place. And then, after that hour passed, the world came back into existence like normal, although he, weirdly enough, didn't feel that awkward feeling that he always did when waking up during the past few days.
The first thing that Eisen did after that one hour was to take a look at his hand, happy to see that it ended up healing just like the old man hoped it would. And then, he stood up and made his way into the dungeon to continue with everything like nothing happened to his hand in the first place.
Immediately when they saw him enter the place, the other Originals, Eisen's students, whose number had dwindled to three including Stahl, Kiron, Bree, Sky and Komer, as well as Fafnir and Sigurd came rushing up to him. Eisen's monsters were already sticking to him like glue ever since he woke up, so it wasn't hard to find them either.
"Grandfather! Are you alright already?" Kiron exclaimed, looking at Eisen with worry, before the old man just chuckled and looked at the still-worried people around him, "Don't worry, losing a hand is nothing against what I did back in Handor, is it?" The old man said with a wink, and those that were there for that immediately remembered that time and inevitably nodded their heads.
"Now, let's move on from this and return to what we were doing before. I'm really fine." Eisen said, before turning his head toward Xenia, "Actually, could you wait for a moment? I want to ask you something." The old man explained, and hesitantly the others agreed to do what he suggested, before Xenia looked at him nervously.
"So, two things. First, did you decide about what I asked you yet?" He asked, and the High-Elf slowly closed her eyes nervously and held her left arm, nearly boring into it with her fingernails.
"A-Actually… If… If you still want me there… W-Would it be alright if I m-moved in with you..?" She asked, and Eisen just looked at her happily and chuckled. "Of course, I would love to have you join me in my home. I'll talk to my son about it and hire some movers to help you out." He explained before slowly moving his fingers through his beard.
"I would come and help out as well, but as you know… There's a bit of a situation going on." The old man said with a quiet laugh as he pointed at his right arm, and Xenia slowly nodded her head, feeling a bit overwhelmed by being accepted without question.
"Th-Thank you… I-I'll let you know when I'm ready…" She replied, and was just about to turn around and leave before Eisen placed his hand on her shoulder, trying to stop her.
"Wait, wait, I said there were two things I wanted to talk about, didn't I?" Eisen chuckled quietly, and then immediately continued. "This whole thing reminded me of the Mass of Yin that we still have locked away. Shouldn't we try to figure out how to make a Mass of Yang already?" The old man asked, and the High-Elf's ears slowly began to wiggle, something that Eisen hadn't really seen her do before. But at the very least, it seemed like she was excited, at least from Eisen's perspective.
"E-Erm… I need to prepare a little, but I think I can manage to make a blessing opposite to the base curse that was put on your arm, but… Do we need to make the Mass of Yang in the same way?" Xenia asked, and the old man just nodded his head with a smile.
"It seems like the safest way, doesn't it? You just need to place as many concentrated blessings on my arm as you can until my body starts being overwhelmed, and then I rip it off. Sounds easy enough, doesn't it?" Eisen asked with a smile, although he moved his fingers through his beard in thought immediately afterward. "Although… Just a little bit ago, while I was yelling at Koro in my Demon Form, it seemed like it turned more toward being gruesome, right? My actual form, I mean." Eisen asked, and Xenia just slowly nodded, considering that the memory was still pretty fresh in her mind.
"Yeah… I thought I imagined it, but it might have actually been like that…" She replied, so Eisen nodded his head.
"I see, got it. Then I'll just have to figure out if I can somehow do the same thing, just more turned toward Yang?" Eisen suggsted with a smile, before Xenia slowly shrugged. "Maybe… But erm… I'll just go and work on everything now, then… I'll let you know when I'm done." She explained, and then immediately turned around and made her way toward the Dungeon Gate, exiting it without any hesitation.
And with a just so slightly weird feeling in Eisen's stomach, the old man then turned around and made his way back to the area where he and his students would be working, and then just looked at them with a light smile, while they were all waiting for him.
"So… About what just happened…" Eisen started, but Rouge and Parc immediately spoke up, while Stahl just kept quiet. "Eisen, we understand why you did what you did. It seemed a little extreme at first but… We get it. He messed up over and over again, and… Endangered all of us… If you weren't who you are, then you would have lost your hand, and wouldn't have been able to work until we managed to see someone that can use Divine Healing, or could manage to find a Perfect-Grade Potion…" Rouge told Eisen, and then looked over toward his friend with a light smile, who then spoke next.
"But even then… Can't you at least let him stay on the islands for a while longer? He's going to be a good help when it comes to physical crafting, even if he can't properly use magical crafting…" Parc pointed out, before the old man slowly just looked at them and smiled.
"We'll see. But either way, he won't stay as my apprentice, no matter what. I won't allow someone to learn under me when they can't even follow the simplest rules that I give him. And you maybe haven't heard it, but his first thought wasn't that of regret either. His first reaction was 'It's going to heal anyway, you're immortal'. He literally blew the hand of a dwarf off. The Hand. Of a Dwarf. Using an explosion. That's not an easy thing to do, it really isn't. And then he tried to tell me that everything was fine, becaues I'm 'Immortal'." Eisen said with a sigh and then shook his head before taking a look at the workstations and noticed that they seemed to slowly be crumbling, and then swiftly repaired them while making Koro's workstation disappear completely.
"And now, I'm going to give you all a little bit of time to work on some projects yourselves with the skills you've learnt about so far. You can ask me or anyone else you want for help, you can work on something together, or you can not work on anything at all, although I suggest you do so. I've got to finish up the Golems now as well, so please excuse me." Eisen told them and then turned around before stepping up to his own workstation while increasing his size with his demonic transformation active, the latter being the norm when he was crafting lately.
Eisen simply wanted to give them a little time, because he was sure that their nerves were laying pretty blank after all of that as well, so they could just work on whatever they wanted to for the rest of the day to just calm down.
On top of that, it would give Eisen a chance to work on his own stuff for a little while longer.
"Alright, then let's get to work, shall we…?" The old man muttered to himself before heating the steel that was still inside of the magic forge up again, and then he grabbed the pieces of steel and began to work on them.
He didn't do anything special, and really just shaped it into a big, slightly rounded square, already trying to work in some of the decorative parts into the huge slab of steel.
And then when the basic shape was done, Eisen sat down in front of the shield and began to properly shape the metal into what Eisen could see on the sketch he was given by Evalia before, and then quickly placed a few Earth-Element Enchanted Gems into the front of it in some specific places.
Usually, a shield like this would require a steady, stable handle, but this one just really didn't. Instead, it would be possible for the 'Tank' Golem to directly connect and disconnect its arm to and from the Tower Shield through a small piece set into the inside of the shield that could be stuck into the side of the Tank's arm.
And next, with a similarly uncomplicated item, Eisen created a Greatsword, a bit smaller than the one he made for Kiron before. Once more, same as with the shield, he used the folding-technique to properly place mana into the steel before shaping it into a simple, straight Greatsword. The Design itself wasn't actually overwhelmingly complicated with the weapon, and seemed to only need to impress with its size.
Either way, after setting a piece of an earth-enchanted earth gem into the handle together with more parts that could be connected to the Golem's direct body, Eisen looked at the two weapons with a smile, preparing to create the counterparts for the shield on the Golem's body.
For the Shield, Eisen simply created a few latches on both the arms, either on the back of the lower arms, that could simply snap into the shield itself, and then created another smaller latch on either of the shoulders so that the tank would be able to properly support the shield while defending against a really heavy attack without the shield sliding to the side somehow.
And for the Sword, Eisen created a few latches that could snap onto pieces on the handles as well as one in the center of the back of the blade if necessary, and placed those latches onto the Golem's fingers. Of course, in a way where they could just 'disappear', or rather twist, into the actual body again to seem as if they were never there, same with the latches on the arms.
And so, all the pieces for the Tank Golem were finished.