Chapter 342 - Pen-Troubles
With a smile on his face, Eisen continued working on the different items for people on the ship, and then began to work on an item for Sky, a book for himself to write into. And after that, he would finally finish up the Warhammer for Bree as well. Evalia finished the decorations a good time ago, but Eisen was yet to enchant it properly.
There would most likely be a fair amount of time for that, though. After all, he only had those two items he needed to finish up from the items he was asked to make. Brody's companions never asked him for anything, after all, so he didn't want to impose on them and make items without them actually asking about it.
Either way, for now, Eisen grabbed the materials that he had been infusing with Sky's element and got to work. Actually, all of them seemed rather… weird, now that Eisen actually took a look at them. The paper that Caria managed to make for him seemed to be generally stronger than it was before, and while it wasn't thicker, it would be harder to rip it apart accidentally and it didn't seem like it would let any ink through either.
On top of that, the surface seemed weirdly like it was 'Flowing'. It didn't really make sense to him at first when he was just running his fingers over it, but when he grabbed an Ink-Pen and tried writing something on it, Eisen understood what was going on. The Ink stayed on the page as if it was written on it normally, but when Eisen tried to write over the letters, what he wrote before then seemed to just immediately dissipate, as if being pushed off of the page. It was pretty weird to look at, put Eisen didn't really mind it. It would only help Sky out, after all, this would mean that he could actually use the book for a good while instead of Eisen having to make more and more all the time.
And then, the leather that Eisen infused with an element also became somewhat weird in the old man's opinion, even if it was different to the pages. The leather became just far smoother and softer than before, but it didn't lose any of its strength. Basically, it was as if it turned into the perfect leather for an item that you would hold for a long time.
"How exactly does that make sense for 'Inkheart' Magic..?" Eisen muttered to himself, before just shrugging. After all, he would surely find out sooner or later when Sky actually tried to work with it, and in general it should be able to enhance his Magic either way.
For a while, Eisen was considering making him a staff, but he didn't really understand how a staff would be helpful to Sky at all. Sure, he was capable of casting regular magic, and was actually rather good at it in exchange for being unable to cast any sort of 'Inner' or 'Supportive' Magic, but he never actually used Sorcery or Magic in any way other than in the form of summoning his Inkheart Creatures.
"Hmm, I could still make him a Pen-Wand, just in case…" The old man whispered as he moved his fingers through his beard, and then began to smile with a satisfied nod, thinking that this would be a great idea. If it was useable as a regular pen as well as a wand, that would just be perfect.
"Then I'll make the book first…" Eisen said with a smile and quickly grabbed some of the spinnerets, swiftly creating a little bit of thread out of some Inkheart-Infused Crystals before looking at Melissa next to him. "Can you give me some of your Wax?" The old man asked, and Melissa immediately nodded proudly before holding her hand forward, creating a small hexagonal hole where a small Bee with some wax in its mouth stepped out of, so Eisen began to chuckle and placed his hand on Melissa's head.
"Good job, thank you." He said thankfully, before taking the small chunk of wax and using it to quickly run over the thread that he just made to properly wax it for the use in the book.
And then, Eisen grabbed some of the paper, formed it in bundles, sewed those bundles together and then quickly stood up, althoug he was soon stopped when he saw Sky approach him.
"Oh, perfect timing!" Eisen exclaimed, and Sky looked at him surprised and tilted his head to the side. "Huh? Why that? I just wanted to come by because I was a bit bored… But what…" Sky wanted to ask, and Eisen swiftly handed the Fey-Kin boy some rolls of Magic Thread made out of the Inkheart-Crystals.
"Could you go to the area in the material storage with the cloth-tables and turn these into some cloth? You can use the smallest machine there, and it won't take long either, but it would be great if i could save some time working on this." Eisen explained to Sky, and he took those rolls of thread into his hand, still rather confused.
"Err, sure? But what are you working on?" He asked, before Eisen just smirked at him and winked. "You'll see. I'll prepare everything else before you come back, so it shouldn't take long to finish everything up then. So get going, will you?" The old man said with a laugh, and Sky just looked at him with a frown, trying to look past Eisen to see what he was doing, but Eisen managed to block his sight quite skillfully with his giant body.
"No peeking." He told Sky with a wink, and the Fey-Kin boy sighed before nodding his head and turning around, quickly heading back out of the Dungeon. And this gave Eisen more than enough time to prepare all that he needed to prepare for both the book and the pen-wand.
With a smile, Eisen grabbed some of the leather and quickly cut it into shape, doing the same with the different pieces of cardboard and thicker paper that he needed in order to make the book. Since he had already finished sewing the bundles of paper together beforehand, that was all that Eisen could really do before putting everything together,
And so, he chose to move on toward the next item, the pen. And the type of pen that Eisen wanted to go for was a simple fountain pen, because that seemed to be Sky's preferred type to write with. It's been a while since Eisen made a pen in general, but it didn't need all that many special parts to it, so it should be fine.
First, Eisen grabbed a small piece of gold that he placed into the infuser as well, just in case Eisen wanted to use it for something, and he was glad that he did so. Gold was a pretty popular material to use for pens, even if it actually never touched the paper itself.
"Hmm, did we have any Iridium?" Eisen thought to himself, trying to figure out if they had ever bought, or even found, any type of quantity of the metal used to make tips for most pen nibs, simply because it was hard, strong, and didn't wear off as easily as other materials might. And so, Eisen figured he should consult a certain book that he had in his front pocket, the one that Sky had given him before.
"Metals… Metals… Ah, Page 56… And then… Oh, perfect! Iridium! We have… 20 grams? Huh, more than I expected!" Eisen exclaimed with a surprised smile before placing the book back into his pocket, and began to work on the parts for the pen, now that he knew that he could create a Inkheart-Black-Gold nib without worries. Black Gold was a material that seemed to be a little softer than even regular Gold, so Eisen wasn't sure if it would be able to survive as a pen nib for a long time if it was used directly in order to write.
But now that he didn't have to worry about that, Eisen continued with his actual work. Quickly, he heated the small piece of gold that he would use up to melt down a little, and then poured it into a flat mold, trying to thin it out as much as possible before pushing thin mana-crystal plates into the mold in specific places to create the proper shape of the Nib, so that Eisen would only need to bend it a little bit later.
Small and thin pieces like this were so finnicky that not even Eisen wanted to bother with 'Forging' something like that. And forging was a little bit overkill anyway, considering that it was gold he was talking about. Gold wasn't really forged anyway, simply because of how soft it was. It was better to just melt it down and use a mold to create the shape you want instead.
Gold was mostly used as decoration instead of a base-material anyway, so it didn't make much of a difference if it was forged or poured into a mold anyway.
And while Eisen waited for the gold to harden properly, he got to work on the other pieces such as the Feed, which just as the name suggested, would 'feed' the nib the Ink through a small slit in its center.
It wasn't really a complicated part, and Eisen just made it out of some Inkheart-High-Steel, but because it had a lot of different 'Fins' by the side of it that would regulate the proper flow of the Ink, it was a little tedious to make as well. But as mentioned, it didn't take long, so Eisen could swiftly move on.
Next, he quickly created the rest of the metallic parts that could be made out of 'Inkheart-High-Steel'. It for some reason turned ink-black through the infusion process, but it fit beautifully together with Gold color wise, so Eisen didn't really mind it.
And the metallic parts that he made next were the cap, so that the pen wouldn't dry out, and the 'Body' of the pen, before bringing these two small pieces over to Evalia with some gold to request her to decorate everything a little bit.
While Eisen was on his way, he quickly rushed to the material storage to grab a little bit of Iridium, and then swiftly returned to his workstation to further work on the Nib. But when he tried to grab the piece of gold that he prepared for that, he found that it suddenly disappeared into nowhere.
"Hm? You guys, where did it go?" Eisen asked his Monsters with a frown, but they were playing a little bit so they didn't seem to have paid attention, so the old man sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Sig-"
"It was Thul." The Core Guardian replied before Eisen could even finish its name, and the old man looked at it surprised.
"Thul? As in, Stahl's Octopus?" He asked, and Sigurd nodded its head in reply.
"Yes, it seems to have been interested in it and then grabbed it out of the mold. It's playing with it near your grandson now." Sigurd explained, and before Eisen could even ask why it didn't stop Thul from doing that, the old man just made his way over toward Stahl's workstation to look for the octopus and sighed deeply when he found it.
Quickly, he grabbed Thul from the ground and began to smile wrily. "Come on, where is it?" Eisen asked, and confused, Stahl stepped over toward him, seemingly having just placed part of his task's items into the Annealer.
"Everything alright, gramps?" He inquired, but Eisen shook his head with a frown. "No, Thul was playing around with some Black Gold I wanted to use for an item and dragged it over here. But I can't seem to find it anywhere." He replied and quickly activated his mana-sight, hoping to find it more easily, before he sighed deeply.
"Oh, really now?" Eisen exclaimed annoyed, and Stahl looked at him confused, before the old man explained why he was so upset.
"Thul ate it…" He said, then handed the octopus back to Stahl. "Can you try and make it throw it up?" Eisen asked, and Stahl just shrugged.
"Maybe, although-" And before he could finish his sentence, Thul's body began to glow lightly, and Eisen immediately knew what was going on.
Thul was evolving.