Chapter 298 - Swordmans Steel
Judging from the materials that Koro was using, that seemed to be a potion meant to increase someone’s defense by causing a state similar to petrification on the surface of your skin. It would decrease your agility and greatly increase your weight as well as side effects, but those side effects were simply prove to the intensity and strength of the ’transformation’. So of course, Eisen was now quite curious, because he wasn’t sure how Koro would combine this potion with an enchantment.
But soon, he managed to see. As Koro’s Alchemy skill wasn’t at Rank 2 yet, Eisen told him that he would end up helping him when it came to the raw shaping of different materials, so when he was needed to, Eisen created a small cylindrical ’container’ out of a mana crystal, which the potion that Koro made was poured into, before the container was completely sealed. And then, Koro began to enchant the outside of the container.
On the two ends, he made two relatively simple enchantments, although Eisen couldn’t exactly see any of the runes or images that he used, so he was quite curious. But after the two enchantments on the two flat ends of the cylinder were finished, Koro connected them through a few lines that he drew inbetween the middle circles inside the enchantment, where he placed the different elemental runes before to describe the raw type of the enchantment. And inbetween those lines, Koro then carved a few different runes, which seemed to be just some supportive text in order to strengthen the enchantments.
And soon enough, the item was finished, actually not too long before the flames at the top of the pipe connected to the barrel went out.
With a curious smile, Eisen then grabbed the small cylinder and took a closer look at it and its description.
[Effect Extractor]
[Quality - Above Average][Rank - 1]
[Description] An item used to extract the effect of the potion contained within created by a nameless enchanter. Through this process, itt is possible to easily ’Toggle’ the effect whenever the user wishes to. The Extractor currently contains a
.
[Effect] Total 10 Minutes of the
Effect
Quite surprised, Eisen looked at the description of the item he was holding, before starting to smile with satisfaction on his face, and then threw the item back to Koro. "Explain to me how it works." The old man said, before his apprentice slowly nodded.
"Alright... It has two sides, and while the enchantments are technically part of the same enchantment, they can be used individually to each other. Using the one with the body with the ’Aura’ around it activates it, and the one with the body without the ’Aura’ deactivates the effect." Koro explained before swiftly placing his finger on the ’Activation’ enchantment, and soon his skin became a slight bit darker and more gray and more uneven, just simply more ’Rock’ like. After that, the young man placed his finger on the ’Deactivation’ Enchantment, before the effect slowly began to fade.
Nervously, Koro then looked at Eisen, waiting for his choice before the old man stood up and made all the things he made with his element disappear, beside the table that the items and tools were still on, before he turned around toward the barrel, which was still glowing in a bright yellow light.
Having been ignored, Koro already thought that he failed, but those thoughts were soon disproven. "I offer you to become a Magicraftsman Apprentice." Eisen said with just a glance at the young man, before Koro began to smile brightly and excitedly.
"Yes! Thank you so much!" Koro exclaimed, while Eisen was waiting for the barrel to properly cool down, and then looked at his newest full apprentice again.
"Well, you showed that you can do it. Now... Komer, you were listening as well, right?" Eisen asked as he looked over toward the young merchant standing just a little bit away, as he came back down from the meeting room after noticing that something was going on, joining the others that had gathered around Koro and Eisen as the test was going on.
"Yup, I was." The Fate Merchant replied, before Eisen just crossed his arms. "Take Koro with you and let him tell you the principle behind the enchantment, and then sketch that enchantment down. Maybe ask Xenia if she has any ideas for improvement on the actual enchantment, and then work together with her and Evalia to figure out a design and base material that isn’t Mana Crystal. Maybe a nice wood layered with something that potions can’t affect at all. Then, you please figure out proper pricing for the different ranks. Oh, and please, when you ask Evalia to design it, please ask her to add a function where you can fill it up with your own potions." The old man explained, before Koro tilted his head to the side confused.
"Huh..? Wait, what’s going on now?" Koro asked confused, and Eisen just shrugged. "You came up with a good item concept, so now, you’re going to work on it with the others to make it something that can be sold." Eisen told him with a wink, while Koro was still looking at Eisen unsure of what was going on, because he, all of a sudden, wasn’t angry anymore in the slightest. And on top of that, his item being praised so much was something he didn’t expect at all either!
"You read my mind! If we sell it and at the same time have a good amount of potions around as well, it’s probably going to give us a good bit of profit~!" The money-crazed young man said with a happy expression, pulling the item out of Koro’s hand, before Komer pulled him along the area and toward the stairs with a bright smile on his face.
"Oh, and you two, please make sure that he doesn’t mess anything up. If you notice that he falls back onto playing around with enchantments like it’s nothing big, then stop him and let me know." Eisen told Parc and Rouge, who both nodded their heads, before Eisen grabbed the barrel that seemed to have cooled down enough to be taken down into the bottom of the ship without issues.
"Of course! We’ll make sure he doesn’t mess it up again!" Rouge exclaimed immediately, before Eisen nodded his head with a smile and then began to carry the barrel back to the stairs. "Then I’ll leave it to you two to clean this here up as well, alright?" He said with a wink, pointing at the items and materials still left on the Flame-Of-The-Earth table, and the two boys nodded their heads, before doing as they were told.
When Eisen got back to his Workshop, he could finally get to work. He opened the steel barrel up and looked inside of it, and was happy to be faced with lots and lots of deep black coal.
"Perfect! I knew this would work! Although... I doubt the Barrel is going to hold out too long if I keep doing it like this..." Eisen muttered to himself, before just shrugging and finally preparing for the actual creation of the item he made the charcoal for.
First, he grabbed every last bit of the ore that he himself mined and then began to grind it down into a fine powder, before swiftly splitting it up into the actual iron-oxide bits and the rock with the help of the riffled bowl, letting the non-metallic parts be carried off by water.
"Surprisingly, that’s a good amount, huh..?" Eisen muttered to himself with a light whistle, happy that there would end up being enough raw steel in the end after all, and he didn’t need to worry about alloying the Metallic Potion with regular steel.
With a smile on his face, and excited to properly work on a big project again, Eisen began to grind down the charcoal that he made just now, which was surprisingly tough to do, because the charcoal itself was just so much harder compared to regular charcoal, as well as the regular old limestone and then mixed it together with the iron-oxide that he got from the ore.
After that, he swiftly added the ground-down materials for the potion that Xenia told him about. First came ground-down earth-gems, as well as the leaves of a plant called Kathkusa, which were a potent means to create strenght-increasing potions.
Then, there was the dehydrated pulp of a root known as ’Swordmaster Root’, because it, as the name implied, was a good way to gain a benefit to Swordsmanship Skills. And at last, there were the mana crystals, all of which were ability-enchanted with the Swordsmanship skill.
Once Eisen mixed the powders together properly, he poured about a quarter of the mixture into the crucible, as that was all Eisen had space for, and began to increase the heat, all the whilst continuing to mix everything around and once more using transmutation to somewhat help with the mixing of the of the potion materials with the molten steel. Eisen also continuosly tried to make sure that the sludge would properly be split off of the main metal.
After the first batch was done and Eisen turned it into a bunch of ingots, the old man repeated the same thing three more times to use up all of the mixture, and then ended up with a quite large batch of a certain metal.
[Swordman’s Steel Ingot]
[Quality - Highest][Rank - 3]
[Description] A metallic potion alloy created by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. It can inherently strengthen the Swordsmanship of anyone who carries an item made of this metal with them. It has a uniquely high ability to let magic flow through it due to the materials added to the actual steel portion of this metal. It is the perfect base for creating swords.
With a grin on his face, Eisen crossed his arms and looked at the literal mountain of the light-gray metal in front of him.
"Alright, then lets get to work now." Eisen said to himself as he turned the crucible next to him into a proper forge, and placed his finger against his right earring. It surprised Sal a little bit, but the tiny albino spider simply went back to his nap after Eisen managed to grab his Large Hammer and then increased his size to the maximum that he could, which was the maximum height Eisen could turn while still being able to properly work inside of this room.
Swiftly, Eisen threw two ingots into the forge, and when the first two ingots were hot enough, Eisen grabbed them out of the forge and placed them on top of each other while placing the next two ingots into the forge, flattening them both together as much as he could, and then folded the two pieces over, then flattened it again, then folded again, and then flattened it again, until the two ingots were perfectly combined into a single piece of metal, while the impurities were spread evenly across it, so that there wouldn’t be a specific area of the metal that was weaker than the rest.
Then, Eisen grabbed the next two ingots while placing the metal he was working with until now to the side and put two new ingots into the forge, before folding the two new ingots together in the same way as the first two. Once they were combined, he took the next two pieces and replaced them with new ones in the forge.
He repeated this until all of the base ingots were properly combined, and then started the whole process again from zero, just using the larger, combined and folded ingots as a single one, which meant that he was now folding two of those already-folded ingots into each other.
This whole thing was repeated until Eisen was left with a single huge piece of metal, which he was now able to turn into Kiron’s sword.