Spending My Retirement In A Game

The old man got started and kept carving into the wood, and then took the steel out to turn it into the shape of a kitchen-knife. Slowly it seemed like the multitool was changing, not only in its ego-rank, but even physically.

It didn’t change all too much visually, but there was still a slight change there. For example, the knife was curved a little bit differently toward the tip, and the same with the blade for the axe-mode when he looked the whole item over. Other than that, it seemed like the surface of the hammer increased a tiny bit. It wasn’t to the extent that Eisen could say that this absolutely and undeniably was the case, it was just that everything seemed just so slightly off to how Eisen was used to with this tool.

"Hmm, does that mean...?" The old man muttered to himself, and then chose to continue working on this knife a little more. Actually, probably a little too much, now that Eisen thought about it. He took some other materials and integrated them into the outer layer of the metal by heating the knife itself up and then just hammering it in, or just by dipping it in a molten version of it. Eisen even cut away some parts of the blade. It looked pretty weird, but now the back of the blade had some half-circles cut out so that you could push down onto it with your fingers. Eisen wasn’t sure why exactly he made this, he just wanted to keep working on one piece some more. Usually that helped the multitool. And he didn’t want to work on something larger, just in case everything ended up getting out of control.

Either way, the old man kept on changing the shape of the blade more and more, until it looked very, very different to what Eisen had been planning at the start when he placed the steel into the forge. It had been covered in a few different layers of different magical materials that the blade was either dipped into, or had it merged with the outside by hammering it on. The old man kept compressing the blade as well so that this fact couldn’t really be seen outwardly.

But when even Eisen figured that it was enough and he started sharpening the blade roughly for now, the edge revealed a rainbow of differently colored magical materials. It looked pretty interesting, actually, even if the raw shape of the knife made it pretty tough to use.

The handle itself had been changed pretty strongly from its intended form as well, as Eisen simply kept going on and on with compressing it and giving it more and more layers as well. Some of those layers were wood, others were crystals and gems, and sometimes Eisen even dipped the handle into molten metal as well.

And toward the end, Eisen wrapped it in leather, the surface of which he had enchanted to the point of it basically being rough like sandpaper. Of course, to avoid this he filled in those carvings with some materials as well. But those materials were once more a mix of a lot of different ones, so in the end, the whole knife became not only weird in shape, but also in color. It was practically a rainbow knife.

For some reason, it was simply incredibly fun to play around like this once in a while. And when Eisen figured that this would be enough, the stats of the item were surprisingly high as well. Of course not as high as they would be with a well planned-out item, but it had a few nice effects that Eisen didn’t know he could cause just by mixing materials together like this. It seemed like this seemingly random layering of materials, isntead of just alloying them, gave this knife pretty unique properties.

And when the others, so Denmir, Folmirra, Morrom and Jekyll, made their way into the workshop as well, they were just as surprised as Eisen was about how good this item was. It would be hard to actually use it, since it weighed far too much after being compressed this heavily, but everyone agreed that it was usually pretty fun to just mess around like this every once in a while.

But the whole reason why Eisen ended up working so hard on this was that no matter what he was doing, the hammer didn’t rank up. Its Ego-Rank just kept on staying Rank 6, Level 0, and the proficiency bar for the level was stuck at 99%. This kind of thing usually happened pretty quickly, but for the past hour, just nothing happened at all no matter what he did. Eisen figured that maybe actually finishing the item would do the trick, but even then, it didn’t work.

So, the idea that Eisen had before seemed to have been confirmed in the worst possible way, "Hahh.... Don’t tell me I have to actually somehow upgrade it physically as well now?" The old man muttered quietly. It would make sense if he did have to do that, though. Since the item was physically changing, Eisen figured that its actual rank would increase now as well, and its Ego-rank and item-rank would finally combine. He had hoped that it would work just like a monster’s evolution, or the type of evolution that Core Guardians went through when the core they were connected to upgraded, but it seemed like this was a bit different when it came to tools like this.

He tried asking the others, since they all also had Ego-Item creation skills, albeit specialized for their profession, and they told him that if they had items like that, although they never made an item that was able to level- and rank-up just in the same way that Eisen’s multitool and sword did, they would just try reforging it sometimes, or adding new materials onto it. Just actively changing it in some way or another.

With a light smile on his face, Eisen nodded his head. That would mean that he might end up spending the rest of the day having to test out methods to safely upgrade this multitool instead of continuing to work, but Eisen didn’t really mind all that much. He did have all the time he needed, and if this helped bring the proficiency for the next level up for his skills a little bit higher up, there was no reason why Eisen should really complain.

For now, the old man tried the method that seemed the most logical to him. Sure, the Yang Metal was an amazing material to make tools, but it wasn’t the BEST material to do so. There was no way that a single material would be the best for every single category, after all. So, Eisen chose to add a small layer of other materials onto the item in some places, just like he had done with the knife he just made. Of course, it wouldn’t happen just as chaotically as that.

The first step was to change the edges of the different blades. Eisen went to pick out materials that he knew were good for cutting and then chose to set it up to be infused with his element mostly turned toward Flames, so that it would turn halfway into a magic material, but not completely.

Since the flame-part of his element usually helped with cutting things apart, and with being swift and precise, this was the best option for edges like that as far as Eisen was concerned. Well, at least for the edge of the chisel and knife, and the tip of the needles at least.

The edge of the axe and tip of the pickaxe would be getting a different material that was infused with his element mostly turned toward Earth. Woodcutting and Mining weren’t the kind of skills that required a high amount of precision, after all. The most important thing was swinging it with a lot of force and technique. Of course, precision was still needed, but it wasn’t nearly as important as for things like cooking or carving. Force was the most important part in Eisen’s own opinion.

Then after those materials were halfway turned into magic materials, Eisen alloyed them with a few gems that were enchanted with some of Eisen’s skills for whatever part they would be used for. So the blade would get woodworking, cooking, and other such precise skills, the needles would get Tailoring, Leatherworking and Enchanting. The axe would be mostly get the Woodcutting skill alloyed into it, while the parts of the Pickaxe’s tip got the Mining skill. On the whole edge, that was a rather small part, so it didn’t matter that there would be two slightly different materials there.

To properly put those metals onto the item, Eisen just so slightly carved away the parts of the edge that would later be covered, albeit just a tiny amount that most people might not even notice on first glance.

The shavings from those parts were of course also alloyed into the materials that would later be applied to the edges. And so that everything could be put on there, Eisen compressed the different materials as they were melting down, and then dipped the edges into the dense liquid.

Using his fingers, Eisen properly spread everything while it was hardening, making sure to compress it here and there for proper balance again, and then just set each part down to the side while he was working on the others.

After that, Eisen just had to sharpen the edges again properly, something that he really tried to do as good as possible, even using whetstones that he hadn’t been using for a fair while to make the edges as sharp as they possibly could be.