Chapter 330 - The Last Straw
At last, Eisen was nearly finished with the main preparation for the Golems, although he still had a few more things to do here and there. For one, he needed to add the ’Information Storage’, aka the Brain, into the head as well.
And for that Brain, Eisen had a rather good idea, because it seemed the perfect base for a three-dimensional enchantment. So first, Eisen created a rough oval brain-shape and then began to get to work with the use of transmutation, swiftly hollowing a few places out here and there and using the materials that he used for that to create the actual ’Models’ for the definitions and the center.
And the center simply got a small crystal brain, while the surrounding ’Element’ spheres got a rune representing the word ’Thought’. After that, Eisen simply placed the brain into the hollow area in the head that he prepared for it, and filled the area surrounding the crystal brain in a potion that was supposed to increase the intelligence stat for a little while.
After that, Eisen got to placing the eyes into the head as well by simply transmuting the metal around the edges to be a bit softer to make it possible to just push the eyes into the specific sockets, and with the help of the enchantments and a little bit of mana-string affixiation, Eisen didn’t have to worry about having the eyes drop out.
And then, Eisen placed the Steel Teeth into the upper and lower jaws, although they weren’t enchanted yet, because he figured that he could do that over time, before properly attaching the lower jaws, which had some simply mana-crystal tongues already placed into them, to the rest of the heads, of course once more using the mana string to support the structural integrity.
Then, all that was left to do was place the heads onto the bodies. This also happened relatively quickly and easily, because all of the necessary parts were prepared beforehand. Of course, once the head was attached, the old man had to properly add the metal ’plates’ that would turn it into a helmet design at the proper places on the head, and then moved them all around a little bit to make sure that they couldn’t get stuck while switching ’Modes’.
Then, Eisen turned the bodies around and continued working on the mana-creation area, using the specific gems that he ability-enchanted to create elemental-mana generators that were hooked up to the elemental-mana batteries.
Once that was done, the mana batteries were hooked up directly to the slot where the Golem Core would be placed later to properly connect the extra mana to the actual Golem.
At last, the only things that Eisen now had to do were to create the weapons and ’Special’ parts on the Golem’s individual bodies, as well as the few cloth-parts, before enchanting the golem’s bodies. So actually, there was still a good bit to do before they would be finished.
The first thing that Eisen then chose to make were the items for the Tank-Golem, the Tower-Shield and the Greatsword.
And while waiting for all of the metal for the shield to heat up a bit, the old man chose to take a look at the three-dimensional enchantments that his students ended up making.
First, Eisen looked at Stahl’s creation. It seemed to actually be rather similar to what Eisen made as his first three-dimensional enchantment, just slightly different in concept. Instead of floating around and returning to whoever activated the enchantment, the small sphere could be thrown pretty far through highly-reduced gravity, but would end up trying to follow the nearest target, although it was mainly just able to change the trajectory ever so slightly.
So it was basically a thrown-homing ball. "Interesting. But how exactly does it find the right target?" Eisen asked his grandson, who just scratched the back of his neck with a wry smile. "The nearest place with a lot of mana beside the user, I guess." He replied, so Eisen just sighed.
"Maybe try to find another solution. If you want to use this kind of thing in a fight, you’d end up accidentally hitting the Mage in your party, who is coincidentally Brody’s wife. So, better try not to do that." The old man explained with a chuckle, and Stahl simply slowly nodded his head.
Then, Eisen moved on. Parc’s three-dimensional enchantments was capable of covering itself and the user’s hand in a layer of rock, to basically turn someone’s hand into a large rock-hammer. "Well, the shape is pretty rough, and if you don’t have a high enough strength stat your arm will be ripped off, but I like it, well done." The old man said with a laugh before deactivating the enchantment, "I’ll play around with this a little more, yeah? I want to test the durability of the rock." He added, before moving onto Rouge’s enchanted crystal.
And what it did was also pretty interesting. It wasn’t directly useful the way it was per-se, but it was interesting nonetheless. The three-dimensional enchantment would, when activated, simply turn the whole sphere invisible. Eisen actually accidentally dropped it while looking at it after activating the enchantment, and he had to activate his mana-sight to find it again.
"The concept is well-thought through, but the item it was used on just wasn’t the best. If this can be made smaller and placed into arrow-heads, this would turn into a real pain in the ass." Eisen explained before carefully placing the enchanted sphere back in front of Rouge, before he then moved on to the last of the four students.
And from what Eisen could tell when looking at the enchantment through the translucent sphere, it seemed to be supposed to cause a delayed-explosion, exactly ten seconds after the enchantment was activated. "So basically, this is a re-usable magic grenade?" Eisen asked while pulling his eyebrows up a little bit, and Koro nodded his head.
"Mhm, it is! Depending on the mana input, the size of the explosion changes as well!" He explained as he took the enchantment from Eisen again, and by having his mana-sight active, Eisen could notice that Koro seemed to have activated the enchantment for some reason. But either way, his mana was moving from his hand into the enchantment for activation.
"What are you doing?" Eisen asked with a frown, and Koro tilted his head to the side. "Hmm? Oh, I’m just refining the image in the center a bit more, I’m not really happy with it." He explained, and immediately Eisen opened his eyes wide before extending his hand forward to grab the enchanted sphere from his apprentice, before activating the three-dimensional enchantment from Parc that he still had in his hand, making it cover his hand, including the enchantment-grenade in rock, before Eisen quickly turned around and squatted forward while increasing his size as much as he could to cover the whole thing more easily.
And before Eisen knew it, a notification appeared in front of him.
[Your lost your right hand. Sleep to Recover]
Immediately, Eisen stared downward at his right arm, noticing that the rock from Parc’s enchantment was slowly disappearing because no mana was being fed to the enchantment, just to reveal the pile of blood and flesh contained inside of it as it dropped to the ground.
With unbelievable anger on his face, Eisen just stood up, turned around, and stepped up to Koro, grabbing him by the collar with his left hand before dragging him toward the dungeon gate behind him while lowering the temperatue of the forge where the steel was currently still heating up. Of course, everyone rushed up to Eisen after hearing the explosion, just to see that he was losing a large amount of blood from his completely crushed-up and ripped-off hand.
Eisen’s hands may be immune to high heat and pressure, but only in specific situations. For example, his hands weren’t able to completely defend against high-tier magic explosions, because magic simply worked different to regular heat. He wouldn’t be able to just perfectly defend against regular fire attack magic either, after all.
But even then, Eisen figured that he wouldn’t end up in a situation where he had to worry about that anyway. After all, he wasn’t a combatist, and even then wouldn’t fight with his bare hands anyway. He wouldn’t have thought that he would lose his hand to his own apprentice.
And considering the strength of the explosion that was strong enough to even crack through Eisen’s demonic transformation, Koro most likely would have died if Eisen hadn’t grabbed the crystal sphere before it blew up. And the two people next to him, Rouge and Parc, probably wouldn’t have been able to get away unscathed either.
For that alone, Eisen couldn’t believe what the hell just happened, and simply threw the rather shocked Koro on Eisen’s large chair in the meeting room.
"H-Hey, don’t be so rough! It-It’s going to heal anyway, right? You’re immortal, so what-" Koro exclaimed, but before he knew it, his whole body was overcome with a feeling that he hadn’t experienced to this extent before, as Eisen repaired his demonic transformation, although he wasn’t able to fix his hand just like that, and stared down at Koro with his deep golden eyes, speaking up in a deep, raspy voice that seemed aeons away from what Eisen’s voice was to begin with. Koro was scared shitless.
"Shut up." Eisen said in a monotone voice, his rock-face seeming like a simple statue, and Koro’s whole body began to shake. It seemed like he was trying to speak, but he just couldn’t. "Are you trying to tell me you did that on purpose?" The old demon asked, but Koro just slowly shook his head. "N-No, of course not! I wouldn’t ever-"
"Then why the fuck would you be dumb enough to activate it? Your skill is at Rank 2, Koro. To be able to edit already-finished enchantments, you need to be able to delete the parts you want to edit. You literally learned all about them, or what the fuck were you doing while Xenia was trying to teach you?" Eisen asked as he began to grind his teeth together, feeling like he was being held for an idiot just now. And then, Koro just stayed quiet, but Eisen wouldn’t have that and slammed his left hand on the table in front of Koro before leaning forward toward him.
"That wasn’t a rhetorical question. Answer me. What were you doing while she was trying to teach you?" He asked, but Koro just wasn’t able to say anything anymore.
"Don’t you realize that you could have died just there? And not only you, but Parc and Rouge as well? Yes, Stahl and I can just wake up again as if nothing ever happened, but you can’t. Your idiocy is astounding, Koro." Eisen said and then stood directly in front of Koro with his arms crossed.
"Stand up." Eisen told him in a commanding tone, but Koro seemed to still not be able to do anything, so instead, Eisen just once more grabbed him by the collar and pulled him along.
Everyone that was in the dungeon before was currently standing there, watching what was going on, and were starting to follow Eisen as well.
And the place that the old man ended up at was his Workshop. With one swing of his arm, he simply threw Koro inside of there and then stripped him of all the tools he had on his body, before taking any materials that were laying around in the room out, with the exception of cloth to act as a blanket.
"Until we get to the islands, you’re staying here. Then, when the first ship leaves this island, you’ll be on it." The old man said in a strict tone, but Koro just began to panick.
"W-Wait, but-"
"Don’t you dare try to complain. From the start, I told you that you will need to follow every single thing I say if you want to be my apprentices. And what do you do? Make an enchantment that’s far above you and nearly kill yourself before you even became my apprentice. Continuosly try to impress me with stupid shit I never allowed you to do. Over and over again, you showed how impatient and selfish you are, trying to push Parc and Rouge to the side to be able to succeed on your own and become my ’Top Apprentice’. And now, you were acting as conceited as you could be. You noticed that I was actually kind of impressed with your enchantment, and then went ’Oh, but I didn’t make it as good as I could have, so I’ll fix this here’ and then immediately tried to change it right in front of me while ignoring the rules of a whole skill, endangering you and everyone around you." Eisen explained quite lengthily, before slowly starting to shut the door to the Workshop. "That was the last straw."