Chapter 337 - Shattered Undead Golem
For the rest of the day, Eisen figured he should go and try to take a look at what his students were doing, before checking on his soon-to-be ex-apprentice.
First, Eisen chose to see what Rouge and Parc were making for themselves, and to his surprise, they were working on tools! More specifically, they were using the things that they learnt over the past few days in order to enhance their tools to the peak that they could manage, and Eisen really couldn’t help but nod his head proudly.
At the very least these two seemed to be ready to properly listen to what the old man had to say. And then, with an already pretty good mood, Eisen moved on toward his Grandson, who surprisingly was working on what seemed to be a wooden mannequin hand, so the old man kept watching curiously. Although, it seems like Stahl himself was rather uncomfortable being watched so intensely.
"Erm... Gramps, can I help you somehow?" He asked with a wry smile, and Eisen swiftly shook his head as he just continued watching. "Not really, I’m just here to watch. Oh, but why exactly are you making a Hand?" Eisen asked, and Stahl sighed deeply before handing the wooden piece over to the old man.
"Because this is the last thing I have to do for the big project I’ve been working on for a good while now." Stahl explained, and Eisen looked at him with a rather surprised expression, especially when he saw that the wooden hand wasn’t actually completely wooden, and Eisen was only able to see the piece’s underside from where he was standing.
On its back, it had a layer of metal directly attached to the wood, and with his Mana-Sight, Eisen was able to see what seemed to be necromantic mana in the wood’s center, although there was some concentrated regular mana in the center of that necromantic mana. And judging from what Eisen could see, what Stahl was currently doing was properly merge the metal plates with the wood using a mixture of transmutation and plant control.
"Hmm, alright, keep going, then..." The old man muttered and gave the wooden hand back to Stahl, who nodded his head with a sigh and then poured his mana into the hand some more, before he started to polish the surface of the alloy that Stahl used for the metal plates, from what Eisen could tell, it was probably partially mythril, steel, and some smaller amounts of different types of metals mixed into it. It seemed to basically just be an alloy that existed for immense defensive capabilities, and Eisen could see that Stahl was folding his mana into the metal as well.
And that reminded Eisen of something else that he wanted to know, "Actually, did you manage to get your element yet?" The old man inquired, but Stahl shook his head with a wry smile, "I’ve been trying to hold off as long as I could... I even had Xenia, Jyuuk and Evalia use different de-buffs on me to slow my Mana-Manipulation growth down as much as possible, but it still reached Level 99 for Rank 1 already... So I should get there pretty soon." Stahl explained, so Eisen just responded with a light chuckle and nodded his head.
"I see, then let me know what happens when you get your element." Eisen suggested, and Stahl smirked in reply, "Will do, but until then, I have something else I wanted to show you... I mean, I’ve been using something that I’m not sure if you’ll be happy with, but either way, I thought it looked pretty cool... I had to change the size a little bit, because the effect for the clothes-growth or shrinking doesn’t apply for Golems apparently, but I think it turned out pretty well." Stahl pointed out and then squatted down in front of a piece of cloth that was laying on the floor, and Eisen could see a humanoid figure underneath that cloth, and curiously watched as he saw the wooden hand snap onto what seemed to be an arm.
"Alright, let’s try this again then." Stahl suggested and pulled the piece of cloth away, revealing a... something.
Eisen really wasn’t sure what it was, because it was a mash-up of so many different things, but after a little while, Eisen was able too see through what was going on at least a little bit.
The base of it was a wooden Mannequin, although it was heavily enchanted to a point where Eisen figured that it would need an immense amount of mana, and Stahl seemed to have somehow gained the Soul Engineering skill without the old man’s knowledge and went ahead and created some Soul Generators, because Eisen was 100% sure that he wasn’t the one that made the ones that were currently inside of that body.
Inside of the Mannequin’s body was a humanoid skeleton, and Eisen really, really had to wonder where Stahl managed to get that on this ship in the middle of the ocean.
But inside of those bones seemed to be something like mana batteries, which were fed by the mana from the Soul-Generators, and even the bones themselves were apparently once more heavily enchanted.
Then, on the outside of the wooden body was a heavily modified version of the suit Eisen made back in Melroe, which was then destroyed in Handor when he ripped his own arm off. For some reason he just didn’t feel the need to repair it any time soon, and just let it lay around somewhere, although he actually somewhat forgot where he left it, and it seemed as if that was what Stahl was talking about when he was saying he wasn’t sure how much Eisen would like that he used it.
But he really didn’t care, he only wore his Leather-Apron and his Wool-Pants lately, after all. Amongst the notifications to the suit were some sections that were exchanged with leather, which Stahl apparently used to hide the fact that he simply sewed the right sleeve back onto the suit as well, and some metallic decoration and armor parts. The areas that were clad in metal plates were really just all the areas that were exposed to the air, although that only included one side of each limb so that movement would be possible later on.
And the thing that stuck out the most to Eisen right now was the fact that there was a hole in the chest that was currently exposed and showing a few parts of the bone-ribcage.
Slowly, Eisen brought along a pitch black sphere, which seemed to be a Golem Core with more twists than a Bop-It. For one, it seemed to be hollow with some kind of liquid inside of it together with what looked to be a simple seed. And then, it also was pitch-black and covered in high amounts of necromantic mana, which made Eisen think that Stahl used necromantic mana-crystals as a base to create this.
Confused and curious, Eisen then simply watched Stahl place the Black Golem Core into the center of the chest, and then poured his mana inside of it. Immediately, the Golem Convulsed and its limbs twisted in unnatural direction, and Eisen could hear very un-nice sounds that were probably not meant to be an actual thing.
But that wasn’t the end of everything. First, Stahl extended his hand forward towrad the Golem-Amalgamation. "Stop, stand upright." Stahl commanded, and the Golem slowly stopped, even if it seemed to not be able to control its body all that well.
Slowly, Stahl stepped forward and closed the buttons of the Suit’s Black Shirt before placing his hand on the dim black light that shone through the shirt. And before Eisen knew it, he could hear something shatter, as the light momentarily disappeared.
For just a moment, it seemed as if the Golem’s body was trying to fall to the ground, but just when that thought popped into Eisen’s head, it properly stood on its two legs again, and stood back up like Stahl commanded it to.
And with a grin on his face, the young, green-haired man then turned around toward his grandfather and smirked without limit. "Yo Gramps, say hi to the newest Limitbreaker on this ship." He said happily, and Eisen raised his eyebrows surprised.
"Oh? Well, what exactly did you do to get there?" Eisen asked curiously, before Stahl just scratched the back of his neck and pointed at the Golem-Thing behind him.
"Didn’t you see all that just now? I thought it was kind of obvious that I made a golem?" He said questioningly, and Eisen sighed deeply, rubbing the top of his Grandson’s way to pet it and to annoy him at the same time.
"Don’t play dumb with me, you know what I’m asking." The old man chuckled, before pointing at the Figure, although Eisen still wasn’t sure what it actually was, because it didn’t seem to be a full Golem at the very least.
"Yeah, I get it, I’m just kidding. Well, basically, I wanted to go forward and create an Overgrown-Golem-Undead." He explained with a grin, and Eisen raised his eyebrow again, before Stahl just sighed deeply and opened the thing’s shirt back up again, revealing a destroyed Golem Core kept together by roots.
"To be exact, it’s called a ’Shattered Undead Golem’. I created a Golem Core using the principles of Necromancy and created an Undead Golem Core that can be placed inside of an Undead’s chest to strengthen it, even if it makes it impossible for it to grow through the Necromancy-Ability that lets your undead level up. Then I filled that Golem Core up with a Growth-Enhancer that I made through a ceremony mixed between Witchcraft, Prayer to my God, and Shamanism so that it would grow in a way that it would break through anything without actually destroying it, and then placed it into the center of the Golem Core as well. Then I activated the wooden Golem-Skeleton mixture with it and made the plant in the center grow with that special Growth-Enhancer. It didn’t work up until now, but then I saw how you managed to connect different items to your golems to make them part of their bodies, so I did the same and never saw any of the things I made as finished, so this was basically a gamble on my part that could have possibly killed us all." Stahl explained with a bright smile, and Eisen just looked at Stahl with a wry smile and shook his head.
"I swear, if I didn’t prefer to keep an eye on you after what you just said, I’d send you back to the mainland together with Koro..." Eisen said with a sigh, but Stahl just shrugged.
"Hey, that last part was a joke. Xenia and Jyuuk helped me out with the Growth-Enhancer and the choice of seed I should use, so there wasn’t really any major danger. The worst that could’ve happened was that the Golem Stopped working because the core was destroyed." Stahl explained, before looking away and scratching his cheek, "... Probably..." He whispered, and Eisen sighed deeply.
"Sigurd." Eisen said and immediately, the figure of the Core Guardian appeared next to the old man, waiting for him to continue speaking. "What exactly is the process of creating a Dungeon Core?" He asked, and Sigurd placed its finger to its chin and thought about it for a moment. "Well, I don’t know exactly, but I’m pretty sure it’s some form of mixture of different types of crystalized energies, such as World or Divine Energy. Why?" It asked, and Eisen just crossed his arms and kept looking at Stahl, who was slowly noticing what Eisen was trying to get it.
"And what exactly would happen if a Dungeon Core broke?" Eisen added, and Sigurd just shrugged its shoulders. "This is theoretical, right? You don’t actually want to try and destroy the Dungeon Core or anything, but are just trying to give an example to this dunce? I mean, destroying Dungeon Cores is impossible as far as I know, but considering that you’re one of the people that made them, it might be possible..." Sigurd said somewhat panicky, and Eisen just chuckled and nodded his head.
"Don’t worry, just theoretical." He explained, and Sigurd then slowly continued. "Well, if you were to somehow make it possible to destroy a Dungeon Core... It would probably release all of the highly concentrated energies which are literally able to control all of matter, space, and time, which would probably end up creating either an explosion large enough to destroy half a continent, or an interdimensional wormhole." Sigurd explained, and Eisen raised his eyebrows once more as he looked at Stahl, who was just scratching his cheek again, with a wry smile, "Right... I’ll try not to go forward with such dangerous experiments anymore..."
"Haha, good. I mean, Xenia and Jyuuk know what they’re doing, so the most what could have happened probably was just what you said, but I’d like it if you were at least aware of what could happen if you mess around with those types of energies." Eisen explained, and then looked to the side at the clock floating in the air. "Anyway, I have to see Xenia in a bit, and I also have to speak to Koro again. Good job, that’s insanely impressive, Stahl." The old man said with a smile and then turned around before making his way to the Dungeon Gate, although a slight thought crept up to his mind as he was walking.
He never used Divine or World energy before, and he had not a single clue to what Dungeon Cores were made of before now, so how did he know that Sigurd could help his point?