Chapter 340 - Aluminum Arrows
"Good morning, you five." Eisen said with a chuckle, and they all slowly raised their heads toward him, happy to see that he was alright again.
"Eisen!" Caria exclaimed and immediately stood up on Eisen’s lap to hug his face, while Melissa hugged his chest and Sal climbed up his shoulder to snuggle against the side of his face, while Sigurd swiftly disappeared and re-appeared standing on the ground with its arms behind its back.
"That was a true shock yesterday, I have to admit." Sigurd pointed out, and Fafnir just stretched for a few moments before jumping off of Eisen’s lap, sitting down on the floor while waddling his tail around.
"I know, I know, sorry that you all had to see something like that twice in a day." Eisen apologized before scooping his three monsters up in his arms so that he could stand up properly, and then set them down on the floor. "So, I’ll have to finish up Ranger’s body now, then I’ll activate him and send him to train with Brody.... Then I’ll head to the control center to see how close we are near the Islands, and use the remainder of the time to work on a handful of items...There should probably still be some time though, so while the workers are preparing for when we reach the islands, I’ll just spend a little more time with all of you. How’s that sound?" Eisen suggested with a smile on his face as he looked at his monsters, including Sigurd and Fafnir, with a smile, and the five of them seemed rather happy about that as well.
And so, Eisen swiftly turned to Fafnir, "Can you open the gate?" He asked the small dark-red dragon, who just turned away with a yawn and slowly began to walk, before jumping into the air to make the gate appear.
"Thanks, bud." The old man chuckled and then stepped toward the door, opening it with a smile, before heading over toward the area where all of his things were currently laying, immediately making his way to the infusion capsules that were enhancing the sensory organs.
To his luck, it seemed to be possible to infuse different materials inside of an item together as long as the item wasn’t seen as finished just yet, so the old man was able to just place the two already-finished eyes into their ’Telescope’ infusion capsule.
And when Eisen deactivated the infusion and grabbed the two small spheres out of it, he was relatively surprised to see that the Green and Blue central-heterochromic eyes, meaning that there were two different colors within a single iris, had changed a little bit. Not by much, but the milky-white crystal eye had turned slightly transparent now, and it was giving off a slight glitter. On top of that, just by seeing through the transparent areas, Eisen noticed that what was beyond those areas was just so sligtly larger than it was supposed to be, which showed Eisen that it seemed to have worked.
And so, with a bright smile on his face, Eisen brought the eyes and the ear- and nose-pieces over toward Ranger, slowly setting them where they were supposed to go, before adding the Golem Core into the center of Ranger’s chest. And then, all that Eisen did was activate the Golem Core, before Ranger’s body swiftly reacted.
"Alright, good." The old man chuckled to himself and pulled Ranger’s information-window up as he began to instruct the golem on how to enter ’Combat’ and ’Default’ mode, the biggest difference being that all of the enchantments would need to be deactivated and his fore-forearms had to retract into his forearms.
"And now, let’s test this out, shall we?" The old man muttered to himself after confirming that Ranger was also a ’Great Golem’s Reincarnation’ and grabbed one of the very simple spear-arrows that he created yesterday to test the bow out and handed it to the Golem.
"Xenia said that they already knew how to handle everything pretty well, so... Ranger, enter Combat mode and shoot this arrow against the opposing corner." Eisen commanded, and immediately, the enchantments on Ranger’s body activated before the bow became cloaked in wind, while only a specific string ’popped’ up out of it, which was the largest of the three Eisen added into the bow.
Carefully, Ranger set the large wooden spear-like arrow onto the bow and then pulled on the string as far as he could manage, bending the spring-steel of the bow like it was nothing, before simply letting go of the string.
And before Eisen knew it, the water-covered giant arrow shot toward the other side of the room and crashed into the indestructible wall of the dungeon, immediately shattering the arrow on impact.
It flew so quickly that Eisen had a bit of trouble actually keeping up, but in the end, it was indisputable that it did fly. And Eisen was more than just ecstatic about it.
"Perfect! The bow actually properly works!" Eisen exclaimed as he looked at Ranger and told him to enter ’Default’ mode again, and just when he did, a certain Demon-Orc came sprinting over toward him.
"Wait, what the hell was that just now?" Brody asked confused, trying to figure out what that giant bent-metal-staff was, before remembering the designs. "That wasn’t an arrow, was it? Like, a Giant Ass arrow?" He inquired with a wry smile, but Eisen just nodded his head with a chuckle.
"It is, actually. I made a handful more for training. They’re just made of cheap wood as well, so don’t worry about them breaking either. You are going to train him, right?" Eisen asked with a smile, and Brody just began to grin broadly before grabbing Ranger by the shoulder, starting to pull him toward the dungeon gate, which Eisen took as more than enough of an answer.
"Alright, the arrows don’t necessarily need to be that high quality as long as they’re sturdy enough to survive the impact. The tips are the most important thing, really, although that’s just in terms of enchanting... Sigurd, can you create four more Blacksmith-Kobolds and send them out here together with the Original Blacksmith Kobold?" Eisen asked with a smile, and before he knew it, Sigurd appeared next to him together with a door next to it. Immediately the door opened up and five Black-Furred Kobolds stepped out before Eisen summoned his Staff and quickly created five different workstations for them, although he still wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted them to make in what way exactly.
"So... The best materials for arrows are light and strong, aren’t they..? I don’t have that much Mythril left to waste it on arrows that might be lost... Steel is too heavy for an arrow... Folding Mana into it already makes it a lot lighter as far as I can see, so maybe it would be possible to work on that concept even more?" Eisen muttered to himself before stepping back over to the different infusers, grabbing specifically the infuser that he made for the Air Element.
"Hmm... Sigurd, is Xenia awake?" Eisen asked, and a few moments later, Sigurd appeared next to the old man and nodded its head. "Just barely so, but yes. Want me to call her inside?" It asked, and the old man nodded silently while trying to figure out a good method to work with this Air-Elemental Mana. And soon enough, Xenia came up to him after entering the Dungeon, so Eisen quickly turned to her, asking what he wanted to know immediately.
"Do you know if it’s possible to manipulate mana that isn’t yours?" He asked, and Xenia looked back at him confused. "Erm, you can’t directly manipulate it like your own, but you can ’Lead’ it along by using the same principles as transmutation. Why exactly are you asking?" She inquired, and Eisen began to explain what exactly he wanted to do, and Xenia looked at him with her arms crossed.
"Well, can’t you just infuse some metal with the Air element then? That should make it pretty light, right?" She asked, and Eisen nodded his head with a light sigh.
"Yeah, but Magic Metals are very brittle. The only one that can be used for physical means is something like Mythril, but that’s just because it reduces direct impact onto itself. But even then, room-temperature mythril will shatter when you try to bend it with your hands instead of actually bending. So if I use a regular magic metal infused with an element that makes things lighter but physically weaker, I can’t even be sure that it won’t shatter before actually hitting the Target." Eisen explained to her, so Xenia slowly nodded her head, finally understanding the actual issue.
"I mean, we have a little bit of Aluminum, and it’s not a horrible material for arrows either... But we don’t have that much of it so I would like to try to avoid having to use it up. Although we didn’t have to use it all that much until now, so maybe it’s going to be fine?" Eisen muttered to himself, before turning back to Xenia.
"Thanks, I’ll try to use the method you told me to fold Air-Mana into some Aluminum. I’ll let you know how well it works. Oh, and by the way, did anything happen with my Arm last night?" The old man asked, before the High-Elf slowly nodded her head and began to grin.
"Yup! The change seems to have started and it’s going through a similar proccess of natural transformation as your other arm back then, so we probably just have to wait a little while now." She explained, and Eisen nodded his head with a smile before nudging his own head toward the exit.
"I’ll be headed to the Material Storage now, want to tag along on your way to your research room?" Eisen asked her, so Xenia just kind of shrugged and chose to follow Eisen in the end as the old man went to retrieve some of the aluminum that they had laying around. It might be just enough to a set of 20 arrows of each size, but in that situation Eisen would be using up each and every last bit of Aluminum, which made him hope that he was able to find some of it on the islands. After all, he wanted to work on a few projects using Aluminum in the near future.
After retrieving the metal, Eisen brought it back to the Dungeon and then gave some of each to the different Kobolds, letting one of them work on the bodies for the smallest arrows, two of them for the medium arrows, and the other two, including the Original Blacksmithing Kobold, as well as Eisen himself, work on the bodies for the largest arrows.
And so, after throwing the metal into the forge, Eisen quickly got to work once he waited for the metal to heat up, although he wasn’t letting the Kobolds work just yet, because they wouldn’t be able to fold the air-mana into the metal.
Instead, Eisen prepared different pieces of Aluminum for them, splitting the different ingots up into sizes where one ingot of each size could be turned into one arrow of each size.
Slowly, Eisen took some of the metal and placed the mana-infuser next to his ’Anvil’, letting the Air-Mana just cover the whole area, while Eisen tried to use this chance to just push the elemental mana against the aluminum, trying to get it to stick to the surface, before beginning to fold it in order to get the air-mana to stay in the aluminum.