Chapter 490: Fourth Trial

After pulling out his Mult.i.tool, Eisen swiftly turned it into its pickaxe form as he looked at the fruit in front of him.

Just like this tree was simply overly giant, these fruits were as well. And Eisen wasn"t entirely sure what kind of fruit it was either, at least he didn"t recognize it like this. It was still completely made up of crystal structures, however. On the outside, it had an emerald-like layer, and the center had some ruby spheres scattered inside of it. It was similar to pomegranate, just that the actual "seeds" were apple-sized and that it was green instead of red.

Thinking that he could surely make something nice with this, Eisen swung the pickaxe at the stem a couple of times and caused the pomegranate-like fruit to drop down. And with a loud thump, it soon reached the ground again.

And so, Eisen moved on to the next fruit. It was very similar to the one before, just that the crystal structures it was made of were different. It had a ruby sh.e.l.l and sapphire seeds. Once more, Eisen made this drop down.

In general, Eisen tried to get one of each possible combination of gems to drop down onto the ground, and then simply jumped back down, catching his fall with his large wings. After reaching the ground again, Eisen swiftly started gathering the fruit up, swiftly splitting them open.

When he did so with the first one, he soon encountered a thick liquid that gushed out toward him the moment that an opening formed. "Erm... What"s this?" Sal asked curiously as he leaned forward toward the split-up fruit, putting his finger into the liquid to give it a taste before opening his eyes wide.

"It"s really good!" He exclaimed, and Eisen slowly raised his brows as he scooped up some of the liquid with his hands, "Hmm... It seems to be just regular fruit-juice..." Eisen muttered quietly and swiftly tried a gulp of it, immediately agreeing with Sal on the taste, and then swiftly created some crystal cups to give everyone a taste of it while Eisen taste-tested the crystal seeds.

"What does it taste like?" Fluke asked curiously, and Eisen smiled lightly in response as he nodded his head with satisfaction, "I thought it would be pretty citrusy, but it"s really just sweet. The consistency is apple-like, but the taste is more like that of a berry." He explained, "I think I can make something interesting with this for sure."

"So you really want to cook something for Cracton?" Caria asked, before Eisen just smirked in response, "Something like that, yeah." He replied with a chuckle, and then slowly turned over toward the pile of fruit and berries that Melissa"s bees had already collected, slowly nodding his head.

"That should be enough, Melissa. Thanks." The old man said, "Let"s get all of this down into the cave already. I"ll try and fell some trees for now." He pointed out, swiftly turning his multi-tool into its axe-mode as he increased his size to the maximum and activated his demonic transformation tuned toward the Yang form to empower the multi-tool a little. 4

And so, Eisen stepped up in front of the first tree that seemed to be one of those with that marble-like rock in the center, and just swung the axe into its side. Now that he actually tried this out, he noticed that weirdly enough, both the pickaxe and axe worked similarly well when trying to fell this kind of tree. Something that he weirdly appreciated.

Once the first tree was felled, Eisen moved on to the next, and then the next, and then the next, splitting each tree up so that he would only have the actual log to work with while placing the sticks and metallic leaves to the side.

And once he held one of the smaller branches in his hand, he tried out something he was curious about. With as hot a flame as he could create just on the surface of his hand, he tried to burn the wood up. To his surprise, it seemed like it actually worked just like Eisen wanted it to and soon lit on fire, although parts of it were also heating up in the same way that he would expect it from that ore-like material.

"Interesting." He muttered quietly to himself before he put the fire out and swiftly started carrying the heavy rock-logs down into the cave, just stacking them up on each other, before he went back outside.

There was one more material that he wanted to get. With a focused eye, Eisen stepped around the giant tree in front of him and searched for the right place to start, and then soon found a spot where there was a rather thick split in the bark.

Thinking that this was the perfect spot, Eisen jumped up there and slammed his axe into the bark while wedging his feet inbetween the already-existent split, and started to carve out some of the bark so that he could pull it back. It took him a little while, but soon, Eisen managed to actually cut into the bark enough so that he could pull away a large square piece of it.

It was high-density ore, so of course, he would try and make something out of it, there was no question about that.

Either way, now that he had all of this, Eisen stepped back into the cave and started preparing everything he needed to do before actually starting to craft, and then turned over toward the Dragon nervously waiting behind him.

"Well then, I think I"m ready to get started. So? Are you gonna leave?" Eisen asked, and with a slight sigh, Cracton nodded his head, "Of course. But I hope everything will be worth it..."

"Don"t worry, it will. Oh, and don"t be surprised, but I"ll probably need to go outside a couple more times. And the bees will be flying out and in the whole time as well."

"Just please, start already..." Cracton complained and nervously started stepping outside toward the light and then just sat there outside in some shade. 1

And while Fluke couldn"t actually help Eisen with this, he could at the very least spectate at little, "So, you"re going to make a snack out of wood? Rock-Wood?" He inquired, and with a light chuckle, Eisen immediately shook his head.

"No, no, I"m not starting with that yet. I"m first making something to get rid of this whole mess right here. Sky would kill Cracton if he saw this..." The old man pointed out, looking toward the mountain of books simply thrown on top of each other, and then turned toward the logs, and swiftly started stripping them of their bark to get just the raw wood of all of them, which in itself already took a couple hours due to the sheer amount and size of the trees.

Once that part of it was done, the next was rather obvious as well. Eisen simply turned all those logs into as many planks as he could. But of course, since the log was round, there were some sc.r.a.ps left over, which Eisen swiftly just placed to the side, since he would be using it for something later.

This monotonous task of creating the nice, marble-colored planks with a wood-texture was done rather soon luckily, and once Eisen was done with that, he could move on to the next step. Although at that point, Fluke noticed something.

"Couldn"t you have done all this outside?" He asked with a slight frown, and the old man immediately nodded his head, "Obviously."

"Then why didn"t you? And instead asked Cracton to leave?" The warforged inquired, and Eisen just smirked, "To get him to go outside, obviously." Eisen pointed out as he started stacking up all the wood-sc.r.a.ps and placing them tightly into a box created with Eisen"s element.

"Huh..." Fluke muttered quietly, unsure how he should react considering Cracton"s strength, but Eisen just kept whistling a bit. After he placed all the wood-sc.r.a.ps into the box, Eisen closed the box up at the top with the exception of a thin open tube facing upward and then started to heat up the interior of the box as much as he could to turn this wood into a type of charcoal.

And while this was happening to that wood, he started working with all of the nuts and fruits that the bees collected for him. That included, for example, removing the sh.e.l.ls from nuts like peanuts or walnuts, and removing the seeds from the fruit.

Since this was all supposed to be for a dragon-sized snack... He needed a fair amount of it. This took him a few hours in itself. Luckily he had some helpers to a.s.sist him in sorting everything out and getting rid of the sc.r.a.ps or seeds he didn"t need. Or rather, "getting rid" meant "placing to the side" in this situation, since all of them were still valuable metal or crystal materials.

And then, Eisen simply started to roast the large number of nuts so that he could use them later.

Soon, the special charcoal was finished, and Eisen took a look inside of the box, seeing really just a single large chunk of it. It was like a weird mix between charcoal and molten rock, but Eisen was sure that it would end up working out properly once he tried it out.

The next step was to extract the metal from the large chunk of bark that he removed from the tree, for which Eisen swiftly ground down all of that special charcoal as well as some limestone-like material that he encountered in this forest as well, which luckily had literally everything that he could ever dream of material-wise.

After grinding down the bark as well and removing any of the obvious dirt and rock chunks that didn"t have anything important in them, Eisen heated everything up together and started the extraction process of the metal. 1

The resulting metal was really rather interesting. While it obviously acted completely like metal, for the most part, it was only a fraction of its regular weight and was far more flexible as well. It had great tensile strength, really. It was the perfect material for what Eisen wanted to turn it into.

And seeing what Eisen was turning them into made Fluke react rather disappointedly, "You just went through all of that work, only to turn that metal into nails and... what are those, screw-caps for jars?"

"Exactly, yeah."

"And why would you do that?" Fluke asked with a wry smile, and the old man sighed deeply in response, "Because it"s easier than making glue that can hold wood nearly as heavy as rock together. I"m making a bookshelf for a Dragon, obviously it needs to be stable. And the screw-caps are to make the snack I"m making last longer."