Chapter 823: Mountain Quarry

Eisen finally found a good spot. The wall was already fairly flat, so he didn"t have to remove much from the front. He stretched his hand out forward and placed it onto the wall, moving his mana into the stone. Using his mana, he created a large cube, concentrating the mana around the edges, using trans.m.u.tation to heavily weaken the stone there.

And then, after turning his ego-tool Bai into a large chisel and hammer, as large as the tool could turn itself on top of the ma.s.sive size that Eisen was already currently at, he placed the chisel against the front of the stone wall. After placing the chisel against the first weakened edge, he struck it with his hammer once.

A deep crack shot through the stone along the parts weakened through trans.m.u.tation. In the end, Eisen could just cut the stone out with trans.m.u.tation completely, but if he did it like this, then the material rating of the stone would be improved. The fact that it took a little longer to prepare was made up for incredibly by the improved strength of the stone.

At the same time, the quality and effect of the final statue would be increased if the material rating was higher as well, so it was worth the time sacrifice. Not to mention, it would take a while for the stones to arrive at their destination anyway.

Eisen hammered the chisel into the weakened edges all around until the stone had been disconnected well enough. Since the large stone cube was now loose, Eisen pressed the first golem core against the center of the front-facing surface. Once the core was activated, mana quickly spread throughout the cube and cracks formed throughout it again.

The cube compressed itself just so slightly, to about 80% of its original size, to ensure that the stone wouldn"t be damaged throughout the transport somehow, and then turned into a roughly humanoid shape. That meant that it still had a cuboid body and limbs, and it was simply "folded out" from the cube to the point where was able to move on its own.

And then, the golem quickly started its descend from the mountain to move over to its new home. It would take quite a while for it to arrive there, but that wasn"t a big issue in the end. Once the first golem arrived there, it wouldn"t take long for the next to reach its destination either. At that point, the distance from the mountain to the statue"s location would become irrelevant.

Not that the golem was moving particularly slow either; it was practically a giant even larger than Eisen himself that was sprinting through the mountains tirelessly for about an hour. Once there, the supervisor system would take over and tell the golem where exactly it had to go as it turned back into a cube.

There, the bird golems would pick up the golem core and return it to Eisen to be reused for another cube.

And the rest of the process was just repet.i.tion. Eisen would weaken the edges of the cube with trans.m.u.tation, and then actually shape it with the chisel and hammer, before placing the golem core onto it, and then repeat.

Of course, since Eisen hadn"t started with a perfectly smooth surface, and because there were a lot of pockets of dirt, air, or simply stone too weak to be properly used, he ended up with a lot of materials that he couldn"t use for this either. Those were just fused and compressed into smaller cubes, split up into their materials, that Silber was moving over to another location.

Depending on the actual materials, they would be used for the reconstruction efforts of the city"s buildings themselves.

Before long, Eisen had gotten into a decent rythm. Once a couple hours had pa.s.sed, Parc and Rouge had also woken up, and got to work creating more golem cores by mixing the correct crystals together, and then applying the enchantments using the patterns that Eisen had created beforehand. That was how Eisen was able to reduce the "gap" that was ever-approaching more and more.

That gap was simply the time between the departure of the last golem core that Eisen currently had on him, and the return of the first that he sent off. He did want that short "gap", but he wanted at most a thirty minute break so that he could take a quick breather and prolong the period of time that he was able to work over the next couple of days.

Like this, Eisen worked straight for four hours, then took a thirty minute break, and then continued working for four hours, repeating this same pattern as long as he possibly could. Stone after stone, golem after golem, Eisen did the same thing again and again.

And it wasn"t even just him working on his own; he had duplicates beside him that were working tirelessly, but even they were unsummoned during each of those thirty minute breaks so that Eisen could let his mana recover a bit. After practically melting his internal organs by overusing ma.s.sive amounts of mana, he didn"t want to overdo it.

Since that was a special case, and even Xenia didn"t have any knowledge about such cases in detail, Eisen figured he should be careful just in case. Especially if the overuse of his mana was the thing that caused that broken skill to appear.

After about two days of nonstop work, Eisen sat down for his next break. At this point, the thirty minute breaks had been reached, so there wasn"t any need for Parc and Rouge to create more golem cores.

Instead, they were supporting the reconstruction of the city; since all survivors and deceased had been recovered through the other originals at this point, the reconstruction had started taking priority. Parc and Rouge were taking part in preparing the materials, making tools for the volunteers, and of course preparing food for the people who had lost their homes.

As much as Eisen hated to say it, but this was probably the best situation for those two to gain a lot of experience. Not only was their knowledge and practical skill increasing by the hour, but their actual system-skill experience was rising as well.

Making practice items was one thing, but making tools and random little objects that were needed here and there, that would be used immediately after their creation, while also allowing them to observe the use of those items... this was absolutely invaluable for those two.

But even so, Eisen of course wished that they had never gotten this opportunity, as it was one that could only be gained through immense tragedy like this.

He let out a deep breath, rubbing the sweat from his forehead. Eisen didn"t know why, but this work felt... different than it usually did. And that didn"t mean in some intangible sense because of the pressure this work put on him, but it simply felt actively different to work right now.

His body felt more like his own, as though he was able to feel the wind and dust brustle up against the smallest hairs on his arms. Eisen"s muscles felt tenser, more tired. He felt a burn that he hadn"t felt in his arms in this world so far. It was akin to when Eisen"s synchronization with his past increased, and he began feeling true pain in this world.

At that time, his body felt much more alive; much more his own. And now, things weren"t any different. Frankly, Eisen knew why. There was no way he wouldn"t. After all, that feeling had grown alongside that broken new skill of his.

While he couldn"t see exactly when it leveled up, since that window simply wouldn"t change or disappear anymore, Eisen had weirdly developed another sense for it. When this skill leveled up, he started to just sort of know. He even had a rough idea where it was at right now, in the low to mid 40"s. And he also knew that this skill was only at Rank 0.

If the effects of that skill were this intense right now... Eisen didn"t want to know what would happen once it ranked up. But he couldn"t stop it anymore. He had to continue; clearly, the condition for it to level up was for him to do practically anything. Using his skills or abilities.

And right now, he couldn"t afford not to do so, even if it caused some potentially irreversible changes to his ability to control his body and skills.

"How far along are we?" Silber walked up to Eisen. The old man let out a sigh, turning around. A large chunk of the mountain had been removed over these past two days, but even so... "Maybe a fifth of the way? A little more, I guess. At this rate, the pillar"s base will be completed in about a week.

That is, if we manage to keep this speed up."

Silber looked at Eisen concerned, "Will you be fine? You said your skills and stats were reset... with your endurance right now, I doubt you can last that long... right?"

Eisen scoffed, "Who do you think you"re talking to?" he asked, before looking to his side at the clock that he has set up for himself through the system, "But you don"t need to worry. I"ll be taking a short break in a second anyway," he explained. It was time for the meeting with the other originals on earth.

He didn"t like it, but he figured taking a longer break every two days wasn"t a horrible idea either.