Chapter 835: Crush and Grind

Eisen waited until the bra.s.s got hot enough, and then picked it up to place it onto his anvil. With Bai in their hammer form, he started hammering the metal down and elongating it into thin rods. Once he got the thickness he wanted, Eisen split the rods up into the needed length and picked them up with his hands.

With the help of his dwarven racial skill, he was able to get a lot closer to some of his creations, which he really enjoyed quite a lot. Just bending the hot metal with his bare hands was somehow a satisfying experience, and he was even able to directly feel if there were any issues with the metal or if any cracks formed where he normally wouldn"t be able to see it.

He bent the thin rods into the shape of a buckle, making sure to connect the two ends smoothly. Since he was holding it in his hands, and the metal was still incredibly hot, he was able to connect it together like he would two pieces of clay.

Once the outer ring of the buckles were done, Eisen quickly continued to make a few thinner rods that he would add onto the base buckles; the parts that would be pushed through the holes in the leather to actually make everything hold in place at the tightness you needed.

They were attached together once more by just bending these tinner rods around the correct parts of the buckle. Once these parts had cooled down, Eisen swiftly attached them to the backpack. And now, the backpack itself had been finished.

Though, he still didn"t acknowledge it as such, since there was still one more step for him here, but he would do that at the end once he completed all the items for the giant traveller.

The next thing that he was going to make was a set of potions. Two larger bottles, and then a number of smaller vials. The larger bottles and a third of the vials would hold health potions, while the rest of the vials were going to hold mana potions.

Of course, in the end, there would only be small, coagulated puddles of these potions left, overcome by rot as the potion bottles and vials were cracked or even shattered altogether.

First, Eisen got started on the bottles, as they had to cool down while Eisen worked on the potions. Basically the entire stockpile that he had with him for this journey had been used up during the reconstruction of the city, as Eisen handed out potions to whoever needed them.

And of course, during the actual collapse of the city, he had used up a ton of his mana potion stockpile, so he would have to make some new ones anyway, just in case. Though, in the storage rooms in Asgards, there were still a lot of stored potions, so he wouldn"t need to worry too much.

Either way, the first thing that Eisen did was prepare the materials for the gla.s.s. It was just his general, basic recipe, though. Silica, limestone, and sodium carbonate, as well as a few additives like ground-down mana crystals to just help everything keep its shape more, which was needed due to the giant scale that Eisen was working at.

He mixed the materials together under supply of constant heat. Since it was basically an ocean of molten gla.s.s, he had to use trans.m.u.tation to make sure that the materials were properly mixed together as well.

Bai turned into a blowpipe, and he held the tip into the molten gla.s.s to pick up a glob of it. As he started twisting the pipe to make sure that the gla.s.s didn"t fall to the ground, he approached his gla.s.sblowing furnace, starting to blow into the pipe. A bubble formed in the center of the glob of gla.s.s.

Whenever the gla.s.s cooled down too much, Eisen held it back into the furnace to get it back up to the heat he wanted.

Before long, Eisen had finished the first of the two larger bottles. It was a simple shape; a round body and a cylindrical neck. It was one of the more common shapes that potion bottles had. It was simple and recognizable, though the potions sold through Starlight had some more intricately designed bottles.

Since they were blown into molds anyway, it was fairly easy to do without adding much more cost, and it would make the potions a bit more appealing as "high cla.s.s" items despite not being priced particularly higher than other potions.

According to Komer, the potions were selling better by the day, especially as the levels of the artificials rose and they started fighting against more dangerous monsters in the central continent.

Eisen placed the bottle into the annealer, and quickly continued working on the next bottle. The vials followed soon after as well, and were really just small, cylindrical tubes for the potions. And as the gla.s.s bottles cooled down, the old man would start working on the actual potions that would go into them.

He got out some different herbs, roots, and gemstones, and placed them down onto his work surface. First, he would prep all the different materials for the health potions. The gemstones would be ground down, the herbs chopped and then crushed, and the roots would be minced. Instead of just grinding it all down, for these particular materials, it was better to treat them this way for a better quality.

Though frankly, Eisen did feel a bit bad that he was going to waste a large amount of these materials, but there was a good reason as to why he wasn"t just planning to create barely enough for the final "scene" to work. The potions, as the bottles broke, would soak into not only the ground, but also part of the cloth and notes scattered around.

Eisen wanted to make the scene really seem alive, as though someone had to abandon his things to be able to run for their life.

And, since potions sometimes had certain effects on plants, at least that"s what Jyuuk had explained to him, he wanted to plant a few specific growths in the area around the backpack, as though the backpack and its contents affected its surroundings as much as the forest and time affected the items.

But for now, he had to finish the potions in the first place. Eisen threw the minced roots into a pot, basically cooking them to make the juices properly flow out. Meanwhile, he mixed the ground crystals with the crushed herbs, letting the crystal powder pull liquid from the herbs.

He reduced down the liquid that came from the roots to the point it was basically a syrup, and then strained the liquid into another container. To that liquid, he added the crystal powder, that had the chunks of crushed herb sifted out, and mixed the two together under a bit of additional heat.

And then, Eisen added more water to the mixture, letting everything dissolve into the water; even though he only just removed the water from the roots" liquids, this process was simply important to improve the quality of the final product.

The old man then let the water evaporate and caught the distilled liquid in another container. That liquid was then mixed with other herbs, which had been dried and ground up, resulting in a deep, almost blood-like red potion.

Xenia had told Eisen about this potion recipe, and from what he could tell, it really did boost the efficacy of the potion a lot more compared to the more basic recipes that Eisen sometimes employed. It was a bit more complex, but Eisen did wonder of he could improve the automated potion-making machines that Starlight made use of so that they could employ these steps.

If he could do that, then it would definitely add a lot more options to the potion shops" a.s.sortment.

The old man set the health potion aside, and quickly got started on the mana potion. For this one, he had to use the juices from a certain berry, distill those juices, and then use the resulting clear liquid as a base for the infusion of the other materials.

Soon, both of the potions were done, and Eisen got the cooled-down gla.s.s bottles out of the annealer. With a simple funnel, Eisen poured the liquids into their respective containers, and then pressed a cork into them to keep them closed properly. He placed the potions into the backpack into the places where they would naturally be, and then continued on.

There were still a lot of other items that he needed to make for this, but it wouldn"t take him too long.

They were just a few small knives, things like cutlery, a notebook, a pen, a pot of ink, some spare clothes, and an a.s.sortment of long-lasting rations. He should be able to get this done by tonight, he was sure.

To first get work out of the way where Eisen needed to work with heat, just to put a bit of an order into the process, Eisen placed some ingots of steel into the heat of his forge, waiting until they reached a heat that he could properly work with.

"To think this is just the start of it," Eisen smiled lightly. He was actually quite excited to work on this project. He had to make a lot of random, small objects and place them throughout these dungeon floors. Things that he could instill with meaning for himself, meaning that the dungeon explorers might never be able to fully understand.

But to Eisen, just the backpack and potions were already something deeply meaningful.