Chapter 507: Starting the grind

With a bright smile on his face, Eisen swiftly greeted everyone and then started to explain the situation of what exactly happened on his trip to see the last dragon. Of course, the thing that Eisen was most excited to reveal was his Draconic Demon transformation, and the fact that it brought along his Demonic t.i.tle just like he had hoped it would. And then there was how he had leveled up to get to level 299.

"So you"re ready to get to Level 300 now? I"m just working on my quest to get to Level 200..." Komer pointed out slightly jealously, and the old man just looked at him with a chuckle, "Don"t worry, you"ll get there soon." Eisen pointed out, "Your quest shouldn"t be too tough, right?" 2

"Right, but it"s still pretty annoying, especially when I have to take care of so much paperwork... Seriously, this isn"t what I imagined would happen when I started p-" Komer muttered, although he ripped his eyes wide open and then looked around with a startled, wry smile and soon stuttered, "When I st-started p-p...planning to follow you! That"s it, yeah!"

With a deep sigh, Eisen shook his head and looked down at the young man, "For a merchant, you don"t always have a great way with words, huh?" He asked, and then just looked at the others, "Don"t worry, they all know. They"re aware of the whole "Game" and "Player" thing. Actually, it seems like they know a little more than you do when it comes to this situation." Eisen pointed out, and Komer just stared at the old man confusedly.

"Wait, what? Are they players too? But... heh? I"m confused, just..." Komer mumbled, really unsure how he should be reacting right now, but Eisen just shook his head.

"They"re not players. They"re people of this world." Eisen pointed out, and then placed his hand on Komer"s back for a moment as he led the young man along the hallway, signaling the others to give them a little bit of s.p.a.ce for now.

And so, since n.o.body else seemed to have done so until now, Eisen chose to tell Komer all that he needed to know about what was actually going on in this place. This world, their original world, how both were indubitably real, the same with their inhabitants.

Then there was of course the part with Eisen"s guess of Samuel trying to either heavily injure or even kill the five originals in the world where they were actually capable of dying without a chance of resurrection.

Of course, Komer had a rather tough time believing all this, meaning that he didn"t completely believe it from the beginning, but the more Komer realized that Eisen was actually being serious, the more he was wavering.

Sure, there were some weird things going on, but he never expected it was something like this. Because this was literally just insane instead of just weird. Eisen moved his fingers through his beard and just lightly smiled at Komer as he headed back toward the hallway, "I can understand if you"re hesitant to believe me. But really, I just told you the truth. Fair enough, a truth that not even I fully understand, but a truth nonetheless. We"ll be able to explain it to you some more rather soon, I"m sure."

And with those words, Eisen made his way back into the room that was supposed to be his own workshop in this building, and then took a look at the wall covered with numerous different materials prepared by Komer beforehand.

With a smile, Eisen swiftly grabbed a couple of literally random gems, crystals, metals, and even some bones and scales from different monsters and sat down in his works.p.a.ce while surrounded by the others, who were curiously trying to see what Eisen was about to do with these.

Once the old man had prepared everything and sorted them into rather weird groups. Basically, he had each material on its own, as well as each material combined with any one other material grouped up, and then looked over at Caria with a smile on his face.

"Alright then, Caria, can you give me five different types of seeds? I think what would be good would be Rose, Apple, Melon, and then some hazelnuts and seeds for any berry-bush that you may have?" Eisen asked her, and with a bright smile and quick nod, Caria pushed her hand into the small spatial pouch that she had with her at all times. Even she couldn"t grow things from nothing, after all.

She swiftly produced four of the five types of seeds, but it seemed like she didn"t have any hazelnuts at the moment, although Komer slightly grumbled and turned around, saying that there should be some in Jyuuk"s room. He was seemingly quite curious about what Eisen was going to try doing, so he hurried up and tried to go get them immediately, even if he was still trying to cope with what exactly he was just told. 2

Either way, first, Eisen prepared the base materials properly. For one, he tried to "merge" the material-groups together, even if he didn"t directly merge them and just roughly attached them to each other so that you couldn"t easily pull them apart. And then, Eisen split up each material and material-group into five smaller pieces, and then slowly grabbed one of the Rose seeds as well as the small chunks of regular mana crystals.

And now, as if he was combining two crystals with each other, Eisen split his mana up into two "types" and pushed one type into the seed while the other went into the mana crystal, before slowly merging them together.

The now crystal-seed was placed to the side while the others looked at it rather curiously. "What is it, exactly?" Sky asked curiously, and Eisen just lightly smiled, "Well, relatively soon, that"s going to grow into a mana-crystal rose." Eisen explained with a smile on his face, and then looked over toward Sigurd, who was also curiously watching the old man work.

"Can you plant this in that hidden s.p.a.ce we"ve made on one of the forest Floors?" Eisen asked with a smile. There was the "Bedroom" inside of the dungeon that Eisen and the others were frequently using on their travels lately, and right next to that, Eisen and Sigurd started building another s.p.a.ce directly adjacent to that which Eisen wanted to use to experiment with the material-growth skill.

With a quick, playful salute, Sigurd grabbed the crystal-seed and disappeared inside of the dungeon before coming back a few moments later, at which point Eisen had prepared the next rose seed. And then the next, and then the next, and all that happened at first was Eisen continuosly creating more seeds out of the materials so that Sigurd could plant them properly.

And while he was working, Eisen soon found that he was sadly unable to create seeds out of the bones and scales just yet. It seemed like this kind of thing had to wait a bit longer. So instead, Eisen chose to just continue making seeds out of the numerous material combinations that he had there.

Or at least that"s what he was planning, but even then, he wasn"t able to actually go through with it. With a deep grumble, Eisen looked down at the ground and asked Sigurd to store these materials somewhere for later. "I hate Rank 0 skills." The old man grumbled, and then started working on something else as well, although it was something that everyone seemingly thought to be quite weird.

Because what Eisen was doing now was just combining two different types of crystal with each other before splitting them back up. And that was all that Eisen was doing while seemingly trying to think.

"Erm, what are you doing right there?" Morgus asked with a slight frown, and Eisen looked at the Black Half-Dragon with a smile and quickly explained, "This is the skill I got from the last of the five Dragons I visited. It"s the Extraction skill, so now I can split items I"ve put together back up." The old man pointed out, and then looked at the crystal in his hand.

The process of splitting something up was actually quite similar to the process of putting two materials together. In the latter, you had to split your mana into two parts, push either part into the one material, and the other into the other material, and then you just had to bring the two types of mana together again.

If you wanted to extract something, you had to split off part of your mana from the mana inside of a material made of different parts. For example, with these crystals, Eisen would think of his regular mana inside of it as the whole combined crystal. But he would make himself aware that they were two different types of mana, each belonging to either of the materials, and then he would pull one of the types of mana out of his regular mana.

And like that, Eisen was able to relatively quickly and easily get this done. Thinking that this would be a relatively easy way to practice and bring the extraction skill to Rank 1 for now, the old man just kept going while receiving some other information from everyone.

For example, information on how the mall was going, how many people were currently traveling to the islands, and of course what kind of items Eisen could be making for the mall. He had to quite literally work non-stop for a few days, or even weeks, anyway. So he wanted to at least use that time to work on something useful.

For his leatherworking and tailoring skills, Eisen already had a few good ideas, like just making a ma.s.s amount of clothes, bags and shoes, but when it came to different weapons, Eisen was a slight bit more hesitant, because weapons were something that was needed the most. He didn"t want to waste his time making 100 swords if only ten were needed, and the shops instead required 90 more s.h.i.+elds. 1

Since pretty clothes and bags were a luxury, that was another deal of course, so Eisen didn"t mind making too much of one since they would most likely end up being sold rather soon anyway.

So, Eisen was swiftly told that he would be getting a list about everything that might be needed at the shops in a bit, and so, the old man chose to get started on the items that he knew would be needed first.

With a crack of his knuckles, Eisen pulled out his hammer from his ap.r.o.n and looked at it with a smile, excited to see it get to the point where Eisen could bring it to Rank 5 soon.