Chapter 766: Siren Prince"s Trident
With a satisfied expression, Eisen placed the aquamarine pendant down bracelets and anklets, now grabbing the materials for the most important item that he was going to create for the Siren Prince. The trident, the weapon that it was going to use to fight against the Dungeon Divers. This was what they were most likely going to focus on the most, trying to dodge the close-quarter attacks of the Siren while it was in the center of the boss room.
However, with this item, Eisen faced a certain issue. This trident was supposed to act both as a staff to allow the Siren Prince to focus its magical abilities better, which would show in the form of the water-shots being thrown at the Dungeon Divers. But at the same time, it also needed to be useful as an actual melee weapon for when the Siren Prince was fighting them more closely. However, in order to make the trident useful as a staff, he needed to infuse it with mana, which would make it brittle and not particularly useful as a melee weapon.
He wondered about the best possible way to go about this, trying to come up with some form of inspiration. Eisen started to pace around the room, basically combing his beard with his fingers, before he looked out the door, noticing one of the swords on display for customers. It was leaning against the wall, with its sheat around it. However, the sheath itself was quite special in the way that it acted as a weapon itself. It could be locked properly onto the handle so that it would be nigh impossible to remove the sheath from it without breaking the whole sword in half. Of course it could be removed again, but that wasn"t the point. The sheat could be used as a blunt weapon. Basically, one weapon was layered onto the next.
If Eisen thought about the two aspects of the trident as different objects that were simply co-dependent on one another to function, then this would work. A method that he often used for his enchanting was to fill the engravings in with other materials. This time, Eisen would do something similar, simply placing the staff portion of the trident smoothly into grooves on the surface of its melee portion when needed. Of course, during the regular combat, this would still make the weapon weaker. The staff portion could simply shatter while the Siren Prince was attacking. So, the staff portion would only appear when the boss was inside of the water.
Either way, for now, Eisen could start working. While he was forging away at it, he would be able to figure out the specifics intuitively. As the base, Eisen would just use some steel, although he wanted to use an alloy of silver and steel to coat the outside. Luckily, steel and silver were relatively close together in color anyway, so it wouldn"t be that hard to make it fully appear as such later on.
First, Eisen placed the pure steel into the flames in front of him, waiting for the metal to heat up until it could be worked. Hammering onto it continuosly, Eisen started to elongate the ma.s.s of metal first. Soon, there were two parts to the steel, the part that would become the main body, that large staff, as well as a large lump of steel still hanging off of one of its ends. Eisen soon split that large lump up into three parts, shaping the p.r.o.ngs of the trident. Now that the rough shape was finished, Eisen started the detail-work. Since the s.p.a.ce required to house a proper staff on top of the base trident was quite a lot, the grooves were rather large. In the end, it looked as if the metal spiraled up around the core of the trident, similar to what it looked like when you wrapped rope around a rod, leaving s.p.a.ce for another rope to be wrapped around right next to it. This other "rope" would then later end up being the staff used for spellcasting by the Siren Prince. But for now, Eisen would need something else to fill this s.p.a.ce. For this, he created another spiral, this time without the core, just large enough to smoothly fit this empty s.p.a.ce. With the way that it coiled around the core, it was able to be smoothly flow down. It was actually quite satisfying, the way that it seemed to perfectly fit when pushed into its proper place.
Eisen repeated this same process for each of the trident"s three p.r.o.ngs, creating separate spirals and slots to fit those spirals perfectly. Now, all that Eisen needed to do was create the s.p.a.ces that this spiral and the spiral for the staff would disappear into. In the end, this part was a similar
concept to Kiron"s spatial sheath, which Eisen created for the Giant Greatsword. He would create multiple sub-s.p.a.ces that would fit these spirals perfectly. Once the Siren Prince entered the water, the steel spirals would simply flow into one of these subs.p.a.ces on one end of each section, while on the other end of the section, a subs.p.a.ce would open up, allowing the staff-spiral to flow into the empty s.p.a.ce left behind. And otherwise, these subs.p.a.ces would be completely closed off, allowing the trident to be used as a melee weapon without any sort of concern. It would allow for a smooth transition between the two "modes" as well.
Eisen grabbed some spatial gems, and quickly flattened them to be just large enough for the spirals to pa.s.s through smoothly. He carved some basic enchantments to establish the sub-s.p.a.ce into their surface, and then got to the most important part. The old man poured his mana into the gemstone, and then pulled it back out to begin the magic inscription. Right now, he was able to see the mess of dots floating around the mana in this raw, unordered subs.p.a.ce. Quickly, he arranged these dots to fit the rough shape of the spiral he was making this for, and then poured his mana into said spiral itself. He pulled the mana out of the spiral again as if he was inscribing it next. But instead of doing so, he placed this mana now linked to the spiral right into the center of the mana linked to the spatial gem, linking the two of them together. This way, the subs.p.a.ce contained within the gemstone was now the exact size and shape as the spiral. It would be impossible for it to wiggle around, and could only move out of it exactly how Eisen wanted it to.
Finis.h.i.+ng the magic inscription up, Eisen pushed the spiral into the thin gemstone plate, which was quickly attached to the inside of the trident"s empty s.p.a.ce. Repeating this process a few more times for the other steel spirals that would fit around the trident"s p.r.o.ngs.
By turning the trident upside-down, not having finished the enchantment to decide when the spirals could move in and out of the subs.p.a.ces, he watched the steel spirals appear practically out of nowhere, filling the empty s.p.a.ce. Satisfied, he moved on to make the spirals for the "staff" mode, copying the shape and size of the other spirals, just making them out of pure mana-infused silver instead of steel. Once Eisen completed the subs.p.a.ces for these spirals as well and attached them to the trident, the "switching" technically already worked. By holding the trident upright or upside down, either the staff-spiral or the melee-spiral would be shown. Now, he just had to add everything to make the process happen automatically, not relying on gravity, when the Siren Prince entered water. For this, Eisen pushed the spirals into the subs.p.a.ces and closed them up, starting to enchant the surfaces that the spirals touched. These would move the spirals in and out of the subs.p.a.ces if multiple gemstones on the outside of the item noticed that they were all covered in water at the same time. Of course, it could also be triggered by the wielder at will, but Eisen figured that relying on the automatic option was more reliable when it came to having most Monsters try and use his items. Obviously he didn"t have anything against them, he was a half-monster as well, but a lot of monster species simply worked better when things were more intuitive instead of relying precise logic or timing.
"Huh?" Eisen let out a bit surprised, pulling the carving needle away from the metal laying in front of him, "That... was the first time I thought of myself as a half-monster so naturally..." the old man thought. It didn"t feel weird when he thought about it a bit more, but there was still some discomfort deep inside of his gut when he thought about what these thoughts implied. Trying to move on, he continued carving the enchantments to finish everything up. Once he was sure that the "switching" mechanism worked, he started to carve the specifics onto the actual movable spirals to make them work better for melee or spellcasting purposes. They were just basic enchantments at the end of the day, but they were still an important and central part of the item, so he couldn"t forget about any of it. And so, after filling in the carved enchantments with some aquamarine gemstones, making the trident constantly let off a quite pleasant s.h.i.+ne, he gave the item to one of his mana-doubles and looked at it when someone was holding onto it.
Satisfied with the item he ended up with, Eisen nodded slightly, waiting for the item information to appear in front of him.
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[Siren Prince"s Personal Trident]
[Quality – Perfect][Rank – 6]
[Description] A silver trident created by the G.o.dly Craftsmaster Eisen, made to be the personal weapon of the Dungeon"s Siren Prince. To account for the Siren Prince"s abilities, it is capable of switching between two modes – Melee Combat Mode, and Spellcasting Mode.
[Effect] {Royal Beauty} {Basic Transformation}
[Requirements] {Siren Prince}