Chapter 874: Watchmaking (2)

Eisen grabbed the small crucible, pouring the liquid hot steel into the moulds. It didn"t take them all too long to cool down either, as the moulds had been specifically enchanted to speed up the process. That meant that Eisen could grab the small parts very quickly, starting to detach the gears, plates, and springs from it.

He sorted all the pieces into a smaller, segmented box depending on the specific size and shape of piece, like how many teeth the gears had or how strong the springs were.

Once he did, he glanced over at the couple dozen wooden casings that he made for the watches that he was about to put together, grabbing the first to get to work. He grabbed all the pieces that he needed, using tweezers to put them into the correct positions.

This was a very finicky job, so he had to go relatively slowly, but at the same time, it was relaxing enough, letting the old man dive into the work headfirst without having to think too much about what he was doing.

Eisen took a few deep breaths as he finished placing the last part of the first watch into the wooden casing. He repeated this for all of the other watches, mindlessly working away at this while thinking about plenty of matters that were bothering him. Mostly, it was concern about what would happen if Samuel managed to somehow interfere with the meeting after all.

The meeting room had finished construction, but that didn"t mean that it was totally invulnerable to outside interference. It was always possible that Samuel took over a powerful individual and then commanded others to cause a mess while the actual meeting was going on. Or, he could always be trying to attack the meeting place with some powerful monster that Eisen and the others didn"t know about.

Of course, that wasn"t the kind of thing that the originals really had to worry about, considering that all five of them were going to be gathered there, but that didn"t change the fact that you could never be too careful in regard to politics.

All of the envoys were currently on their way to the harbor islands, and from what Komer had told Eisen in some messages, the people from the holy empire that were coming had already been causing some issues before departure, as was to be expected.

They were continuously complaining about the fact that they had to "entertain monsters trying to play as being people", something that seemed to be a fairly well-supported sentiment amongst people on the anti-monster side of things. Eisen was positive that they would make a mess of the meeting, whether it was deliberate or not.

People like that always said what was on their mind, and what was on their mind were some of the most horrendous things Eisen wasn"t even able to imagine. And considering that giants weren"t necessarily known to be patient, Eisen really had his work cut out to him as the moderator of the treaty meeting.

Hopefully the gifts that he was preparing would be enough to at least improve their mood before going into the actual meeting. Eisen was already starting to get a headache, just imagining that whole mess. Not to mention, while the Holy Empire, ironically, weren"t exactly saints, that didn"t mean that the other countries suddenly had pro-monster stances.

If giants weren"t one of the species of monsters that was able to live amongst people the easiest, looking practically indistinguishable by the time they"re shrunken down to the average person"s size, this whole thing would be practically impossible anyway. That was one of the reasons why the meeting was happening on that insect-based island in the first place.

Amongst the whole animal kingdom, insects looked the most "alien" to most people, and considering that the native sapient species on that island were ant-like folk, the envoys would be faced with something even more monstrous than the giants. Eisen and the others were hoping that this would pa.s.sively, or maybe even actively, help the conversation go along smoothly.

It could cause some other issues, obviously, but considering that the ant-folk were citizens of Asgard, the country run by the originals, no sane individual would try to actively mess with them... right?

Whichever was the case, most of these things were matters that Eisen and the others would have to deal with if, or when, they popped up. For now, Eisen had to get started with the watch faces. He walked over to the annealer and took out a mould filled with circular pieces of strengthened gla.s.s that would perfectly fit into their position.

Half of them were the pieces of gla.s.s that would be placed over the hollow s.p.a.ce with the hands, and one was the actual watch face. The watch faces had a small hole in the middle that the mechanisms connecting to the watch"s hands could be fitted through, and as Eisen popped one of the small discs out of the mould, he took a closer look at the small indents. They looked pretty nice.

The hours were simple roman numerals in a font that seemed like n.o.bles would enjoy.

And so then, Eisen placed each of the gla.s.s plates into a small tub of acid specifically to give them a slightly frosted and more opaque appearance. He wanted the movement of the gears in the background to still be visible while not being all too distracting at the same time. Once the pieces of gla.s.s were frosted and dried, it was time to fill in the numerals with some colour.

Though specifically, he was going to be using dense rubies, whose red would s.h.i.+ne strong within the small indents. Eisen grabbed the gemstone from the table, running his thumb over it. As if he was working with clay, he scooped up a small amount that he simply ran over the surface of the first gla.s.s disc.

The indented numerals were filled in with the ruby through this specific application of trans.m.u.tation, and once the first face was done, Eisen moved on to the next. He finished them all, handing the rest of the ruby back to Constant who quickly brought it back into storage to the others.

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As he held one of the watch faces up, Eisen was quite happy with the result. It certainly looked quite high-cla.s.s, especially knowing the numbers weren"t just paint, but actual rubies. The old man carefully fitted the faces into the wooden casings, clicking them into place perfectly into the small groove.

He used trans.m.u.tation to slightly widen each of the faces to make them fit tightly without falling out.

And then, it was time for the small, black watch hands. He really just had to click them into place into the right parts of the mechanism sticking out through the hole in the middle of the watch face. With that, it was time to place the other round panes of gla.s.s onto the watches, fitting them into their position by clicking a small wooden ring over them into place, locking everything down tightly.

Just like that, the main watches were done. Eisen turned one of the watches around, pouring some mana into the small enchantment on the underside. Different to the crystal prototype, these watches held some compressed mana batteries that would just need to be filled up every few weeks.

All those n.o.ble envoys would have plenty of people to supply the mana for them, if they were even going to use those watches regularly in the first place.

With some quiet tics, the watch started up, and everything seemed to be working perfectly fine. Eisen turned the small wooden cog on the side of casing and set it to the currently correct time, quite happy with the small item. He was going to pre-set each of the watches to the local time of the home of the envoy who would receive it before gifting it to them.

After a slight stretch, Eisen walked over to the nearby workbench and grabbed the roll of leather. Now he just had to make the leather bands for each of the watches. That was going to be an easy job as well, he just had to cut out all the pieces, round out the edges, punch the holes, add the buckles, and then attach the bands to the actual watch.