Chapter 495: Copycat
Once the metal that Eisen put into the forge properly heated up, the old man started to properly beat it into shape to turn it into the parts that he needed to be metallic. For one, that was the actual shotgun barrel, and then there was also the part that the actual shotgun sh.e.l.ls were placed into. Of course they wouldn"t be actual shotgun sh.e.l.ls, but rather, Eisen would give Dentex a couple of mana-batteries that he could replace whenever he wanted to. So he could have a pack of a dozen small mana-batteries, have ten of them filled up at all times and constantly replace the "ammunition" inside of the shotgun-staff.
Overall, it wasn"t really all that hard to create this, since it didn"t actually need to work like a shotgun was supposed to work. That would have been a whole other request. Sure, Eisen could technically make it work and give Dentex a bunch of mana-bullets that he could use, but that would make the staff useless if he didn"t find someone to make new ones for him. And that should be rather tough in and of itself, at least that"s what Eisen figured to be the case.
So, Eisen would just create it so that it was basically just a staff, and then encourage the creation of bullet-like spells inside of the actual barrel. Once he was done with the barrel, he could simply enchant the inside of it to be a magical accelerator, so it should be possible for Dentex to just create a small orb inside and then shoot it out at high speeds like that. Basically like a cannon instead of a shotgun, really. 1
Then of course, just to make it a bit more "realistic", Eisen also added the trigger, getting everything ready quite swiftly. Luckily, Eisen also enchanted a small gem with Dentex"s "recognition" of an item or spell to make it finished, so that all he had to do was just pull the trigger and the spell that he was forming would immediately be activated.
At least that was the plan that Eisen was going for. First, he had to just keep going with what he was doing for now. Beforehand, Eisen had folded powder from a mana-crystal that had Dentex"s necromancy skill enchanted on it into the shadow-element infused material, and could like that probably get a pretty good influence toward both the shadow element as well as necromancy.
And then, Eisen also figured that while he was here, he should just try and get the alloy for the actual magical support ready, the alloy that he would be filling the enchantments with to increase their flow and strength.
All of the metallic materials, like the white gold, black copper, and mythril, had been infused with the shadow element, while all the crystals and gems that Eisen ground down and added to the mix were enchanted with the necromancy skill.
In the end, Eisen was left with a black metal even darker in color than the mixture of shadow-high-steel and -mythril, which already was nearly black. In the end, the parts made of base-metal alloy had an actually rather matt tone to it, while the one made with the n.o.ble alloys was rather s.h.i.+ny the moment that it cooled down a bit.
Eisen wasn"t exactly sure why the base-metal alloy was matt like that, but it was probably an influence of the shadow element. Magic metals did act in very weird ways sometimes. Eisen was just glad that the mythril he made from the shadow element could actually still be used, since he had alloyed the silver he made it from with a little bit of iron beforehand.
For the most part, a couple of hours later, Eisen was already done with the base for the shotgun item, and now only had to work with the magic wood, carve the enchantments, fill the enchantments in, and then give everything a finis.h.i.+ng touch here and there.
With an actually rather satisfied expression, Eisen placed everything that he made to the side and started cleaning up after himself, although when he started doing so, he noticed that he had gotten quite a few of onlookers as he was working. Some of them actually seemed to be players, now that Eisen took a look at them properly.
But even then, the owner of the smithy, that Bull Beastperson, as well as his son were just as astonished as the players were considering the speed at which Eisen had been working.
"Holy s.h.i.+t, isn"t that Eisen?!" One of the players asked one of his friends, who took a closer look at him and then swiftly nodded his head, "I think so! That"s so weird, I thought he was supposed to be in Ornier right now!" He pointed out, and immediately, Eisen snapped his neck and looked at the player.
"What did you just say?" He asked with a deep frown, and the player started looking around himself before pointing at his chest, "M-Me?" The player stuttered slightly, and Eisen immediately nodded his head.
"Yes, you. What did you just say? Why am I supposed to be in Ornier?" Eisen asked, "Is something happening in Ornier?" He continued. It"s been a while since Eisen had been there, after all. The capital city of the human country. Sure, he would be going there at some point to deal with everything Merc and Cial were doing, but for now Eisen didn"t want to mess anything up for Stahl and Evalia. They really had everything under control.
"Huh? Aren"t you having that duel with Merc and Cial?" The player asked with his head tilted to the side, and Eisen immediately stared back at him, "What did you just say? Why would I have a duel with them?"
The Player looked back at his friend confusedly, but that friend seemed just as confused as the first player himself, "A lot of... Artificials have been talking about it. I mean, there"s definitely a person there that looks identical to you there. They"re even wearing the same necklace as you are... Or one of them, the one with the red and black coin? Well, apparently that Eisen there told Merc and Cial that he wants to fight them "mano a mano"." 1
"Are you kidding me?" Eisen asked with a deep, annoyed frown as he immediately opened his friend list and messaged Stahl about this. And a couple of minutes later, after his reply came, Eisen looked back at the two players in front of him. 1
"Can I ask you two for a favor? I"ll even turn it into a quest for you. I"m giving each of you a type of item that little to no artificials should have yet. Alright?" Eisen asked them, and the two players immediately nodded their heads excitedly.
"Of course! What do you want us to do?" One of them asked, so Eisen swiftly crossed his arms as he explained what they had to do, mentally turning everything into a proper Quest for them to work on.
"I want you two to spread the fact that the Eisen in Ornier is real. In any possible way. Tell it to as many merchants as you can, as many adventurers, artificials, anyone that"s heading out of this town soon, alright?" Eisen told them, and with happy expressions, albeit while being rather confused, the two players immediately accepted the quest they just received and then made their way over to their workstations to clean up and head out so that they could get that done just now.
And as they were doing so, the older of the two Bull beastmen came up to Eisen, "I know it might not be any of my business, but what the h.e.l.l was that just about?" He asked, and Eisen slowly shook his head, "There"s a fake running around pretending to be me. And I want as many people to gather around in the place where that fake is, so that I can show as many people at once as I possibly can that he indeed is a fake."
And as Eisen was explaining that, he kept sending messages to Stahl to tell him the plan. It seemed like neither Stahl nor Evalia really knew what was going on with that fake Eisen, just that it was a surprisingly good fake. 1
They had tried figuring out who it actually was, but apparently that didn"t end up working out all that well in the end, because that only brought some suspicious looks toward them. But at the very least, those two were able to find out something else. And that was the plan that Merc and Cial had.
The two of them created that whole fake situation to get as much attention on them as possible, even more than they had already. By beating the "Leader" of the originals, as those two called Eisen, they wanted to show their superiority. But at the same time, since it was that fake Eisen that requested that duel, it was seemingly also supposed to but Eisen himself into a bad light, turning him into someone that tries to bully the weak. 1
This actually annoyed Eisen more than he could say, and made him come up with a change of plans. The "Duel" was in one in-game week, and Eisen and his group should be able to reach Ornier within that week if they didn"t make any stops along the way. From Ornier, it should just take another two in-game weeks to reach the desert, so it wasn"t that big a deal as far as Eisen was concerned.
This might actually let them try and figure out where the last dragon actually was at as soon as possible. But on the other hand, this meant that Eisen couldn"t actually deal with whoever was doing those experiments on the monsters. Instead, Eisen had another idea for that.
One that he hoped would be able to make as many people move at once as possible, to just ruin the day of whoever was literally turning living beings into test-subjects. And that was by creating a quest that anyone could take.
There were a couple ways of doing that, but in the end, the one that Eisen chose to go with was the simplest and quickest one as far as he was concerned. After picking up all the shotgun-staff parts that he managed to finish here, he made his way outside and swiftly increased his size to the maximum that he could, before yelling out loudly. But of course, Eisen did so as he hid behind a wall, creating the quest in a way that would make Eisen"s name not appear in it.
"Listen here, all of you! Near this town, there lives someone that is using the Ancient Copper Dragon Cracton"s gift to experiment on living creatures! Whoever can stop him from doing so without killing him will be rewarded extensively."
And the moment that Eisen yelled this out, he decreased his size to normal and started walking into the center of town while looking in front of him curiously as if he was seeing the same notification everyone else was.