Chapter 508: Gut-Feeling
"Next sword done." Eisen announced as he confirmed the piece of metal in front of him properly having turned into the item that the old man wanted it to be. He reached the hand that was currently holding the sword to the side and handed it to Rouge, who quickly got to work on polishing it some more to prepare it to be sold.
"What item's next?" The old man asked, before Parc immediately placed some more materials in front of Eisen, all of them properly prepared for Eisen to work with them instantly, and the young man quickly explained, "A warhammer, 150 centimeter handle, the hammerhead 50 by 30 by 30 large at least. One side is supposed to be a pick." Parc explained, and Eisen immediatley nodded his head as he grabbed the piece of wood that Parc laid down next to him and then looked at his tool, quickly catching the pieces of it that just automatically dropped off.
With a smile Eisen looked at his multitool, that had finally been turned into an ego-item with an ego-rank of 5 a couple of days ago, and then got started on his work. The multitool could switch its modes basically on its own now without Eisen needing to do any of it manually. It would just react to what Eisen wanted to do and then change its mode accordingly.
"Any element?" The old man asked as he turned toward Parc, but the young man just shook his head, "No, just a regular one. But still enchanted, of course."
With a quick nod, Eisen continued his work and started using the white knife in his hand to carve into the wood in front of him to properly turn it into a handle that was easy to grab onto. Then he also prepared both ends of the long handle for either the hammerhead or the counterweight on the other hand, just to make sure that it would be easy to safely attach either of them later on.
It didn't really take all that long to get this part of it done, so Eisen next just turned around and placed the steel that was prepared already into the forge. Once it had heated up properly, Eisen grabbed it out of the forge and started hammering it into shape, although he left a little bit of excess for now so that he could more easily carve the metal into shape afterward.
And of course, that step came after the rough shape was done, and Eisen just blasted the outside in heat so that it would turn softer more easily before using his chisel to basically push it into the right shape. He even used his fingers sometimes, but for the most part, he just tried to use his tools.
Of course, the decoration wasn't all that prominent with this hammer, Eisen still wanted to give it a bit of a shape so that the collision with enemies had a stronger impact at least visually. Then, the old man cracked his knuckles to loosen his fingers up a little bit and then let this hammer-head cool for now while he placed the flame-of-the-earth mythril alloyed with mostly steel, into the forge.
A couple of minutes later, the metal had become hot enough to work with and Eisen grabbed it out of the forge to hammer it into a thin panel, which was soon punched into the right shape so that the old man could pull it over the front of the warhammer.
Luckily, it was rather easy to flatten the mythril-steel alloy on the warhammer's surface while pushing it into all the small nooks and crannies that it needed to go, at least when Eisen was using his fingers to directly push it around. He really could have used this sort of ability in the past in the other world. Well, if he had this sort of ability, he probably never would have started playing in the first place, since he would be able to continue his work in real life. Eisen never would have been injured in the first place, and would have never felt the need to escape into a virtual world. Even if he now knew that this world was anything but virtual.
Either way, Eisen swiftly continued and tried to keep pushing the mythril-steel alloy into place while it slowly cooled down and hardened. Once it was hard and cool enough to do so, Eisen placed his finger toward the side of the hammer and soon saw one of the needles twist out of it before dropping onto the old man's finger.
With a satisfied smile, Eisen just got started on carving into the metal, enchanting it with the basic stuff in the direction of 'force' or 'durability', simply the kind of thing that most blunt weapons without a specific purpose were enchanted with. It wasn't like this was the item that someone requested or comissioned, it was simply an item that Eisen was preparing to be sold at a shop in the mall.
When the hammerhead was properly enchanted, Eisen handed it over to Parc so that he could get going with sharpening the pick at the other end, and then grabbed the handle himself so that he could enchant it with the regular old handle-enchantments. And those usually went into the direction of increasing the grip that you had on the handle, something that was important especially with extremely heavy items like this.
Other than that, Eisen simply grabbed one of the many metal spheres that he had made beforehand and heated it up a little bit to give it a slight indenture that the handle could be rather easily attached to in a little bit.
Of course, this sphere already had a three-dimensional enchantment in it to react to the current orientation of the item and then counterbalance it. Eisen just had to carve a bit more onto the outer surface to make sure the enchantment was properly attuned to this specific warhammer.
By the time Eisen was done with all this, Parc also finished sharpening the pick, so Eisen could finally put the whole item together. He placed the hammerhead onto the ground upside down and then just pushed the handle inside of the small hole that Eisen started making with his hammer and a chisel, and then increased just so slightly by compressing the parts around the hole some more with transmutation.
And now that the handle was inside that hole, Eisen just decompressed the steel until it fit tightly around the handle without any chance of accidentally ripping apart while it was swung around.
Then Eisen just had to do the same with the counterweight on the other side of the warhammer, and then looked at it closely with a quick nod.
"Alright, seems good. Parc, Rouge, what do you think?" The old man asked as he turned toward his two apprentices, but the two of them just quickly nodded their heads excitedly, "It looks really great!" Rouge exclaimed, and Parc immediately agreed.
"Yeah!" He added, but Eisen just chuckled a bit and shook his head, "No, no, that's not what I was asking. Thanks anyway, though." The old man pointed out, "It's like what we were trying the other day, what do you think the effects of this will be? If you know what you need to focus on, how the whole system works, and how different methods and materials influence the final item, then it should be rather easy to figure out in what range the item effects will be, right?" Eisen explained, before Parc and Rouge both just went quiet for a little bit.
"True..." Rouge muttered after a little while, although he didn't seem all that confident after hearing Eisen's opinion on this, "Don't worry, just go with a wild guess from your gut for now. If for any item you make, or if you're there for the production of an item by another person, then just do your best and guess. If you're too far off, then you can start thinking about why the actual result was so different from what you thought it could be. Slowly but surely, you should develop a feeling for it." The old man explained to them reassuredly, and both of his apprentices nodded his head.
Although, someone else had a bit of a question in this regard, "And you have that feeling for it despite only working with this stuff for a few months? You said you don't have stats or levels over there, right?" Morgus asked with an annoyed grumble.
The five half-dragons, together with sky and bree, were basically constantly watching Eisen work for the past while if they weren't busy training. Of course, Bree also spent quite a lot of time with Dien, so these seven weren't always here. Well, Sky mostly was, although he probably paid the least attention out of all of them since he was constantly reading something.
Either way, with a smile on his face, Eisen turned over toward the black-half dragon and swiftly answered his questions, "Yes, we don't have things like that over here. But even then, I picked up my first hammer when I was maybe six or seven. And a lot of things when it comes to general logic are things that I am currently receiving from the Eisen from before our experience was stolen." The old man explained, and Morgus slightly grumbled, "Sure, good excuse." He muttered, and Eisen just chose to ignore Morgus for now. He was aware that this half-dragon had a bit of a hard time accepting everything that Eisen had told them as complete truth, but that was simply how it was.
The old man turned back toward his two apprentices and waited for an answer. It seemed like it took them a while to get there, but they both managed to make relatively good guesses, and once Eisen actually 'finished' the warhammer, he showed the information to the two of them so that they could see how far off they were.
They were actually far closer than Eisen would have thought they were, but since they couldn't really explain to the old man why the effects were exactly what they were, Eisen figured it was really mostly gut-feeling. And that was fine for now, it's what he suggested, after all. But it was important to be able to find the logic behind your gut-feeling, or else you wouldn't get anywhere. Just living on gut alone was never a good choice, at least as far as Eisen was concerned.
Even if he often made choices that others may seem as rash or emotion-driven, it's not like he ever made any major moves without at least thinking it through a little. 1