Chapter 525 - The Wood-Giant's Hands
Eisen shaped the crystalized mana into a three-dimensional spell that was meant to support the agile and dexterous movement of the Wood-Giant's body from inside the hands before enveloping it in a layer of mana-crystal. The outside of that crystal was then enchanted so that it would be possible to actually make proper use of the spell.
Then, all that Eisen needed to do was simply remove part of the wooden sphere that would act as one of the joints and then place the enchantment-spell item into the center before properly placing the wood back to where they it was supposed to go. Following that, Eisen started forming the different extra parts that he needed before creating the enchantments inside of each of the joints.
These enchantments were really mostly just made to take the 'command' from the central spell-item and actually put it into action. For that, with each joint, Eisen connected all the parts that he needed to properly to those wooden cores that Eisen made, which were a mix-match of anything inside of your body that wasn't skin. That included crystal-musculature, veins for blood and mana flow, as well as thing like bones for the general structural integrity and something similar to a central nervous system to make it easier for the Golem Core to control this huge body.
Once he got all of these joints ready, he just basically had to finally put the fingers together. And since there was a little bit of natural strain to everything through the musculature, the large fingers could still be bent a slight bit by hand but were mostly just straight as they were laying there on the ground.
Either way, next, Eisen had to move onto the central part of the hand that Eisen could connect everything to. Of course, Eisen first created the 'base cores' for everything and put them into the right places for the bones. Other than that, Eisen would also add a few more layers of musculature to everything while filling in some general gaps so that the hand could move properly and grip tightly like it was supposed to.
The part that the old man had to think about the most, however, wasn't that mechanism that he already created multiple times. But rather, it was the part in the palm that would allow for combat. For one, it was supposed to be something that allowed the Wood-Giant to properly hold onto the sword that Eisen would be making for it at some point. But other than that, it was also a good place to account for hand-to-hand combat. Other than the knuckles, of course. But since Eisen would be placing a layer of metal onto the knuckles, that was a seperate issue.
In general, through the palm, Eisen wanted to let it make use of techniques similar to the ones that Brody usually used with his Yin and Yang Energy. Because quite often, when he used the external yin energy, he would transfer that into the body of the other person through his palm. It was actually also pretty similar to the way that the Half-Dragon Paladin, Argon, fought using Holy Energy.
Eisen was wondering which kind of element would be most appropriate for a wood-giant, and the only thing that he could really come up with was the nature element. Eisen tried to combine it with Brody's Yin energy to make it something 'external' like that, but in the end, 'Energy' and 'Mana' seemed to be two completely different things. It was like trying to merge wood and rock into one thing. And technically, while that was something that Eisen accomplished with the use of his material-growth skill, that was just an exception to the rule. Eisen still wasn't able to combine Energy with Mana no matter what he tried.
So, he had to come up with other ideas instead. He had been messaging Xenia to ask her about whether or not there were some kinds of energies that were good for this, or if there was any sort of elemental mana that she recommended the most.
The Minority of the energies that Xenia, and as such Eisen, actually had access to were made to be used in combat. Of course they could still be used for it in a pretty roundabout way, but for the most part, the only energies that could be used for direct contact that they knew of were the Yin and Yang Energies as well as Holy Energy.
Since neither of those really fit the Wood-Giant, Eisen just continued thinking about mana, and in the end, just ended up choosing to use multiple different elements. Since the body was enormous, Eisen should be able to create quite a few storage containers for different types of mana. And as long as he made a modular part about the Wood-Giant where Eisen could then simply add more mana-convertion enchantments to turn mana into an element, then it should be fine. The bundle of mana-crystal thread with mana-thread cores was capable of moving around any element anyway.
So as long as Eisen made sure that the rest of the Wood-Giant was also made for just that, it should really be fine. In the end, Eisen even started coming up with the idea to create extra 'fullbody enchantments' onto the wood-giant so that it would be able to infuse its own body with an element for a short time, just like Eisen usually did. It should be pretty hard to do so fully, of course, but even a bit of an increase should be a bit of help.
Either way, for now, Eisen wanted to finish working on the hand itself. The central part for it would be a thick crystal disc that would practically push out mana whenever necessary. At the same time, while it was capable of pushing out energy, Eisen also enchanted it so that it could attract another enchantment with a very specific 'Code'. That 'code' was really just a small crystal that Eisen mixed with a basically random amount of other gems and crystals that he split into smaller pieces so that it could be used as such a 'code'.
Either way, for now, Eisen tried his best to make it so that mana could be properly pushed out of the palm in a strong gust. Since the wood-giant was going to be an ego-golem, it would end up being capable of simple mana-manipulation anyway. So while this maybe wasn't technically necessary, it would still be a huge help, especially since it would most likely be hard to find a soul that was used to handling such a large body.
Other than this piece that would be set into the center of the palm, Eisen also started creating the 'skin' for the wood-giant out of some of the ironbark wood. And then, Eisen started stripping away some of the actual Ironbark as well and started attaching it properly as the 'armor'. And just like that, when Eisen properly put everything together, the two giant, four meter long hands were finally done.
With a satisfied expression, Eisen looked at those two things and smiled while picking them up in his largest size possible. As far as the old man could judge, this was a definite success.
Eisen looked around with a light smile and then just placed the two hands back down onto the ground, or rather the stump, and then started thinking about what else he should get started with.
For now, the old man would just have to simply get started with cutting the log up. He had to somehow get it away from here at some point anyway. This would for now also allow Eisen to simply finish up with his woodcutting and woodworking skills.
Thinking that he didn't necessarily have much else that was overly important to do right now, Eisen got started with his work. For now, he just tried to think about what pieces he would exactly need and tried to make guidelines into the log to make sure that he was really going to be able to make the larger pieces. And at the same time, he also tried to pay special attention to the bark that would end up being needed for everything. Sure, he would definitely need to stitch different parts of it together to properly make armor out of it, but he wanted to use as many full pieces as he possibly could.
So, Eisen first created those outlines for the armor, and even began to strip the bark away from the Ironbark log whenever he could. In the end, Eisen would really need to spend a lot of time cleaning all of this up. He really underestimated the final size of this tree if he had to be honest. But that didn't matter, it wasn't like Eisen was under a major time-constraint at the moment. Eisen simply had to steadily increase his skills. And on top of that, once Eisen finished the Wood-Giant, he would have an enormous helper that he would be able to use for things like pulling the roots ouf of the ground and transporting the leftover wood somewhere where it didn't bother anyone.
After stacking some of the large panels of the bark on top of each other, Eisen simply chose to, for the rest of the day, continue trying to cut the actual log up. In the evening, he went to sleep and when he woke up, he started cutting everything up again. And this continued for the next couple of days, until the whole tree was completely taken apart and Eisen had all the base materials that he actually needed to get started on creating the Wood-Giant.