Chapter 555 - Air Walking
Eisen watched as Evalia started painting Stahl's 'Demon Suit' onto him before Eisen started to explain how the bracelet he gave Stahl was supposed to work.
"Alright, when you push your mana into the green gem, you will shrink, and when you push your mana into the red gem you will grow. It depends on how much mana you use, so just test it out first to get a feel for it." Eisen said, and Stahl swiftly nodded.
"Gotcha. But you really think it's a good idea to do it like this?" Stahl asked. He wasn't entirely sure if it was, since this plan would result in the death of numerous people instantly. Instead of the players antagonizing Ailren, Eisen would be antagonizing those players. It might turn him into a complete public enemy for players.
But on the other hand, Eisen's reasoning for this plan did also make sense to an extent, "I do think it is a good idea. Obviously people will get mad at me, but it doesn't matter if I die. I can just come back a little while later. And if I had to be honest, I would much rather people fear me than look down on me. At least for now, since it's going to make things a lot easier for us going forward." Eisen explained and once he noticed Stahl's slightly worried expression just started to laugh, "Don't worry, I'm not planning on being a Tyrant or anything. It's just so that people don't try to fight us out of nowhere just to be able to say that they fought us."
"Ah... yeah, that would probably happen." Stahl said with a wry smile, "It still might, even if people know they'll die if they do."
"Well, hopefully it would be less, at least." The old man pointed out as he swiftly waved his hand to the side and opened up his Item Storage. There were only minor differences compared to before, really. The main visual difference was that it was a little bit bigger than it was before as the material storage.
And of course, it could store items. But Eisen didn't do that yet, he still mainly just had his materials in there. His materials, as well as two rather special boxes. And so, the old man shrunk down and grabbed those boxes.
"Evalia." Eisen said, and the artist slowly turned her head toward him, "Hm?" She asked, and Eisen just threw the key-box to the 'Portable Atelier' over to her, "As a little 'thank you' for giving me door idea."
"Hm? What is this?" She asked, and Eisen just lightly smiled at her, "You and Stahl can go ahead and go on a little walk. There's a small platform that's relatively hidden just a five minute walk away from the cave entrance. I'll have one of Melissa's bees show you the way, so try the key out over there. And don't worry, if the place is too unsafe, it's not going to unfold all the way, so just try it a couple times if you need to." Eisen suggested, and Evalia looked at the small, but incredibly heavy, box in her hand really curiously.
"Alright, yeah, you can be sure that I'll try it as often as I need to! Thank you so much!" She exclaimed with a bright smile, and Eisen just smiled back at her, "Don't mention it. And Stahl, you just try to figure out what kinds of changes might be good if you want to have this as your Demon form. You'll most likely be a Yang Demon, so you need to properly engage that positive energy. And try the bracelet out a little." Eisen suggested, and the old man's grandson quickly nodded.
"Got it. Then we'll see you later." Stahl said with a smile, and then left toward the exit together with Evalia and one of Melissa's bees to guide them, like Eisen said.
And once they properly left, Ailren chose to turn himself into his humanoid form, all the whilst Kirisho came out of the amulet around Eisen's neck.
With a soft smile, the ghost looked at Ailren and lightly bowed forward, "It's an honor to see you again, Ailren." Kirisho said, and the Ancient Gold Dragon somewhat chuckled as he looked back at her, "Likewise. I am glad to see you are doing better than when I last saw you. Eisen seems to be treating you well." Ailren pointed out, and with what Eisen could only call a short giggle, Kirisho nodded her head.
"Yes, he is. I hope you are not too lonely here without me." The Mist-Spirit pointed out, and the dragon smiled back, "I found consolation in taking on your former sleep schedule."
"...weren't you sleeping all the time anyway?" Eisen asked, and Ailren turned his head toward him, "I never mentioned when I took on her sleep schedule. Now anyway, what is that box that you gave to Evalia? It's the same to the one you are holding, is that not so?" The Dragon inquired rather curiously, and Eisen quickly increased his size as he started pushing away some of the treasure that accumulated inside of here to make space for the portable shop.
"What are you doing?" Ailren asked confusedly, and Eisen simply smiled back at him, "You asked me what the box is, so I'll show you. But I need a little space for that." He replied. Eisen continued clearing out some space before shrinking back down to his normal size.
Eisen stepped over in front of the area that he cleared up and quickly activated visualization, although just for himself, to make sure that the shop would actually fit in here.
"Melissa, sweetie, come a bit more over here." The old man said with a smile and stretched his hand out to the Great Empress Bee, who just came running over to him and then clung to the old man's leg. And as Eisen rubbed his one hand over the top of her head, he stretched his other hand out forward and pushed his mana into the key. The moment he did so, the box started unfolding and soon turned into the front door of the portable shop, at which point Eisen could let go of the key.
And then, from the door outward, the building appeared in front of Eisen, Kirisho and Ailren, while the gold dragon in particular was just watching this happen in complete awe, "I see. So this is it. A rather beautiful process, if my opinion matters in any way."
"Thank you. And of course it matters. Evalia's is something similar. Same item, different building. Her's is more art-oriented." Eisen pointed out as he pushed open the door to the shop, watching the rest of the building fold open from the inside, "Come on, let's go through to the back. I'll just get started on some items for this real quickly."
Eisen stepped through to the back of the building into the workshop area. He then opened up his item storage and grabbed some of the materials out of it. First things first, Eisen would work on an item that correlated to a suggestion that Stahl made to Eisen before about the 'act'.
In general, it was related to his image of what kind of Demon Stahl wanted to be. Basically, it could be summed up in one word. Trickster. With a lot of completely ridiculous, technically unnecessary gimicks that simply made someone want to stare at them all day just because they looked cool.
The first thing that Eisen was going to make was one of the few things that Stahl couldn't just do with the skills of one of his occupations, with magic, or with the assistance of Evalia. And that was walking in the air.
In the end, this was a very specific sort of magic that you normally wouldn't be able to cast if you weren't a direct mage, or at least it would be very, very hard to do so. And even then, as long as you didn't have the right element, you would still have a hard time.
But luckily, Eisen had access to one of the elements that made air-walking possible. And that element was the 'Barrier' element. It was an element that was quite literally meant to create barriers of different sorts. They were obviously mostly meant to just be defensive, but since they could be 'fixed' to a location for a little while, it was possible to walk on them. It was a rather rare element, one that you seemingly could only get when you were a sorcerer with a very specific skillset, but Eisen was lucky enough that he was able to get his hands on this element after someone requested a 'barrier staff' to be made.
To start it off with, Eisen really just needed to make shoes. Their aesthetic didn't matter too much, but Eisen figured they should at least not stick out in either situation, no matter if Stahl was in his 'Demon' mode or just walking around regularly.
Obviously in the former situation it didn't matter too much since Stahl's Demon form was meant to be mostly his regular form with the main changes being his outfit, so no matter what, Stahl would most likely end up with the ability to put on that 'costume' no matter what he was wearing at any point in time.
So, Eisen really just needed to fit it to Stahl's regular style, which wasn't that hard either, since Stahl mostly just wore any shoes he wanted to. He didn't have a 'regular style', so Eisen at least tried to make them look good by themselves.
And so, he created the shoes by using leather that was half-infused with mana to give them just that tiny increase in the mana flow without actually turning the leather into magic materials.
The thing that Eisen mostly had to work on were the soles, where the actual enchantments and inscriptions had to be placed.
The most important material Eisen used for this was some leather that this time was properly infused with the barrier element, which Eisen would later protect with a layer of thicker, more protective layer of leather that Eisen could properly carve to have good grip on the ground.
Eisen took a gem that he had ability-enchanted with the Barrier Element and then used his Magic Inscription skill to change how the barrier system worked. Basically, whenever magic was pushed into the gem, a barrier with a modifiable size and shape would appear at short distance and could disappear instantly as wel, all the whilst being invisible.
Then, Eisen carved the enchantments into the soles to make sure that the effect could be connected to another item which Eisen would make later to let Stahl easily control this, and filled those enchantments out with the gem Eisen ability-enchanted and inscribed and then softened the enchantments to make sure they wouldn't cause Stahl discomfort while walking. And just like that, the air-walking shoes had been finished.