BXBX NOVEL Chapter 313 - Staff of the Elemental Spirit
The Earth-Gem was possibly the only one that became a bit denser, heavier, and harder. The water-gem was somewhat like jelly, while the Air-gem seemed to be nearly weightless. The fire-gem flowed around slightly like gems and became hot to the touch. The light and darkness gems both became somewhat weirdly cotton-like, and Eisen was able to basically pull them apart with his hands, although the gem kept reattaching and returning to its other half no matter what was done, and either of them gave off either a soft light, or pulled the light around itself in to cause darkness.
Eisen was sure he would be able to have a good bit of fun playing around with these materials. The wood that Eisen chose as a base of the staff was elemental High-Ironbark, or more specifically, part of the tree’s core. As that part especially was increidbly hard to begin with, it was still quite hard even after being infused with Xenia’s element, making it the perfect material to work with.
And as for the other materials, Eisen had a rather simple solution for how he could make them easy to work with. To start it off with, Eisen split the Margon that he would be using on this staff into three equal parts, and then split one of those parts up into another six, even smaller equal parts.
After simply melting each of those parts down individually to each other, he mixed them with each one of the six different gems that Eisen had. To his luck, that alone seemed to for some reason strenghten the magic of the gems to such an amount that they not only increased in size, but their peculiar effects became even stronger, and Eisen even had to place the water-gem into a bowl while keeping the air-gem inside of a bag to make sure they couldn’t disappear somewhere.
And after taking half of each of those Margon-Strengthened Gems, Eisen mixed a half of each half, so a quarter of each gem, with an equal part elemental-infused mana crystal, and then mixed the other gem-quarters together into a single gem.
And then, Eisen took the second-third of maroon and mixed it with an infused-mana crystal, and just like that, the old man finished preparing all the different materials for the staff.
"Alright, now, don’t waste any of the probably most expensive material on this planet, please..." Eisen muttered to himself and then started to get to work assembling everything.
First, the element High-Ironbark was shaped into a regular, simple form for a staff that Xenia would be able to hold quite easily with one hand. Eisen added a core of infused-mana crystal into the center of the staff which he had turned into an elemental mana-battery.
On the outside of the staff, Eisen added a simple free-form enchantment to strengthen the flow of mana inside of the staff, and then used the last third of the Margon to fill those enchantments out. And just for a little extra touch, and as the old man didn’t have enough Margon to fill the carvings out completely to the top, and could only put a thin strand of it along each part of the carvings, Eisen placed some ’Elemental Spirit Mythril’ over it. For some reason, this mythril had somehow kept its shape, while bascially being completely like mist. It was something really interesting to work with, and due to its nature, it simply looked incredible being added above the Margon, which accelerated the flow of the mana inside of the mythril and made it bascially look like a river of mist that was forming an enchantment on the outside of the staff.
And then, at the top of the staff, Eisen started to really get to work with everything. First things first, at the top of the staff came the gem with all of the different types combined into it. It turned into a rather weird material, if Eisen had to be honest. It was basically weightless when it was just floating around, but the moment that the old man touched it, it became pretty heavy. It was obviously pretty hot and would have most likely damaged anyone that touched it by a few points if the old man’s hands weren’t immune to heat. But the weirdest thing was that it at the same time gave off light and pulled it into itself, making it look like an eclipse, somehow.
It was completely pitch-black in the center, but it had a small ring of light around it no matter what position one looked at it from. And it seemed like due to the water-gem, that exact light was flowing around like water would, and it seemed to weirdly reflect Eisen in itself, although he wasn’t able to see anything due to the fact that the center of the sphere was pitch-black.
It was really something weird to look at, but that was as expected as far as Eisen was concerned. And it fit the Original of Magic quite well on top of that, considering how contradictory and weird mana in itself felt to Eisen. But either way, Eisen wasn’t done yet.
He swiftly started adding the different other gems to the outside of the multi-gem that was floating in front of him, and luckily, it seemed like they were directly sticking to its surface and Eisen didn’t need to use transmutation to fuse them together in a single thin area.
But just like that, Eisen was able to create a quite interesting landscape on the outside, basically creating a small world around it. The Water-gems became the ocean, the Earth-Gems the continents, the air-gems ended up forming actual clouds while the fire gems were turned into the base-layer of everything, which could be seen like magma underneath some parts of the ’planet’.
And the Light and Darkness gems ended up especially interesting. With a few extra enchantments here and there on some different parts of it, Eisen was able to create a small ’sun’ and a ’moon’ moving around the ’planet’, like in some medieval model of the solar system where the sun revolved around the earth and not the other way around.
Either way, Eisen really liked what he ended up with, and now swiftly began to enchant the whole thing with some mana manipulation in a few different parts, and then, when it was basically finished, he called Xenia over to enchant some other parts with her element, just to add onto everything.
And when she saw what the old man created, she couldn’t really believe her eyes. "Wait, is that the staff you wanted to make for me?" She asked a bit confused, and the old man simply nodded his head with a grin on his face, before Xenia couldn’t help her excitement and immediately tried to grab it, but was swiftly stopped by the old man.
"No, no, stop. Not yet. First come the finishing touches, and then you can play with it." Eisen told her as he held the, incredibly light, Staff above her head where she couldn’t reach it, and then continued. "I need you to enchant a few parts of it with your elemental magic skill. That’s the last of it, though, and then we’re done." He explained and handed Xenia a few enchanting marbles, before swiftly instructing her on what needed to be done exactly, before he swiftly saw the item as finished.
[Staff of the Elemental Spirit]
[Quality - Perfect][Rank - 4]
[Description] An incredible Staff created by the Omni-Craftsmaster Eisen. Its materials have been infused with high amounts of ’Elemental Spirit’ Mana and have transformed into new materials bearing its traits. Magic of this element will be immensely strengtened when used with this staff, while mana of any other element will be repelled. Not even pure mana will be accepted into this staff.
Due to Margon that has been added into parts of the staff, the magical effects are heavily strengthened, and the contradictory gem at the top of the staff has gained a peculiar effect through it.
[Effects] Immense Strengthening to
[Requirements] 300 INT, 300 WIS, Elemental Spirit Magic Skill Rank 4, Mana Manipulation Rank 4
With a grin on his face, Eisen read through the description of the staff and was quite impressed with the effects. He wasn’t sure if this was purely due to the Margon or due to the fact that it was a rank higher, but this Staff quite literally put Eisen’s own to shame. It doubled the effect of Xenia’s magic and even gave her another ability to use. Although, even then, the requirements seemed to be incredibly steep as well.
As far as he knew, nobody on this ship had reached 300 in any stat yet, and none of the players had a single Rank 4 skill, although they were all slowly getting relatively close to achieving the latter.
It made sense for the requirements to be insane, though, considering the effects. Although it seemed like Xenia was rather unhappy with this fact.
"WHAT?!" She yelled out as she read through the item’s information, unsure if she should be happy or sad, "Eisen, this is probably the best item you could have ever made for me, but why the hell do the requirements have to be so high?!" She exclaimed as she looked at the old man, who simply ended up scratching the back of his neck.
"Well, at the very least you’ll have a good item ready for you when you reach that point, right..?" Eisen asked with a wry smile, and Xenia just started at him with a blank expression before sighing loudly. "I guess you’re right... Guess I’ll just have to work harder, huh..? Even though my element is not even at Rank 2 right now...Because I don’t have a spirit yet..." She muttered quietly, before Eisen looked at her with a light smile and then checked out the ability that was mentioned within the staff’s information, before grinning broadly.
"I’d guess we can change that. The ’Elemental-Spirit Finder’ ability lets you do just that, and its active at all times as long as someone who meets the requirements hold it." Eisen explained, and Xenia tilted her head to the side confused.
"Yeah, but we don’t have anyone that meets those requirements." She answered, before the old man took the nearly weightless staff from the young woman again. "That’s not quite right, actually. I may not be able to use it because I don’t have the required mana, but as the crafter, I can ignore the item’s requirements. That means, as long as I’m holding it, the effect of the gem at the top can be used. Try and activate your spirit-sight." The old man suggested, before Xenia slowly nodded her head, with obvious excitement and nervosity on her face, before her eyes slowly began to glow ever so slightly, although really not by much.
And the moment that the young woman then looked at the contradictory gem at the top of the staff, she once more couldn’t hold her excitement as she stepped up to the gem and pressed her face against it to see better, even though it was obviously slightly damaging her due to the heat.
"It found one!" She exclaimed, and then turned toward the old man with a bright smile. "There’s a Darkness elemental near here!"