Chapter 294 - Maroon Scales

"Your third tamed monster?" Stahl asked confused as he looked over at Fafnir. "Wasn’t he your tamed monster as well?" He asked, but Eisen shook his head quite swiftly. "No, no, because it seems like Fafnir’s nature as a Dungeon is stronger than his nature as a monster in the sense of ’Ownership’, I’m his Dungeon Master, and not his Tamer." The old man explained, before Stahl slowly nodded his head.

"Oh, right... That was the situation... Alright, yeah, now that you say it, otherwise the others couldn’t have been in the Dungeon all the time." Stahl said with a sigh, before Eisen turned over toward the four other originals with a grin on his face.

"Oh? So you were inside of there a lot? I’ll take a look at what you were doing there later, but for now, I’ll first have to deal with this little one..." Eisen explained as he looked back at the sphere in his hands, before the others looked at it in curiosity as well.

And a little while later, Eisen noticed that the outer, protective layer just so slightly deflated in one spot, which meant that the tiny white spider in the center of the egg most likely managed to crack the shell up in one spot, and the protective layer simply sunk in there.

A few more seconds later, the thin, black protective layer split open at the spot that it deflated before, and the moment that the tiny albino spider climbed out of the egg properly, a notification appeared in front of the old man.

[You have tamed an Albino Spider]

[Name the Tamed Beast]

With a smirk on his face, Eisen let the tiny spider crawl into his fingertip, where it, as he saw before, barely would have covered his fingernail if he hadn’t increased his size. "Well then... Erm... Jyuuk, is this guy here actualy a guy or a gal?" The old man asked as he lifted his head up and noticed that especially Xenia was looking at him with a weird expression.

"Y-You said you wouldn’t get another insect!" She protested, but Eisen tilted his head to the side. "Well, it’s not an insect..." He muttered, and Jyuuk nodded his head. "Yeah, it’s obviously an Albino Salticidae! So it’s an Arachnid, and not an Insect!" The Monkey Beastperson exclaimed quite clearly, and with that, Eisen already had a good name for it.

"Doesn’t really matter what you are. But I guess I’ll call you Sal!" Eisen exclaimed with a smile, before the small spider on Eisen’s thumb tapped its legs around as if dancing, before another notification appeared in front of Eisen.

[The Tamed Beast has been named Sal]

"Alright! Now you’re officially part of the family, bud." Eisen said with a smile on his face, before he scratched the back of his neck. "Although... I don’t really want to just let you loose anywhere, so..." The old man muttered, before sighing loudly.

"What’s wrong?" Stahl asked, noticing his Grandfather’s expression, who simply looked back at him with a wry smile. "I just now realized how much I have to do and catch up to. Hmm... Alright, for the rest of the day, I’ll stay in the Workshop. If anyone else needs to do something there, let me know and I’ll make some space for you. And Stahl, we’ll need to finish the ’Training’ at the islands if you’re fine with it, there’s some things you’ll have to do there anyway if you want to complete my side of it... I have to finish the items for everyone first. Oh, but you and Komer, please work together on a small crystal item with the mana-source extraction circle. I’ll do the rest." The old man explained as he slowly stood up, and Stahl nodded his head. He didn’t really feel like doing much at the moment though, but it was fine in the end.

He’d just chill with Evalia for the rest of the day after the enchantment circle was done, and then do whatever he needed to tomorrow. And just after Eisen made his way out of the room with his three tamed monsters, plus his dungeon, in tow, Stahl opened his eyes wide.

"Shit..." He muttered out, and the others looked at him in worry, before Evalia spoke up, "What’s wrong?" She asked worried, and Stahl scratched his cheek.

"Well... I just dropped the glass and tools to the ground when I heard that Gramps woke up..." He replied, before Bree looked at him with worry and nervosity in her eyes. "Then you should probably go after him and clean everything up..."

"Yeah, that’s a good idea..." Stahl responded, before jumping up and hurrying out of the room to do just that.

---

And after Stahl cleaned the Workspace up and apologized for the mess, he immediately left again. Eisen didn’t like how Stahl avoided him that much, but it wasn’t like he didn’t understand it.

One day, Stahl thought his grandfather was going to be fine, and the next day he saw him hooked up to wires and tubes with an arm missing. Anyone would be upset, especially if they were blatantly lied to, so it was all Eisen’s fault in the end.

"Alright, then let’s get started for now..." Eisen muttered to himself before walking over to one of the boxed in the corner and grabbing a certain small creation that he made a while ago, before he began to pull the scales out of its body. They were mostly uniform, so then, Eisen could create a simple mold with them as a base so that he could simply recreate the scales using Maroon instead of the original material. And when that mold was finished, Stahl grabbed the ingots of the Maroon and tested a few things out.

"Hmm... Alright, so I can’t melt it down with my element..." The old man said with a sigh, before holding it in front of Fafnir’s snout. "Can you try your Dragon fire on it?" Eisen asked, and Fafnir swiftly nodded his head before opening his mouth just so slightly, before releasing a little bit of his flames, but even they didn’t seem to be able to heat it up at all.

"Then maybe this?" The old man muttered to himself before grabbing one of his chisels and his hammer to split off a small piece of the metal off of one of the ingots to experiment with, although this was only possible because it was a quite soft metal anyway. And then, Eisen put the small chunk of Maroon into a small steel bowl, and then tried to heat the steel up. And to his luck, the Maroon began to soften up further, and then in the end slowly melted down.

"Alright, so at least this works. Shouldn’t be too hard, then." Eisen said with a smirk on his face, before he added more Maroon to the hot steel bowl to continue melting it down, although he only added just enough to create the scales, and then poured it into the molds he made. Although he didn’t think about one thing.

The molds were made out of his element, so instead of actually working, the Maroon simply flowed through the magic and was heading straight for the ground. But luckily, Eisen was able to react quickly enough and then held his hand underneath the melting metal, and as his hands were resistant to high heat, he was able to simply pour it back into the steel bowl.

"Hmm... Then what can I use..? I can’t use Transmutation on it either..." Eisen muttered to himself, before he looked at the small mountain of mana crystals next to him.

"I guess I could..." The old man whispered, before creating a small thin crystal stick and put it into the Maroon. It seemed to completely negate all the effects of actually letting it let mana flow through it, though, and otherwise, the metal simply ’ignored’ the mana crystal, like water did Aquaphobic fabric.

"Alright, good enough, I guess." Eisen muttered to himself, "At least I won’t need to worry about getting it out of the mold."

And so, Eisen swiftly created mana-crystal molds for CF-1’s scales, and then poured the molten metal into them. After a little while, it finally ended up setting, and Eisen just needed to flip the mold over and the Maroon scales dropped out of it.

"Hahh... I wish it was always this easy..." The old man chuckled, before starting to place the first scales into the places they were on the small Camera-Fish’s body, and when it was all done, he turned around with a smile, as he heard a knock on the door, and in came Komer and Stahl, swiftly delivering the small mana-crystal piece to Eisen.

"Alright, thank you, you two. Just to make sure I get how this works, the enchantment doesn’t need to be activated, but is activated by the mana source itself, right?" Eisen asked, before the two of them nodded their heads. "Mhm, exactly, actually! Oh, and is that the finished thing that will get to the mana source?" Komer asked curiously, and Eisen swiftly nodded his head.

"Yes, it is. I just hope that the Maroon doesn’t mess with any of it, otherwise we’ll have an issue..." The old man muttered to himself, before Komer and Stahl looked at each other confused. "Wait, what do you mean?" Stahl then asked, and Eisen turned to them surprised.

"You’ve had this for a few days and didn’t notice yet? You can’t properly use mana when you’re holding Maroon, and it even hinders mana regeneration... My hopes are that, because the Maroon only touches the metallic frame and none of the important places for the actual mana flow, CF-1 will work like normal, but we’ll need to see. Either way, I’ll have to modify things more than expected." The old man explained with a sigh, before grabbing a piece of high-tensile brass that he brought with him on his way to the Workshop.

"I’ll make another protective layer around the Eye and the place where the tubing will be coming out of later so that nothing can happen. I hope, at least." The old man explained, before Komer sighed loudly.

"Alright, so I guess there we have the negative..." Komer sighed loudly as he scratched the back of his head, and Eisen looked at him confused.

"What are you talking about?" He inquired, before the young Merchant explained. "Well, a Material like Maroon that’s basically completely immune to any kind of magic is insane, so it has to have some kind of negative to it. I don’t know how we didn’t notice yet, but I guess it makes sense to be that way. It’s a material perfect for defense against magic, but in turn, you won’t be able to use any kind of magic either, and because everyone really uses even a little of it in a fight, that makes it pretty tough to use, doesn’t it?"

"Not necessarily." Eisen explained with a smirk on his face, and noticing that Komer and Stahl didn’t follow, the old man explained as he started working on the Maroon-Protection parts out of Brass. "We know someone who doesn’t have an ounce of mana in their body, don’t we?" Eisen asked with a smirk, and immediately, Stahl and Komer opened their eyes wide and looked over to the side, directly at the tiny white fluffy spider sitting on the top of Caria’s hat.

"You don’t mean... You want to use all that Maroon for some kind of Mecha suit for Sal?" Stahl asked with a wry smile, but Eisen just sighed loudly. "I’m talking about Brody, boys."

"Right, that makes a looot more sense..." Stahl then admitted, before Eisen nodded his head and smirked. "It does, doesn’t it? I mean, if we at some point find a good source of Maroon, I’ll make some equipment out of it for him. Although most likely not purely out of it, but more like an alloy... It’s too soft otherwise." Eisen explained, before continuing to shape the Brass underneath the swing of his hammer.