As Eisen stared at the wooden Dragon below him, the old man didn't know what to do. After all, how was he supposed to react? Confused, Eisen turned around and looked at his friends, who were staring at Eisen, wondering how he would respond. For the most part, both Jyuuk and Xenia were the most excited, while the workers were quite confused and didn't know what was going on, similar to Evalia, Brody, and the rest of the Guildmembers.
Noticing that this was most assuredly a shared project between the Original of the Living and the Original of Magic, Eisen chose to ignore the notification that has been hovering next to his face for now. "Erm… Jyuuk, Xenia, what the hell is going on?" He asked before they both smugly crossed their arms before Xenia wanted to announce already what it is before Eisen held his hand toward them to tell her not to while he read the notification.
[You have activated a Homunculus]
"Don't say it. First off, thanks. This creation is something amazing, obviously. But we'll have a little meeting amongst our Guild's founding members in a bit, alright?" Eisen said with a smile, as he was still trying to figure out what was going on and didn't want Xenia to reveal it to anyone that was there before then.
He knew what a Homunculus was supposed to be, a fake 'being' created through alchemy, which was probably Xenia's side of things. And since it would imitate life, Jyuuk was quite clearly also involved. But he needed to figure out a bit more before being able to know what to think about it. Either way, Eisen then turned to the Homunculus with a smile.
"Hey there bud, how about you go back to sleep for a while, yeah?" Eisen asked it before it slowly turned around and returned to its regular position before stopping its movements as if it could never move in the first place before Eisen looked back at all of the workers.
"So this ship now has something quite special to it, isn't that right?" He said with a laugh, trying to play it off while knowing that this was kind of a big deal judging from basically all of the NPCs' reaction. "Either way, I'm sure that's only going to make this ship even greater!" Eisen exclaimed before finally acknowledging the ship as finished before a Notification Immediately appeared in front of Eisen.
[With the assistance of many people, you created a Large Ironbark Ship]
[Large Ironbark Ship]
[Quality – High][Rank – 5]
[Description] A Large wooden vessel created under the Leadership of the Omni-Craftsmaster Eisen. Not only has the sturdy Ironbark been masterfully transformed into an incredible Ship, breaching the Limit of the Leader's Skill. But it has also been equipped with wondrous enchantments to further its glory, breaching the Limit of the one's skill that created them, but it has then been coated with layers of Magic Paint created with numerous materials as a base, breaching the Limit of the one's skill that swung the brush.
[Special Abilities] Dragon's Protection, High-Speed Travel, Shock Absorption, Return, as well as Flame Resistance
[As the Limitbreak of Multiple Masters' abilities had intertwined, the broken limit has been further breached. +1 to all basic stats]
[Special Condition met, <Limitbreaker V> Title evolving to <Skybreacher> Title]
Surprised, Eisen looked at all of the notifications before glancing back at the crowd in front of him, who all seemed to be getting more and more excited the more they read the description to the Ship. And it seemed like both Evalia and Xenia also got more notifications than usual, although they most likely didn't get the 'Skybreacher' title as Eisen did. Either way, for now, Eisen payed attention to another notification that had more importance at this very moment.
[Name the Ship]
And only after a few seconds, Eisen came to a conclusion and chose a proper name for this ship, and only one name seemed truly logical after remembering the Dragon Homunculus directly behind him.
"And from now on, this ship shall be known as 'Dragon's Nest'!" The old man exclaimed so that all of the workers could hear his voice, before answering with cheers from their side as well.
[The Ship has been named 'Dragon's Nest']
With the confirmation from the System, Eisen slowly nodded and looked at the Workers with a smile. "Good job all of you! We prepared some drinks down in front of the Warehouse, so go ahead and celebrate a bit, will you?" Eisen laughed loudly before the workers swiftly did as instructed.
When Eisen saw that a few specific people wanted to go with them, Eisen just stopped them. "Not you four. As I said, we're having a meeting." He exclaimed in a stern expression, before looking at the other Guildmembers. "Sorry, we need to talk about what just happened," Eisen told them before he turned toward Kiron.
"And this time, you can't be here either, sorry. And can you take Caria and Melissa with you? They seem a bit tired right now." Eisen asked him before the Half-Dragon swiftly nodded his head. "Of course, Grandfather." He said before taking Melissa onto his arm, as she still couldn't walk all that well, and then brought her and the Myconid following him off the ship.
And now that only the five original guild members were left on-deck, Eisen turned to them, pointing at the cabin on the top, of two floors, of the structure at the back of the ship, where a meeting room of sorts was being constructed. There wasn't much yet, but it at least had a large table and chairs to sit on.
"All of you, up there." Eisen said with a frown, before snapping his fingers, something that he noticed helped when commanding things like Golems, that didn't seem too dissimilar to how Homunculi worked. "Humunculus, come with us." Eisen commanded the dragon, before the horrible creaking started again as both Evalia and Eisen looked at it in horror at that sound, which only annoyed Eisen even more.
Slowly, the Dragon Homunculus then climbed onto the deck and stood behind Eisen as the group of five, plus one, stepped up the stairs and entered the room. There, Eisen deactivated his Demonic Transformation, still keeping up his Titan-Size, as he sat down on the chair with two armrests, making it seem more like a wooden throne than a chair, that was specifically created to accommodate his current size, with the Homunculus acting somewhat like a dog and trying to stick its head underneath Eisen's arm.
"Alright, first of all, I think the question that I need to ask is obvious. Xenia, Jyuuk, why the hell did you turn a stagnant wooden figurehead into something living?" He asked, turning his head over to the wooden Dragon who already had cracks forming all over his body. Confused, the High-Elf and Beast-Person then looked at each other perplexed, Xenia being quite disappointed that Eisen didn't react the way she hoped him to.
"What do you mean? It works with Golems as well, right?" Xenia asked with a pout before Eisen nodded his head. "Yes, of course. But if you had just stuck a golem core in there, that would have also made the wood crack while the Golem core changes its new body so that it can move around. Evalia may have carved it in a way that it seems like it's mobile, but it's supposed to be stagnant. It's just amazing; it's completely amazing. A homunculus is a fake living creature, right? Trust me; if you had given it a proper body, I would have kissed all of you right here. But you didn't. And Evalia obviously didn't know what exactly was about to happen when I poured my mana into that crystal. Otherwise, I doubt she would have accepted it just like that. It's just blatantly disrespectful to Evalia as an artist, to the material simply because it's breaking just by accommodating the third thing you disrespected, the newly born living creature inside of there." Eisen pointed out, before Xenia and Jyuuk both realized their fault in all of this, while Evalia nodded her head angrily.
"I-I'm sorry, Eisen, I just thought it would b-be a nice s-surprise, I didn't know th-that…" Xenia began to stutter, something that none of the Originals had seen or heard her do so far since she was always outwardly extremely confident.
"Don't say sorry, Xenia. This Wooden Dragon here is already just amazing; I just wish you would have figured out how to give it a proper body. We can surely still fix it." Eisen tried comforting her from the other side of the table, feeling bad of making her react that way. Maybe he was a little bit too harsh on her.
"Alright, Homunculus, lie down for a little while so that you don't break your body further," Eisen commanded before the wooden figurine made to look like a rock did so immediately. "Let's move on from these mistakes you made, which are not all by far, but I'll talk about that later, to some other points… How the hell did you manage to make a Homunculus?" Eisen asked, and Xenia slowly began to stop shaking as she thought about the process.
"Erm… It was a-actually the cursed seed you brought me together with the crystalized mana. I was able to turn the curses into b-blessings and purify the wicked mana. We used the pure mana at a later point, but the seed turned into a s-seed of life." Xenia explained, continuing to calm herself down, only stuttering every once in a while now.
"And a seed of life obviously sounds like the source to all living things, right? And that reminded me of Homunculi, and because I didn't do that much with Alchemy yet, I read up on it, and when the Guildmaster at the Mage's Guild found out about it, he was delighted. He's a high-tier alchemist, so he knew a thing or two, obviously. He gave me a quest, and I found out more about how to make Homunculi, but I needed a few more things for that. One of those being a soul to give to it as well as some 'flesh' that the seed could sprout out of, so I talked to Jyuuk, and he helped me out with that." She explained, before turning to the Beastperson so that he could continue the story for a little bit.
"Huh? Oh, yes. You see, that 'Seed of Life,' as Xenia said, needed to be buried in the heart of a robust living being. And since Xenia got the quest from that Dragon, she chose to ask him if we could place it in his heart. Well, he accepted, to say the least. And because of his Rank as an ancient dragon, the 'Fruit of Life' immediately sprouted. I used some necromancy techniques to infuse a soul into that Fruit, and then it kept asking for a 'Core' to use. Since the Fruit of Life we used came from an Ancient Dragon, it needed to be a pretty high-rank mana-crystal, but we didn't have any of them. So we gave it a few regular mana-crystals, and it seemed to work, although it kept saying it needs to be always 'fed' mana-crystals, and that only after we gave it the crystalized mana as well... We figured that wouldn't be an issue, and continued. We figured out that it needed to be set in place similar to a Golem Core. Then Xenia placed it inside of the Dragon Figurehead with that complex enchantment to stabilize it while also activating the enchantments on a ship in such a way that the vessel could act with only the enchantment circle at the back of the ship as the core so that it could detach from it. And then… this all happened." Jyuuk explained as Eisen wasn't sure whether he should feel impressed or completely stupified by that story.
"So you're telling me that you asked an ancient dragon that could wipe out entire Handor within a few seconds to use its body for an experiment, received a weird fruit from that, and then gave that fruit highly condensed mana originating from either one of her followers, or even the Evil Dragon Queen herself for all we know, and thought 'it wouldn't be an issue'?" Eisen asked to get clear on the most important things that he just heard before Jyuuk slowly nodded his head.
"Alright, I've got to give it to you, I most likely would have done the same, so I can't judge you there. Well, first, good job on the enchantment, Xenia. I didn't even know it was possible to do that — good job on creating artificial life as well. Obviously, we'll be needing a new figurehead for the ship, so please take care of that, alright Evalia? Because we can't have a unique, artificial creature simply there at the front for everyone to see, because that would just freak them out. And it would be a shame if anything were to happen to it, especially once we give it its new core." Eisen explained as he rubbed the bridge between his eyes, before all four of the Originals looked at him confused, especially Xenia and Jyuuk before Eisen skipped the explanation and grabbed his backpack, before pulling out the one thing inside of it.
The Dungeon Core.