"Bolremgar, wake up," Eisen yelled out as he climbed off Cabarum's back and looked at the Bronze Dragon sleeping on the broken-down ship in the water. Slowly, the Dragon lifted his head and looked at the man standing in front of him.
"Oh, Eisen. You again… You know, the majority of Champions see us two or three times a year at the very most." He said in a quite sassy way, and Eisen crossed his arms, ignoring that comment.
"I need to talk to you, so come down here for a second." He asked, or instead commanded, and the Ancient Bronze dragon sighed loudly and jumped over to where Eisen was standing, transforming mid-jump.
"Alright, what do you need? Want the other egg I had?" Bol asked annoyedly, and Eisen shook his head. "No, thanks. And I'm pretty sure the other 'egg' wasn't an egg, was it?" The old man asked, and Bol began to chuckle.
"Yup! I'm surprised you realized that. Actually, how did you realize that?" He asked curiously, and Eisen swiftly began to explain, wanting to move on to more pressing matters.
"The egg that you gave me was specifically petrified by a monster. And the overall texture and color of the two rocks you showed me looked very, very different from each other. I doubt that a monster can use two different types of petrification. But that's not what I want to ask you about right now." Eisen said quite strictly, and Bol replied with a nod.
"Sure, shoot." He said, and Eisen immediately started asking the questions he wanted to know the answer to; "First, why do you have a red dragon's egg? Second, why did you give me an egg filled with venom and a parasitic slime?"
Continuously wearing a grin on his face, Bolremgar began to explain, "I'll answer the second one first. I just figured you could deal with it, that's all. And no kind of venom can damage a dragon's bones, not even an unborn one's. Since you only needed the bones, I thought that it didn't matter what else was in the egg." He answered, and Eisen stayed quiet, merely accepting that as-is for now. After all, if he wanted to kill Eisen somehow, it would be much easier to do so right this very moment.
"And then to your first question. This cave was once a Red Dragon's Lair. That was a few hundred years ago though. I killed it and took over, because I liked this cave. And before you ask, the body was taken by some long-dead guy. He wasn't interested in the egg because it already died, so it was just lying around here. I was curious to see if you would instinctively pick the actual egg, so I showed you something that wasn't an egg together with it." He explained, and Eisen nodded his head.
"I see. Well, I'll take that as an explanation for now, then." The old man answered, and then immediately moved on. "You said you saw a red dragon before. Can you maybe show me what it and its major abilities looked like?" Eisen asked, and Bol nodded his head, although in annoyance.
"You peaked are quite peculiar, aren't you? Very well, I'm going to show you." He replied and stepped over to a space-free area, transforming back into his dragon-form, before closing his eyes. Slowly, his scales turned from the lightly green-ish metallic bronze color they had over to a deep, bright red, while Bol's body bulked up and his wings changed shape together with him.
While the metallic dragons he's seen so far seemed more artistic, majestic, and lean than anything, this chromatic dragon was something like a true monstrosity. Giant teeth that stuck out its mouth and ripped up wings while having a scar-covered, bulky body.
"This a true copy of what the dragon that used to live in this cave looked like, for a short while, my body is completely that of that dragons. My scales, my powers, everything. Tell me what you want to see." Bol said in an entirely different voice to before, and Eisen nodded his head with a grin.
"How about everything?" He asked with a grin and activated his 'truth-seeing' eyes, focusing entirely on Bolremgar with one of the new visual abilities that would let him scan everything about at least the visuals of this dragon body.
With a bit of surprise, Bolremgar nodded his head. "Sure, I do not see why I shouldn't. After all, this is just information about the enemy." He answered while Eisen stepped around Bolremgar to first see if there were any peculiarities, also running his fingers over the red scales to feel how tough or flexible they were.
After that, Bol swiftly showed Eisen a few different skills that the red dragon had, including the peculiar flames.
Eisen could feel that they were far, far hotter than any regular fire could be, but surprisingly enough, they were a dark red, the color which usually the comparatively 'cold' parts of fire took on. But these flames were that color all the way through.
"So this is the fire of a red-dragon?" Eisen muttered out quietly, trying to capture the scene well enough in his mind so that he wouldn't forget about it.
About an hour or two later, Bolremgar had gone through all the different skills that the particular dragon that he killed had, and shortly afterward, the 'True Copy' ability ran out, and he turned back into his standard form.
"Now go, please. I'm always tired after I use this." Bol said and climbed back up the ship to lay back down, and Eisen thanked him before climbing onto Cabarum's back.
"I think I just found out far more than I figured I would," Eisen muttered to himself as he left the beach in front of the cave, riding back toward town, while Caria and Melissa were playing around a bit directly in front of him.
A little while later, the old man arrived in town and made his way back to the harbor, where he didn't hesitate to enter his workshop. The others were currently still out, so Eisen had all the time he needed to work on the scales now, and Caria and Melissa sat behind him, curiously watching what the old man was doing, which they haven't done in a while.
After splitting the large block of the Red-Dragon's alloy up into smaller pieces with transmutation, each part large enough for one scale, Eisen did a little bit of a mental calculation, trying to figure out if this was enough to make every scale. Or if he would need to somehow stretch the metal along with some different materials to make a different alloy.
"Hmm, I think I should be able to just about, do this…" He muttered to himself as he grabbed the first small chunk of the metal and threw it into a magic forge he just created to heat it. "And now, let's get to the grind, shall we?" Eisen chuckled to himself as he started to get to work to mass-produce the large number of scales that he needed.
---
Eisen continued working continuously through the night without sleeping, which was only possible due to his current Endurance stat. At the moment, it was around 5 am in-game, and the first few people from the church seemed to make their way to the ship, with the originals each waking up unusually early to oversee everything that was going on, at least those that had the time to do so.
"Yo Eisen, still workin'?" Brody asked as he opened the door, looking to his left and noticing the two monster-girls curled up next to each other as they took a nap, and Eisen himself was sitting on a chair with one of the scales in his hand.
"Still working, yes. I want to finish the scales up before the others finish their materials so that I can help out a bit with that." He explained before Brody nodded his head. "Sounds good to me. Tell me if you need me to do anythin'."
"Will do, don't worry. Say, how was the day in town yesterday?" Eisen curiously asked as he didn't have the chance to ask his grandchildren yet, and Brody sighed loudly. "It was pretty fun until everyone suddenly fell asleep because they didn't have enough endurance. We were just a block or so from the ship as well. Had to carry them over here, and that's quite annoying when players are asleep." He complained, and Eisen chuckled.
"I get what you mean. Although I'm surprised you managed to move them all, I thought that was supposed to be something like a safe-mode?" The old man asked, and brody nodded his head.
"Basically, it is. Like, they can't get damaged at all no matter what you do, and only people on their friendslist can pick them up. Otherwise, they can only be somewhat dragged around, like a few meters, and then no more. I guess that's just so that people can't block any entranceways by just logging off or somethin'." The Demon-Orc Halfling suggested as he turned around and left again. "Well, gotta help out the others settle in. See you later, you old geezer." He said as he closed the door, leaving Eisen alone.
With a light smile, Eisen then continued his work. He managed to finish creating all the scales a while ago and was now working on enchanting them. On the inside of each scale, he placed the two Kanji for 'Red Dragon', and on the outside, he carved the peculiar pattern that he found on Bol's scales during his transformation yesterday. They didn't form any specific shape but were probably just a natural pattern that didn't give any effects to the scale itself, but Eisen felt it was an excellent way to correctly specify these as a Red Dragon's Scales, despite them being different to usual scales.
And after he finished the first one of these, he was able to see that it worked! They were seen as 'Red Metallic Scales,' so Eisen continued creating the scales in the same way over and over again, merely piling them on top of one another.
He was already three-quarters of the way done when Brody came into the room, so it only took him about one more hour until he was finally finished, ready to grab them and bring them up into the meeting room.
After Eisen placed them into a bag to be able to carry them there more easily and then made his way to the main deck, he was immediately greeted by his apprentices and Noa, the nun who was the first person he met at the church.
"Ah, Eisen! We finished with all the preparations you asked us to make." Rouge exclaimed with a smile before Noa looked at him and Eisen a bit confused.
"Rouge? Didn't you say you were asked that of the Sir Demon? He is your mentor now, right?" She asked, and that was when Eisen realized that Noa hadn't seen him outside of his Demonic Form yet. So with a wry smile, he shrunk down to regular human-size and activated his demonic transformation.
"Yes, and that is me. I don't naturally look like that, you see." The old man chuckled, and Parc crossed his arms smugly and nodded his head. "Mhm, and that's because Eisen is something far cooler than a demon, to begin with, he's-"
"Parc, leave that explanation to me later, yeah? We're leaving soon, and I want to tell everyone at a place where there's no chance of being overheard by anyone that's not supposed to hear." Eisen explained, and Parc nodded his head apologetically.
Surprised, Noa ignored that small exchange just now, looking at Eisen with wondrous eyes. "Oh, so you are a Titan in reality? Wait, no… Do Titans have the ability to change their height?" She asked, slightly confused, but Eisen shook his head.
"I'm not a Titan in reality either. I'm a Giant-Dwarf Halfling, and I recently learned the ability to change my size through my Giant-side." He explained quite quickly, and Noa nodded her head in surprise. "I see, that is quite peculiar indeed! Please tell me more about that later. For now, I have to assist some of the children in finding a place to sleep on this ship." She explained, lightly bowing forward before she made her way down the stairs leading into the body of the ship before Eisen smiled at his apprentices.
"Try to help anyone that needs help. I'll be up on the top floor if you need me." Eisen explained, and the three boys swiftly nodded their heads at their mentor's words.