"Now then..." Eisen muttered to himself, trying to stretch his body properly after all this repetitive work. Luckily his stats were so high at this point, otherwise he never would have been able to get the Farming skill to Rank 3 within a single day. Usually, it took far, far longer to do that kind of thing.
For now, the old man just looked at the time properly, and then moved his fingers through his beard as he turned toward Serio, who was currently preparing to move all of what was farmed to a different location. "Are there any sort of mines here in town?" The old man asked, but Serio slowly shook his head. "None that I'm aware of, sorry." The Core Guardian replied, so Eisen just nodded his head with a sigh.
"Guess that has to wait a little longer, huh?" The old man muttered to himself, and then looked over toward his Grandson again.
"Then do you want to help me out to level some of my other skills up?" Eisen asked, and Stahl raised his brows surprised. "Heh? What other skills do you need to level up?" The young man asked curiously in reply, and Eisen quickly checked his status out and moved his fingers through his beard.
"Hmm... Just my Rank 0 skills... So Sorcery, Lockpicking, and Swimming." The old man pointed out, and Stahl scratched the back of his neck in response. "Sure, then how do you need my help?" He asked, and Eisen closed his eyes and thought about it for a while.
"Basically just to let me know what kinds of different Magic Circles I should make, and help me make an unpickable lock." Eisen suggested, before Stahl looked at him confused.
"Well, I get the first one, but why do you want to make an unpickable lock if you want to level your lockpicking up?" Stahl asked, and Eisen just smirked at him.
"It's going to be a lock that returns to a random state when it was picked, that's what I mean. So that I don't need to make a few dozen locks or something like that." Eisen explained, making Stahl look back at the old man surprsied.
"Oh, that sounds neat... How do you want to do that?"
"That's exactly what I could need your help with, to figure out a way to create random patterns through enchantments." Eisen pointed out, so Stahl just nodded his head. "Well, that's not necessarily that complicated... But alright, sure. I'll work on something. But how do you want to practice swimming?"
"Don't worry about that, I'm just going to make a small pool or something like that." He pointed out, looking back toward where Serio was before, although he had just disappeared in a cloud of mist, and then spoke to the Core Guardian. Luckily, Serio was able to at the very least know exactly what was going on in open areas like this, so he could hear Eisen perfectly.
"Is there any place for that kind of thing?" The old man asked, and Serio just nodded his head in response when he appeared a few moments later.
"Yes, there is. There would be the castle's central courtyard, or the garden, of course. In the latter, you would also have sufficient materials for whatever you want to make." Serio pointed out, so Eisen just shrugged and nodded. "Fair enough. Then let's get back there. Serio, are you sure you don't need any help?"
"I'm alright, don't worry." The Core Guardian replied as he transported the next little bit of the wheat away, and Eisen, his monsters, Evalia and Stahl then swiftly made their way over to the castle, although Evalia soon split up from them and chose to make her way through town a little bit to see if there were any places she could help out.
And so, Eisen and Stahl simply made their way through the castle together and then stepped into the Garden, where Constant quite swiftly appeared in front of them again.
"Ah, Master Eisen! Welcome back!" He exclaimed, so Eisen just laughed in response. "Yep, I'm back. Just to let you know, I got a pretty nice idea for what I could make with the Yin and Yang ingots." The old man explained immediately, so Constant stared back at him quite curiously. "Oh! Really? What is it you want to make?" The Core Helper asked, but Eisen just rubbed his hand over his head with a smile.
"For now, could you give Stahl a few mana crystals to work with? We need to do something first, I'll tell you later." Eisen pointed out, so Constant nodded his head swiftly.
"Of course! And what do you need right now?" The Core Helper asked, and Eisen just smiled at him. "A little bit of crystal as well. I don't think I need anything else." Eisen pointed out, and Constant swiftly disappeared, before returning with two large chunks of mana-crystal in his hands.
"Here you go!" He exclaimed, so Eisen nodded his head with a smile.
"Thank you." The old man said, before quickly getting out his Staff and walking over to an empty area, where he swiftly started to construct the 'pool' in the rather uncommon shape that he wanted it to have for just a certain reason.
"Alright, then let me know when the random-generator is ready." Eisen said as he turned toward Stahl, who slowly nodded his head while looking at the structure that was forming in front of Eisen, in the shape of just a giant, horizontal loop.
"Sure..." He muttered, while Eisen simply created a square window made of mana-crystal in the side of that loop, and then created an opening at the top of it, which Eisen swiftly climbed into.
Then, using a regular wand, Eisen tried to get started with his Sorcery-Practice and started to make a water-creation magic circle so that he could start filling this entire loop up with water.
And to that magic-circle, Eisen added a condition that it would continuosly keep the water going while Eisen was supplying mana to it, so that he didn't need to repeatedly create this same magic-circle over and over again.
A little while later, Stahl stepped up to the window that Eisen was sitting behind of and knocked on it to get the old man's attention, holding the seemingly-finished enchantment in front of himself.
With a smile on his face, Eisen nodded his head and yelled out toward Stahl to ask him to make a mask that would allow Eisen to breath underwater, which the young man swiftly did. Using that time, Eisen managed to completely fill this loop up with water.
Afterward, the old man stepped back out of the loop and then made his way over toward the workshop in the center of the hedgemaze, where Stahl was currently working.
After taking a good look at the actually pretty simple enchantment, the old man quickly started working on a system to properly 'set' the different types of lock then.
It seemed like Stahl actually took the random-generator far enough to control the whole 'pin-generation' sequence on its own, meaning that all that Eisen needed to do was to hook this up to a proper lock, and make a mana-signal run over toward this enchantment every time that the lock was opened.
And for that, Eisen just needed a small transmutation setup that he added to change the places where the mana-crystal pins could split up so that the lock could be opened.
Then the only thing that needed to be done was to create the casing, the tumbler, and then set all of the different pins inside together with some springs that would push the pins back out when no pressure was on them.
Just like that, the unpickable lock was finished, and Eisen could get started pretty quickly. Of course, Eisen tried the lock out a few times outside of the water before putting on the mask that Stahl made for him and stepping into the water-filled tube that Eisen created out of his own element.
First things first, Eisen tested the lockpicking out a few times underwater without swimming around, and then swam a few times around the loop while unlocking it more, before Eisen nodded his head in satisfaction, then starting to create the first enchantment that he wanted Stahl to show him, an enchantment to increase the current inside of the loop, as per the old man's request.
Using the small wand from before, Eisen created that enchantment that would react whenever he passed through it with his body and increase the current just a tiny bit more. Of course, instead of swimming with the current, Eisen did his best to swim against the current, because that gave him far more proficiency in this skill.
And so, Eisen swiftly managed to properly create a system where he could practice both lockpicking and swimming at the same time. Now he just needed to add sorcery into it, which wasn't all that hard either.
Whenever the old man got back to the window, he would stop and wait for the next magic-circle to be shown to him, and the old man would stick his hand through a small opening that was created specifically for this and then created the magic-circle outside of the tube like that. It might be a little bit of a waste of time if he could just do it like normal afterward when he got outside of the tube again, but in the end, skills gained more proficiency if they were used properly in unfavorable conditions, which was another reason why his Lockpicking skill was leveling up so nicely.
And so, Eisen did this same thing for a few hours on end, until Stahl had to go to sleep. But at that point, the old man already got a rough grasp of what exactly needed to be done to create the most proficiency-efficient enchantment, and tried his best to come up with his own ideas for some after Stahl left.
Just like that, this weird and surprisingly efficient method ended up getting the old man rank-up after rank-up, and when the sun came back up in the morning and Stahl returned, Eisen was still swimming inside of the tube.
His swimming skill was the only one that needed to Rank up another time now, so Eisen placed the lock outside a little while ago and was just swimming inside of there now, really trying his best to fight against the insanely strong current that was pushing against him now.
But finally, when the other Originals were gathering around the loop as well, the old man was finally done, and grasped onto the wall that he himself made with his element, practically ripping away at it.
The tube opened up and water shot out of the small hole like it was a Fireman's Water-hose, before the old man swiftly climbed out of that water and properly stretched, taking off the mask that by now was practically stuck to his face, even having deeply imprinted himself in his skin.
It looked kind of ridiculous, but nobody wanted to laugh at Eisen, because this whole idea was just ridiculous in and of itself.
"You were really inside there the whole night..?" Jyuuk asked with a wry smile, and Eisen nodded his head in reply as he slowly activated his elemental transformation in his flame-state to quick-dry himself.
"Yup. And I managed to rank up three more of my skills up to three. Swimming, Lockpicking, and Sorcery." The old man explained, and then happily smirked in response to properly confirming one of the other things that appeared on his status throughout this whole ordeal.
On top of now being able to breath underwater naturally for about half an hour, having gained the ability to pick locks with his mana, or simply create ability-based magic-circles, Eisen had gained the title <Living Torpedo>, which heavily increased his underwater speed.