With a slight sigh, Eisen pushed his body up and waved the notification that appeared in front of him away, before just stepping back into the Dungeon. It was fine that the players were there now, but he was feeling quite uncomfortable with the new knowledge that was just given to him about what kind of person he was before.
"If I lived that long... Then maybe it could be..." He muttered to himself. After all, the 'Eisen' of the past lived 100 Thousand years, as far as the old man was aware. And he knew people that changed who they were from the grounds up in a single decade, so it wasn't too hard to consider it possible.
And from what he heard at <Prototype>, he was pretty cynical sometimes toward the end, meaning that it was more than just possible for him to have become just a truly bad person like that. He hoped that it wasn't the case, but after being told all that just now, Eisen simply didn't think he could actually deny it.
At the very least he gave them their 'Free Will' like his Instincts told him to... At first he wanted to just make it a proper, regular Golem Core, but then he changed his mind basically drastically and made an enchantment so that the souls would practically own themselves. It wasn't actually him that started all the enchantments, Eisen simply gave everything a bit of a 'jumpstart'.
The old man wasn't sure why exactly he did it, but as mentioned, it was just that his instincts told him that's what he was supposed to do. Maybe it was the old Eisen shining through and telling the current Eisen that his actions were a mistake, but he wasn't entirely convinced of that.
For now, Eisen just wanted to work on something else, and as such went into the Dungeon together with Aulu, to start it off there.
He basically already confirmed that it was possible for the 'Souls' inside of Ego-Golem Cores to learn the information saved inside of 'crystal brains', so Eisen was pretty sure that it should be the same with Aulu, and she should be the same cute wolf lady as she always had been.
And so, the old man slowly made her lay down on her back and opened her chest up carefully by removing some of the threads holding her leather-skin together and then carefully took the Golem Core out of her chest, before getting started on making another one that he could replace it with, swiftly placing one of the wolf-souls into it.
Just like that, the old man then managed to replace the Golem Core with an Ego-Golem Core making use of a basic Wolf Soul. Eisen was pretty glad to see that there were multiple of a few ranks of Gray-Wolf Monsters above that, reaching all the way from Rank 1 to Rank 5, and the same was the case with the Horse-Souls for Cabarum Later.
And the reason why he was happy about it was quite simple. Right now, Aulu had changed into a Rank 0 Ego Automaton, and while it didn't necessarily say that she had a Rank Limit of 0, Eisen figured it made sense that he somehow had to 'Upgrade' her using other souls as well, just like he had to with regular Ego-Items.
He would just need to wait and see about that later on when he got her to level up all to the peak of Rank 0, which probably shouldn't take so long.
But either way, Eisen was more than just happy when he saw Aulu move around. At first, it seemed like her 'Memories' hadn't connected to her soul just yet and she just started trying to growl at Eisen, but after a little while, she just started to snuggle up to Eisen like she often did anyway.
"Ah, there's my good girl again, huh?" The old man chuckled slightly, happy that he was able to properly keep Aulu along with him for a while now, at least that's what it seemed like. He probably wouldn't have trashed her either way, considering that she was too weak to take any of the monsters Eisen could fight against now anyway, but it was practically impossible to take her with him at all to anywhere, which Eisen wasn't necessarily happy about.
For now, while Aulu was running around in the Dungeon space playing with some of the Dungeon Wolves, the old man swiftly started preparing the Ego Golem Core that he would then place into Cabarum's body instead of the Golem Core that he had inside of him at the moment. He didn't want to do so just yet, because it seemed like Aulu's 'Stats' had been reduced pretty heavily already, and Eisen just figured he should take his time to find a nice spot for them to level up and then switch Cabarum out, so that he wouldn't end up too weak to pull the carriage. Just technically from his body, Cabarum shouldn't be too weak, but you could never really say what he would end up as.
The Physical base didn't really always matter anyway, apparently, considering that the tiny girl Caria's current stats were already far higher than Eisen's were when he started out. Just from the physical standpoint, it would be nonsensical for her to be stronger than him, but the reality would have been different.
Either way, for now, there was another Golem that Eisen had to work on. And so that he could properly do that, he swiftly turned over toward the Mist-Spirit calmly playing with the Monster Children. "Kirisho, would you mind and, just for a couple of hours, wait outside of the Dungeon? There is something I need to work on, and I don't think I really want you to see it just yet." Eisen explained with a slight smile, and Kirisho looked at him with a surprised expression but slowly nodded her head, "Of course... As long as it is nothing dangerous to you, it is alright with me." She admitted, so the old man just chuckled and shook his head.
"No, no, it's nothing dangerous, don't worry. I simply don't want you to see the item I'm about to work on just yet. That's all there really is to it." Eisen explained to her, and Kirisho slowly nodded her head and made her way toward the 'Reception Building', although she curiously peeked over her shoulder a couple of times on her way there.
And it seemed like she wasn't the only one that was curious about what Eisen was about to make. The others, meaning the three Monster Children as well as Sigurd, swiftly made their way over toward the Old man as well, huddling up together next to him to get a proper look at what exactly he was about to make.
To start it off with, Eisen thought about trying out a bit of a new way of creating Golem Cores. Sure, he should be able to create an Ego-Golem in this manner quite easily, but Eisen wasn't entirely positive if that was enough for his purposes.
He wanted to give Kirisho something that would basically be a complete, true fox, with the exception of it being made of a bit more metal than usual. And for that, Eisen thought that maybe it could help to 'extend' the reach of the Golem Core a little, and ended up getting a pretty nice idea for that.
But to start it off with, Eisen had to actually create the body of the small Fox to start it off with. He took a look at the soul, grabbed it out of the Soul Stone a few times just to see whether or not he got the size and general proportions right for this soul, and then swiftly started working, creating a simple metal skeleton out of an alloy of different magic metals.
The two main metals for that were Mythril and Matikum, the metal created when infusing Platinum with enough Magic. As Eisen really wasn't able to 'Specialize' this metal toward any specific element, considering that Kirisho's mist wasn't a skill but rather an innate part of her bodily structure, and Eisen wasn't able to use such a thing for Enchantments yet.
So, this part would have to stay like normal. Of course, Eisen also alloyed it with some Brass for general strength and even a little bit of White Gold, to give it just a little bit more of a raw boost.
And so, after properly working on somehow strengthening the outer surface of the metal, the old man had some nice, strong, magic-metal bones in front of him. They were still far easier to bend or break compared to regular Brass, maybe, but considering that this didn't seem like a 'Combat Pet' kind of Golem, Eisen didn't think he had to worry about that all that much. In the end, it would still have a stronger body than a regular fox would, after all.
Either way, after finishing that Skeleton, Eisen swiftly put it together and then started on the creation of the Golem Core, and swiftly turned it into thick crystal thread. And using a method that Eisen used before already, Eisen pulled Mana-Thread through that crystal thread and used transmutation to simply pull the 'core' of that thread out of it to hollow it out and turn it into a thin tube.
As Eisen hadn't turned every part of the Golem Core, which Eisen had specially mixed with the Soul Stone Crystal beforehand already to properly contain the soul, into thread, he placed the rest of that Golem Core safely into the center of the Metal Skeleton and connected different parts of the hollow thread throughout the 'Body', hardening it in different places to make sure it would keep its shape, and then connected the ends of that thread to the Golem Core using transmutation, to make sure that it would end up as 'One piece'.
Once that was done, Eisen grabbed something else. The small prototype version for the automatic Potion-Brewer, which Eisen swiftly tried to use to create 'Potion Jelly' for a very specific potion recipe.
And that potion was called a 'Healthy Body' potion. Basically, it removed any minor physical injuries or diseases, helped with your stamina and health regeneration, and added a slight bonus to physical stats. The reason that Eisen wanted to turn this into Jelly was quite easy as well... The regular potion itself had a quite weird texture to it, mainly because it was very, very thick in its potion state already, as it was made using the pulp of specific fruits and roots. Those would be completely dissolved in the end, so it wasn't like there were any chunks inside, but the consistency was practically like thick pudding.
So when Eisen made potion jelly out of it, and to top it off the 'Compressed' version as was created by the Mass-Production machine, it was basically one solid, wobbly chunk that was hard to pull apart. Basically, it was like raw meat, which was just the texture that Eisen wanted, and its color was basically snow-white, which Eisen didn't mind all that much. It might look nice when peaking out from under the pitch-black fur, after all.
And so, Eisen swiftly set this 'Meat Substitute' to the side and started building the different connection pieces that were supposed to support the movement, before placing that meat substitute onto the frame, and then at last just hardened that meat substitute in different places to create a skin-like surface at the top, before moving onto creating a metal fur using a pitch-black metal alloy, once more supposed to help with mana-flow.
But then, toward the tail, Eisen created a 'Mist Tail', using the 'Mist' rune to create it around something like a mana-thread wireframe.
Then, the only thing that was left was to add the soul.