Carefully, Marcear placed her hand on the old man's chest, before Eisen started to feel a warm energy enter his body as a notification appeared in front of him.
[Magic Craftsmanship Skill Learned]
"Oh? Magic Craftsmanship..?" Eisen muttered quietly before he raised his brows in response to what he just read, before smirking slightly. "So basically the ability to turn actual magic into items?" The old man asked, and Marcear nodded her head in response.
"Quite exactly, yes. The trial I had you go through was to see if you truly had a deep enough understanding of magic to work with it in this manner, and if you already had experience to control and manipulate it in normal manners." The Dragoness explained before Eisen just slightly smirked in response.
"Should've come here earlier. It sounds interesting, really. Alright, tell me what I need to do." The old man suggested, and Marcear pushed her hand forward toward the table standing next to her and seemed to push her mana out of it, creating four different small blocks of crystalized mana.
"It is quite basic. Mana carries intent, so depending on your intent, it will behave differently. If you wish to forge it, it will act like metal. If you wish to turn it into clothes, it will act like cloth. These here should be enough to let you try out different categories already. Once mana starts to crystalize, it should be easy to work with, although it is also possible with it in its regular form." The Dragoness explained, so Eisen smiled brightly as he grabbed the first of the blocks of crystalized mana.
It probably wouldn't be often that he could make something using a Dragon's Mana, so he should try his best. "I'm guessing for now I can only work with pure Mana?" Eisen said as he carried the crystalized mana over to the forge, and Marcear slowly nodded her head.
"Yes, that should be the limit of your current Skill." She explained, so Eisen cracked his knuckles and kept smiling as he looked at the crystalized mana. "Steel." He said, and then threw the crystalized mana into the forge while Marcear looked at him surprised.
"Did you already assign how it should act to it?" She asked, so Eisen nodded his head, although it caused him a little bit of a headache thinking about it. "Oh, yeah… The old Eisen probably knew how to do this, maybe the action is ingrained in me?" The old man figured, and it wasn't a lie either. He just instinctively did it, so that was most likely the case.
Soon enough, it seemed like the crystalized mana had heated up enough, even if its color didn't change much. It had something like the glow of hot metal, anyway. The base color of the mana was more like silver, and it practically seemed like it was the regular metal when Eisen looked at it before. It was the mana of a Silver Dragon, after all. But, it now acted like steel, at least similar to it, so this felt a bit weird to work with for the old man just looking at it.
Either way, Eisen then just grabbed his multitool and set it properly into its hammer-state before starting to forge the crystalized mana into shape. There wasn't necessarily a lot of it, so Eisen couldn't make some amazing high-tier item, which was to be expected considering that his new skill was at Rank 0 right now anyway.
So for now, the old man just wanted to make an item that could make use of multiple different materials, and ended up choosing a simple Dagger for that. He could use Metal for the blade, wood for the handle, leather to wrap the handle, and gems for enchantments or decoration.
The crystalized mana was a little awkward to work with. Sure, it acted like metal and could be bent and dented into the right shape, and it even felt weirdly like metal when Eisen touched it, but it was clear the moment that Eisen started working with it that it absolutely wasn't metal. It just felt weirdly artificial, somehow.
Eisen wasn't entirely sure what kind of benefit Magic Crafting had, but he hoped that it was worth it. If not, he wouldn't really be using this skill much, and that would just be a shame.
Soon enough, the old man managed to finished the metal part of the dagger and then quickly got started with grinding an edge onto it, and it even gave off the regular sparks Eisen was used to when he was doing it.
And then, once the blade was done, he grabbed the next piece of crystalized mana and looked down at it. "Oak." He said, and immediately the Silver-Colored and -Textured mana started to feel a little more like wood in Eisen's hand, even if not really. Especially that part was pretty weird as well.
Swiftly, the old man changed his Multitool to its Knife-State and started to carve into the Crystalized mana, quickly carving it into the proper shape of a handle. This didn't really take that long, so Eisen could swiftly place it onto the blade. Luckily he didn't need any glue or something, since the pieces just connected with each other once Eisen 'willed' them to.
Then, he grabbed the next piece of crystalized mana and simply used transmutation to press it flat, into the right thickness, and then slightly sighed to himself as he muttered, "Cow's Leather", and then used his knife to cut through it to turn it into a single long strip that he wrapped around the handle of the Mana-Dagger, properly making sure that it stayed attached.
And then, for the last part of Crystalized mana, Eisen didn't have to 'assign' it anything, since it was already a crystal-structure, and instead just used transmutation to grab a chunk off of it and then tried to carve it into shape using the knife by covering the edge with a thin layer of his own crystalized mana to use transmutation properly.
Then, Eisen simply pressed the gem into the small spot at the bottom of the handle and pulled out one of the small needles that he had inside of the Multitool to carve an enchantment into the nearly-finished mana-blade.
It was basically just something like an enchantment meant to increase the speed and cutting strength of everything, so nothing all too special.
"Alright then. It's done." Eisen said with an unsure expression. It wasn't bad working with the mana, it just felt 'wrong' to him, at least a little bit, so he wasn't sure if this item was really that great.
[Silver Dragon's Mana-Dagger]
[Rank – 0][Quality – Perfect]
[Description] A Dagger entirely made of mana created by the Omni-Craftsmaster Eisen. The Mana used comes from an Ancient Silver Dragon. It is a spell in the shape of a Weapon meant for high speeds.
"Hmm… A Spell in the Shape of a Weapon?" Eisen asked with his brow raised and turned toward Marcear, who just nodded her head slowly, astounded by the speed at which the old man created this piece.
"Ah… Yes, that is the nature of this skill… It is a spell, but at the same time it isn't. There are many opponents that are immune to physical attacks, but with a weapon created like this, even they will be able to cause damage. And due to the nature, you can use it to closely interact with mana." She explained, and Eisen looked at the Dagger with a bit of a grumble.
"Is that it?" He asked disappointedly. Sure, it was a nice item, but it wasn't anything special. The only real use it had was in very, very specific situations, so having a whole skill for it seemed a bit… disappointing.
"Hm?" Marcear asked surprised, not having expected the old man's response to the skill, "I think it may be hard to truly grasp it like this, but…" Marcear pointed out and then slowly raised her hand, creating the same small flame spell as before. "Try cutting through this fire." She suggested, and Eisen slightly sighed and figuredd it couldn't hurt to try.
Carefully, he ran the dagger through the flames and they quite literally split up for a moment, and the upper half of the flames simply rose up higher and then disappeared, while the lower half stayed there with a flat upper surface. It looked pretty unusual, but at the same time was enough to make Eisen feel a little more excited.
"You need to understand, such a weapon is a spell, as I said. It interacts with magic in a different manner to regular, physical items. And of course, this here is simply pure mana, and your skill is at the lowest rank. If you had made this dagger later on with a higher rank, it would have surely taken on part of my nature. And if you later use your ability to make the same weapon out of flame magic, it will be a weapon of wieldable flames. Something that will give a new perspective to mages, because it will allow them to use their mental prowess to their physical advantage. After all, a Spell grows stronger depending on who the user of that spell is." Marcear explained, so slowly, Eisen became more and more impressed with the possibilities of this skill.
It would definitely open up a lot more possibilities if he learned to properly make use of it, both for him, and for those that received these tools or weapons.
"Interesting… Xenia is going to be excited hearing about this." Eisen muttered to himself as he looked down at the dagger in his hand. It was slightly translucent, and seemed weirdly-glass like. Basically, everything about this item was weird, that's all there was to it…
And as Eisen was looking down at the dagger, he noticed something else that was going on in front of him, which was that the Ancient Silver Dragoness turned back into her Dragon form and was currently pushing a lot of mana out of her body, which amalgamated right in front of her into a small point. It took a whole few minutes before she stopped exhaustedly and handed the product of this work to the old man, who was now holding a large, heavily compressed mass of crystalized mana the size of the old man's head in his arms, and it was incredibly heavy, meaning that this must have more mana than Eisen could imagine.
"Erm… What's this?" The old man asked, and Marcear looked down at him with a light smile, "A Small gift for you, for passing this trial so swiftly." She explained, so Eisen smiled up at her, happy that he could have something to make a great item with once his skill level rose a bit more, although there was something else that he also wanted to request.
"Thanks, but… Could I possibly also get one of your scales?"