"Ah, so you're going to make some jars or something like that?" Fluke asked, before Eisen just nodded his head, "Mhm, exactly. I would have preferred to make them out of glass, but since one of the few things I couldn't find was Silica, I'll just make them out of wood." The old man explained, "But for now, I should really just build the bookshelves."
Just as Eisen was saying so, the old man waved his arm to the side and created his mana doubles to make them help him with his work. Basically, they were just supposed to hold everything up while Eisen himself was hammering everything in place.
And a few hours later, the white marble-wood planks were converted into a large amount of bookshelves. With a smile on his lips, the old man turned around toward both Sal and Melissa, "Could I ask the two of you to sort all the books that are laying around into there?"
And without even having to wait that long, Sal immediately started weaving threads that he used to pull the books into the right positions in the shelf, "I thought you'd never ask..." The Spider boy muttered quietly, seemingly having waited for this for quite a while now.
Then, Eisen got started on the 'snacks'. It wouldn't really be that much of a snack, but more of an ingredient, since you wouldn't eat either just on its own. Usually not, at least.
Either way, while Sal and Melissa were working on the bookshelf, Eisen was getting started on working with the nuts some more. As he already roasted them before, now he just needed to grind them down, for which Eisen used the smaller handle of the multi-tool, since he specifically made it to be able to be used for things like this, and worked until all the metalic and crystal nuts were ground into a fine powder. Thinking that it would be a good addition as well, Eisen added a little bit of a flower that seemed to be made completely out of rock-salt. After all, salt and nuts were always a good combination.
But once it was actually a little ground down, Eisen needed to use another tactic for everything, since otherwise this would take far too long. And so, he created a quick enchantment to continuosly rotate a crystal part that was sitting just so slightly loose in another crystal part, to which Eisen then attached some of the metallic, razor-sharp leaves.
Eisen didn't know why he didn't do this to begin with, maybe because he wanted to make sure that they could actually be properly ground up at all since they weren't like regular nuts. But either way, now that everything was already a little ground-down, Eisen just continuosly poured his mana into the makeshift blender and watched as the nut-powder continued being ground down.
A couple minutes later, Eisen just scraped the powder away from the sides of the bowl it was in, glad to see that it already got a little bit moist. And after blending it some longer, it just got more and more liquid, and not too long after Eisen started, he finished his nut-butter. Just like that.
After he was done with the first bowl, Eisen gave it a little bit of a taste-test with his pinky, and was actually more than just pleasantly surprised. Sure, it had a slightly metallic aftertaste to it, but it wasn't really unpleasant. He actually kind of liked it. The color was vastly different to what usual nut-butter would be. Usually it would be some sort of brown tone, but now it had a dark red tone to it, because the majority of the nuts were made of ruby.
It was actually a pretty pleasant color in Eisen's opinion. In total, this was a complete success as far as he was concerned.
Then, Eisen just had to make the wooden jars and fill them with that nut-butter, turn the rest of the nuts into nut-butter as well, and then start working on the jam.
The jars weren't really that hard to make, as he just had to hollow out some logs and then fill it in with the large amount of nut-butter made from nuts that were constantly being supplied to him through Melissa's bees, and then he could place the metal lids on top of some of those large jars, while others stayed empty for the jam to be added later.
For jam, Eisen wanted to try out a few different variations. For one, he wanted to try out some of the different berries and fruit that could be found here in this forest, and then the different types of seeds inside of the large pomegranate-like fruit that Eisen took from the giant tree. They actually all tasted rather different to each other, and if he separated them by type the color should be rather interesting as well, so that was something work playing around with.
To his luck, since sugar, or anything direct sugar could be extracted from, was also one of the few ingredients that couldn't be found in this forest, he was allowed to use regular sugar from outside after asking Cracton about it.
So, the old man just created a couple of large saucepans from him element and cut the different fruit into large chunks. These were then placed into those large elemental saucepans which were already slightly heating up, and mixed in some sugar, salt, and juice extracted from a crystal lemon. He started slightly mashing the fruit up until it just had a chunky texture.
Then, that mixture was brought to a bil that Eisen frequently stirred for maybe 20 minutes until it had a thick and jammy texture, and then just waited for the jam to set and be done.
Removing the heat from the elemental saucepans, he started waiting for everything to cool down for a little while, and could then move on to testing everything.
To start it off with, each of these jams looked just amazing because they were practically translucent. Technically they were made from crystals, so in general they were quite pleasing to look at. But not only that, the taste itself was great as well.
In the end, Eisen chose to go with a jam made from the sapphire pomegranate-seeds, since the taste seemed to fit best with the nut-butter that Eisen ended up making. And color wise, it also seemed to be a quite nice match.
And so, Eisen continued to make more of that specific jam, and poured the rest away into other wooden jars to keep for himself later on, and then just chose to turn everything into a slightly more 'snack-like' shape so that Cracton could taste-test them properly.
And that shape really was just that of a small ball with a jam center and a thick nut-butter exterior that Eisen slightly hardened to keep its shape. At that point, Eisen was done.
Of course, it wasn't anything extravagant, but what was he supposed to make with these materials otherwise that would be interesting? It wasn't like there was anything about these materials that let Eisen think about anything in specific that would be perfect. Sure, the wood from the trees seemed to be more fire-resistant than normal, but that's because it was basically rock, making it far heavier. So, it wasn't a great material for anti-fire-shields.
He could have tried to make a whip or something like that out of the needle-grass, but that was the first idea that popped into his head, and even Fluke seemed to have the idea, so he was sure that Cracton already saw something like that, so he wouldn't be interested in it anymore.
The only real choice that he had was making something that Cracton was obviously lacking, such as the bookshelves, and something that seemed so boring nobody would ever make it for Cracton. But since this Ancient Copper Dragon didn't leave this cave in so long, he shouldn't really know that much about culinary culture. And Eisen actually didn't find anything much about the nut-butter and jam mixture in this world, surprsingly.
So he was sure that this would interest Cracton more than some random attempt at making an item that was supposed to impress him. Because that wasn't the task. All that he had to do was make something that got Cracton's curiosity rolling, and that could be anything. Especially since Eisen made him leave the cave, which Cracton did without any sort of possible entertainment to keep him busy. He had to have been thinking about what Eisen possibly made, which would have instinctively brought some curiosity with it.
Of course, that probably wouldn't be the case if Eisen didn't show the crystal scale to Cracton, something that had obviously awoken the dragon's natural curiosity toward who Eisen himself was.
So, just like that, Eiro called the Ancient Copper Dragon back into the cave, to which he swiftly obliged and rushed into the space again.
"Alright, you're done?" He asked excitedly, seemingly more happy about finally getting to go inside again than anything else.
Once Cracton made his way into the cave again, the first things he noticed were the bookshelves on the other side of the large space.
"That's what you made? Not some kind of weapon, tool, Golem... But shelves?" Cracton asked with slight disappointment, and Eisen simply nodded his head with a light smile.
"Yep. It just kind of bothered me to see all those books laying around on the ground like that. So, to have you treat them a bit better, I figured this might be a good idea." The old man pointed out, and Cracton just took a closer look, turning into his humanoid form to take a closer look, "Well, it's certainly quite a nice gesture. And while I didn't expect it... it's not really that interesting. They're just shelves, you know?" Cracton pointed out, and Eisen nodded his head immediately.
"I know, I know, don't worry. That was just something so that I could try using this special wood a bit." Eisen admitted without any sort of shame, "While of course at the same time giving me an excuse to send you outside." He added, not trying to hide it in the slightest.
And then, Eisen got out the soccer-ball sized sphere of nut-butter and jam, waiting for Cracton to turn back into his Dragon form to taste-test it, "What is this? Some sort of pill to help your physical performance?" Cracton asked, actually seemingly interested, and the old man shook his head.
"Nope. It's just something to eat. You seem like the kind of person who would enjoy having a snack like this while reading." Eisen pointed out, and swiftly handed the sphere to the dragon, who swiftly gave it a taste.
And soon enough, he opened his eyes wide in response to the taste filling his mouth.
"This is actually quite delicious! Someone attempted creating a dish for me before, but it was nothing but an assortment of crystal fruit in the end that he crumbled down since he did not know about the correct method of handling them. But you on the other hand, seem to have complete knowledge about that." Cracton exclaimed, seemingly actually interested in this.
