Continuosly, Eisen kept filtering a specific type of sand out of the mix and then combined all of the smaller sand crystals into three larger crystals for each specific type of sand.
Either way, for now, the old man managed to get this part of it done, although he was still rather disappointed at how easy this trial ended up being. He had hoped that it would be a little harder, especially after Zortady said that he would make it tougher due to it being Eisen's last trial.
For now, the old man had no choice but to accept it as is, and then kept going. What Eisen noticed while splitting the sand up into each type was that they were practically made for this sort of method. The grains were of vastly different sizes depending on which type of sand they were, after all.
Considering that this was the case, this was rather easily done and Eisen managed to split everything up for the most part. The combination of the grains was actually the more annoying part, because he wasn't able to just scoop them up and combine them together like he may have wanted to. Instead, he had to combine each and every tiny grain with another grain.
Sure, due to their size it was basically enough to just move his mana through the grains realtively slowly to accomplish this, but it was still a little bit annoying as far as Eisen was concerned.
Soon, however, Eisen had enough materials to actually consider creating an item. And then, he had to really think about that for a little while. There wasn't much that he could make with just crystals other than decorations or enchantment-based items, after all.
"Hmm, maybe I can make something that makes the task itself easier?" Eisen muttered quietly to himself. Now that he had basically three large grains of sand with him, he would probably be able to create enchantments that would allow for a heavily specified magnetism enchantment to suck just a single type of sand up into itself.
Then maybe those grains of sand could be processed into something else by using transmutation. Thinking that this was good as anything that he would be able to come up with in this heat, he figured he should just get started. Eisen turned all three larger sand-crystals into cylinders using transmutation. The insides of those cylinders then received the sort of magnetism enchantment that Eisen had thought up.
Of course he created it with the marble workstation, which Sigurd just directly placed onto the sand so that Eisen could keep working out here within sight of the Ancient Steel Dragon.
By pushing a bit of mana inside of one of the tubes, Eisen managed to make them practically 'suck up' a specific kind of sand. Like that, the old man was able to already make the filter-tub that he made before obsolete and just continued by compressing the mana crystals and crystalized mana again and handing them back to Sigurd.
Like that, Eisen was able to pretty quickly get more sand that he could then use to create more combined crystals to keep working.
Out of the new crystals that he was able to form, Eisen created some more, albeit rounded ones, tubes that the first tubes would feed the sorted sand into. While the first tubes would be practically pulling the sand upward, these would just let it slowly drop downward and feed it into the complex three-dimensional enchantment at the bottom of the tubes.
First, the small ring would keep 'sucking' the sand onto its walls with another magnetism enchantment, and would then begin combining the closest crystals with each other.
Like that, after being fed enough crystals, it would create a round crystal slab that would be just so slightly pushed down to make space for new crystals to be combined with each other. Basically, this was a mechanism to create crystal rods out of the sand.
And the whole thing was then finished by using some of the leftover crystals to create a tub, which Eisen had to annoyingly push together after changing their shape because he wasn't allowed to combine together the different types of crystals anymore.
At least he managed to fill the gaps inbetween that afterward, so it was fine. Either way, Eisen could now push the tubes into their holders at the rim of the tub, fix them in place, and then just enchanted the actual bowl so that it would provide all of the other parts of the item with mana if some was pushed into the bowl.
It wasn't that large an item, but it should probably be enough to satisfy Zortady and what the ancient dragon had in mind for the trial. After all, considering how lazy he seemed to be, he would probably appreciate that the second half of the trial was something that made the first half of the trial easier.
And so, with a bit of a grumble, Eisen stepped up to the Steel Dragon again, although his eyes were still blinded, and held the item forward toward Zortady.
"I'm done. Please try it out." Eisen suggested clearly, since he really just wanted to leave as soon as he could again. He felt that Zortady was pretty annoying... And the light that he reflected off of him was even more so.
With a deep groan, Zortady slowly stood up and stretched, sand falling out of the gaps inbetween his scales as he was doing so, before he turned into his humanoid shape. Like Eisen would have expected, the skin of Zortady's humanoid form was that of the kind of person that spent every single moment of their freetime suntanning. After all, this was what Zortady did in his dragon form.
Sure, Eisen himself wasn't exactly pale either, but at the very least he wasn't a scrawny old man like Zortady. Eisen was old, but anything but scrawny. Zortady took a look at the item and immediately understood what it seemed to be for. With a light smirk on his face, he squatted down onto the ground and scooped up a handful of sand that he placed into the tub that acted as the base for this item.
And after pushing his mana into it, with a bit of a rattling sound the sand was sucked up and transported to the end of the rounded tubes. Just a little while later, some crystal rods were pushed out of the ends of the tree tubes and dropped onto the ground when there wasn't any more sand left to combine it with.
Zortady handed the item back to Eisen and then picked those three rods up and took a closer look at them. It seemed like he pushed some mana into them, but then just nodded his head in satisfaction. "Alright, these rods are perfectly pure, at least. It seems the crystals you made that item out of are pure too. Well, I guess that should be enough for you to pass my trial, huh?" Zortady asked with a light smile that contradicted his otherwise tired expression, and then looked at Eisen.
"Alright, you've passed my trial." The Ancient Dragon said, and some notifications appeared in front of Eisen.
[Title <Champion IV> became <Champion V>]
[Extraction Skill Learned]
[You have earned the right to ascend to becoming a true Champion. You will be summoned for an audience with the Crystal Dragon King Trygan in 1 minute]
[Summoning Interrupted by Crystal Dragon King Trygan]
[The Crystal Dragon King has accepted your strength and dedication. Title <Champion V> became <True Champion>]
[As a <True Champion>, you have the right to be amongst those who lead the army of the Crystal Dragon King in the war against the Evil Dragon Queen]
[You have earned the gift of the Crystal Dragon King. <Draconic Transformation> Ability Learned and combined with your Soul]
[<Draconic Transformation> Ability already part of your Soul. Ability rediscovered]
[<Draconic Transformation> ability combined with <Demonic Transformation> ability and became <Draconic Demon Transformation> ability]
[Redundant Gift will be transformed into Experience instead]
[You are now Level 299]
[Level-Up Quest <Road to 300> started]
Eisen looked at the storm of notifications in front of him and just started to laugh loudly. "Haahh.. Just like I thought." The old man exclaimed after waving all of the notifications away.
For now, he really didn't care too much about that 'Extraction' skill. It was rather obvious what it was all about, after all. It would most likely just let him split already combined materials up again. It would definitely be useful in the process of salvaging what is left of alloys, and it would definitely make it easy to get high-purity materials in the future.
What Eisen really wanted to try out was his new ability, the 'Draconic Demon Transformation'. Like normal, he tried to activate the transformation he was used to, but it seemed to have changed a fair bit to what it was before.
First of all, without even using his size-changing ability, Eisen's body grew to three meters in height. His skin was still mostly made of rock, but instead of being just metallic-golden veins, he had golden crystals growing on him. It was as if all the cracks in his body were filled up with those crystals and produced a shine.
The enchantments on his body as well, they were all filled in with golden crystals.
The thin part of Eisen's wings, the part that would actually allow him to propell himself, became slightly translucent, while his regular rock-skin became more smooth and obviously far harder than usual. It seemed like his back was suddenly covered in scales as well, although they were mostly the color of his rock-skin, even if a bit darker. Those scales covered his back, his shoulders, his neck, and the back of his legs and arms.
His fingers had practically turned into claws, although it seemed like he could turn them back into regular fingers again. And then, there were the parts that Eisen wasn't able to actually see just like this, for which he got a little bit of help from Sigurd by being handed a mirror.
Eisen was able to see his own face and immediately saw the rather surprising changes. His eyes had changed a little, and while they were still golden, they had a far stronger shine to them and basically seemed more feral like those of a real dragon.
His beard had parts of those golden crystals woven into it, while his horns had turned into the same golden crystals. But on top of that, he didn't just have two large horns anymore, but instead two pairs of them. One pair was the same size as before, albeit in a slightly different shape, while the others were maybe half the size and placed right next to those larger horns. They had a roughly similar shape, just a slight bit more stretched into length, it seemed.
But somehow, despite his transformation suddenly changing this much without him intending for this to happen, Eisen really didn't mind. With a broad grin on his face, the old man changed his size to the maximum that he could, and was able to grow to a total size of roughly eight meters like this.
Eisen looked down onto the body of the rather surpised Steel Dragon as he explained a few things to him to receive one of his steel scales. Once he managed to convince Zortady, he just turned around and then looked into the direction where he needed to go now.
Once he made sure that the three monster children were safely on Fafnir's back and Fafnir would be able to follow behind him, Eisen jumped off the ground and used his new, strengthened wings to push himself up into the air. It seemed like he was even able to properly fly without using tricks now.