Eisen was standing in his workshop with his hands completely enveloped in hot metal. It wasn't like it was hot enough to hurt him right off the bat, but after a while, even a dwarf's hands would lose out a little bit. Once more, Eisen chose to increase the size of his body forcefully despite his hands being inside of the metal. He could feel the pressure increasing as his hands were being pressed together.
It felt like they usually would have been broken and crushed into a single mass already. The old man was even taking a bit of damage through this, although he was quickly being healed by either Bree or one of Eisen's potions whenever he lost a little too much.
"Is..." Sky started with a slightly nervous, wry smile, "...that actually working?" He asked, and Eisen turned toward him with a slight grin, "Surprisingly, it actually is. The rate at which I gain proficiency is much higher than if I were to just use my skills regularly." Eisen pointed out.
"And I was actually thinking of a way to increase the speed a little more." He added, before turning around and walking up to Morrom. The half-elf was currently working on a small enchantment-idea he had, and just raised his head when he saw the old man.
"Erm... yeah?" He asked, not able to avert his eyes from the mass of metal around Eisen's hands, and the old man just lightly smirked at him, "Could I ask you to help me a little?" The old man suggested, and Morrom lightly raised his brows before just nodding his head.
"Sure, what do you need my help with? Removing the metal?" He asked, but Eisen simply shook his head.
"No, no. I can just melt this away if I need to, don't worry. I need you to create a magnetism-enchantment on the ground that only attracts this specific metal." Eisen told him, and Morrom lightly raised his brows in response.
"And why exactly do you want me to do that?" He asked, even if he did technically understand why he wanted to go for this, "Right now I'm just making use of general abilities of my racial skills, the ones that I can use at any time without the skill 'technically' being active. So I want to try and use my Giant's Strength skill a little bit, at least." Eisen explained to him.
Morrom lightly shrugged and accepted that as a proper explanation. That was actually a solid method that people with that kind of skill used to level it up, after all. The rest that was involved with this was a bit over the top, though.
Morrom just spread out a layer of mana crystal on the ground and flattened it so that Eisen could stand on it, before simply creating the kind of magnetism-enchantment that Eisen asked for.
The old man stepped onto the mana-crystal platform and then poured mana into it from his feet. Immediately Eisen could feel the pull on his arms. It was to the amount that usually, he would have expected his arms to pop out of their sockets on Eisen's shoulders.
But even then, Eisen was able to still hold out for a while, and then just activated his Giant's strength skill. That actually made it far, far easier to hold out with this. So, Eisen increased his mana-output and with that also increased the strength of the pull directed at the mass of steel around his hands.
Since the metal even pushed itself inbetween the gaps of Eisen's fingers now, and Eisen just opened up a little bit of hollow space in the center of his fists, he was able to properly grab something like a 'Bar' there and pull the mass of metal up on that instead of simply having it hang on his wrists. It was like that at first, and he was actually taking a fair amount of damage just through that. Not to mention, it hurt a fair amount, considering that Eisen was no actually capable of feeling pain in this world.
The hot metal itself was pretty unpleasant, but because of his innate resistance to heat on his hands, it was still bearable to an extent.
Either way, for now, Eisen just stood there, with a piece of metal that was far, far, far heavier than anything anyone had ever carried before on Earth just around his hands. He kept trying to increase his size and breaking through the steel over and over again, causing more and more damage to his hands. This continued for not only the rest of the day, but even the next day. Of course, while Eisen was sleeping, he had squatted down cross-legged and was just sitting on the platform instead of standing there, but it was still a fair amount.
And around the evening of the next day, some notifications that Eisen really wanted to see finally appeared.
[A Giant's Strength reached Level 100 in Rank 4, upgrading to Rank 5]
[You have discovered who you truly are by diving into the depths of your racial skill. The <A Giant's Strength> skill became the <A Fire Giant's Body> skill]
Eisen couldn't help himself but smile when he saw these notifications. He had become the kind of giant that he was supposed to be again, huh? The old man just opened the detailed information of the skill and looked it through. In total, not much had changed from the abilities that were listed here, but there was still something slightly different about everything. Enough to be an immense difference. For one, the potency of all the abilities had increased by a fair amount, to the extent where the extra strength that Eisen gained through this awakened skill had made it easy to carry the piece of metal on his hands around.
But then, there was something else as well. Another, new innate ability that came with this skill. And that was an ability that increased the general 'performance' of his body. It seemed like a simple passive buff at first, but when Eisen read through everythign, it turned out to be far more amazing than that.
Sure, there were the generic passive buffs to his crafting-related strength and speed, but there were other parts about it as well. For example, his body had become able to resist high temperatures. It didn't seem to be to the extent of his Dwarven Hands, but it was still pretty incredible as far as Eisen was concerned. Like this, he would be able to survive in completely different environments than normal.
"Well, that's a pretty pleasant change." Eisen pointed out to himself. At least he felt a bit more fulfillment from getting the upgrade to this. Sure, it was still out of his control what kind of upgrade he got, but at the very least he was actually somewhat straining himself to level this skill up.
Still, Eisen wasn't done yet. His other racial skill was at level 99 as well, and even in the upper 90's when it came to proficiency, so it surely wouldn't take long to rank this skill up anymore either. With an excited smile, Eisen just kept pushing through. He wanted to get this done today, really. Tomorrow, the next ship would be departing for the islands, after all.
The others were currently taking a bit of time to just sight-see here, and buy a few things that they were told would be hard to come by on the islands for now, for example specific types of food or materials, and most of the others were accompanying them.
Otherwise, the five Half-dragon knights were spending their time just training with brody, while Komer had started instructing the dozen Bodyguard Golems on what they were supposed to do specifically.
Bree was on another date with Dien, and even Sky chose to sit on the roof to read out there instead. Eisen wanted to just spend some more time with everyone for now, even if he didn't know exactly where that urge came from.
For one, he would be soon heading to the islands as well so that he could get the 'King' stuff out of the way, but but the half-dragons and bree were always around him anyway. And it wasn't like he would be alone at any point anyway, because the three monster-children were most likely going to follow him around as long as they lived, and even if not, he still had Kirisho with him inside of the amulet around his neck.
Either way, there was no need to think about this kind of thing right now. Eisen just kept on trying to increase his size for a while. Although roughly ten or so minutes later, the steel suddenly started heavily bending and split open before falling to the ground due to being broken open by immense pressure. And as Eisen stood there confusedly, he noticed the other notifications that popped up at the same time that the metal broke open.
[A Dwarf's Hands reached Level 100 in Rank 4, upgrading to Rank 5]
[You have discovered who you truly are by diving into the depths of your racial skill. The <A Dwarf's Hands> skill became the <A Mountain Dwarf's Hands> skill]
The old man raised his hands surprisedly to take a look at them, and then just waved the notifications away before he opened the skill info for his newly upgraded racial skill.
Similar to his Giant-racial skill, the Dwarf-racial skill was mostly similar and just gave Eisen's hands a basic increase in its abilities. It seemed like especially the heat and pressure resistance got a fair upgrade, though, at least judging from the fact that Eisen was able to break open the steel shell this easily.
With a slight sigh, Eisen just cracked his knuckles a bit and then stretched his fingers out a little bit into all directions, to get rid of the stiffness from having them stuck in place for the past one and a half days. Eisen would test out what his new hands could do later, first, he wanted to try something else. Eisen slowly started increasing his size a bit more, until... He hit the ceiling. The literally 7-meter high ceiling. And to Eisen, it didn't seem like he was anywhere near his size limit.
And so, the old man chose to just make his way outside onto the balcony. There was at least enough space there, even if the danger of him being discovered was higher.
Once he made his way there, the old man stretched a bit and then repeated what he did before, slowly increasing his size. Both Sky and Komer, who were sitting there just casually talking to each other, then stared at the figure of the old man that continuosly kept increasing in size more and more.
The figure that only stopped growing when it hit 15 meters in height.