For a while, Eisen was really just sitting there, controlling those three items, the two mock-hands and his multitool, as if he was actaully standing there and working, even if the reality was very different.
Eisen was slightly surprised at how well this was working out, considering that the items that he had been making ended up being pretty good. Of course, they didn't really come close to what Eisen could do usually, since he was right now technically just thinking about making the item. Without the physical part of it, the touch, the resistance, the exhaustion, it became a little bit boring. But that didn't matter for now, since this was all so that Eisen could level up his three occupational skills.
Using 'Crafting Space', he was controlling the mock-hands and the multitool to move like he wanted them to. Then, using 'Crafter's Mind', Eisen was properly visualizing himself to stand there and work on items. And the items that he would be working on were simply different Ego-Items.
For roughly two hours now, Eisen had been doing this while meditating to make sure he wouldn't run out of mana during this whole process, until he noticed the door opening.
"Yeah, that was really interesting, right?" Morrom exclaimed as he stepped through, and Denmir immediately nodded his head in response, "Mhm, those were some pretty unique items, aye? These artificials have pretty nice ideas sometimes." Denmir pointed out, and Jekyll quickly chose to change the topic to something else.
"Talking about 'ideas'... Do any of ya have an idea of what's goin' on here?" The Half-Dwarf asked and everyone stared at the... things that were just floating around randomly and crafting an item.
And before anyone could make a suggestion about what was going on, Eisen simply greeted them. "Haha, don't worry, this is simply a method to level my occupational skills up."
"I figured you were controllin' this, but still, how? Your element isn't a 'Metal' element, right?" Jekyll asked next, so Eisen simply shook his head, "It's part of the 'Crafting Space' Skill. It lets me control tools freely within the space. I'm combining it with some other skills to be able to make those things move like I would." The old man pointed out, before quickly making one of the metal hands wave at the group of four.
"What an insane skill that is..." Denmir muttered, slightly jealously, it seemed. Simply agreeing, the other three nodded their heads.
Then, Eisen simply continued on with this. And sure, while his Ego-Item Creation skill was already at Rank 3 for a while now, but Eisen figured it was still a good chance to get some mor experiments related to how different souls affect ego-items, and how different people affect the ego-items they're given.
So right now, Eisen was simply making basic items like daggers, swords, shields, bows, and so on. These would then later be sold to, or simply given to, players or NPCs that seemed like they had an interesting character.
It was really just to see what would happen to Ego-Items later on, and then to see what they would turn into after they've been 'maxed out'.
The old man was pretty sure that he would never hear about the majority of them animore, but it still seemed worth it.
But of course, making ego-items wasn't the only thing that Eisen thought about doing. Especially since the Ego-Item skill's rank was already at 3, he could simply move on freely and do whatever else he felt like. That for example included, but wasn't completely limited to, cooking, drawing, and woodworking a bit here and there. Those were skills that he really had to rank up as well, after all. Well, his woodworking skill's rank was already at Rank 4, but carving things out of wood was still a good practice for this, since it required pretty dexterous actions for the mock-hands to follow up on.
The bad thing about the cooking was that Eisen couldn't actually taste-test it easily, but at the very least, he could simply smell it and at least somewhat tell if everything was going in the right direction. And this whole thing continued for the rest of the day, until Eisen's 'Crafter's Mind' skill reached Rank 4. Its level was already in its upper 80's when Eisen started using it this early afternoon, but it seemed like this method was just perfect to make the skill level up quickly. Eisen would be sure to remember that.
But since he now didn't need to constantly be viewing everything from the hypothetical position of the mock-Eisen, the old man chose to do something else that was focused more on the actual movement of that mock-Eisen instead of being able to make proper items.
And that started with cutting through the thread that connected the metal palms to the fingertips on the two mock-hands. Then, the old man simply continued and made the rest of the segments of the fingers to add onto that.
Without connecting any of the parts, Eisen tried his best to make it so that these small metal pieces, which Eisen actually had turned into finished items so that they could be seen as a tool, move around. It took a minute or so to properly get everything into position, but soon enough, Eisen had a metallic hand floating in front of him that had basically just air where its joints would usually be.
After Eisen made the second hand as well, he started making the feet. And after that, the legs, the arms, and even the torso. Of course, he only added the most integral parts, so he didn't create intricate things like bones or muscles on this, but they were literally just lumps of metal that Eisen was controlling as if they were tools. He did have to cover the whole thing in his mana and compress it a little bit, but just enough until his mana could somewhat hold the metal parts together a bit, so that the metal body was capable of moving around just so slightly.
And using this pretty large 'collection' of tools, Eisen did a few pretty simple things. It was basically the same kind of stuff that he had his mana doubles do back when he first got the mana double skill. Simple, basic physical excercise, where Eisen tried his best to make the metal parts stay in place as if they were really part of a proper body.
There was no proper reason behind this, and Eisen would simply melt all of the parts making up this guy's 'body' down the moment his crafting space skill ranked up to 5. Eisen was basically just playing around a bit. And in the end, he didn't try to hide that fact either. For example, he made extra parts for this guy, so that he had four arms instead just two, and then added another section to the legs, all the whilst not even giving him a head.
Because of the extra section on the legs, it just looked awkward if it still tried to walk normally, so Eisen made the legs twist around so that they were like an ostrich's. Basically, the 'thigh' went backward instead of forward, the 'knee' bent forward, and then the invisible joint connecting the lowest segment to the whole leg simply twisted backward like a regular knee.
The way it was walking around looked pretty weird like this, but weirdly enough, it didn't necessarily look bad.
Either way, after that, Eisen added another segment to the arms as well, even if all the joints twisted in the regular way an elbow did. The figure looked pretty creepy, but it was still a good practice even if it drained a lot of mana from Eisen.
Well, the others seemed a little bit concerned over what Eisen was doing in here like this, but the old man simply continued on adding things to this really, really weird metal being that could only walk through Eisen's control over it.
The old man gave it a tail, an actual head made up of a ball of metal and a rough jaw, some horns that went onto that head, and even some spikes onto its back where its spine would be.
It looked pretty monstrous toward the end, but Eisen just tried to make sure that he could keep leveling this skill up. He had been using it literally all the time ever since he got his class, after all. It was just the basic ability of creating a space where crafting abilities were increased, but still, he didn't craft without this skill active anymore. It went so far that Eisen sometimes instinctively tried to activate the skill in the other world when trying to make himself breakfast.
So, it was pretty annoying that the skill still was at just rank 4. Although, as if someone heard Eisen's complaints, the old man noticed that the skill was at Level 99, and its proficiency was in the upper 90's as well!
It seemed like despite already spending a couple of hours on just playing around with this skill like this, Eisen was able to get it to rank up sooner than expected. The old man continued making this weird figure do a bunch of random things, and simply finished it off by having it walk into the large crucible that Eisen created for this by itself.
The metal parts were slowly heating up, and Eisen pulled out his mana to keep the body together more easily so that it wouldn't hinder the metal heating up somehow. It soon started glowing in a bright orange color, before the smaller parts, like the toes, tail segments, and fingers, slowly started to melt away.
The larger parts started shrinking because they were losing metal from their surface as well, and soon, the only thing that was still there was the torso.
And just when Eisen's control over this metal completely disappeared, a notification appeared instead.
[Crafting Space reached Level 100 in Rank 4, upgrading to Rank 5]
[You can now store materials inside of an extra space]
Eisen waved the notifications away with a light smile. Occupation skills couldn't be upgraded by having them reach rank 5, so Eisen hadn't been expecting anything either.
But that didn't matter for now, since the old man was pretty curious about this new ability. Eisen waved his hand to the side and started thinking about that 'extra space' to appear, before what was basically a box the size of his carriage appeared in front of him. It was made completely of wood, and was just so slightly decorated around the edges. One side of it was open, and simply showed a small empty room.