Eisen stood on the pier and looked at the ship as it was slowly departing into the direction of the islands, just so that he could make sure that it wasn't lopsided or anything like that. And once he saw that it was fine, Eisen swiftly turned around toward Komer.
"Alright, then I'll be heading off. Your last chance to give me something to take with me." Eisen pointed out as he slowly increased his size to his maximum and squatted down so that he could still properly speak to the young merchant. With a slight laugh, he just shook his head, "Nah, that's fine. Everything that needs to go over there is on the ship already. I'll send more stuff with the next ship though."
"Then that's that." Eisen said as his skin slowly turned to rock and golden crystals grew on him, "See you." And then, Eisen just started flapping his wings and rose into the air while being watched by a rather large amount of people that had gathered on the pier after following the wood-giant over here.
Just like that, Eisen got started with actually trying to complete one of his level-up quest's conditions. The condition to be flying for a total of three days. He was able to catch up to the ship pretty easily like this, and just started thinking about what he should do while flying for now.
There were three skills he had to rank up when it came to mana and magic in general for him. Mana Manipulation, Mana Double, and Flame of the Earth Magic. He already managed to rank the mana copy skill up to 4 a little while ago, and his mana double skill was pretty close to rank 4 as well. Well, neither of the other two skills would take too long to rank up to 5 either, since Eisen was using them constantly, after all.
Either way, for now, Eisen figured that the best thing to do would be to create mana doubles and have them fly right next to him. Of course, they mana doubles that also had the draconic demon form active, so that they could actually properly fly and keep up with Eisen.
And then, after the mana doubles were created, Eisen got started playing around with something else. He had four doubles at the moment. So, why not use them for practice for his other two skills? In the end, while at least mana manipulation maybe wouldn't be affected too much, at the very least Flame of the Earth magic should get a bit of proficiency.
Eisen was flying above the mana doubles and got started with them one by one. The first one, Eisen started filling with his pure mana. Usually that wasn't really possible, since the volume wasn't determined by the amount of mana but rather by the mana double skill itself. And since the mana double skill itself didn't have compression-capabilities, you couldn't just push more mana into it than the body would allow.
But since Eisen had the 'Mastered Alchemy' skill, he was able to compress things to a quite extreme extent. And of course, that also meant things like his mana. So, Eisen immediately compressed the mana that he was pushing into the Mana Double's body. For the first little while, there was no visible change, really. It was just a snow-white figure in the shape of Eisen's body.
Later on, that changed. Soon the mana that Eisen had been pushing into the Mana Double's body compressed enough to be crystalized. And while it still didn't change too much outwardly, it became a bit 'Shiny' at the very least, as it was now reflecting the sunlight right above them.
More and more, Eisen kept pushing his mana into the figure of the Mana Double, compressing it as he was doing so, until he nearly ran out of mana. But well, when that happened, Eisen could just drink a mana potion to keep going.
It actually took around an hour, but at some point Eisen was unable to compress his mana any further. And at this level of compression, something else could be seen with Eisen's mana. It was slightly gray, actually. Gray and metallic. It was like that mana-double was just him with a lesser version of Eisen's 'safe form' when he was sleeping.
"Interesting." Eisen muttered to himself. Well, for now, that didn't actually matter too much. He got one more level in his mana manipulation skill through this though, which was kind of surprising to Eisen. He wasn't really manipulating his mana much, after all.
Eisen wasn't complaining, though. After Eisen was done with the regular mana, he had the next mana double move underneath him, and then pushed his element into its body instead. His regular, unchanged element. And of course, again, Eisen compressed it and basically repeated the same thing he did for the other mana double.
He had to drink a couple more mana-potions to properly do this, but in return he couldn't really compress his element as much either, so Eisen was done after a little under one hour. And the same was the case for the other two mana-doubles that he infused his element into. One of them had his element attuned fully toward earth, and one of them had his element attuned fully toward fire.
And as expected, the former of those two was actually a bit hard to control properly. Mostly, it was just tough to make sure it could actually keep flying like that the whole time. After all, it was made of highly-compressed rock. It was many times heavier than Askr, the wood-giant.
But this is exactly what Eisen wanted. He exactly wanted to make it so heavy. In the end, no matter how heavy it was, since it was Eisen's element he would be able to control it properly with enough concentration. That didn't mean that it was incredibly easy though. And there was one thing that Eisen was sure about, the tougher something was, the quicker you gained proficiency for it. The other two 'elemental doubles' weren't that big a deal. The fire one was basically weightless and incredibly speedy, so Eisen was mostly using it to gain Mana-Double proficiency by having it fly in a complicated way.
The other two were just following behind Eisen generically. Other than that, Eisen was also simply doing some general practice by turning his magic into small shapes and shifting them around nearly randomly. And so, this is exactly what Eisen did for the rest of the day. Then when he was too exhausted, or whenever he had to eat or drink something, he would land and get whatever he needed to do done. That included of course having breakfast, lunch or dinner, as well as sleeping until he fully recovered again.
And then, Eisen continued flying while practicing his magic skills, and by noon of the next day...
[Mana Double has reached level 100 in rank 3, upgrading to rank 4]
Finally, Eisen's mana double skill ranked up again. The ability that he got through this wasn't necessarily that interesting, though. It was just something that once more increased the ability of the mana doubles to follow commands independently.
Of course it was a big help, but it wasn't anything new either. Either way, for now, Eisen was able to get rid of the mana doubles and instead use all of that mana in other ways.
Basically, he just started doing the small-scale practice that he had been doing parallel to all this in a bigger scale, using his whole body.
Sometimes Eisen had to get rid of parts of the elements because it was nearly impossible to keep fully controlling them. For the rest of the day, Eisen just kept on practicing his magic in this way. When it came to his magic skills, he only had to rank up mana manipulation and his flame of the earth magic up now. It would take a while longer, and Eisne wasn't entirely sure if it was really going to be possible to get this done within this ride of the ship. Maybe if he concentrated on one of them he would be able to, but he wasn't entirely sure if that was a good idea.
But well, it didn't take him long to decide either. After all, it would make more sense to choose to rank up mana manipulation first. When you brought that skill to rank 5, and then again at rank 8, you would be able to make the choice to get a different element if you were maybe 'unhappy' with your current element. Eisen most likely wouldn't change his element, but it would definitely be a good idea to look into it at the very least, before he would get to choose his upgrade for his actual element.
And so, he just dissolved his elemental mana and got started on general mana manipulation with the highly-compressed, pure mana. There were a few things that Eisen was trying to do like this, really. Most of them were completely random, though. He just kept on expanding on his own body for the most part. He turned his dragon-wings into angel-wings by forming the crystalized mana into feathers and placing them onto his wings. He made other parts for himself, like maybe larger, or simply more, horns, a dragon-like tail, and even covered his body in more scales.
It was pretty ridiculous, but it was one of the few things he could actually work with this high up in the air. This all continued for the next little while, until another one of Eisen's level-up conditions was cleared, and Eisen officially spent three days flying. Finally, Eisen could sit down a little bit more again, and most importantly, he could speak to others again. And so, while spending some more time with his friends, Eisen continued to create random things with his highly-compressed mana to somehow gain as much proficiency in his mana manipulation skill as absolutely possible. Just like that, the notification Eisen was hoping for appeared just two days before they would reach the island.
[Mana Manipulation has reached level 100 in rank 4, upgrading to rank 5]
[You are now eligible to change your element]
[Possible Elements to choose]
-[Draconic Demon]
-[Giant]
-[Craftsman]
...
...
...
Eisen looked trough the elements that he could choose from, which of course were the regular elements as well as some special elements. But while there were some that looked interesting to Eisen, in the end, he chose not to change his element after all. It was clear that he would make this choice, at least to himself, but Eisen still didn't want to regret anything and went for the mana manipulation skill to reach rank 5 first after all.
And so, the old man moved on to trying to gain more proficiency for his flame of the earth magic skill.