Now, Eisen had a mana crystal that in itself was capable of producing flames in the way described by the magic circle that the old man placed into it. And the thing about it was that any single part of it could to an extent. The whole piece was needed to produce the full power that the magic circle would have been capable of displaying. But if Eisen split the crystal up into two equal parts, each of them would be able to push out flames at half the full power.
Seeing that this actually worked like he 'remembered', although he didn't actually vividly remember any instances of ever doing this but just rather the raw information about it, Eisen merged the two halves back together and got started on working on more magic inscriptions.
Of course this wasn't the actual way that magic inscriptions worked, but this was how it had to be done at lower ranks of it. Eisen created a few different magic circles and pushed them into different gems and crystals for roughly two or three hours, until he finally managed to get the skill to rank 1.
From that point on, Eisen could inscribe materials other than crystals. So, the old man got started and worked with some different metals instead. For the rest of the day, Eisen kept working on this and managed to get the magic inscription skill up to the mid-level range of rank 2.
And by noon of the next day, Eisen not only managed to rank this skill up to 3, but also managed to rank up the skill that he had been gathering proficiency for for the past couple of days as much as he could. And that was the Flame of the Earth Magic skill.
[Mana Manipulation has reached level 100 in rank 4, upgrading to rank 5]
[You are now eligible to advance your element]
[Choose your advancement-route]
-[Crafting]
-[Combat]
-[Construction]
-[Transformation]
"Huh... So it's like this, then." Eisen muttered to himself, "Well, the choice is obvious. Crafting." The old man pointed out, and immediately the notifications in front of him disappeared and were replaced by new ones.
[You have chosen to advance your element toward its intended direction]
[Flame of the Earth turned into Blazing Core of the Mountain]
"Blazing Core of the Mountain?" The old man thought. He extended his hand forward and pushed out some of his mana already infused with his element. The name of the element sounded kind of weird, and when Eisen formed an actual ball out of his element, he wasn't entirely sure what he was looking at either.
In its base state, it seemed very similar to the way Eisen's skin in its transformed mode used to look like. With red flames pushing out through cracks in the rock surface. But other than that, it was like solid rock. Before, the element was a direct mixture, and rock and fire at the same time. Now, however, those two things were separate. There were flames, and there was rock. They were both part of the element, but they weren't directly connected.
Eisen tried to use the spells that he already had created for his elemental magic, and first swiftly made a forge out of this new elemental variant. And at that point, Eisen saw something rather surprising. The forge itself was made to be as hard and durable as possible, just because that's how Eisen naturally imagined a forge to be.
Now, this was still the case, but the parts that were rock before, were now actually metallic. Somewhat steel-like. Eisen could adjust it very easily, though, and then turned the forge's body into something like brick instead, somewhat like it was before.
"This is something I have to try out..." The old man muttered to himself and pushed out some more mana out of his hand and turned it into his element, trying to tune it fully toward being a rock. And then, it turned into a rock. Then, Eisen tried to turn it into a metal, and it turned into the metal he was thinking about, iron. But not only that, Eisen could also turn it into other metals. Copper, Steel, Tin. Basically, any sort of metal. It didn't seem to be completely pure, definitely not at the level that Eisen would enjoy working with it if he had an ingot of it, but this was really just amazing nonetheless.
Then, Eisen turned his element into flames instead, and could see that he had an incredible amount of control over its heat, color, volume, and even how much the heat spread out. And to Eisen's actually rather pleasant surprise, it wasn't restricted to normal logic either. For one, Eisen could create 'cold' flames of a a couple hundred degrees, which would usually be dark red, and turn them completely white. Or black. Or green, purple, blue, or any color Eisen could think of.
Not only that, but Eisen could create actual cold flames. Flames with temperatures too low to make water boil, and flames with temperatures to make water freeze. And these sub-zero flames now made it possible for Eisen to make things like freezers very easily.
And so, Eisen slowly activated his Draconic Demon transformation, and quickly started to adjust that transformation a little bit. After all, since it was based off of Eisen's element, he was able to manipulate it a little bit here and there. Soon, his rock-skin turned somewhat shiny after Eisen turned it into metal, the golden crystals turned pure white while cold mist poured off his body after mixing with the air that was heated up through all the forges, boilers, and crucibles.
Of course, this wasn't at all what Eisen wanted it to be like usually, but it was still a quite interesting thing nonetheless. He swiftly turned the transformation back to normal, and slowly started to adjust a few things here and there. For example, the claws that he had gained after getting the 'Draconic Transformation' ability and having it merge with the 'Demonic Transformation' ability were turned completely metallic and razor-sharp. The same was the case with the few spikes connected to his wings.
Other than that, Eisen increased the hardness of his skin a little more without actually turning it metallic, while smoothing it down in certain places and roughing it up more in others. The parts Eisen made 'smooth' were those where none of the draconic scales were covering him, while those scales themselves were made rough and actually slightly more metallic.
They were small changes, but in the end, Eisen was convinced that they were great improvements to his transformation. Honestly, this new element of his was just amazing!
With this, Eisen would surely be able to do so many more amazing things. He was getting pretty excited through this, and as such, he chose to try and make use of his element a little bit more for now. Eisen created a small metal ball with his element and then used one of his multitool-needles to draw a magic circle into the air before pushing it into the metal ball, that Eisen of course turned into an actual, usable material through his magic craftsmanship skill.
The magic circle that he created itself was also made up of Eisen's element, and was supposed to make it possible to create differently colored flames depending on how much mana you put into it. Only the color would change, the flames themselves were kept at room temperature.
This was actually a pretty fun, easy, and safe way to play around with things like mana as well. Maybe Eisen could create some more different mana-manipulation practice-toys with this new, advanced element that Komer could then sell. Another thing that Eisen thought of using this was that it was a good way to make lighting-based items.
For example, Eisen could now very easily create lightbulbs. And of course, it was always possible using enchantments based on light runes or the light element in general. After all, it was what they were using to light the ship and the different houses inside of the dungeon up currently.
But using this, Eisen figured it would be possible to create much different ways of lighting that weren't dangerous, things that were more atmospheric. Either colored lighting, or things like infinitely-burning torches, or even just a flame in a bottle. It was all possible like this, and Eisen thought it was a pretty interesting idea to play around with.
And so, the old man did just that. He played around with that idea and tried to create different small items like that using only his element in different ways together with the magic craftsmanship and magic inscription skills.
Like that, Eisen was able to not only gain some more practice and a better idea of how to handle his new element, but simply got to rank his magic inscription skill up one more time. And his magic craftsmanship skill didn't seem to be far away from reaching rank 4 anymore either.
Eisen was a bit surprised that he managed to get the magic inscription skill to rank 3 that quickly, although in the end, it made sense. He was using skills that were a couple of ranks higher than it together with it, so of course it would be able to level up rather easily. Eisen should definitely keep that kind of thing in mind for when he got new skills in the future that needed to rank up quickly.
Either way, for now, Eisen would try and continue creating the item that he learned the magic inscription skill for in the first place. The portable house.
Because now that the magic inscription skill reached rank 3, the old man unlocked the ability to inscribe things directly in the true way that you were supposed to. Until now, it needed to be done in such a roundabout way of using magic circles as a carrier for the inscription, but now, it was different.
Eisen grabbed a mana crystal and pushed the needle against its surface. He pushed a little bit of mana out of the needle's tip and made it spread out through the whole crystal, before he pulled all of the mana out and spread it around in front of him.
And now, he could get started on the actual inscription. From this point on, it was more based on the concept and description rather than following a certain logic. A specific logic helped the creator while inscribing an item of course, but it wasn't necessary in the slightest.
Either way, what Eisen could basically now do was very easily turn the mana that he pulled out of the mana crystal into the model of a sphere, and then basically 'carve' words into the rest of the mana that he pulled out that were describing it when it came to size or properties.
When Eisen was done with this, the mana was pulled back into the mana crystal, and Eisen pushed his mana into it. Immediately afterward, the mana was used to create a small, perfectly round rock-ball the size of a marble.