While Eisen was still praising Caria for making something so interesting, he suddenly got an idea. It looked really beautiful, although it was somewhat hard to see the flower in the center. It would probably be possible to sell these kinds of items, and might actually bring quite a good amount of profit.
But since Eisen didn't want to treat Caria as a production slave, it wouldn't be sold in high quantities, but since that meant there couldn't be a constant supply, it had to last longer than a regular flower would, that's for sure.
And so, they would need something to cover the whole thing in so that it wouldn't wilt. The easiest thing to use for this would probably be something like epoxy resin, but the type that you could use for smaller crafts like this was usually synthetic, so Eisen couldn't get his hands on it if there wasn't a similarly suitable substance that was both as clear and easy to work with as epoxy resin.
For now, though, Eisen chose something else to work with. He stood up and looked through some of the crates in the back of the carriage, before grabbing some glass bottles together with the two flowers made by Caria standing on the shelf.
He first grabbed the regular flower that Caria created through Plant Control, and took one of the glass bottles in his other hand. Slowly, Eisen used transmutation on the glass to turn it more into a liquid, which was far easier at this point in time. Not only did Eisen manage to change the state of the glass far quicker than he used to be able to, but he also managed to turn it into a thick liquid rather than something like slime. The consistency actually reminded him a slight bit of honey.
Eisen first formed a small base to set the flower on with this glass-liquid so that it may look somewhat as if suspended in mid-air, and then covered the direct layer with the glass, using his transmutation to continuosly change between its solid and liquid states to make sure he could properly fill out every little nook and cranny around the flower.
So at last, Eisen only needed to expand from there, adding layer over layer of glass to the outside of the flower until it grew in size enough to be compared to a small version of the glass bell that the rose in 'The Beauty and the Beast' was kept in, although this one was completely solid all the way through instead of being hollow like the one in the movie.
But this version still looked nice nonetheless, and it should be more than enough to keep the flower basically stuck in time.
"Oh, wow! That was amazing, Eisen! I didn't know you could do something like that…" Komer said surprised while leaning in to the small decorative item that Eisen just created. There wasn't an alchemist in the town he started, so it made sense he would be surprised to see this for the first time. After all, changing the shape of something with your thoughts is just incredibly weird to see, isn't it?
"Haha, this is just a basic Alchemy Trick, kid. Maybe you should actually learn a higher variety of skills to get used to everything here. That reminds me, what kind of skills do you have?" Eisen asked Komer while placing the glass-covered flower away and grabbing the root-sphere that Caria made.
Komer scratched his cheek while seemingly opening his status page, before leaning against the wall. "Not a lot, really. I have Appraisal, Trading, Cooking and Mana Manipulation. Appraisal is my highest rank skill, and Mana Manipulation is my lowest rank one. Oh, and of course my racial skill, A Human's Perseverance."
"I see, then you really should learn a few more skills. Maybe a few crafting skills so that you can get a better feeling for the items you're selling as well. But Mana Manipulation might be surprisingly useful, so I suggest bringing that up a to rank 2 as well. Although, maybe wait a bit until your trading skill is a bit higher and you actually became a proper merchant until you actually rank it up from 1 to 2." Eisen suggested, and Komer tilted his head lighty to the side.
"Why is that? As a merchant, being able to use magic isn't really all that useful, right?"
"It actually is. Merchants probably have high mental stats rather than physical ones, so that's the perfect base for magic. And you do need to be able to defend yourself a little bit, considering that there are some pretty strong monsters. Also, when your magic manipulation reaches rank 2, you will get to choose a magic element. Depending on your actions, you may be able to get some kind of element that will end up helping you as a merchant."
Komer frowned lightly but ended up nodding. This definitely made quite a lot of sense, even he had to admit that. When he first tried it, controlling your mana was just way too hard and underwhelming compared to those awesome things you read in novels. That's why his skill was still at Rank 0, since he really didn't do anything to practice it after the first two or three times, especially after he suddenly passed out from losing too much of his mana. But if it could really be as useful as Eisen said, then maybe it would be worth continuing to practice it anyway.
"I mean, at the start you can barely do anything with mana, right? So I can't imagine it really changing all that much… But I'll trust you. So you also have that element thing then?" He asked, and Eisen nodded as he faced his palm toward a small open spot in the carriage, before a figure suddenly appeared that was basically just an utterly white version of Eisen wearing a just as white suit. Before Komer could even react to this, the figure suddenly turned into dirt, or at least that's what it looked like at first.
It didn't really seem to be dirt, and instead was moving in something like small waves, as if it was just some kind of smoke compressed into a body.
"Yes, I do. And trust me, you really can do quite amazing things with mana. The white version of me was the pure-mana double, and right now it's been infused with my magic element. The element is quite useful for crafting, so that's why I got this." Eisen explained, and Komer kept staring at the other version of Eisen standing in the room, before it suddenly disappeared.
"So just keep practicing your mana manipulation for a while, and as I said, try to only get it to Rank 2 once you've properly grown into your role as a merchant. Also, can you tell me what your Human Racial skill does?" Eisen asked while preparing to also turn the root-sphere into a decoration with the help of transmuted glass, but Komer only got confused.
"Er… What? You should know, right? Aren't you also a human?" He asked, unsure what Eisen was talking about, but was incredibly surprised when he heard the answer.
"Haha, no, I'm actually not a human. I'm half Giant, half Dwarf, so my racial skills are different from your's." After explaining this, Eisen chuckled lowly as the glass bottle in his hand slowly began to drip down while he turned it into a liquid, slowly moving it over the root-sphere.
Komer was still surprised, but when he considered Eisen's dimensions, it actually made sense to see that he wasn't human. "O-Oh, alright. Erm, anyway. The 'A Human's Perseverance' Skill doesn't actually do all that much right now. It just makes me lose my stamina less quickly when I activate it, and if I activate it when I'm about to fall asleep because of exhaustion, I won't be tired during the duration of the skill. That's all for now. A man in the village told me that later, it would passively influence some of your abilities depending on your surroundings, but I don't really know." He explained, and Eisen nodded in response.
"I see… Hey, Bree, you also have the 'A Human's Perseverance' Racial skill, right?" Eisen asked in a louder voice so that Bree could hear him while she was sitting on the bench at the front of the carriage, and she turned her head around to look inside.
"Huh? Ah, yeah, I do! Why are you asking?"
"It's just because of Komer. I wondered if you could tell us something about it."
Bree tilted her head to the side and began to think for a bit, before nodding slowly. "Hmm, I guess you could say it's kind of an all-rounder ability at first, but it grows into a more specialized area depending on what kind of person you are later on. That's because humans live basically everywhere, in any type of area, and they don't really have a racial specialization. They don't get any bonuses to stats, but at the same time don't have any disadvantages either, but the racial skill can change that, so some humans or actually on par in ability compared to more specialized races like dwarves or elves."
Eisen and Komer listened curiously, while Eisen was currently filling out the whole area inside of the sphere with liquid-glass that he quickly hardened, before also covering the roots in a thin layer of glass to make sure that these couldn't rot either. "And what did you specialize in?"
"Well, it my case, it supports my mental stats for the most part."
"I see, thanks, Bree! You really have an answer to everything, huh?" The old man laughed loudly while the sphere in his hand hardened and began glittering in the sunlight streaming through the small openings of the carriage.
"So, as you can see, you will be better off if you specialize on an area and concentrate on raising skills like these that will make you even better in that area. It's like synergy, you know? For example, in my case take Tailoring and Leatherworking. Since they are quite similar technique-wise, once I learned one, it was easier for me to learn the other. If you have a skillset that supports itself and pushes you up, you can grow to immense heights." Eisen chuckled, while placing the glas-covered sphere of roots down next to the other flower again, then looked back at Komer.
"Should I tell you about some of the items that you may be selling in the future?" He asked, and Komer nodded excitedly while standing up. "Yes, please!"
"Alright! Here, first these…" And so, Eisen began to explain the main types of items that would probably be sold with the use of examples.
This included the potions, pills, clothes, tools or weapons. And at last, Eisen also showed Komer some of the 'bottles' of mead that he was currently preparing, that have already been fermenting for a few while now, every once in a while letting out small pops as air escaped through the small air-locks at the top.
And Komer was simply stunned. "Wow, you're making all of this stuff? Is there anything you can't make? And you're even making alcohol…" He muttered to himself while grabbing one of the honey-containers that Eisen filled with the mead, curiously trying to figure out what this was.
"Did you make these… erm, Bottles, as well? They look pretty cool. And they fit the Mead-Theme too, since it's made with lots of honey, right?" Komer asked, carefully placing it back down onto the pile of the other containers, while Eisen shook his head.
"No, I didn't make these. I found them in a giant Beehive in a forest. The Bees used those to store honey in, and a few of them were empty, so I grabbed all that I could get. That's actually also where I got this here." Eisen reached out toward the perfectly round amber-colored egg still lying on its pedestal.
"It's a Queen Bee egg, so I'm hoping to be able to tame it once it hatches, similar to what I did with-"
While Eisen was trying to explain his plan for the Bee that would hatch from this, it actually began to shake a little bit.
Apparently his luck was quite great, wasn't it?