Chapter 668 - Multitool Enhancement

Eisen swung Bai down onto the glowing hot metal in front of him with a broad, natural smile on his face. He was simply incredibly excited to be able to work here, and he was having quite a lot of fun doing so. Naturally, that helped with Eisen's performance and he managed to actually get a few things done more quickly than he usually would. And just now, Eisen was finishing the ninth instance of the exact same hammer that he had been trying to make so that he could feed them to Bai.

While he was making his way through the different divine realms and was crafting things here and there, Eisen noticed something changing when he was cleaning up Bai a bit. For one, it was that Bai managed to find a way to integrate its new transformative abilities into the way that it was switching between the different 'tool forms'.

Usually, Bai would just detach or attach certain parts of its body to end up with a certain tool form and Eisen had to hold onto those leftover parts for the time being. But now, Bai was able to practically 'store' these pieces somewhere else within its body. It was like the parts were shifting through Bai's body and were absorbed, and then later, produced by the multitool itself.

And on top of that, once that was the case and Bai became more adept and controlling its own body at a new level, and once Eisen's 'Item Fusion' skill ranked up a bit as well, the old man could make it so that Bai could absorb different tools that it ate in a new way. They would became part of the tool's body and it became able to shift certain parts of its form to be more like that tool.

So far, Eisen wasn't able to add completely new tools, however. For example, even though he made about two, or at this point maybe even three dozen glassblowing pipes and fed them to Bai, they didn't become part of its body. But when Eisen added a knew knife, like the scalpel from before, it was really just a slight change compared to what the base knife on the tool already was.

These sorts of changes did happen. And now, Eisen was trying to add different types of hammers into Bai's arsenal so that he was more prepared for anything that Eisen had to make in the future.

And now that he fed Bai so many of the exact same sort of hammer, Eisen let out a relieved sigh when he saw that Bai was now able to also shift its hammer-form into that exact one.

These transformations were also a little bit weird as far as Eisen was concerned. Due to the way that Bai's original body was built, the hammer could be turned into a shovel, an axe, as well as a pickaxe. So of course, now that the shape of the hammer changed, that also changed the shape of those other three tools.

It wasn't a huge difference, but in certain forms, the shovel couldn't be used properly for example. And that was because there was now a gap in the middle of the shovel that wasn't supposed to be there. But all that Bai had to do then was shift its body to the way it used to be again to fix that.

But now that Eisen saw himself faced with this issue where these large tools were affected by the transformative aspects, he figured that it was a good chance to change a bit about these as well. He could make a spade-head that the shovel could turn into, he could create different shapes for the axe that might be useful to get rid of different sorts of growths other than just regular trees.

Thinking that this might be a pretty good thing to use and take advantage of, the old man chose to make those different sort of tools as well. The material didn't really seem to matter to Bai when it absorbed the tools, and the shape was the most important. The actual 'essence' of the tool, basically. Although, Bai did seem to accept the tools more easily the higher-quality the materials were, so that was the main thing that Eisen was trying to focus on.

And just like that, he started to create all of these tool-heads for different sorts of shovels, axes, and pickaxes that Eisen may be able to use in different situations. Basically, he was trying to turn Bai into the ultimate multitool where he could make use of it at any point without having to use any other tool.

It would be useful if Bai, at some point, learned to do things similar to what Hephaestus was capable of. For example, splitting itself up into two parts and two separate tools. It might be useful at some point as well, but for now, it wasn't really all that important.

Eisen looked at the forge and then took out the glowing hot metal sitting inside of it that he wanted to use to create all these tool-parts.

Jephas, who had been watching Eisen the whole time, was simply sitting behind him, polishing and finishing up the hammer that she had made herself, "And that tool is really one that can feed on other tools?" She inquired.

Eisen turned his head toward her and nodded, "Mhm, it is. Hm... I'm sure you are aware of my fixation on the creation of true articial life, right?" 

"...I've heard about it.��� Jephas admitted.

The old man smiled back lightly, "Well, it seems like at some point before losing my memories, I created a tool for this purpose. In the end I didn't seem to need him, but Hephaestus was something of a superior Ego-Tool. He was familiar with close to every material, and close to every tool there was, and could transform his body into any such tool he wished to. For some reason, I 'discarded' him back then, and he lived his life on his own. Since he had the passive ability to cause any sort of ego-item that he created to become an imitation of life directly rather than the real item, as if mutating somehow, and was unable to properly create regular items, he just spent his time working away and creating these 'Living Ego-Items' that roamed around Silmos' island in the mortal realm."

"Oh! So that was where those came from. I did wonder about that, but our Lord never told us about that..." The lesser goddess pointed out. Eisen slowly smiled at her in response, "I was unaware at first as well. But either way, I met Hephaestus again and managed to 'recruit' him, somewhat. He became a tool of mine once again, but specifically for the purpose of creating 'Living Ego-Items'. And then, because he's not the most patient being around, he used an active part of his passive ability and imbued life into Bai here. And so, it transformed into a humanoid shape, and somehow retained the ability to shapeshift. Ever since then, it had quite an appetite for any sort of tool, and I made sure to use that fact to my advantage."

"...How curious..." Jephas muttered quietly as she listened to Eisen's story while the old man continued to work. He continued to forge, and continued to shape the metal to his will.

And so, Eisen worked for a few hours, as much as he could. At some point he had created all of the tools that he wanted to feed to Bai, and the Multitool had even absorbed a fair amount of the Divine Energies flowing through this realm. Nearly enough to even gain the Trait, Eisen assumed. Having this trait would definitely bring Bai as a tool to the next level, or so Eisen hoped. It should have a little bit of an effect, at least.

But not only did Eisen create all of these different variations of tools, but he also created the metal parts for different weapons. Swords, daggers, warhammers, Eisen even created a few metallic parts for some staffs. Some Chains, needles, shuriken, throwing knives, and all sorts of other smaller items were also included in this, since they might come in useful at any point in the future. 

And once Eisen was done, he tried to simply heat up some different metals and fold them over and over again so that they might be infused with a little bit of this realms divine energies themselves. But in the evening, Eisen found that Jephas had actually grown a little impatient after not being able to work for the whole day and having to watch Eisen do so the whole time instead. But since she had promised Eisen to let him work there for a while, she probably felt bad to interrupt him.

And Eisen himself used that to the fullest, even if it may sound a bit excessive and mean. He had to use this chance he was given to the highest amount possible, and he probably would have been able to stretch the time he spent working there for even longer if he wanted to. So stopping now when Jephas was still eager to work instead of frustrated that she couldn't was probably the best idea.

And so for now, the old man properly placed all of the metallic parts of the items he would make later into his item storage, properly cleaning and sorting them.

When Eisen was finished with this, the lesser goddess of Blacksmithing had already started to work again, eagerly waiting for the metal in the forge in front of her to heat up properly. With a light smirk on his face, happy to see a youngster excited about their craft like that, Eisen packed all of his things up and chose to sit down for a while, simply continuing to watch Jephas while taking a short break. He would log off for a while later so that he could recover properly and then head off to the next workshop, but for now, it was nice to just undulge in the sounds of people hammering onto metal and the scent of smoke in the air.

Eisen sat there and had his elemental spirit bring out a bottle of whisky for him that he chose to enjoy. Eisen didn't have many chances to indulge like this for a while now.

Who knew, maybe Eisen was really just trying not to log off again, since it has been rather awkward for and tense for him in real life lately. Either way, that didn't matter anymore as the alcohol flowed down the old man's throat and he tried to forget about his worries.