Looking at the number of wooden balls in front of him, Eisen let his mana infuse the enchantments of two of them. They both rolled forward at the exact same speed, at least according to the speed measurement device that he improvised.
It was a simple item that looked at a specific area and could lock onto determined objects, measuring exactly how fast they moved, saving the specific speed at certain intervals. On top of that, it could measure the time it took for an object to reach a specific line; Eisen made this item specifically for this test. And from what he could see, the two balls were moving almost exactly the same speed.
One of them was a wooden ball made from regular oak, and another was made from a dead oak treant's wood. The one made from the treant's oak reached the 'destination' fractionally faster, but the top speed between the two objects seemed identical. The only difference was that the treant oak ball accelerated a tiny bit faster.
Eisen repeated the same thing a couple more times, always coming to the same conclusion for these small, one inch wooden balls.
"So there really is a difference there. Treant wood is at the very least more receptive to these kinds of impulses," the old man muttered, running his fingers through his beard, "Or, at least with this method of enchantments."
Eisen glanced over at the other wooden balls that he had made. He had used a few different approaches for enchantments with a pair of treant oak and regular oak; he wanted to see exactly what part the treant wood influenced, so having more reference points wasn't a bad idea.
He swapped out the balls with the simple force enchantment and then grabbed one that was enchanted with a magnetic repulsion approach. He tested these out a couple of times, and then swapped them out for another pair, doing this until he had tested out all of the different enchantments. And with each of them, the conclusion was simple.
The treant oak balls were more responsive to the enchantments, but everything else was the same. And of course, because the treant wood was able to accelerate differently, if Eisen adjusted it, he would be able to get the same exact results, just using less mana, which was exactly what he was aiming for. However, he was still just curious about what exactly was going on with these treant oak balls.
They accelerated quicker, as if the oak had less 'drag'. Every physical object had drag, as mass always wants to keep its state. When it's static, it wants to stay static; when it's moving, it wants to stay moving. The heavier the object, the more this was the case, hence why things like cars couldn't just stop instantly and had a breaking range.
In reverse, it took a certain amount of force to get even small objects to move, even disregarding things like friction or air resistance, and with the treant wood, it simply seemed like that drag wasn't as strong. At least, that was the case when making use of enchantments. Enjoy new tales from m-v l'-NovelFire
Just blowing on the wooden balls and letting them roll down a slope, everything was the exact same no matter which wood it was.
However, what he wanted to make now was a proper, decent timepiece with all the small gears and springs that a watch needed.
For this, Eisen was going to need to make a prototype, and the simplest way to do this was using mana crystals. He could just use transmutation to properly shape the pieces and make sure that he had everything and that the watch worked in the end.
And then, he could use those pieces to make a mold to pour metal into so that he could make more watches, marking the pieces that would need to be swapped out for the treant wood parts once he figured that part of it all out.
Creating the prototype was really quite easy and didn't take too long; Eisen's precision with transmutation was quite high, after all.
After creating all the individual cogs, plates and springs, transmuting the springs to make sure they could actually store the energy that was needed properly, he began to work on the enchantment for the central cog that was going to affect everything else in the clock.
It was a very simple rotation enchantment, though he had to make it a bit more complex to make sure that it would run smoothly without any mistakes that might pop up by uneven mana flow or other outside interference.
He carefully placed all the pieces into the simple prototype casing that he made, attaching the hands and closing everything up in a way that nothing could happen to the sensitive mechanisms.
He turned the crystal watch around and started engraving an enchantment onto the underside, which would allow the watch to gather mana from outside sources, in this case, the individual that was wearing it.
And after Eisen turned the dial on the side to adjust the time properly, he placed it onto his wrist next to the watch he was already wearing, and then decided to wait. To make sure that he had created it properly, he was going to need to wait for a while, to see if he needed to adjust the size of any of the cogs or the tightness of the springs.
If the watch was off after a while, then he would need to readjust it, and if not, then he could proceed with this piece as a reference point.
But either way, he was already quite happy with this prototype timepiece that he had made; it didn't actually drain that much mana from the user, though it was still a noticable amount that might have long-term effects on someone with little to no mana to begin with. If he could make this more efficient as he was hoping, then he could have it drain mana from the air instead of from people.
But for the time being, this was a pretty good start.