Chapter 306 - Core Guardian
After all, if you’ve never tried a recipe, how could you know how to improve on it? With such a mindset, Eisen continued working on putting the different parts together, starting with the crystal structures on the inside that were surrounding the metal skeleton. The old man first worked on each of the limbs first, as it seemed to be relatively easy to attach them to the torso if he did so first.
When the glass parts were all properly attached to each other, Eisen then added the metal casings and then placed the different parts together, although he made sure to leave a little space in the center so that he could place the special type of Golem Core into the center last.
After a while, Eisen soon had the metallic, robotic body in the shape of a Halti, a gnome-like creature from the Underdark. And then, he only needed to place the core into the center of the body and then add the ’Blood’ to everything. There even seemed to be a quite special ’Startup’ procedure, so Eisen had to be careful not to mess anything up for that while filling the body up with the potion.
Either way, in order to create the Golem Core, Eisen had to basically mix the materials meant for a regular Golem Core into the materials to make glass, add a little bit of a soul-stone crystal to that, and then needed to create a small hollow glass sphere.
Inside of that sphere, while Eisen was actually still blowing the glass, he had to quite literally ’Blow’ the soul into that glass sphere, and then after that fume the inside of the sphere through one of the two holes inside of the sphere, which would then later be connected to the glass tubings.
And for the most part, that was it. As the Golem Core had an actual soul inside of it, it didn’t need the two special enchantments to be placed onto it, which might have also been part of the reason why he couldn’t start the Core Guardian up in a way that he normally would start up a Golem.
Either way, when Eisen put everything together and added the last metal plate to the chest, the old man swiftly stood up and made sure that nothing was laying on the floor directly surrounding the Core Guardian, and then created an enchantment directly underneath the Core Guardian. The layout for the enchantment as well as a detailed description of the image one was supposed to have was actually included inside of the blueprints as well, so Eisen finished the job quite quickly as he just needed to ’do it’, and not figure out ’how to do it’.
After a few moments, the enchantment circle was finished, and all that now needed to be done was to make the potion and pour it into the Core Guardian’s mouth, and then infuse a large amount of mana into the Glass-Golem Core.
The Potion was relatively straightforward to make as well, although it did require a few techniques that created a large amount of waste, like manually pulling the actual potion out of the large mixture of things, which created a weird gray sludge that you really didn’t want to accidentally touch.
And after the large amount of the potion was finished, Eisen swiftly poured all of it into the Core Guardian’s mouth at a steady rate, even relatively weirdly ’massaging’ the neck directly underneath the jaw’s joints, making the artificial muscles that the old man had to add here and there react and then help carry the potion into the actually important parts of the Core Guardian’s body.
Once Eisen was done with that, all that was left to do was to pour the mana into the Core Guardian’s Golem Core. When the old man started doing so, though, a notification appeared in frotn of him.
[Startup Procedure of a Core Guardian Initiated. 1000 MP Left]
"That much..?" Eisen muttered with a wry smile and then looked at his status, noticing that this was roughly two thirds of the mana that Eisen currently had left after all the work that went into the creation of the body, and then sighed deeply.
"Guess I’ll have to go grab some potions after this." The old man said with a smirk and continued to pour the mana into the core at the fastest rate that he could steadily manage, while the number on the notification kept dwindling more and more, before it finally reached zero.
[Core Guardian Startup Procedure activated]
[Basic Knowledge will be given to the Core Guardian. Specific Knowledge will be learned when it connects with its Core]
Slowly, the Core Guardian’s body began to move, and Eisen at first thought that he would hear a lot of horrid sounds from inside of it due to the initial adjustment at the very least damaging some of the glass parts inside of the Guardian’s body. But surprisingly, none of that happened! All that Eisen could hear when he tried listening closely was the potion that he prepared slowly starting to flow around, before the Core Guardian’s face also started reacting.
Its metallic eyelids slowly moved and revealed the two crystal eyes that were prepared beforehand, and then the corners of its mouth began twitching just so slightly, before the Core Guardian slowly sat upright, looking around rather confused.
And that in itself was something that then in turn confused Eisen. This creation of his was moving as if it was alive, blinked when it looked around, and even seemed to be somewhat scared, as it didn’t seem to know anything just yet.
Although, just when that thought crossed Eisen’s mind, the Core Guardian’s eye twitched a little and it moved its hand to its head with a grimacing expression, before it ripped both of its eyes open immediately and then stood up upright, jumping to its legs nearly immediately as if in a military academy and Eisen was the instructor that just caught it slacking off.
"This is... amazing..." Eisen muttered quietly to himself as he looked at the naked, androgynous, somewhat child-like figure in front of him. Of course Eisen himself knew what it was, and its skin wasn’t a natural color, right now it was just a very metallic gray tone and was lightly glistening at the little bit of lighting that Eisen had in his Workshop, but if one took care of that and maybe painted the metallic skin, the Core Guardian may as well look completely like an actual, living person, especially due to the sight amount of Micro-expressions on its face, and the slight wobble that its body had.
It was truly like a person, but Eisen was completely aware that it was made of nothing organic in the slightest. It was an artificial creation, the process of which was done 100% by this old man.
"You are beautiful..." Eisen whispered as he grabbed the Core Guardian’s arm to check if it really was still just metal, or if some kind of weird magic stuff was going on and the core guardian wasn’t just switched out with an actual person, although it was probably the worst moment for Eisen’s grandchildren to appear in the room.
"Err... Yeah, Grampa, what’s going on?" Stahl asked with a wry smile and a frown on his face, as it looked to him like his grandfather was kneeling in front of a naked, gray-skinned child, but Eisen didn’t care up the situation and just spoke up with a broad grin.
"I finished it! Come on, take a look! He- She- It, whatever, we’ll have to figure that out later, is the Core Guardian!" Eisen exclaimed with an ecstatic expression from the moment that he confirmed that the Core Guardian’s skin really was just made of metal still, and Stahl looked at Eisen and the small figure confused.
"Wait, what?" He asked and immediately stepped up to the figure and touched its shoulder, noticing the cold feeling of steel, before he opened his eyes wide.
"Holy shit!" Stahl yelled excitedly, and while Alnico was also quite impressed, she stayed silent through all of this and just watched, before Eisen looked at his two Grandchildren with a grin.
"You two, go take Fafnir with you and make him create the Entrance to the Dungeon in the meeting room, then tell the originals to make their way to the Core Room, please." Eisen asked excitedly, and Stahl, who had just recently learned the beauty of such creations, nodded his head immediately and sprinted out of the room, taking the living dungeon and his cousin with him as he did so, while Eisen kept looking at the Core Guardian.
"Alright, let’s get you dressed for now." Eisen said with a smirk on his face, although the Core Guardian swiftly responded, in a rather cold and emotionless voice, although far more human than Eisen ever expected it to be.
"I do not require clothing. They might be hindering as I fulfill my purpose." It responded, simply staring forward toward the wall without moving for a moment, but Eisen just responded with a wry smile and pulled a simple robe over its head.
"Yeah, sure. I’d prefer it if you wore clothes, though. This should do for now, but we’ll figure out something better later." Eisen explained with a smile, and the Core Guardian just stood there like a statue, before Eisen’s initial excitement finally died down a bit as he looked at the notification next to him.
[Legacy Creation - Core Guardian]
[Name - None][Connected Core - None]
[Rank - 0][Level - 0]
[Description] The Legacy of the first that peaked, created by himself. With the help of knowledge that it is given by the world, it is able to control a single core perfectly and knows anything that has to do with it. It becomes the core, and the core becomes it. If the Guardian is destroyed, so is the Core, and if the Core is Destroyed, so is the Guardian.
Somewhat surprised, Eisen looked at the weird format of the information screen, which seemed to be something like a mix-match between the information screen of a creature and the information screen of an item.
And while the old man was confused that it was at ’Level 0’, or more specifically confused about the fact that it was even able to level up in the first place, he figured that his newest Creation would probably be the best to answer such questions.
However, there was a different issue that Eisen wanted to figure out first, which was the fact that this newly ’Created’ Core Guardian still had no name. And even if the old man was aware that it might not be the best choice of name, but for some reason, it felt like an interesting combination considering that this Core Guardian would end up connected to Fafnir.
Either way, Eisen stepped up to the door of his Workshop and looked at the metallic figure wearing a simply cloth robe behind him.
"Let’s go, Sigurd."