Chapter 262 Necronomicon
"I have a few bones like that actually, yes, and I don’t directly have a material like the gems you used on my Beastiary, but I can try something else?" Jyuuk suggested before grabbing one of the mana crystals on the table and slowly using some skills on it, before the crystal slowly turned deep black.
"Erm... What did you just do?" Eisen asked with a frown, before Jyuuk smiled at him. "Ah, right, maybe you don’t know... You’ll have to ask Xenia, or Sky, Kiron or Bree here, if you want to know more, but there’s a few skills that have their own type of ’Mana’, so to speak. Necromancy is one of those skills. You can only use the ’Necromantic Mana’ directly in connection to the Necromancy skill though, so what I did just now was basically try to turn this gem into an undead, which immediately changed its nature." Jyuuk explained and handed the Necromantic Mana Crystal to Eisen, before the old man slowly nodded his head.
"Huh... So that’s a thing, then?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk swiftly nodded. "It’s only that easy with things like Mana Crystals, although I don’t know why. I’ve been experimenting with the Necromantic Mana a bit to see how it changes the bodily functions of my zombies, and... one of my tamed beasts, actually..." Jyuuk said a bit embarrassedly, and Eisen looked at him with a frown.
"You’re trying to turn one of your living monsters into an undead?" Eisen asked with a frown, because that seemed like a pretty inhumane thing to do, but the Beastperson swiflty shook his head. "No no, it’s not like that! Rather, you know how Animals first evolve into Monsters, right? Sometimes that happens through gaining experience, and sometimes that happens as a natural consequence of being exposed to a lot of mana. And technically I’m not using the Necromantic Mana on an animal I have already tamed, but an egg, so that kind of makes it better...?" Jyuuk asked as he scratched the back of his head, and Eisen slowly nodded his head.
"Kind of, I guess." The old man admitted, and Jyuuk sighed lightly and nodded. "Yeah, I know it’s a horrible thing to do..."
"It’s not necessarily. As long as you’re not harming whatever currently is in that egg, I guess it’s not a big deal. Just curious, but let me guess... You’re trying it on an Eagle egg?" Eisen asked, and with a bit of surprise, Jyuuk looked at him and nodded his head.
"Yeah, how did you know?" Jyuuk responded with a frown, and even the others were looking at Eisen confused at how he got to that conclusion. "Well, you already have Akatori, who is going to turn into a phoenix sooner or later, and the Aotori, who is going to turn into the water or ice equivalent sooner or later. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were just waiting for me or Xenia to get our Enchanting skills to rank up to four so that you can create wind, earth, light and dark versions as well. Or would Necromancy count as the dark one?" Eisen asked, and immediately, Jyuuk’s face began to flush a light red. "Whaaat..? I would never ask that of you..." He muttered as he looked away, before Eisen just responded with a laugh.
"Sure you wouldn’t. But isn’t this all a bit overwhelming? You already have so many tamed beasts." The old man pointed out and in the meantime began to prepare everything for working on the book with a bit of help from Sky, Bree, and Kiron, while Caria and Melissa were just listening and playing around with their elements as a ’Practice’ of sorts.
"Actually..." Jyuuk said as he looked at Eisen with a complex expression, "I was thinking about setting some of them free at the islands." He explained, before Eisen looked at him in surprise.
"What do you mean? Is everything okay with them?" He asked with concern, but Jyuuk immediately nodded his head. "Oh yeah, don’t worry! They’re all fine, but it’s just that I have so many tamed beasts that it’s getting an issue. I barely have any of them out in the open. Right now, I have the eagles fly around so that we have eyes all over the place, while Gobu is trying to help out all over the ship. And because each one of the islands is apparently so unique compared to any of the others, I want to find a good place for each one of them to live, so that they’re not just stuck in the Beastiary all the time." The Monkey-Beastperson explained, before the old man nodded his head with a light smile.
"Well, that’s actually a pretty good reason to do that, yeah. But we should be careful with that, I doubt your monsters are all strong enough to live on the islands." Eisen pointed out, and Jyuuk nodded his head.
"I know, but I know that I can at least find a place for Gobu and the Eagles beside Akatori and Aotori. And don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they’ll still be around all the time, but when they’re not my tamed monsters, they’re going to stay peaceful toward us and maybe even stay in the area for a while. I love them, but I can see that they’re unhappy with what it’s like." Jyuuk pointed out, before he scratched the back of his head. "And as for Gobu... I feel somewhat uncomfortable having him as my tamed monster, to be quite frank. He’s slowly starting to learn to speak, so that doesn’t make it easier. I completely understand and support it when they’re so child-like like Caria and Melissa, but Gobu is basically a late-teen or early-twenty male. And that makes it awkward. And I can’t deal with awkward. Gobu surely notices that I’m uncomfortable as well, so I think when we get to the main island that’s supposed to be inhabited by Monsters like Goblins, Kobolds, and monster races like that, he will surely fit in." Jyuuk explained, and Eisen slowly nodded his head.
"I understand that. Did you talk to him about it yet?" The old man asked, but Jyuuk just shook his head. "Not yet, I’ll get to that soon. Anyway, I’m sure you’re busy as is, so I don’t want to keep you from working on stuff for too long. I’ll bring you the bones real quick, and then I’m going to train my monsters a bit more." Jyuuk said with a light smile and bowed ever so slightly, before he turned around and left the room.
Then, the old man looked at the materials he had for the Necronomicon he was about to make. "Alright, let’s get to work then." Eisen said as he cracked his knuckles, before turning to the group that was listening to the conversation, and his eyes ended up getting stuck on Caria and Melissa, who were staring at him with sad eyes.
"Are you going to leave Caria and Melly too?" Caria asked, and Melissa immediately nodded furiously, wanting to know the same thing. "Leave?"
With a light smile, Eisen kneeled down in front of the two of them and shook his head. "Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you two alone, no matter what." Eisen said, before he looked over at the three others that seemed to also feel similar to Caria and Melissa about this.
"I’m not going to leave you three either. Doubt I’d be able to get rid of you even if I wanted to." The old man chuckled, before he sat down again, starting to bundle up the different sheets of paper. Especially two of the group, all of which were now cheered up, were incredibly interested in the process, Caria and Sky.
Caria seemed to be interested because the paper was made of natural plant fibers, while Sky was simply interested in how books were actually made, because he was carrying them around constantly and never acutally managed to watch that process this closely.
And noticing the reasons that the two of them had, Eisen chuckled lightly. "Sky, want me to teach you how to bind books after I finish this one? It’s not that complicated as long as you have a little bit of stamina and are good with your hands." The old man suggested, and swiftly, Sky nodded his head immediately.
"Yes, please! That would be great!" He said excitedly, and with a satisfied smile, Eisen then looked over at Caria.
"And now to you, little lady. If you’re interested in how to make paper, just take a look and see if you can figure it out, yeah?" He asked with a smile before handing a few sheets of paper to the small Myconid, who was excited just as if she just found a puppy under the christmas tree.
"Alright, for now, I’ll just get started." The old man said with a smile, before grabbing one of the Necromantic-Mana Crystals and stepping over to the Spinning Wheel that he placed in the corner so that he could constantly make magic string whenever he needed to. And after fidgeting with the wheel a bit so that it would produce slightly thicker string compared to usual out of the mana crystals, Eisen swiftly pressed the crystals against the funnel that would then basically ’suck’ them in, before grabbing some beeswax that he also had in this room, just making sure to hold it around the string as it was getting rolled up to produce some nice, waxed Necromantic Magic String that he could use for the bookbinding process.
The rest was just as Eisen had done a million times before, stacking the different ’Bundles’ of paper on top of each other before swiftly moving his needle through the holes that he put into the paper before to bind everything up. And after then placing some cloth around the spine of the book, Eisen attached some thick, black paper to that cloth, before grabbing two pieces of thin wood, each just a little larger than the pages. With some of the rolled up magic string that Eisen prepared to be basically a thin rope that he then glued to the spine with a few inches inbetween each other, Eisen then attached the wood as some proper hard front and back covers, which would then be the base to attach the leather.
The old man chose to go with some thin, already pretty dark leather, which he then swiftly dyed a nice, deep black to be perfect for the ’Theme’ of the book. When everything was nice and attached, Eisen swiflty began to carve some simple, decorative parts into leather, once more using the sigil on Jyuuk’s ’Original Coin’ as a reference, just making the crown of the tree point downward this time, while the roots formed a vague shape of a skull. Into that carved base, Eisen then inserted the Bones from one of Jyuuk’s former undead, before looking at the whole finished item with a satisfied smile.