Spending My Retirement In A Game

Chapter 247 Glassblowing

The group of five then made their way over to Eisen’s workshop, where the old man immediately summoned his Staff from his soul storage and created the three furnaces he would need, the central furnace to melt the glass, the glory hole to keep the molten glass hot, and then the annealer to slowly cool it down.

Behind him, Kiron and Komer were helping Eisen carry some of the materials that he needed, which were, for now at least, just three different ones. Silica sand, which is just a very fine granulated, pure sand with a low amount of impurities, the same limestone that he used in the metal extraction for Fafnir’s scales, and then the material which was a pain to find, sodium carbonate, also known as Soda Ash.

It was quite hard to find a store that would sell Soda Ash just by itself, and in the end, Komer luckily managed to find a Glassblower that was kind enough to sell it.

"So, what first?" Stahl asked excitedly, and Eisen just smiled at him and stepped over to the polished metal plate that he leaned against the wall, which he then placed on a table once more created with his element.

Seeing that, Komer placed the bag he was holding on the ground and stepped closer. "What’s that for?"

"I’ll use it as a marver, which is just a metal plate that I’m going to use to help me shape the glass. But don’t touch it, because I’m heating it right now." Eisen told them, before remembering that he didn’t tell everyone about one of the most critical parts of their ’tasks’ yet. "Oh, all of you, when you’re helping me using any tools, make sure that they’re hot enough. If the tools are cold, they are going to make the glass crack instantly, and I don’t want that to happen." He said and then grabbed the bags with the materials for the glass before pouring the ratios that he was personally used to into the crucible acting as the central ’furnace’ and then turned to Komer.

"I’m making just regular glass right now, but I want to add other materials later as well. You also managed to buy the coloring agents from the same glassblower that you got the soda ash from, right?" The old man asked, and Komer smiled and nodded his head. "Yeah, we got a bunch of them. Not every possible color gradient of course, but like a dozen or two different ones." The young merchant answered, and Eisen nodded his head with a smile.

"I see, thanks. Oh, and could you grab some of the low-rank mana crystals from the storage as well? I want to use them as an enchantment-carrier later." Eisen explained, and Komer nodded his head before rushing out the door, while Kiron looked at Eisen excitedly as his scaled tail was slightly wagging back and forth.

"And what will you be making now?" The half-dragon asked, and Eisen scratched the back of his head while waiting for the silica, limestone and soda ash to melt down, liquify, and turn into glass. "For now, I think I just want to make something rather normal. Some Glass cups maybe, so that we can replace the Self-Filling Cups and use the mana crystals for something else. I was also thinking about some bottles for the alcohol I’m going to be making soon. Then, of course, things related to that, like Wine or Whiskey glasses, or decanters even. Oh, and I also want to make some proper, well-made Mana-Spectacles."

After Eisen’s explanation, Stahl scratched his cheek in thought before coming up with an idea. "How about you make some unique potion bottles as well? I mean like, make bottles that will cause others to think ’Oh, I know who made those, they’re good, instantly.’" He suggested, and at the start of the idea, Komer came back into the room, and couldn’t help but agree with that idea.

"I actually wanted to talk to you about that as well! So far we’ve only been selling straightforward, flat-surface bottles, which is fine for the Low-grade potions that are sold in high quantity at a relatively low price, but especially for higher-grade potions, it would be a good idea to make those unique bottles. Some High-Grade potions are very expensive, so having something that people recognize will make them feel calmer and less reluctant to buy our products again, just like Stahl said." Komer added, and Eisen didn’t need to think about it for long. "Sure, sounds good. Let’s talk to Evalia and ask her to come up with a few designs later." He suggested before taking a look at the crucible to check up on it and then saw that it was ready.

And after heating the pipe that he would use to blow the glass with, he stuck the end of the pipe into the molten glass and twisted the pipe around a little bit to get some of it onto it, before then moving over to the Marver before beginning to get to work. He started to twist the pipe around a bit and pressed the end flat against it to make a cylinder shape, all the while blowing into the pipe to cause a bubble in the center of the glass to grow to make it hollow. And after a while, Eisen looked over at the four others standing around him just watching him.

"One of you, grab the knife over there, but use the gloves laying next to it." Eisen said, and before he even finished the sentence, Stahl already jumped over to the little magic ’toolbox’ that Eisen made to keep the tools hot. Stahl quickly put the leather gloves on and grabbed the knife that he was instructed to, before bringing the blade over to the Marver.

"And what now?" He asked, and Eisen smiled lightly. "Hold the knife next to the end of the glass and keep holding it as tightly as you can. Try not to wobble or anything; this is still glass we’re working with." After Eisen explained what his grandson needed to do, Stahl squatted down and held the small knife in front of him with both his hands, before Eisen moved the glass against the knife, before twisting it around so that the other end of the glass would be cut off.

"Alright, perfect. Please take that scoop over there and put this glass back into the crucible. But hold it into the furnace for a little while first to let it melt down a little bit more again." Eisen instructed him, and Stahl swiftly nodded his head before the old man looked at his other grandson, Kiron.

"Come here, hold the pipe for a moment. Don’t worry, it’s not as hot, and you just need to hold it steady." Slowly, Kiron came closer and took the pipe out of Eisen’s hands, before the old man stepped to the glass still attached to it and took the knife that Stahl used just now, holding his hands directly underneath the glass before cutting it off of the pipe.

Since his hand could stand the heat, he just needed to be careful not to bend the glass somehow, but he was extra careful, so this luckily didn’t happen, and it stayed in the shape that he wanted. He slowly brought the Glass Cup over to the ’box,’ the annealer, that he created and opened the front up just with a thought, before placing the cup inside.

"Alright, now, let’s wait a little bit for this cup to finish so that I have the skill going forward." Eisen said with a smile and then began to lean against the wall while slowly making the annealer cool down to a temperature where the cup was ’safe’ from just randomly cracking.

And a little while later, Eisen opened the annealer back up and put his hand inside of it, grabbing the now only slightly warm glass cup. He waved the information screen that appeared to display the information for the cup away immediately, and just looked at the ’Glassblowing Skill learned’ notification for a moment and then smiled.

"Perfect. Alright, let’s continue." Eisen said immediately and stepped back over to the crucible and once more picked some glass up with it and, in an exact copy of the process from before, made another cup that was nearly identical to the first one.

And then another one, and another one, and another one, until Eisen made a total of 12 nearly identical cups, which was enough to make his Glassblowing skill rank up to 1. After placing the cups to the side somewhere where nobody could just accidentally bump into them, Eisen took one of the mana crystals into his hand together with an enchanting marble.

"What’re you doing now?" Alnico asked as she leaned in and looked at the two unfamiliar items. "Oh, I’m enchanting this mana-crystal with my mana sight ability now. And while I’m at it, I’ll just make a few enchanted with Visualization, I guess." He explained, and Alnico looked at him a bit confused.

"Eh... don’t you need to carve something for enchanting?" Al then asked, but Eisen just chuckled in response.

"This is a different kind of enchanting. Yeah, usually you carve things for enchantments, but you can also enchant things with abilities. Right now, I can only use relatively shallow abilities that I have, but at some point, I can also use abilities that other people have." Eisen explained while he did what he was describing, simply enchanting some mana-crystals with the mana-sight ability, and others with the visualization ability.

Then, he ground the mana-crystals with the mana-sight ability down into a fine powder and added them into a new batch of silica, limestone, and soda ash to create glass with this ability.

Eisen hoped that this would adequately work and waited for everything to melt down properly. "So that kind of stuff works? I thought you’d need to enchant it later, and in the first place, I wasn’t aware you could mix mana crystals into the glass." Komer asked curiously, as he did somewhat know about how enchantments worked as he had the skill himself, despite not using ability enchantments so far.

"Well, the same principle is used in other things already. For example, let’s just take Bree’s dress. I made it out of magic fabric. Magic fabric is just woven out of magic thread, which was made out of mana crystals. And the mana crystals used for the dress were enchanted with a ’Growth’ ability enchantment by a friend of mine." Eisen explained the first part of Komer’s question, before then swiftly moving onto the second.

"And as for the other thing, it’s just like alchemy. Combining mana crystals with herbs seems less natural than combining mana crystals with glass crystals, doesn’t it?" Eisen explained before Komer nodded his head. "Huh, didn’t think of it that way yet..." He muttered to himself, while Eisen just smiled and grabbed some of the molten glass.

"Yeah, it took me a while to think of it as well. Then I mixed the Red-Dragon’s Crystals with the metal I was extracting from the petrified eggshell, and it worked, so I thought this should work as well. I could probably just enchant the glass itself, but the effect would surely be stronger like this." The old man explained as he began to form the glass on the hot Marver, just shaping it into a tube again, but this time not blowing into the pipe and just trying to shape a solid glass cylinder, before he turned to Kiron.

"Hold this again, alright?" Eisen asked, and the Half-Dragon swiftly complied and took over, while Eisen took a knife and cut off slices off of the cylinder-like it was some pepperoni he was preparing so that he could put them on a pizza.

And then, Eisen just carefully brought those glass-slices over to the Annealer one after another to let them cool down. He would just shape them later so that he could properly use them for eye-glasses.