Chapter 121 Bestiary
Later that evening, the group found themselves in the stables, preparing to leave by making some more space inside the carriage for everyone.
Before they left, Eisen also quickly made his way to the bookstore where he bought supplies at before and bought a map so that they could figure out the way toward the Magic City. It was a different story before, because Bree knew the way from Melroe to Ornier already, but nobody of this group had ever been there before. But luckily, there weren’t many large magic cities, and the one that they were talking about seemed to be the largest one on the continent.
Now that they had a rough idea about the route they would need to take, all the group needed to do was to make sure they did everything they wanted to do before leaving, and that included one thing.
Eisen wanted to see if he could make something for Jyuuk to help with the Monster Storage, now that his skin was largely covered in the monsters that Eisen brought to him.
And he already got a few ideas for that. But first, he would need to make a new book, which was another reason why he went to the book store, to buy large A3 paper so that the pages would be large enough. This would mean a little bit more work, but it wouldn’t be a huge project in the end. But since Jyuuk would maybe be using this and carrying it around with him more often, he wanted to make it actually look quite nice and basically just cool.
For that, Eisen used a small wooden frame that he put together to help in binding the book in a way to achieve just that. What he did was take thick string and twisted it around itself a few times to make it even thicker to be around as thick as a pinky, while having a rope-like consistency, and then bound four parts of that string from the top to the bottom of the frame, with two of them close to the center and one close to each end, and then began to properly work on everything else.
He had already quickly put together the bundles of paper that he needed and punched six holes into each sheet, so that he could just immediately start sewing everything together.
As Eisen did that, he used a slightly different method to before. After holding the first bundle with its spine toward the thick string he bound to the frame, he started by simply pushing the needle through the first hole at one end of the bundle, and then put it back out the next hole, that was placed to be directly next to the first thick string.
He then simply circled that rope-like string and pulled the needle back through the same hole to be inside the bundle again. Eisen repeated this with the other holes before then adding the second bundle, which he did by simply pulling the needle out of the bundle through the last hole, and moving it into the hole directly above, before doing the same thing he did with the first bundle and basically sewing the rope-like string to the spines of the paper bundles. When he then got to the end of the second bundle, Eisen simply tied the very start of the string to the part of the string that just came out of the last hole.
Eisen repeated this same thing over and over again, until he managed to sew all the bundles together successfully.
Once that was done, he cut off the rope-like string that was bound to the wooden frame, leaving about an inch to one and a half inches of it to continue further into both directions when seen from the book’s spine.
Eisen then pressed all of the paper down again by laying a large, flat plank onto the whole thing and then weighing it down with a few more books, before applying glue to the spine.
While that glue was drying, Eisen began to prepare for making the headbands, that were supposed to further protect the book on each end. They were simply some small leather strips about as long as the spine was thick.
What he did to actually connect that headband to the book was quite easy, albeit with a lot of little steps. Eisen first tied two threads together, one black and one white to make it harder to confuse the two of them, and then pulled the end of the black string through the outermost hole in the front bundle of paper from the outside to the inside and pulled until the knot reached the hole and it couldn’t be pulled through anymore.
Next, he moved the white thread, that was still on the outside of the spine, to the inside, and then pulled it through the same hole that he pulled the black thread through, just from the inside to the outside, to create a small loop.
Now, Eisen placed that small strip of leather through that loop before tightening it, and then pulled the white thread back over the piece of leather again. After that, the black thread was simply pulled around under the piece of leather, before the same was done with the white thread, alternating between each other before reaching the area directly above the outermost hole of the second bundle, where Eisen then basically just repeated the same exact process as before.
This continued until Eisen got to the last bundle, where he simply pulled both the white and black threads out from the inside to the outside through this bundle’s outermost hole, and then tied both of them together.
Now that this headband was finished, Eisen simply needed to repeat it one more time for the other side of the spine and added another headband there.
After that, Eisen cut out a piece of fabric three times as wide as the spine of the book would be thick, and then glued it onto the spine as well as the front and back of the whole soon-to-be book, before laying it under the same makeshift press as before and waiting for the glue to dry properly.
When it was finally dry, Eisen grabbed two pieces of high-quality, thick and strong A4 paper, which he then glued onto the parts of the fabric that were exposed to the front and back.
Next, Eisen grabbed some very thin pieces of wood similar to thin plywood, to use for the cover parts instead of the cardboard he had been using before. The reason why he did this was simply because this would make the book’s cover a lot harder and durable, which was better for such a large and heavy book.
Out of that wood, he only cut parts for the front and back of the book, and made four small holes into each piece of wood near one of the long edges, where the rope-like string could be pulled through from the outside.
Once that was done, Eisen pulled the ends of the string apart so that it could more easily be glued to the wood on the inside, and then let the whole thing dry.
After that, the base of the book was done, and now Eisen only had to properly bind it in leather, for which he picked strong leather from a beast that seemed to usually work in packs and commanded those under it in the hierarchy, which Eisen simply did in the hopes of it helping to connect with Jyuuk’s Taming skills.
After he cut the leather that he needed out, about an inch wider into any direction than the outer surface of the book actually would be, and cut away at the corners of the leather to make sure it could be folded better in a bit. Next, he simply spread glue on all the outer surfaces of the book base as well as the leather itself and carefully placed it onto its outside, letting it dry properly after placing it under the weight of other books again.
Once the leather was roughly glued onto the book, Eisen folded the leather around the plywood and glued it on there, before grabbing another thick piece of paper and glueing it onto that surface to hide the plywood completely.
Now, while the final parts of the book were drying, Eisen got to work with something else.
He grabbed a mana crystal and began shaping it the way that he had planned, which was simply in the pattern of the coin that Jyuuk had around his neck as a sign of being an original, which was mostly the same to Eisen’s, although simply with a tree in its center instead of the hammer that Eisen had on it.
The reason why Eisen made this out of a mana crystal instead of simply carving it onto the leather itself was quite simple. He wanted to enchant it, and effects of enchantments were always stronger and more stable on mana crystals instead of other surfaces, at least the type that Eisen was going to apply to it, an ability enchantment.
He grabbed one of the small white marbles that he used for that, and then enchanted it with the same type of ’Ownership’ enchantment that was used for Golem cores, that would simply acknowledge anyone as the owner that first poured mana into the core.
After Eisen was done with successfully enchanting it, Eisen grabbed the book and began to carve out a little bit of space on the front cover to place the shaped mana crystal into, which he then did by simply applying glue to the carved-out space and placing the crystal onto it.
Following this, Eisen simply decorated the book with a few more things to make it look less empty, before finally acknowledging it as finished.
"Done."
[Large Empty Book]
[Quality - Perfect][Rank - 2]
[Description] A Large Leatherbound book made by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. It has the symbol of the Original of the Living on the front in the form of a mana crystal enchanted to allow specific ownership of this book.
[Pages] 250
[Due to already having reached the peak as a limitbreaker, you will not gain anything from creating
an overwhelming quality item through the Bookbinding Skill]
With a smile, Eisen looked at the book in his hands and flipped through it a few times to see how it felt in his hands, before nodding in satisfaction.
"Well then, this took a few hours, but I’m finally done." Eisen exclaimed as he stood up and stretched, deactivating all the skills that he had been using during the creation of this book, and both Kiron and Sky looked at him in awe.
"I have to say, M’Lord, your ability in craftsmanship is truly unrivaled!" The half-dragon said with a large smile, and Sky could only nod, and Caria nodded smugly.
"Of course! Eisen is the best!" She yelled out, before Eisen began laughing loudly,
"Haha, thanks, everyone. I appreciate it. Anyway, I have to hurry and give this to Jyuuk, I told him to meet me here around this time." Eisen exclaimed and stepped out through the carriage’s door, where Jyuuk was already waiting for him.
"Ah, perfect! Here you go, just try it out for a second, will you?" Eisen chuckled as he handed the book over to Jyuuk, who looked it over excitedly.
"Oh? This looks amazing, Eisen! You said you would make me something, but I didn’t expect something like this. But how do I try it out? I didn’t get a notification, at the very least." The Monkey-Beastperson asked, before Eisen quickly began to explain.
"It’s quite simple, really. The crystal in the center of the cover there is enchanted to grant ownership to the first person to pour mana into it. So go ahead and try, maybe it triggers something." The old man suggested and Jyuuk quickly did as explained.
And sure enough, the book began slightly glowing before that glow disappeared as quickly as it appeared, and Jyuuk slightly jumped as apparently a number of notifications popped up in his sight.
Without even saying anything, Jyuuk smiled and placed his hand on the cover of the book, before the multitude of tamed monsters on Jyuuk’s skin immediately transferred over to the book, and Jyuuk quickly flipped it open after the process was finished.
This revealed the same tattoos that he had on his skin just a moment ago spread out on the pages. So, with a smile, Jyuuk nodded at Eisen. "This works great, thank you, Eisen. Now I don’t look like I was swimming in paint anymore." He laughed, and showed the book to Eisen again to let him take another look.
[Jyuuk’s Bestiary]
[Quality - Perfect][Rank - 2]
[Description] A Large Leatherbound book made by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen that turned into a Bestiary after the Beast Master Jyuuk took Ownership of it. It is already holding numerous beasts that have previously been tamed by the owner of the book.
[Pages] 250
"That worked out perfectly, didn’t it?" Eisen laughed quietly, "Well, now there’s only one thing left. This won’t take long, don’t worry. But can you give me your belt for a second?" He asked quickly, before Jyuuk nodded in confusion and handed it to him, and Eisen immediately left inside the carriage again.
While hurrying up, Eisen quickly added something small to the side of the belt, just another two leather straps to hold the book so that Jyuuk didn’t have to carry it around in his arms all the time. Since that was all it was that Eisen added, it only took about ten minutes before he came back out of the carriage again, handing Jyuuk the last part of his thank-you gift for taking in all the monsters that Eisen freed from the Monster Shop.
But now, all the business in Ornier that the group had left was finished, meaning that it was finally time to leave.