Chapter 143 CB, CR and CF
Eisen looked at the materials in front of him and began to work on the most important part of the camera-bots, the golem cores. At first, he was thinking about turning the Crystal-Eye itself into the Golem Core, but since that may influence the enchantments he would be putting on the Crystal-Eye later, he preferred to go the safe route and simply place the golem core in the center of the Crystal-Eye instead.
After finishing the three small golem-cores, he opened up a small hole in the Crystal-Eyes and placed the cores into the center of the fist-sized spheres.
Next, Eisen began working on the enchantments, one after another. The first thing that Eisen did was try to memorize exactly how his son and grandson had suggested that Eisen should create it, and began by carving the general structure, before then adding the runes on the outer circle as well as around the four ’slots’ for the small enchanted crystal cylinders, appointing each slot to a specific enchantment already.
Now it was time to create these enchanted cylinders. First, Eisen created some small soul generators as a power source for the cameras, but then set them to the side for now. The reason for that was that he was afraid the generators would accidentally trigger the golem core’s activation before Eisen was finished with creating the body for it. Next, he created the cylinders enchanted with his truth-seeing-eyes skill, placing that one into the corresponding slot as well.
After that, Eisen created some ’storage’ modules to properly store what was seen by the camera, and with that, all that was left was the ’sender’.
That took some more time to figure out. First, what Eisen did was to make two different crystal items, one cylinder and one small rectangular plate made out of one of the leftover crystal eyes, since this may possibly heighten the success-rate as well, considering that the crystal eye was a material that was highly compatible with visual uses.
So, Eisen quickly enchanted the ’receiver’ display in the way that Eisen planned before, where he enchanted it with the ’Chat function’ with concentration on receiving a message, so that a visual signal would be accepted and then simply displayed on the front of the display. And in order to make the specification for the receiver easier, he carved a small 10-digit identification number made up of random numbers and letters on the back, which he also already added to the runic circle around the slot for the ’sender’, which Eisen made next, simply by enchanting the cylinder with the ’Chat function’ with concentration on sending a message.
And now, after Eisen placed this cylinder into the corresponding slot, he began to work on assembling the body. This time around, he actually went for something more in the direction of a mechanic look, since he fully acknowledged these things to be just tools in the shape of small animals that couldn’t think for themselves, different to what Aulu and Cabarum were to him.
As such, Eisen fully displayed the brass rods, while still hiding the gears so that nothing could accidentally drop inside and clog everything up. And this time around, Eisen simply didn’t try to somehow hide the sewing, even adding more metallic parts to fix the thin, dark leather to the front and back surfaces of the wings to fix everything onto the metallic skeleton more safely. Since the wings would be under a lot of pressure and strain most of the time, Eisen wanted to make sure nothing could break mid-flight.
And after that, Eisen added the same enchantments as with the prototype onto the wings, that would allow the Camera-Bat to properly fly, even staying stagnant in one space mid-air, by expelling a gust of wind from its wings.
"Alright, I think it’s done. Let me turn it on right away." Eisen muttered with a worried frown formed on his brows, before slowly placing his palm on the crystal-eye and pouring his mana inside to activate everything, and while the gears were slightly cracking and creaking around as they reacted to being properly connected within a body, Eisen set the soul generator in its slot.
Immediately, the Camera-Bat began to flap its wings and began to fly, looking at its master. The carving for the enchantment on the front actually somehow made it so that you could somehow recognize it as an eye as well, although a rather weird one.
"It’s flying at least... Well, let’s give you a name first, huh..? Let’s just go with CB-1. Alright CB-1, start recording your sight on the storage module and send everything you see over to the receiver." Eisen commanded as he looked down at the small crystal display in his hands, before slowly, a blurred sight appeared that became more and more clear within a few seconds, until Eisen could see the sight of himself looking down at the tablet.
With a grin, Eisen raised his left hand, and with no delay in the slightest, the version of him on the display did the same. "CB-1, activate Truth-Seeing-Eyes." Eisen commanded next, and the sight on the screen soon changed to be slightly blurry again, with everything completely black and white with the exception of a few colorful circles here and there.
"Get closer to the item on the right and appraise." Once more, CB-1 reacted immediately and flew over to the small potion that Eisen meant for it to look at and the information screen quickly. With that command, Eisen managed to verify two things. First, that the Truth-Seeing-Eyes enchantment worked, and second, that he didn’t need to be very specific with the wording of his commands, and as long as he himself knew what he wanted CB-1 to do, it would be done.
"Perfect. Now, turn around and activate mana-sight." Eisen commanded, and CB-1 flapped its wings and expertisely turned around in one swift motion, as if it had already been controlling this body for years. So that’s what regular golems were like? Ignoring that thought for now, Eisen looked at the screen and saw that there were now different colors within CB-1’s sight, and Eisen confirmed that everything was properly working by activating his own Truth-Seeing-Eyes as well.
Incidentally, it seemed that CB-1’s appearance also slightly changed with the activation of this skill, and it gained a light golden tint.
"Great! CB-1, come here and deactivate." Eisen told the small camera bat and held out his hand, before CB-1 flew directly above his hand and deactivated his functions, meaning that it stopped recording and sending what it saw and deactivated the truth-seeing-eyes enchantment. But on top of that, it also rolled up its wings around its body and dropped down onto Eisen’s palm, making itself look like a simple leather ball, since every part of the Crystal Eye was covered.
While Eisen was looking down at CB-1 in its dormant mode, Komer stepped up to him excitedly and looked at him as if he just made some legendary treasure. For some reason, it didn’t feel all that special to Eisen, just some neat little toy to play around with.
"That’s so awesome! It really works like a camera, right?" Komer asked with excitement in his voice, and Eisen nodded with a smile.
"Mhm, it does. Ah, CB-1, wake up again." Eisen commanded, before quickly continuing with his tests. "Listen to the commands of Komer, Kiron, Sky and Bree as well."
After Eisen said this, he told CB-1 to activate the transmission again, and then threw it out of the back door of the carriage to see how well it could keep up. And soon enough, the camera was flying above the carriage as if it was simply standing somewhere, and Eisen and Komer could look down onto Kiron, who was lying on the top of the carriage’s roof, before sitting up once he noticed the flying machine.
With a surprised expression, the half-draggon climbed over to the edge and looked down into the still open door. "Ah, M’Lord! I see that your project is finished?" He asked curiously, before Eisen nodded and told CB-1 to come back again.
"Yeah, it works better than I expected, if I’m gonna be honest." The old man chuckled as he handed the small display in his hands over to Komer, who was quite obviously just waiting for a small chance to play around with this. "Here, CB-1 reacts to voice commands, so just say what you want it to do. Just make sure it doesn’t leave the carriage. It needs to hear you say your commands, and I’m the only one that can command it from further away." Eisen explained as he sat back down at his worktable and Kiron climbed back onto the roof.
Eisen already prepared all the materials and parts that he needed for the other two Camera-bots beforehand, so now it was only about assembling everything and making the two other receivers and senders, since he only made one to make sure this really worked out properly.
Although he did notice that it was kind of hard to differentiate between them, so Eisen quickly apologized to Komer and grabbed the tablet again, carving in a simplified version of CB-1’s shape onto its backside, writing the camera’s name into the center. Now that he could know which one belonged to which bot with a short glance, Eisen continued, carving the respective symbols of a small fish and a small rat into the other two receiver-displays.
And with that, it was pretty easy to properly assemble the two eyes that he needed with each corresponding complex enchantment circle, once more only leaving out the ’Power Supply’, so that nothing could go wrong while Eisen was assembling everything.
Now, Eisen grabbed the brass parts that he grabbed beforehand and carefully assembled the rat-body first of all, once more openly displaying the metallic rods while keeping the gears hidden. This time around it was a little bit more complicated, since he needed to construct a whole body instead of just two wings, but in the end, that only meant that it took a little while longer. After all, he already had some experience in this from making Aulu and Cabarum.
After the rat-body was done, Eisen connected everything properly to the eye, which actually made it look somewhat creepy, as if an actual rat’s complete head was simply replaced by a crystal ball. But it didn’t need to look great, it just needed to be able to be agile while running around crowded places, which Eisen hopefully achieved while building the body.
And now, once more, Eisen activated the golem core and while it was getting used to the gears in its new body, Eisen placed the mana supply inside. With the same regime as before, Eisen quickly tested out if this second Camera-creature was ready as well, giving it the name CR-1.
And now, at last, Eisen also started working on the camera-fish, which he needed to make some metal plates before as well so that nothing could simply get through the leather and then somehow push the gears around in some way.
But those were simply metal plates that Eisen connected in a similar way as he did with the leather on the other two camera creatures, adding a little bit more detail by making small ridgets along the metal plates to make it look like the fish really had scales. And once more, Eisen connected the crystal eye to the body and activated the third kind of Camera-bot, which Eisen then tested by filling one of the empty barrels with some water and carefully placing it, named CF-1, into it, once again repeating the same tests that he had been doing before.
And it didn’t take long for Eisen to confirm that all three types properly worked. Now that this was the case, Eisen had only one more thing left to do before arriving in the magic city. He would now send out the camera-bot that had the best use for long-distance travel, CB-1, to retrieve a certain gem from a dragon’s lair.