I can see a few ways to possibly fix his blindness. The first would be to implant an eye of the beholder, perhaps have him transmute the 3 types of philosopher stones together to make it more powerful. It would lock him out of using transmutation, alchemy, enchanting and synthesis for a very long time but in the long run he would gain all the other benefits from the other types of philosopher stones.
With the transmutation stone, even people without transmutation can use a simplified version of the transmutation job. It's like having a free job but it doesn't level up. I've used this method in the past to upgrade everyone's gear with a permanent set bonus. Using synthesis for someone's eye just makes sense as well.
I leave all of my generals there with him while I head back through the portals to gather items. I could have sent one of them to get them but I also want to see the amount that was made since I haven't been around. I also plan on gifting the elemental lord with plenty of items in order to gain him as an ally later on. I head to the fishing island and ask where the philosopher stones are and they send me to a shack built nearby.
Opening it I realize I probably should have come back and told them to stop making these. Crates of transmutation stones are piled in the corner with a much smaller crate containing all the eyes of the beholder that were made. Racks upon racks of vials filled with the false soul stones. Easily numbering in the hundreds for both the transmute stones and false soul stones. I count the rough amount of eye's of the beholder and they number in the 50's. There are way too many to ever run out of now.
I think I've only used 1 eye of the beholder so far. I fed it to Aegis since he could absorb it into him without any work. I did mention this to my generals and some of them showed interest. Green, Gobber, Leon and Zergnar mainly wanted them. I just never got around to giving them the eyes. Mainly because I forgot but also the thought of doing eye surgery to my friends sends a chill down my spine. With a single mistake I could permanently take the sight away from one of their eyes…
Counting how many eyes I have and how many people actually want them… I've made far too many. You could possibly say that about all of the philosopher stones. I tell them to stop killing fish with those transmutation knives. Now that I think about it, the amount of fish would need to be astronomically high to make this amount of stones. To make these many stones… It would take more than 50,000 fish. It might be better to lay off of the fish for awhile to let them repopulate.
We've been using the fish as a crutch, almost every other meal, sometimes breakfast, lunch and dinner we eat fish. If we fish all of the fish around the lizardman island making us need to use ships to continue to fish it could become far more dangerous. Well, at least I caught it before it became any worse. I head back through the portal and into the base.
Giving it a quick thought I decide to head to Nami's village as well. I speak with the shogun and see how the animal scrolls are coming along. Enough have been made that they've finally caught up allowing everyone to try them even if they've already formed a spirit contract with another animal. From what I understand the number of people who formed 2 contracts weren't even in the double digits.
I get some of the completed spirit contracts and with the ones that I'm making myself I should have about 50 in total. I think this should be enough for my generals. I doubt a single other person will end up being able to make 3 contracts. I'm not entirely certain people who aren't ninja's can even form spirit animal contracts. Most of these contracts will end up being wasted. The moment blood is put on them they become worthless unless the person can still form a contract.
I guess now is a good of time as any to let them try to make contracts. I also grab an incredible amount of food and some of my weapons and armor I created. If he does get his sight back, showing him some of them could help make improvements since he's such a skilled blacksmith. Altogether, I've filled 2 extra void bags worth of items. They aren't part of a set so I have make sure they aren't touching anything heavily enchanted.
I'm about to head back through the portal when I'm stopped by a bubbling noise behind me. It almost sounds like words.
“Ppppmmmmaaaaasssstttteeeerrrrpppp.”
Nami's point of view
It's been about an hour now since Kite left to get something. We've continued to stand around in this powerful elf's house trying to make idle chatter. I just can't get past it, even though he seems so nice just being near someone who could end my life so easily is very unsettling. I seem to be the only one who cares about this. He is acting very polite right now, taking a heavy interest in Leaf. Asking her all sorts of questions. Mostly about herself and about Kite… He could be asking questions to learn more about Kite for his God.
I don't think that's the case though, it just seems that he is very interested in the person that cured his scars and the man who says he can cure his blindness. He does seem to be a decent person. I mean he's served us tea and he's trying his best to make conversation. If he was going to kill us he would not have waited so long.
Now that I think about it though. This elf is a wind mage, most likely the strongest in the world. Learning from him could make me stronger than I currently am. This is something Kite would do. Kite would exploit this stronger person, getting stronger himself in the process. That is most likely why he wants him in his debt. He already has a disciple. Perhaps if I could study under him for a few years I could learn many things to help my people more.
I stand up to approach him and I am almost hit by a sword. My reflexes are fast enough that even from the corner of my eye I dodge the attack. I turn to look at the threat and its the little blue frog person. Before I can react I hear the elf speak up.
“Ah, what good reflexes young lady. Glenn, is there a reason you attacked this person without warning?”
The frog continues to point the sword at me now.
“Master, we cannot trust these people. Their leader obviously can't fix your eyes. He went to go get more men to kill you. We should take this time to fight them before their leader comes back.”
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“You better come at me with more than a wooden sword if you want to do any damage.”
I put my hand on my katana's hilt. It gets a response I expect out of the frog. He visibly gulps, his giant throat puffing out as he does. The elf must have also noticed because he spoke up.
"Hey there. No reason to…"
He stops talking mid sentence and looks over at me as if his eyes still work. He stares down at my sword.
"May I see that sword for a moment?"
He gets up and walks over to me. His overwhelming presence is now far more apparent as he sands up and looks excited. It was foolish to think that we could even hold this person back let alone defeat him in a fight. I pull the sword and hilt out of my belt and hand it to him. He slowly unsheathes it. Running his finger across it very carefully, judging the work as any master blacksmith would do. The care he takes handling the sword shows how passionate and skilled he is at making blades. He speaks now.
“The blade is perfectly balanced, the quality of material it is made out of is beyond anything I've seen before. Even the swords grip is made of a high grade wood.”
I force myself to talk to him now.
“Y-yes… Our leader made my weapons for me. I don't understand much about the weapon itself but the material he made it out of is called cold iron. It takes a specially made forge that only he can use to temper the metal to that degree.”
I pull out my 2 ninjato that Kite also made for me using the smithing techniques he learned from the murine folk blacksmiths and improvements he made on the design himself.
“He also made me these 2 weapons.”
I hand him both of the smaller 1 handed swords. Once again he runs his hand over the weapons.
“For these, he hollowed out the middle to make the blades lighter. I also tried to use a similar method for my wind blade but with how fragile they become it made it impossible. It seems like he's used several different types of metal for these to make up for the missing space. The core of the blade must be a more flexible metal and this edge is extremely sharp.”
As he runs his finger across the blade it cuts into his thumb. I wince when I think of how sharp that blade is. That has the dragonslayer metal for the tip. It's sharp enough to cut through iron.
“For this to cut me… These weapons are beyond a normal blacksmith. Even I might not be able to compete with weapons like these. I can also see the care you put into maintaining these weapons. I don't feel any scratches or rust on these weapons.”
“Ah yes. I use several different stones to continuously polish the sword. To remove the scratches from the blade I used to have to spend a huge amount of time sanding or scrubbing the blade but now I just use my slime to clean and remove impurities.”
“I'm guessing something else your master helped you figure out.”
“No, I watched Leaf use it that way to keep her automaton clean and thought it would work on my sword the same way… Although he did give me the slime to make sure he can keep in contact with his generals.”
My slime now pops and bubbles as if it is trying to alert me to something. Finally I hear what sounds like my langauge coming out of the slime.
"Pppppmasterppppp tttttaughttttt Leafffff."
For anyone would couldn't speak murine folk. That might have sounded like my slime just making popping and hissing noises. My slime can talk! What!? I look at it now shocked for a second before I realize I am still in front of someone with monstrous strength.
I barely finish looking up when the sword swings down towards me again. I catch it barehanded as the frog attacks me.
“Alright you little twerp. I'm going to give you a good spanking for attacking your elder. You can look over my weapons while I go teach your disciple a lesson in manners.”
I look at the elf again seeing what he's going to do. He just keeps looking down at my weapons even though he has no vision and says.
“Please take it outside.”
I grab the frog by his shirt and start to drag him outside while he yells back into the room.
“M-master! Do-do something.”
“You brought this on yourself Glenn. You should learn to not attack people without any reason from this.”
It's been a long time since I've wanted to beat the arrogance out of someone this badly. I feel nostalgic when I realize the last time I did this was against Kite. I kick the door open and toss this frog on his ass. A smile forms across my face as I think of how fun this is going to be.
Kite's point of view
I go through the portal and empty my hands from the bags I'm carrying making a huge sound. I hear the wind elemental lord say from the other room.
“Ah, it seems that he's finally back.”
It took me far longer to put everything together than I had planned. Not only did I spend time gathering supplies to give to the elemental lord. I brought some of the weapons I made and some other quality of life things to make living out here easier. The main reason I brought weapons is to get the opinion from him. That is even if I can make this eye of the beholder work. I was also stopped by my slime I left behind, it turns out he can speak by pulling air into his body and pushing it out. I'm too busy now to stop and really talk to him but if he is smart enough to speak he should be able to learn a class.
I walk in and notice that the room has thinned out slightly. I ask where Nami and Zergnar are and they tell me Zergnar ran off to explore almost as soon as I left and Nami took Glenn out to spar… Well that's fine, I'll hope Zergnar gets back since we'll be doing the eye surgeries here. Honestly I should send some of my generals home.
“Alright, if you don't want to have one of your eyes replaced you can go now. Sorry for making you wait. Anyone who stays I would just like to say the process is going to be extremely painful. The numbing poison wont work either so I've brought some alcohol to help ease the pain.”
Most of my generals leave. Only Sock, Leaf, Green and Strong stay behind. I get everyone else but… Why did Leaf have to stay.
“Leaf you aren't planning to get-?”
She cuts me off.
“Oh of course not! The thought of replacing one of my eyes is terrifying to me. I'm here to help you with anything you need.”
First is first, the elemental lord.
“May I ask for your name before we begin?”
“Ah, the name the god of creation has given me is Zephyrus.”
As an elf, giving his true name would give me a magical advantage over him. The elf is a race tied closely to mana and magic. Just knowing their name can result in your magic being more effective and certain effects being stronger. The only true way to control an elf through magic is to use their name in the spell cast. Giving them immunity to charm spells unless you know their true name.
“So to start, I need you to hold these 3 stones and combine them together. When you hold this stone you'll have the knowledge of transmutations. With that you can combine all the stones together, possibly your eye as well to make it easier to replace.”
By using the transmutation stone to synthesize all the stones together. They wont be able to use the transmutation stone for as long as they are locked out of being able to use it for a certain period of time. If they used synthesis normally it would take constantly focusing on the items until they formed but it would take weeks of work and more than a single person to do. This way is easier but comes at the cost of locking you out of synthesis, alchemy and enchanting.
I've done both methods and both have there drawbacks. The one that locks you would be far less of a big deal to someone without any of those jobs. With a transmutation stone you could also give it to a random person in town and have them synthesize things together. They would get locked out of those jobs but the money that you would pay them would make up for them being locked out. Plus they wouldn't even realize what it meant most likely. I was going to use this method but with the burden of time I decided to just come here and put the burden onto them.
This combination philosopher stone should be named for the purpose of the future. I call it the pure stone, it is a combination of all of the stones. Not only would it strengthen your sight and possibly be a replacement eye for a sightless person. You would be able to use the transmutation job and do transmutations without a circle and finally it would strengthen you if you were a monster.
After each of them combines the stones together… The eye looks far better for replacing an eye than the eye of the beholder. Zephyrus is the only one with a pure stone that looks how it would naturally combining them. The others have all removed one eye and have also combined it so their pure stones look similar to their eyes. The eye of the beholder was a very hard stone, while the pure stone is similar but with some other additions. It was much squishier and had a stalk like back to the eye that contains the optic nerves I'm going to use to attach the eye. Now that everyone is done making their new eyes… It's time to start the operations.