The air was waving back and forth from the heat emanating from the ground. Molten rock was flowing from the cave's ceiling, dripping down like water into lakes that one could only imagine from hell otherwise.
Monsters crawled around in here. Beetles that had magma clinging to their mandibles, and moths with scales that could light ice on fire. There was just a single area in here that was completely devoid of these traits that were offensive to life itself – a small camp, where the air was cool and crisp. Wisps of cool blue flas floated through the air, protecting the folk inside.
Inside of that camp, an elderly man with an appearance that seed to hint at him being from a hell quite similar to the one outside of the camp's borders was carefully placing a gemstone inside of a small tal lantern.
It was a cool blue stone, the sa colour of the chilling wisps of fla floating around. The mont it was set into place, it began emanating a bright light. The surface of the tal lantern began to gather a thin layer of frost quite instantly.
"Hm... Maybe the output is a bit too strong..." Eisen muttered to himself, wiping the thin layer of ice off the tal, "If I do it like this, then it's going to be hard to handle..."
A loud yawn ca from the other side of the tent that the man was sitting within, "Can't you just, like, put an anti-frost enchantnt on there or sothing?"
The old man looked over at Brody, who was sitting on a small chair with his legs up on a wooden crate containing a number of different materials for Eisen to work with.
"No, I can't. I don't want this to be a single-use magic tool if I have the opportunity to make it more useful. A frost gem would be useful in here, but if the next zone is so kind of frozen wasteland, I'll just have to make a completely different item," Eisen explained, "Plus, if I make this prototype work like this, it'll be easy to sell."
"Money-grubber," Brody laughed.
"What, do you have any idea how much money I need to revive Silber?"
"Aren't we rich as hell already?"
"Of course we are, but this is a sum that you can't just use without disrupting things. Most of my personal funds are tied up in things, like with Kor or the developnt of the country and guild," Eisen let out a long sigh, "Not to ntion all the high-grade materials that I buy all the ti..."
"... You sure you don't want to use Asgard's treasury to revive 'im?"
"I refuse to do that. He's my brother, and I have the money. I just need to co up with so new ways to make more money so that I don't screw sothing over for Kor," the old man stood up and walked across the tent, grabbing a small vial filled with a fine off-white powder.
Brody just sighed and looked at the old man's back as he slowly sprinkled the powder into the inside of the lantern, using his transmutation to spread it in a thin layer across the glass panes, "So what are you doing now? Does baking powder block frost or sothin'?"
Eisen smiled, shaking his head, "No, they're ground-down scales from a moth that lives in the giant country. Surprisingly enough, each individual moth is just a little bit larger than the bigger types here on the central continent, but they're incredibly hardy. Most of their body is made from certain crystaline structures that are extrely resistant to almost anything. But it just so happens that their scales are also an extrely powerful irritant. I rember them being called the 'scourge of the ho', because back when barely any giant ever shrunk down for any reason, way back in our more rudintary tribal era, literally nobody could even see them because of how small they were, and they caused extrely annoying rashes."
"Rashes? On giants? Don't giants take baths in boiling water?"
"What? No, of course not. That's just the fire clan," Eisen joked, "But yeah, you're right. Anyway, those scales are an extrely toxic poison to most species of people. Because the moths are so plentiful in the giants' country, you can get a ton of the scales, and if you were to coat armour in it, you could easily boost any sort of elental resistance imbued into that equipnt. With just one issue..."
"It's poison."
"Exactly. There is one way to neutralise that poison, but it makes any coating using the scales extrely brittle to the point where you absolutely cannot use it for most cases where it's useful. But here, on the inside of a lantern, I can detoxify the lanterns without worrying about that. Plus, with them as a base, I can create an elental defense on the lantern's tal."
"If it's on the inside, why detoxify it in the first place?"
"Because it's extrely deadly. Most people without any resistances at all will be completely paralised almost imdiately. A few minutes later, they'll be dead," Eisen explained, "But it's just the most efficient material when it cos to adding blanket elental resistances to an item. Plus, I've been wanting to use it for sothing for quite a while."
"Ah, so it's just an excuse, huh?" the demon-orc halfling let out a loud laugh, while Eisen finished applying the moth scales to the inside of the lantern. Since they were perfectly transparent, especially when they were flattened with transmutation, they weren't going to block any of the light, though that wasn't the main use of this lantern.
Eisen stood up and smiled lightly, making his way to the edge of the camp. He stepped outside of the protective barrier and soon walked on the scorching hot stone. Breathing beca harder almost imdiately, but Eisen could deal with it.
He carefully pressed the button at the side of the handle and held it down for a few monts. The frost gemstone in the center of the lantern lit up, and Eisen could feel the air around him cool down. A bubble of cool air ford around him, and imdiately began to protect him from the heat.
"Perfect," Eisen smiled happily. Now he just had to make one of these for every person in the group so that they could move independently. That was really the biggest trouble of these hot floors. Eisen could cover them in a bubble of cold air with so magic items, but everyone was going to be restricted to the fairly limited range. If everyone had their own bubble that encompassed just them, they could move and fight however they needed to.
Plus, the lanterns were small enough that they wouldn't really get in the way, and could just get strapped to one's belt without much trouble. The frost magic stone in the middle could also be mass-produced. It was a mixture of different stones that were well-attuned toward ice magic, and the rest was just pure enchantnts. And because of the way that Eisen constructed the lantern, it should be easy enough to swap them out.
A weaker version of the frost stone to traverse the desert, maybe mixed in with so water magic to increase the moisture in the air and so dark magic to provide shade. With so air magic, with so actual barrier magic to provide a more rigid boundary, you could use this lantern to travel underwater. And using fire magic, you could get even through areas of the world obstructed through snow and blizzards.
If Eisen made a stronger version of this, he could make sothing that could cover a whole campsite. Maybe he could just do what he did here at this camp. He had basically just deployed his domain and cooled down his magic enough to balance the heat of the air. If he made a magic item enchanted with the ability to create a domain, it could create a pretty great safe zone or oasis in the middle of an otherwise terrible place.
It might be worth building a prototype in case the rest of the zones continued becoming harsher and harsher in ways that Eisen couldn't do anything against. But for the ti being, he just had to make the portable ones for the soldiers.
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