Spending My Retirement In A Game

With a smile, Benjamin walked over toward his grandchildren, crossing his arms as Benji and Sophia looked back confused. "This feels a lot different to when we were playing around at Prime Industries the other day." Benji pointed out, and his grandfather slowly nodded his head.

"Yeah, I know. I think the game itself makes everything feel like normal, here it's a bit more awkward and artificial, right?" He responded, and they both nodded their heads immediately. "Exactly! And what can we do here, Grampa?" Sophia asked before Benjamin moved his fingers through his beard, a sensation that also felt quite different here in the desktop mode compared to real-life or even the game.

"Well, something like this, I guess. Rover, copy the hut from my desktop over to here." Benjamin loudly said, and immediately the lightly glowing, floating sphere appeared mid-air.

"Will do, Benjamin!" Rover exclaimed, before the world around them changed into the small wooden log hut that Benjamin made in his desktop, and Rover disappeared immediately afterward.

"Basically, this is the kind of thing you can do. I would say this place is just for playing around, working, or relaxing. Nothing much happens in here." Benjamin told them before Sophia and Benji looked at each other just ever so slightly disappointed before Benjamin laughed loudly. "Don't worry, you two. Tomorrow morning, the game will be open for you two. You just need to wait another day, that shouldn't be that hard, right?" Benjamin told them with a wink before they sighed loudly.

"I guess. Well, let's just play around a bit in here then." Benji said as he turned to Sophia, and Benjamin himself smiled at them. "I'll leave you to that, then. I'm going to go back into the game a bit earlier than I planned then." Benjamin explained, and Benji and Sophia nodded their heads dismissively as they summoned their assigned rovers and began to modify their appearance a little bit before Benjamin chuckled and called out for Rover as well.

"How can I help you?" The AI asked him, and Benjamin answered quite clearly.

"Can you start up the game for me?" He asked, and Rover 'nodded' his head, or rather himself, up and down before Benjamin noticed the area around him slowly disappear, and then found himself in his body as Eisen sooner than he knew it.

With a smile, Eisen stood up from the bed he was laying in and stood up, stretching his body a bit before he turned around and smiled at the two monster girls next to him. "Good morning, you two," Eisen said as he picked both of them up, and sat them down on his shoulder while increasing his size to his Titan-form, and grabbing his backpack before making his way out of the Inn-Room.

"Eisen, Caria and Melly want to show you something super cool!" Caria exclaimed as the three of them were on their way to the Harbor, before Eisen nodded his head. "Alright, go ahead. Can you do it like this?" He asked, before Caria immediately nodded, but motioned at Eisen so that he would raise his hand in front of her. Slowly, Caria put her tiny palms on Eisen's, before the old man felt a light surge of heat as well as something bulging underneath his skin. "Erm, Caria… What did you do?" He asked, and Caria began chuckling, as the bulge continued to grow, before Eisen's skin simply 'slipped' open as something came out from underneath it. It was a tiny, mostly beige mushroom with a grey-white cap, as well as a brown oval on one side of it. Happily, Caria looked at Eisen with glittering eyes, pointing at the mushroom gleefully. "Eisen Mushroom!" She exclaimed, and Eisen took another look at himself before looking back at the mushroom.

"So you can make mushrooms that look like people?" He asked, before Caria nodded her head furiously. "Mhm!" She nodded, and Eisen thought about it for a while as he stepped into the alley where he was planning on activating his demonic transformation, first inspecting the mushroom with his Truth-Seeing Eyes just to see if what he thought was going on was correct.

[Eisen's Mushroom][Quality - Average][Rank - 0]

With a smile, Eisen then looked over at Caria on his shoulder and placed his hand, the one without a mushroom growing on it, onto her head for a little bit. "That's pretty interesting, good job. Can they do anything, or do they just look super cool?" Eisen asked with a laugh before Caria shook her head.

"They don't do anything, but Caria thinks they might when the magic is better?" She explained while tilting her head to the side, and Eisen nodded. "Alright, then tell me when that happens, yeah?" He smiled at her, before he looked back at his hand where the little mushroom had already shriveled up and completely disappeared without leaving a trace behind, so he then activated his Demonic transformation and continued making his way to the Harbor, looking over to Melissa a few moments after starting to walk again.

"And what did you want to show me?" The old man asked her, as she looked at him with an excited smile and extended her hand toward Eisen's as well, although probably for a different purpose than Caria. And it seems Eisen was right with that thought, as Melissa soon climbed onto the old man's palms, simply so that he could see her better, and then held her arm forward so that Eisen could see.

And what he did see then was rather horrifying if one thought about it more closely, since this tiny girl's arm soon began to form a hexagonal 'hole,' before one of her Scout Bees crawled out of it and onto her hand. "Hive!" She said before pointing at herself happily, while the scout crawled back into her skin through a new hole that formed on her arm.

"Huh… you're your 'own' Hive now?" Eisen muttered quietly, and Melissa nodded her head back and forth immediately. "That's pretty amazing, to be honest. Just don't overdo yourself if it starts hurting you, alright?" Eisen told her with a bit of worry, before placing the small Empress Bee back on his shoulder.

Soon enough, Eisen reached the Harbor, where he could already hear the workers running around the warehouse while Xenia was giving instructions to them. For a few moments, Eisen watched the whole affair while taking a look at the current progress of the enchantment, not being able to help himself but smile. "Now then… that's also pretty amazing…" The old man chuckled as he walked up behind Xenia, who turned around in surprise at hearing his voice.

"Eh? Eisen? What are you doing here? I thought you were still asleep…" She muttered as she tilted her head to the side, and the old man nodded. "Mhm, yeah, I was. Stuff was done earlier than expected, so I managed to wake up already." He explained in a quite vague way so that nobody could understand what he was talking about even if they could end up hearing him.

So tell me, how far along is the enchantment?" Eisen asked, before Xenia began to explain it to him. "It's coming along relatively alright. Evalia drew guidelines onto the ship for everyone with an ability like hers. I just gave her the 'Blueprint' of sorts for the enchantment that would be placed on the ship, and she near-to-instantly drew it on there. And now, everyone is just carving where the paint is, so it's moving along pretty steadily. So far, only the supportive and descriptive parts have been engraved, though. Of course, the center of the enchantment in the three-dimensional array in the Figurine, but there's other vital parts as well near the stern of the ship. Those haven't been carved yet." She explained as the Half-Elf brought Eisen over to the back of the ship, where he could take a look at the bright blue paint that couldn't possibly be missed, forming the shape of an enchantment circle.

Impressed, Eisen crossed his arms and nodded his head as he looked at all of it. "Seriously, I never could have come up with something like this. Impressive. Now then, I think I should get to work a little bit as well, huh? Just leave the enchantment circle here in the back to me." The old man said and cracked his knuckles at the same time, taking a large enchantment needle, perfect for his current size, out of his chest pocket.

"Sure. I'll tell the others you're here while you're working." Xenia told him before she took Melissa on her arm and began to hold Caria's hand so that Eisen could concentrate on the enchantment.

It was a quite large enchantment, and despite his increase in size, Eisen still wasn't able to properly reach every part of it, since it covered nearly the whole back-surface of the enormous ship. So, Eisen quickly thought of something else. He grabbed two unused doors that were prepared for the ship and handed them to his Mana Doubles. First, Eisen stood up on one of the doors, which was then picked up by the Mana Double. Since Eisen could control their movements near-to perfection at this point and since they didn't wave around in any way and were perfectly stable at all times, this was a great way to increase his reach. But since that still wasn't enough, the Mana Double that was carrying Eisen stood down on the other door that he grabbed and was then, in turn, picked up by the additional mana double.

Due to Eisen and his doubles' increased size to three meters, as well as their arms' reach of about a meter, Eisen could reach up to about 12 meters high, which was enough to carve the lower half of the enchantment at least partially. And so, Eisen swiftly got to work.

Since Eisen's doubles were able to squat down and move around steadily, the old man himself was able to properly reach move around every part of the enchantment's lower half while also making it easier to carve the round shapes. It was a quite complicated enchantment even then. Eisen was quite surprised that he was able to engrave it on wood, but Xenia assured him that she made sure that such a complex enchantment wouldn't fail even on wood. The old man had no idea how she did it, but he trusted her, so he didn't need to know.

Either way, Eisen carved the oversized enchantment at a calm and relaxing speed, which may already seem somewhat hectic to others. And an hour or so later, Eisen managed to finish all of the enchantment that he could reach.

In the meantime, he had already called some people for help that were supposed to bind a sturdy rope to a stable part at the top of the ship, which he now saw dangle a few meters, maybe five or six, above him. Looking down, Eisen then noticed that Brody was watching what Eisen was doing since he couldn't help with much at the moment, so the old man yelled something down to him.

"Hey, Brody! Catch!" He shouted before making his Mana Doubles both squat down, while he did the same, before he had both of them stand up and jump at just a slight delay to each other, so that Eisen was swung into the air and was able to reach the rope, which he now hung from while looking down at the ground.

After he did that, he wasn't confident in being able to make the Mana Doubles catch the doors again, so he swiftly unsummoned them, using Brody to ensure that the doors wouldn't hit the ground and break, or even worse, injure someone.

 Startled by the incoming doors, the Demon-Orc halfling jumped into the air using the propulsion from his energy, to reach both doors in time before they hit the ground, before he silently placed them down onto the ground, looking up at Eisen calmly although he was only calm for a second.

"What the hell you old geezer?! Warn me a bit earlier next time, will you?! Or I'll cut that damn rope off while you're up there!" He yelled out aggressively before picking the doors back up and bringing them back to where Eisen picked them up before, Eisen laughed a bit and thanked him silently.