Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Alright, good as always, Mister Joyce. You're healing well, you're responding amazingly to the medication we're giving you and you don't have nearly as much of a muscle deterioration as we expected you to have. Truly astounding, that's the only word I can think of right now." The Doctor said with a smile and wrote a few things down in his notes, before turning toward Benjamin again.

"Now then, I'll see you tomorrow then." The doctor added, before shaking Benjamin's left hand and making his way to the door again, at which point Benjamin could hear someone else entering the house as well.

It seemed like Tony and Jasmin had arrived, so the old man tried to move toward the small table standing in his room to sit down on a chair there, while moving the other one out of the way so that Jasmin could properly sit in front of the table as well.

And before Benjamin knew it, the young woman rolled through the door of the old man's room and joined him at the table, before Benjamin quickly greeted her. "Nice to see you, Jasmin. Even if we only just spoke about half an hour ago anyway." He chuckled, and Jasmin slowly nodded her head while setting the break of her wheelchair, before turning to Benjamin nervously.

"So this is your house... It's way... Larger than I expected..." She said, obviously trying her hardest not to stutter, so Benjamin nodded his head in response and looked out the window.

"Yeah, I know, I may have gone a little bit overboard when I built it, but it was supposed to be my dream-house, so I really couldn't resist it." Benjamin laughed, and Jasmin slowly nodded her head.

"Of course, you being the one that built it does explain it... I saw DJ-Set you made for Alnico... It's really insane. It should take a lot of mana, right?" Jasmin asked, seemingly wanting to switch to a topic that she was able to comfortably speak about rather than being nervous while speaking about random things, which Benjamin didn't mind at all either.

"It does, yes, but the battery I made can keep the whole thing running for a whole week straight. The Soul-Generators can't bring it that much, though, so I added a mana-collector so that ambient mana can be grabbed and prioritized." He explained, and Jasmin immediately nodded her head with a bright smile.

"So that was what was happening! I was taking a look at it with the Mana-Spectacles, and I thought that I saw the mana around it acting weirdly!" She replied, and Benjamin slowly nodded his head.

"That collected mana will be stored indefinitely, but can also be changed into raw mana if Sophia wants it to. There aren't that many batteries for ambient mana inside of the backpack."

"Right, about the backpack... You made it using spatial gems, didn't you?" Jasmin asked him, and the old man replied by simply nodding his head.

"Yes I did, there's a fair bit of them inside of the material storage under my workshop. You should have a few in your research room as well, right?" Benjamin inquired, and Jasmin sighed in response.

"Yeah, but I haven't been able to turn it into items like you have. Sure, I enchanted them, but I'm missing out on so much because I literally can't do anything with my hands..." The young woman complained, but Benjamin just chuckled in response.

"Don't worry, especially in the game, you'll be able to properly learn how to do things like that. That, or you can try to find one of those Crafting-Based Spirits you mentioned before. They did seem pretty interesting." Benjamin admitted, and Jasmin slowly nodded her head in response. "Sure, I guess I can do that... At the very least on the Craftsman God's Island there should be a few of those." She said while scratching her cheek, and Benjamin nodded his head in response.

"Of course. Although I'm pretty curious about what kind of monsters there are on that island in the first place." The old man said with a laugh, before moving his fingers through his beard with a smile on his face.

"Now then, do you want to eat something?" Benjamin asked, and Jasmin slowly nodded her head in reply.

---

Back in the game, Eisen swiftly got to work with the last few preparations that needed to be done for the trip to the Golem King's island. They would be able to now use a lot of the space that used to be living-quarters for the large group of people that was brought to town to instead store materials to potentially bring back to the main-town on the central island.

And while the trip wouldn't take that long, only about half a day, Eisen wanted to prepare as much as he possibly could on the actual ship-ride, for example, he wanted to create another Core Guardian to then connect it to the new town-core which they were supposed to find on the island.

What actually needed to be done for that was quite simple. They needed everything on the actual ship, and because it was a little bit away, they did so with the help of the Carriage, which Eisen had some of the people left on the ship bring over. Of course, together with that carriage came Eisen's failed apprentice. He was allowed to walk around freely now, after all, he wasn't really a prisoner, but was just placed on a bit of 'House Arrest' to make sure he couldn't mess around too much. But considering that the whole town was under constant supervision of Serio, Eisen didn't have to worry about him doing anything unwanted.

There was supposed to be a first shipment of different construction materials and food coming from the country soon, and Koro would be sent back with them, and then had to make his way to Melroe and learn under Eisen's own 'Teachers'.

"Alright then, let's get going now then." Eisen said with a smile as he sat down at the front-bench of the carriage, turning around to look at the doorway in the back of the carriage, which they were using to transport all of the people that needed to come with them to the ship easily. It worked on the Ship, after all, so why shouldn't it work on the Carriage? That's at least what Eisen figured would make sense, and to his luck, it worked like a treat and everyone was able to come with them relatively easily.

It probably wouldn't have made too much of a difference anyway if the different groups came with them just like that either, though, considering that the ones that came with them now were only the five originals and their respective companions, plus the Paladin Half-Dragon who was being trained by Kiron to become a Knight.

A few hours later, Eisen could finally see the harbor in the distance, and because of Eisen's five golems, they could manage to make their way there without having to stop due to monsters either, so Eisen was pretty glad about that.

When they reached the ship, Eisen swiftly drove the carriage on the deck and let everyone know that they could come out now, and the first thing that was done was that Jyuuk summoned the Sailor-Skeletons while Eisen let the few people that were keeping watch of the ship while everyone else was gone know that they could leave now as well, sending them off with Croco to defend and lead them to town. Eisen chose her to do that because she was the only one that could get to the ship even after the group set off, something that they did not too long after making sure they really had everything they needed.

And then, while actually traveling, Eisen got started on making the next Core Guardian. He had all the materials that he needed for that, so he really just had to do what he had been 'practicing' over the past few days while repairing the different First and Second Generation Guardians.

And because there was actually a little bit of maroon, and even enough Margon to make a few more Core Guardians, in the Treasury, Eisen didn't need to worry about using the materials for a core guardian, because before he found out that they had more materials available, Eisen wasn't completely sure if he really should go ahead and use up every last bit of such an expensive material, but now he didn't need to think about that anymore and could just craft to his heart's extent.

Eisen would have liked to create a different visual for the Town Core Guardian now that he found out that they weren't all based off of Halti, but it seemed like because the blueprints were only made for that type of Core Guardian, he wasn't able to do anything but repair those other type of Guardians. He wouldn't actually be able to create any Guardians that weren't created using the blueprints as a guide, at least not until he was capable of creating Ego-Items in general.

Either way, for now, Eisen created just another one of the short guardians, and then soon had it laying in front of him, luckily just when they reached the island, and then put the body away inside a small item that he and Xenia worked on together, a small 'Box' made using compressed spatial gems on the inside and magically-infused wood on the outside to support the spatial gems some more. The spatial-gem surfaces were of course enchanted as well, and in the end, it turned into an item capable of taking in just one other item, although that item could be as large as Eisen's whole in his new fully-increased state.

That meant that it was a great way of bringing a large amount of Golems, and Eisen's five Golems were swiftly stored inside of five of them as well. It actually seemed like they could take in corpses as well, so it was a good way to easily store the corpse of a monster with high-value materials to take it apart in a better environment.

Other than that, Xenia and Eisen both also worked together on enhancing Bree's backpack a bit, although Evalia did also help with that, even if it was just through turning different materials into paint, which was then applied onto the inner surfaces of Bree's backpack in thick layers. And those materials were mostly more spatial-gems ability-enchanted in certain ways to enhance and change the way certain things were stored, and in the end, Bree's backpack was able to store about three times more than normal!

The young fey-kin was also pretty excited about that, because while increasing the storage space, it also heavily decreased the weight of items placed inside of it, so Bree was excited about properly trying it out.

Sadly, Eisen couldn't try his idea of a 'Spatial Tent' out yet, because he didn't want to waste materials like that.

Either way, soon enough, the ship was 'parked' near a suitable place and everyone swiftly got off of the ship, and Jyuuk commanded his skeletons to sail the ship to a safe place a bit further away from the island so that, just in case something on the island took an interest in the ship, it wouldn't be able to actually get to it.

But the moment that they stepped onto the actual island, it was pretty clear that something was off with this place. While the plants seemed to be pretty normal, one of the first creatures that they encountered on the island was a squirrel.

While the others were just a little surprised about how it seemed to come out of nowhere, both Eisen and Jyuuk knew that something else was going on. There was something wrong about it, and trying to confirm it with each other, Eisen and Jyuuk looked at each other momentarily, before Jyuuk quickly used his plants to capture the critter.

And when Eisen stepped up to it, he could confirm that his suspicion was right pretty quickly. This animal's fur wasn't actual fur, it was dirt. And so was the rest of its body. After pushing his hand through the loose dirt that was its body, Eisen swiftly pulled out a small orb from its center and watched as the squirrel's body just crumbled.

"Seems like even small animals like this are golems on this island, huh..?"