Spending My Retirement In A Game

"This works a lot better than I'd have thought..." Eisen muttered quietly to himself, and then just started to smirk lightly as he thought about what else he could make to make his life a little easier. The grenades were fine and all, but they weren't exactly the best choice in a forest, even if it was a magical one that extinguished all sorts of fires instantly.

But there would surely be other versions that one could make with this, wouldn't there? Slowly, Eisen thought about it and then returned back to his workstation, swiftly creating some crystalized Earth- and Air-Mana, as well as just a little bit of crystalized Fire-Mana.

In a similar fashion to before, Eisen created a smaller version of the grenade that he just made, but since it was far smaller, it would have only a fraction of the force compared to before. On top of that, Eisen also created the enchantment to focus less on the flames' heat and more on the explosion's force.

This small bead was roughly the size of Eisen's fingertip, and then Eisen started creating a few pebble-sized chunks of Earth-Mana, each of which he enchanted so that they would give off heavy force on any impact. Of course, this was only possible due to the marble-workstation, though. And then, Eisen created another larger sphere, the size of the original grenade, and then used some mana-thread to suspend the tiny bomb to float in the center of the sphere, before filling it up to the brim with the small earth-mana pebbles.

And the gaps inbetween those earth-mana pebbles were then filled with Air-Mana turned into water. Of course, Eisen compressed the air-mana crystals that he used for this even more densely so that they would create immense pressure inside of the sphere once turned into air.

And then, Eisen closed the hole in the outer sphere that he used to fill it up with and enchanted the outer sphere.

With this new grenade in hand, Eisen then made his way back into the work-in-progress floor and then spoke, "Sigurd, compare this explosion to the explosion from the grenade before." Eisen told the Core Guardian, who swiftly appeared right next to Eisen and nodded its head, curiously waiting for the old man to throw it.

After pushing his mana into the grenade, the outer sphere turned into hard rock like Eisen wanted it to, and he could already feel it starting to slightly shake in his hand due to the sudden release of the large amount of air inside of it, while the small enchanted pebbles turned into rock and were hitting against the outer and inner sphere, constantly scratching againt it.

Now, all that Eisen needed to do was properly throw it and pull his mana out of it, something that he did within the next moment. And before he knew it, he could hear the loud noise of an explosion, once more with some dirt and sand flying toward him. But before any of the dirt and sand could hit him, Eisen felt a strong pain on the inside of his elbow and swiftly looked down at it.

"Well, at least I know it works..." The old man sighed, looking at the remnant of the pebble that just hit him as it disappeared and crumbled down into nothingness, "Hmm, maybe I should make it so that they disappear shortly after the explosion... So that nobody will be hit by any stray pebbles..." Eisen muttered to himself, and Sigurd turned toward him with a slight frown.

"I think that's a good idea... One of those flew 152 meters just now..." It explained, so Eisen slowly nodded his head in thought, "I see... I mean, this is working pretty well so far, so once I can tweak that and get a bit more used to the production process, they should become pretty interesting tools."

"You can say that..." Sigurd said with a wry smile, and before they continued speaking about all of this, the Core Guardian raised its brows with a smile, "Alright, everyone's up and ready to go now. Seems like you can't destroy my floor any further for now."

"Come on, you can fix that little damage in a minute." Eisen sighed, and Sigurd just shrugged and created a gate to bring Eisen to the reception area, "It's about the principle. Now, let's get going." Sigurd suggested, so Eisen nodded his head and stepped through the gate before looking around the room, soon spotting Sky.

The old man stepped up to the Fey-Kin boy with a smile and asked, "So, how long do you think it's going to be until we get to town?"

In thought, Sky closed his eyes and scratched his cheek, before looking up at Eisen, "Maybe six, seven hours if we go at the speed we've been until now? I mean, this Jungle is so dense that it's hard to know if the paths on the map we have are actually real. They could be overgrown already..." Sky pointed out, "If we're unlucky, it's going to take maybe half a day. But not longer than twelve hours."

"Hmm, I see." Eisen muttered quietly, moving his fingers through his beard as he was doing so, "Then we should better get going, huh?"

---

After roughly nine hours, since there were indeed a few paths that weren't traversable anymore, the group finally managed to reach the town that they were looking for. While they were at it, they actually passed a place where nearly every monster was one that had 'experimental seeds' implanted in them, but now that they were here at town that amount got less again. At least that gave Eisen a rough clue of where the source of those seeds was.

For now, since it should be rather weird to see someone approach while riding on a young dragon, Eisen got off of Fafnir's back, but in turn increased his size to his maximum possible height, out of a weird instinct, actually.

The group soon approached the gate in the distance and could already see some players around, albeit a rather small amount compared to what they expected. They stopped in front of the gate in front of the Guard that was currently standing there.

The Bear-Beastperson looked at the rather weird group and smiled wrily, "Let me guess, you're Artificials?" The Guard asked, but Eisen just shook his head with a smile on his face, "No, no, rather the opposite, actually." Eisen said with a smile, swiftly using his truth-seeing-eyes to inspect the Beastperson and soon found out his name, raising his brows in surprise.

It was the Beastperson that Jyuuk told him about! The first one that he spoke to here in the game, actually, "We're here because our friend Jyuuk suggested we should. He said everyone here was pretty helpful when he found himself around here a couple months ago." Eisen pointed out, and the Bear-Beastperson looked up at Eisen with a light smile.

"Jyuuk? As in the Monkey-Beastperson Tamer?" He asked, and Eisen immediately nodded his head, "That's him. Well, technically he's not just a tamer anymore. He's incredibly skilled at Necromancy and Plant Control as well."

"Huh, that's a weird combo... Life and Death in one, huh?" The Guard muttered quietly, and Eisen chuckled quietly, "It sure is. Well, anyway, can we enter town? We don't really have much luggage with us." Eisen pointed out, although that was a big ol' lie. They had a literal town as their luggage inside of Fafnir.

"Hmm, we'll just take a quick look at the back and then see, alright? By the way, the name's Brak. Nice to meet you..." Brak said and extended his hand to shake Eisen's, the tone of his voice suggesting that he wanted to learn this old man's name as well. And so, Eisen chuckled and decreased his size to properly greet Brak as well, "Eisen, nice to meet you too." He said, shaking the baffled man's hand before increasing his size again.

"Y-You're not just a big titan...?" Brak asked with a wry smile, and Eisen swiftly shook his head with a laugh, "Not at all. I'm a half-giant actually. Can you guess my other half?" The old man asked with a wink, and Brak looked at him with a slightly nervous laugh, "Erm... I'll think about it for a while and then give you my guess, alright?" Brak suggested, so Eisen just slightly shrugged. "Sure, take your time."

With a slight sigh, Brak looked around the group a bit more while some other guards took a look at the actual carriage and the others inside of it, "Actually, I'm just slightly curious, but... Is that actually a Dragon..?" Brak asked, and with a slight frown, Eisen moved his fingers through his beard and thought about it for a while.

"Let's say yes... Technically he is? But somehow he isn't either? That kind of thing." Eisen explained, and that answer was absolutely unsatisfying for the Bear-Beastperson. But he didn't have much time to think about that, because the Guard that just opened the door to the carriage jumped backward in shock with a loud gasp.

Immediately, Brak ran over toward him to see what was going on, and once he looked into the carriage swiftly spotted seven figures sitting there. Two of them were obviously people, but the other five... Not so much.

Brak slammed the door shut and then stared at Eisen confusedly, "You-You have that many monsters with you..? Are you a tamer as well?" Brak asked with a wry smile, and Eisen stared at him with a deep frown.

"Hey, I only have three monsters, these three." The old man pointed out as he pointed at the three children standing right in front of him, and then stepped up to the carriage.

"One of those 'monsters' you're talking about is my grandson and at the same time my knight, and the other four are his squires. They're Half-Dragons, they're smarter than most people."

"Okay, okay, there's a lot going on that's confusing me right now. First off, if those five are half-dragons, then that's another story. This town has pretty good relations with a Copper Dragon around here, so we know they're not like other monsters. But why are you calling those three kids... monsters...?" Brak asked, but before he even needed to finish the sentence, the three of them swiftly demonstrated what was going on.

Sal opened his six smaller, closed eyes. Melissa opened up her hives and had numerous bees crawling out of her hoody. And then Caria... Just stood there. She didn't have a good way of demonstrating anything like that, really. But either way, at least this was all enough to convince Brak that the three of them weren't actually normal children.