Spending My Retirement In A Game

The group was on their way back to town to meet back up with the others. They had to make sure that there were people there that could prepare for the arrival of the original townsfolk in a few days. Asmond reassured Eisen that he would try to convince everyone to come, but there seemingly were a couple of people that, after building their life anew inside of the hill-village, maybe wouldn't want to come along after all. That should be a complete minority, however.

Either way, now that they got through everything in relation to this Island of Craftsmanship, they only had to head to the Island of War and take that over as well. In particular Jyuuk would be on the frontlines there, as he was the only one that was really capable of making use of a really huge amount of troupes in the form of his beasts or undead. 

Of course, Eisen was also pretty important for this all, due to the fact that he was capable of creating a lot of really high-quality golems. Melissa's bees would definitely also be useful, especially the ones that she specifically created to do as much damage as they possibly could to any sort of target.

Those ones were really, really terrifying, even for Eisen's standards. If he was to ever see such a thing in the other world, he had no idea what he was going to do. That was because the bodies of those bees were as long as Eisen's arms, and proportionally, they were even bulkier than normal bees.

Their stingers were basically venom-covered daggers, and even their legs and wings were sharp enough to cut into someone's skin. And to top it off, they had incredibly hard carapace that was acknowledged as 'annoyingly tough' by Brody while they were trying to figure out how strong these bees actually were.

And in the end, to make them even stronger, Eisen did something that he never expected he would do, but... he made items for bees. While their stingers definitely were sharp, they still couldn't compare to actual daggers made by a skilled craftsman. So, Eisen made a special item that could be strapped onto these large bees that would cover their stingers. Since they were already shaped roguhly like daggers, Eisen could make it so that only the edge was covered in an extra layer of metal so that there wasn't too much extra weight on them. Of course, he still used special materials that weighed as little as absolutely possible.

Other than that, Eisen carved some extra channels and enchantments into the stingers and those reinforced metal edges to make the venom flow better.

Besides that, Eisen figured he could also get a little bit of practice in for making uniquely shaped armor by making new things for these bees. Since they needed as little extra weight as possible, Eisen just made them thin, but incredibly tough and durable, leather armor.

And so, just like that, all these bees' terror was lifted beyond what Eisen had ever hoped to have to see.

But besides that, Eisen also made some items for other non-humanoid beings, of course with the assistance of the four grandmaster craftsmen. He made claw-caps for Jyuuk's eagles to make their claw-based attacks stronger and not as hard on the eagles themselves, special defensive armor for Jyuuk's 'heavy' beasts, extra weapons for those that were capable of wielding it, and so on.

In the end, before they got to the Island of War, nearly all of Jyuuk's beasts ended up getting perfect equipment made for them that would push their abilities even further than one may think. Eisen also suggested doing the same thing for the undead, but Jyuuk actually had another suggestion that he figured they should take a look at first.

"You want to make Ghosts?" Eisen asked, and Jyuuk quickly nodded his head, "Yes. Until now, I've been mainly trying to figure out how to best increase the strength of my physical undead, but I never really considered making use of Ghost-Types all too much. I was already able to create a few different ones so far, like Banshees, Poltergeists, simple Specters, and so on. But there is a specific type that I would like to try out as well. Haunted Items."

"Haunted Items? Could you possibly elaborate on that?" Eisen inquired. He had a bit of an image in his head, but he wasn't directly sure whether or not that was really what he was thinking of.

"Heh, Haunted Items, really? We don't need that shit, I'll go ahead and make some more Ego-Items for ya, and you're gonna be fine, so fuck that." Hephaestus pointed out, and Eisen slowly turned his head toward the Ego-Item sitting right next to him, "Keep talking and I sew your mouth shut again. Let him finish. And by the way, you wouldn't be making the ego items, you and I would be making them together. Don't make promises for me, alright?" The old man said, and Hephaestus simply huffed out some air out of his mouth and crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall he was sitting up against.

And so, Eisen turned back toward Jyuuk, "So? What are Haunted Items?" 

"Well, technically, what Hephaestus just said may not be all that wrong. Ego-Items might possibly be better in a sense, especially the ones that we've seen so far. Best would actually be a combination between an Ego-Item and a 'Haunted Item'." Jyuuk pointed out, and Hephaestus slowly turned his eyes toward Jyuuk, slightly intrigued.

"You see, a haunted item is really just an invisible spirit that's 'wielding' any sort of item. There's different ways to make them. If you want a full warrior, you can make a complete armor-set a haunted item, and then give it some sort of weapon to hold in its gloves, even if that weapon isn't directly part of the haunted item, and it's going to be able to fight in a way that's similar to how regular people fight, although that's not the main appeal of haunted items. The main appeal is something else." Jyuuk explained quickly, and turned his head to look for a good item to demonstrate it on, before seeing a small dagger just laying there.

"Can I use this for a second?"

"Mhm. Go ahead." Eisen replied nearly instantly, and Jyuuk smirked as he pulled out a soul stone out of the pouch hanging onto his belt. Just a few moments later, the soul was pulled out of the soul stone and used to envelop the dagger completely. Eisen was using his mana-sight to take a look at everything, and was able to quickly see that Jyuuk was using necromantic mana to control this soul right now. It technically seemed to be similar to the process of making an ego-item, just that the main difference was the way that it was realized. Normally, Eisen didn't even use any sort of mana while imbuing a soul into an item, he simply tried his best to move the soul along without any sort of different influence, but Jyuuk's process was relying on it. He was pushing the necromantic mana into the soul itself to change how it behaved, and then imbued it into the item.

And just a few moments later, while the dagger was giving off a wicked, black aura, Jyuuk was holding it in his hands.

"If I'm holding it like this, it is very similar to an ego-item, just a bit more independent. It won't automatically support my actions, but rather, it will go for certain actions itself. If you want to fight properly using a haunted item, you need to kind of 'synchronize' with it. You need to be on one wave-length. For example, see this. This soul in particular seems to be keen on going for seemingly random smaller movements. It was a goblin's soul, and those guys can just never sit still, so yeah." Jyuuk started to explain, and then slashed the dagger down in a straight line in front of him.

Or at least that's what he tried to do. Instead of actually being able to keep the dagger straight, it rapidly pulled to the side and nearly slashed at Eisen in the process.

"See? It's hard to control a haunted item. And the reason for that is simple. With a haunted item you're not directly changing the item, it's the exact same it was before with the exception that it gives off necromantic energy and as such does more necromantic damage, but instead you're making a wielder for that item. The spirit that's now in control of this dagger doesn't have the form of what you would expect the wielder to look like, however. Its form is that of the dagger, and its body is that dagger. But it's only using it, that's why it would be possible to turn an ego-item into a haunted item." Jyuuk explained quickly, and then just let go of the dagger, "And this is the benefit to doing so."

Instead of falling to the ground, the simple steel dagger kept floating right there in front of Jyuuk. It was twisting and twirling around a bit, seemingly trying to get used to wielding this weapon, but it definitely did seem to be moving rather erratically.

"Slash." Jyuuk commanded it, trying to show the haunted item the motion with his own hands, and the dagger quickly did just that. It copied Jyuuk's motions and simply slashed at the air. It wasn't a particularly clean slash, but it was still doing it without needing to be wielded by another person.

It was even able to do it at different, random heights, and was practically just able to fly as high as it wanted to. It did seem like it would come in pretty useful sooner or later.

But then, Jyuuk pulled out something else, another item with a similar black, necromantic aura to this dagger. It was also a blade, but a different kind. This was specifically a throwing-knife, and it seemed much more stable than the dagger. Much calmer.

"The soul I used for this one was that of a monster that, while alive, exclusively attacked with long-range attacks. It would shoot rock-like clumps out of its body while statically attached to a specific condition its whole life, unable to move away from there. It's not very intelligent, which made it even more perfect for this." Jyuuk explained, before he pointed at one of the targets that Eisen made for Brody to practice with that was still standing here in the workshop.

Jyuuk took a deep breath, and threw the throwing-knife at the target, and it immediately hit bullseye. Then, the knife detached from the target and came back to Jyuuk.

"Aye, that's definitely useful, alright." Denmir pointed out impressed, but Jyuuk simply smirked and shook his head.

"Yeah, but that's not what I wanted to show you. I'll make it more obvious." Jyuuk said, and then threw the dagger again, this time with everyone standing behind him. He obviously threw the knife so that it wouldn't even hit the target now, but... the Haunted Throwing-Knife changed its direction and Jyuuk was still able to hit bullseye.

"This is something that can happen if the soul is in-tune with the item, and you can properly connect to the soul."