Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen's first dream tonight of recovering one of his memories was now over. He had gained a lot of things through this, more than he had thought he could with just a single sort of memory.

While he simply felt somewhat happy about learning about the others, that was where his feelings for them stopped. He was excited about teh basic idea of finally recovering his memories again, but beyond that, the actual memories didn't cause him to feel any special way.

But it was different with the memories that he recovered just now. This time, a hole that Eisen didn't even know about was filled in. The old man felt energetic at a level that he didn't expect, ecstatic nearly. He was happy. That was all that one could call what Eisen was feeling. And in the end, it made sense as well. Nobody could blame him for feeling excited about this whole thing right now.

After all, he remembered raising his own son again now. He saw the different milestones of his growth again, of how he became what he became. 

He became stronger, and turned into the King of the Dragons. Following after him, many other sorts of Dragons were created, both the metallic and chromatic kind. The former were more inclined toward good, while the latter was sadly more inclined toward evil. But Trygan loved both equally anyway.

He honored them, and they honored him. And so did all of the other types of Dragons out there. Even if they had never heard of Trygan before in their lifes, the moment that any sort of Dragon, whether it was a Dragon of Life, Death, the Sky or the Mountains, they would all see Trygan for what he was.

They saw him as their king, without even a single exception. And the moment that he ascended to godhood, they all felt this in their hearts and grew happy for him.

Seeing your child become a being that is respected by anyone like him without many exceptions was the greatest feeling to Eisen. Trygan accomplished something, and Eisen could finally rest easy that he raised his child the right way.

And together with his memories, Eisen had lost all of these emotions that he had gat hered over time without even realizing it, and the old man couldn't help himself but be happy after regaining them.

However, these memories weren't the only ones that Eisen was set to get back tonight. There were two more.

And so, after finding himself back in the pitch-black space surrounded by multiple golden and two white spheres of light, the old man grabbed the left white sphere at random, since it really didn't matter all too much.

He felt himself be surrounded by a whole other world. He could smell the scent of the ocean in his nose, and saw a giant gate floating in the air in front of him. They were the gates of Heaven and Hell. He just travelled through the former earlier today.

For the most part, they were really the same as they were now, with the simple exception that they didn't have any gatekeepers. The gates were protected in a different way, it seemed. The former Eisen didn't seem to have any kind of trouble flying up to the gate in question either. 

He was pulled up to the gate in the same way as before, as if gravity had been simply flipped upside down. The former Eisen stood there on the gate and slowly placed his hand onto the metal, trying to feel the patterns that were carved into it.

"Hm, it should not be too hard to get into here." The former Eisen muttered to himself. The current Eisen could tell roughly what happened next although he wasn't able to see it. He didn't activate his truth-seeing eyes, but otherwise, he would have felt a sudden burst of immense amounts of mana that were poured into the gate. It was enough mana that Eisen didn't even need his truth-seeing eyes in order to notice that this was exactly what was happening.

"This is how Xenia must feel a lot of the time, huh..?" The current Eisen chuckled quietly to himself as he watched his former version even more. All of the patterns on the floating, heavenly gate started to glow and it slowly opened up, sucking the old man into it as the scenery around Eisen changed again.

These memories were really not quite as... important as Eisen was really hoping they would be. He had hoped that he would have ended up finding out lots and lots more information about whatever he needed to know in order to continue on with this fight, this war against Samuel, but in the end it was just as if Eisen was visiting old friends and acquaintances. 

Eisen remembered working alongside the God of Craftsmanship, making weaponry for different Gods of Combat or War, as well as tools for many other gods that would be seen as powerful artifacts these days. But of course, they were created with the best materials that all the heavens had to offer and were turned into Divine Quality items after a lot of hard work from the craftsman that surpassed even the god of that discipline.

For the most part, that was really the end of it. Eisen didn't learn anything that was of direct value to him right now, or so he thought at first. But the more he watched the scenes unfold in front of him, he noticed that the exact opposite was the case. 

All of this held immense value. If he hadn't remembered his memories about the 'Mortal Trygan', then he may have looked at this completely differently. In retrospect, he may have suddenly started to look at a lot of the other memories he had already recovered differently in the back of his mind, and only now realized that such a sudden, unexpected change came to him.

Instead of selfishly focusing on the worth that these interactions with the gods may have to the current Eisen, he just had to focus on the interactions themselves. They were all that these memories were about. They weren't about some kind of amazing tactic, or a way to get amazingly strong allies. Instead, what they were about was exactly what was shown.

It showed him some of the friends that he used to have amongst the divine, those that considered Eisen their equal in a lot of areas. It was a weird feeling, considering that they were all gods and Eisen didn't feel like he was at any sort of level like that in the slightest, but that was how it was. Even if Eisen wasn't the same to them, he was their equal. Their friend. Someone that they trusted, and someone that trusted them in return.

Eisen really hadn't thought about how valuable this was. Especially the memories about the fights he had with Brody were now given a whole other perspective.

These duels were apparently a big part of the Giant-Dwarf and Demon-Orc's relationship about the millenia, and Eisen had really just skipped over it as a 'way to learn more about himself', and afterward, as a tool 'through which he learned how to defeat Brody'. The old man had an incredibly selfish mindset with all of this, and it wasn't anything that he really wanted to feel after taking a good look at himself and his emotions. 

The old man just sat there as the scenery around him changed back to the black space, and all that was left was this night's third white sphere of light. Wondering what kind of things he would learn through these memories tonight was something he really anticipated, somehow.

And then, the world around Eisen changed completely. It was vastly different to the memories of heaven that he just explored. The whole atmosphere was different. It was calmer, as if time had completely stopped all of a sudden.

There was a bed in front of him. A drawer placed against the wall, and a door placed right next to it. And the old man soon realized what exactly this room was as he continued looking around. There were small toys placed all over the place, the few clothes placed onto the bed and the drawer were that of a child.

And it dawned on Eisen. This memory came from speaking about the children's story that the small carved, painted wooden piece he received belonged to. Just as he was thinking about this, the door opened up and Eisen stepped inside.

But instead of being the aged Eisen, it was a younger version of him. A version of him before he peaked. It was after Trygan was born though, as the young dragon was sleeping in the other room. And in his arms, the young, former Eisen held a child that he brought over toward the bed with a bright smile on his face.

As he laid the child down on the mattress, the young Eisen glanced over toward the current one, which was the instance of the memory interacting with him this time around, just like they always did to an extent.

But this was the first time that the memory-Eisen didn't say anything, probably because of the atmosphere surrounding the current Eisen. He was standing there, staring at the child. At the young girl that was laying there. Eisen felt a gaping hole in his chest as he choked up, even before hearing the words the girl said next.

"Daddy! Tell me a story!" She exclaimed. Eisen leaned up against the wall as his legs nearly gave out. It really was exactly how he thought it was.

The young version of Eisen turned away from the real Eisen and at the small girl, "Of course, sweetie. Now, what do you want to hear?"

"Surprise me!" The girl exclaimed, and Eisen just quietly chuckled, "Alright... Then come on, scoot over a bit." The old man smiled as the little girl excitedly did as asked, and the young Eisen slowly sat down next to the girl before wrapping his right arm around her shoulders to hug the girl.

"Then how about this... This is the story about a boy... He grew up in a place where everyone was extremely powerful. Large, strong, and smart. Compared to them, the boy was just small, weak, and maybe a little bit dimwitted."

As the young Eisen spoke, the world slightly changed again. Not too much changed, really. The room-layout, the toys, the colors of the walls, and so on. But one thing was the same. A younger Eisen, now twice the age as the version from before, was laying in bed next to a child that the current Eisen had to assume was his own. And he continued to speak of the same story, continuing where the other Eisen left off.

"The boy was left out a lot. He could never play or get along with the other children. But he was good at something else. He was-"

The scenery started to change again. The only thing that stayed the same was that Eisen, now even older than the other two, was sitting on or next a bed, telling a bedtime story to a young child.

It happened again and again, and it was the first time that Eisen ever came in contact with any sort of knowledge related to the numerous children that he had over his lifetime in this world.