Spending My Retirement In A Game

The spears created by the magic circle disappeared after just a few moments, just so that new ones could be pushed out of the ground again. And then, the same thing happened once more. Again and again and again.

"Certainly, that would have killed even me at the time..." The old man muttered, surprised at how efficient this rudimentary magic circle really was. But in the end, it really didn't matter all that much anymore, Eisen just had to figure out why exactly these spears were here in the first place.

For that, Eisen had been using the mana-copy skill to save all the different sets of spears to see what he could do with them. He created high-quality visualizations of the huge copied spears and tried his best to figure out why he was shown these now.

At first, Eisen just tried to take a closer look at the individual spears, to see if there was anything wrong with them in particular or if they hard certain markings on them that might give Eisen some sort of clue, but in the end, he didn't find anything.

But just then, Eisen had a bit of an idea. He simply overlapped all of the instances of the spears appearing in a seemingly random fashion, and when he did that, he noticed that they themselves were actually forming a pattern of sort.

It wasn't a complex representation of that pattern, but nonetheless, Eisen was able to figure it out practically instantly. When seen from above, these spears formed a pattern that reminded Eisen of his symbol, the same one that was one the necklace that he was wearing the whole time. 

Maybe he had to make use of this pattern here somewhere, or he had to find it somewhere else here in this room. After a bit of thought, Eisen chose to simply look around. There was no need to hypothesize if he may end up simply being wrong in the end. It didn't seem like it was something that would trigger a memory again either, so Eisen just didn't even worry about it being something related to that. For now, Eisen made his way through the room, checking on the walls as much as he could, but he didn't find anything even after extremely intense searching. All that was left to look at now were the actual chains, something that Eisen maybe actually should have started with, now that he was thinking about it.

It would make sense if there was something on them, considering that this room was otherwise completely empty, with the exception of the pedestal, of course. And so, the old man took a closer look at the chains, even pulling and pushing on them to make sure that he could even see the places where the different chain-links pressed against each other. 

But for the most part, Eisen didn't find anything there. He almost wanted to give up, when he did finally notice something. He looked at the small slit that was on each chain-link, that was there so that the different links could even be connected properly. On these round surfaces, on each and every chain-link, Eisen saw a small circle. There wasn't anything on the circle, and it was extremely subtle, but each and every chain-link had a perfect circle on it. 

At first Eisen thought that maybe this was just something that stayed on the item as a side-effect of the particular production-method that the craftsman that made these chose, but Eisen couldn't come up with any particular reason why there should be something like this here. After all, it wasn't some sort of imprint, but it rather seemed like it was just a circular scratch that was added after the chains were already finished.

Thinking back on his memory of how Eisen freed himself at the execution, he remembered that he simply pulled on the chains and caused them to snap. Chains like these usually snapped because one of the chain-links gave in and bent so that either of the two connected chain-links was pulled out of it, hence cutting the chain in half.

Eisen figured that this would be too much of a coincidence, and as such quickly searched the total four chains, two for Eisen's arms and two for his legs, for the exact link where they snapped in Eisen's memory. It was kind of weird, this was not a detail that Eisen would usually be able to remember. Certainly, if he had never lost his memories in the first place, Eisen most likely wouldn't have been able to rememeber this. But because he just lived through that part of his past again as if it just happened to him, it was still fresh in his mind, and he was able to recall things like this sa bit more easily.

Eisen looked around the chains and soon foudn the ones that he figured where the correct links, and an idea popped into his mind. Each of these chains had one of these weird circles on it, and so Eisen figured that they were meant to be some sort of spot where something specific had to go. Eisen pulled out a small needle, and proceeded to carve the exact pattern that was on the coin on his necklace into the circle. 

The moment he finished this, the pattern started to glow, and Eisen quickly took a step back as he heard the metal in front of him loudly creak. The chain-link started to bend as if a lot of pressure had been put on it, and then it simply broke, half of the chain dropping to the ground with a loud noise.

Thinking that this seemed to be the right path, Eisen proceeded to carve the same pattern onto the correct spots on the other three chains as well, and the exact same thing happened.

Once all four of the chains had been broken in half, the whole room started to creak loudly and light flooded into the room through cracks that were forming along the walls. It seemed like the same thing as in Eisen's memory was happening, and three of the four walls dropped to the side and the ceiling folded onto the back of the fourth wall that the rest of the chains were still connected to.

It took Eisen a little while to get used to this extremely bright light at a level that he really wasn't used to or expected to appear right now, but when he did, all that he saw was that they were outside again. In the middle of one of the plazas of this town. With a deep sigh, Eisen rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Don't tell me that was completely useless." He muttered to himself as he looked around. The whole metal room was completely gone, as if Eisen and Ambriel were both teleported to this place together. In the end it didn't matter too much, considering that Eisen managed to recover two memories and had a third that he could also remember the next time he slept, but it still felt weird that he just wasted his time like that. 

Or so he thought. Just when Eisen wanted to interact with all the Camera-Bot units again, he noticed that there was something new in one of his apron's pockets. Eisen pulled it out, and found it to be nothing but a small, leahterbound book.

At first glance, it didn't have anything to do with Eisen. And neither did it at second glance. It was just a random book, a novel, it seemed. Eisen flipped through it, read certain sections of it, inspected it with his Truth-Seeing Eyes, but all he did led him to believe that this was really nothing but a simple novel. And that was when Eisen's focused was pulled away from this book, and onto the huge tower that was standing in the center of the town, Mystor's own dwelling.

The old man thought about it for a while, and then sent one of his camera-bats over there. Quickly, he saw that this giant tower had numerous books covering its outside. As if this tower was built by stacking filled bookshelves onto each other.

Thinking that he had a rough idea of what he had to do now, Eisen activated his Draconic Demon King trasanformation and quickly flew over there. Within just a few minutes, Eisen reached the Book-covered tower and tried to figure out what he was supposed to do. Of course, Eisen instantly thought that he was supposed to either find the book that he was holding right now in this tower to get another clue, or to use this book he was given as a key by placing it into the correct location.

Either of that meant that he first had to figure out where exactly this book was supposed to be, either way. He looked at the different books, different signs that were hanging here, trying to figure out the system. Soon, he figured out that the lower on the tower something was, the earlier in time it was written, as if the tower was just steadily growing the more books were written.

And depending on where exactly at the tower you were, you would find a different genre of book. Soon, Eisen found the part where all the novels were, and then managed to narrow it down to the exact topic of this book. 

And since this book had the date written onto it in the back, it wasn't all that hard to find the right place, in the end. Just like that, Eisen found the right layer of this book-tower, and the right specific shelf, and landed on the small platform that was floating in front of it. After just a bit of searching through the names of those that wrote all these books, Eisen found it. The same book that he was given, standing there in the bookshelf. Of course, Eisen immediately proceeded to pull it out of the shelf. The moment he flipped it open, Eisen realized that it was probably the first option of what he thought this book was for. It was giving him a hint to where Eisen may be able to find Mystor in this realm and finish this quest.

Or so he hoped, because otherwise Eisen had no idea what to do. There were numerous parts cut out of this book, marked in different colors, or just underlined. As if all these things were supposed to have a meaning, or were supposed to lead Eisen to some sort of secret message.

The old man sat down where he stood and compared both of the books to see if maybe he could find any clue to what he had to do. 

And with a loud sigh, he got to work, "Let's hope this won't take too long, now."