Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen was sitting on the ground, going through the two books that he was holding, to try and figure out what exactly he was supposed to do next. The book that he found here in the tower was basically completely unreadable due to the different markings and the parts that were simply cut out of it, but using the version that was intact as a reference, Eisen should be able to figure this out.

The old man used his 'Crafter's Soul' skill's ability to properly remember the small details about this book, since it helped him figure out specific damages on items and how he was supposed to repair them. And just like that, Eisen managed to finally come to a conclusion as to how he was supposed to solve this part of the puzzle.

"Hm... There are 3 different colors for the markings... And if I take the parts that were cut out of each of those color-marked spaces, I can get three different messages depending on what color it is." The old man muttered to himself. He made sure to note those messages down, and exclude the parts that were obviously supposed to be misleading him somehow. 

And just like that, Eisen had the three messages in front of him.

" 'The East part of town, the crystal blue river. An elderly fisherman awaits you' is the blue message. The yellow one is 'The North part of town, the sun-yellow tower. A young researcher awats you'... And the red one is, 'The West part of town, the blood-red hut. A smiling beast awaits you'." A bit confused at what all of these things meant, Eisen just commanded his camera-bot units to go and search for these places so that Eisen may figure out what exactly they were.

"Shouldn't you get moving at this point? You don't have forever, now do you?" Ambriel asked bluntly, not caring for the fact that Eisen obviously didn't like them or enjoy their company. The old man turned around with a deep frown, "I'm working on figuring everything out, so just leave me be. But what do you care, I'm sure you would be happy if I failed."

"Of course I wouldn't be happy if you failed." Ambriel replied, and Eisen was actually a bit surprised for a moment, before the angel continued to speak, "After all, if you fail this task, you must find another realm to take on to replace this one. It would just be more time spent with you, and if I can, I would love to avoid that with any means possible."

"Ah..." Eisen sighed quietly, "If that's the case, I can only say that I share that sentiment."

Since the two of them seemed to have come to an understanding that both of them wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible, Eisen concentrated on figuring out what the different camera-bot units were really seeing. A few of them made their way toward the right places yet, although they didn't find the place from the red markings yet.

The place from the blue markings seemed to be the hardest to find. That 'crystal blue river' was rather long, after all. But since there was only one that was really that color, the camera-fish could simply swim through it and look out for any sort of fisherman. And soon, they did find one. They found the statue of a fisherman placed onto the side of the river, carved out of a white, marble-like rock.

Just as Eisen was about to tell one of the Camera-Fish to inspect the statue more closely, Eisen noticed that another one of the camera-bots reached one of the other places. A camera-bat flew toward the tower in question, and at its top, it found another statue. It was a statue of a young woman standing there with a book in her hand while taking notes into it.

"...Alright, so both of them are there... Maybe I have to get information from all of them and combine them into something." The old man thought to himself. And so, Eisen waited for one of his camera-bot units to arrive at the last of the three locations, where, just like the old man expected, they found a statue there.

It was a wolf-like beast with an unnatural smile akin to that of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland. All three of the statues were made of the same material, and also seemed to have been made by the same person. But now, Eisen had to wonder, what exactly could these statues lead Eisen to? And what did the colors and the cardinal directions have to do with this?

Eisen tried to make sure that he really had all the information that he could get from these two books in his hands, and once he did, he placed the one that was neat and tidy into the bookshelf beside him while keeping the one that was all ripped up and marked-down for himself, just in case that he did need to make use of it again. I twould be a lot harder and more annoying, but he should be able to figure out some certain codes even with this one.

The old man activated his demonic transformation and quickly flew toward the closest one of the statues, which in this case was the one with the smiling wolf. Once he landed, Eisen immediately got started on inspecting the statue. It seemed to be the size that a regular wolf would be, and the details that went into the creation of this statue were truly incredible. As if this had been a living creature just a few minutes ago, just to be randomly petrified like this. 

Eisen ran his hands over the surface of the statue and used his truth-seeing eyes to inspect it in as much detail as he could, but he simply didn't find anything on this statue. No clue, no carvings, no hidden message that would lead him to the next step.

"I swear, if this all just led up to a red herring, I'll rip Mystor's head off when I finally find him." The old man muttered to himself in annoyance. 

Eisen made sure to use his mana-copy skill on this statue, and then went on his way to take a look at the next statue, the stature of the scholar. Just like with the smiling wolf, Eisen inspected this incredibly detailed statue with as much care as he could, but whatever he did, he couldn't find anything on this statue either. So the old man proceeded to mana-copy this statue as well, before then heading toward the last of the statues, the statue of the elderly fisherman. 

But just as Eisen had expected, not even this statue had anything on it that could be seen as some sort of clue. Frustrated, Eisen sat down next to this statue and looked down into the crystal blue river. He created the visualized 3D map of this town once more, and looked at the locations of the three statues.

And that's when he got a new idea. All of the statues were looking straight ahead, which seemed a bit unnatural, particularly with the scholar from before. 

Using the map that was floating in front of him, Eisen created a line starting from the location of the statue next to him, going in the direction where he was looking. And then, he got up and flew to the other statues again to make sure that he could accurately draw the lines starting at their locations. And just about twenty minutes after this idea crossed his mind, the old man had a rather small area on his map. It was a triangular area, about 100 meters on every side.

Hoping that this was the place where Mystor was waiting for him, Eisen flew over there as quickly as he could, and once he was in the air, simply stopped flapping his wings so that he dropped to the ground rather swiftly.

The old man looked at the area in front of him, and just saw an empty space. Eisen had never seen such a large empty space in the middle of a town here in the divine realms, so it was clear that it was prepared by Mystor. Surely, he was in the right place.

With his truth-seeing eyes, Eisen looked around, soon finding a point of interest. It was rather central in this space, a small triangular platform that had a few plates that could be shifted around on it. 

The puzzle placed onto this wasn't really that hard to figure out, it was just a sort of sliding-puzzle where Eisen had to complete an image. It took a little while, but in the end there wasn't anything special about it. Well, beside the fact that Eisen had to focus on the magical paint that he could only see with his mana-sight instead of the physical image that he could see. Or so that's what he figured, considering that none of the parts of this puzzle had to do with what could be seen by simply anyone.

When Eisen finished this sliding-puzzle, the ground underneath him started to glow in a bright light that blinded the old man. And a few moments later, he already found himself in a large hall, and in front of him sat a figure clad in mist so that Eisen wasn't able to see its true figure.

"How disappointing..." The figure muttered, and Eisen's heart sunk into his stomach the moment he heard it. Did he mess up? Did he do something wrong at some point and follow a false route?

Well, it seemed like that really wasn't the issue right now, "I set up all of those misleading routes, and you did not fall for even a single one of them? It was as if you didn't even see the things that I prepared for you." The figure said in a disappointed tone, and Eisen just stared back at him with a relieved sigh.

"So does that mean that I solved your quest?" The old man inquired with a smile on his face, and Mystor slowly nodded his head, "Sure, sure. But really, tell me, how did you manage to practically choose the right path right of the bat? Did somebody tell you of my plan?"

"Would it really have been possible for someone to tell me about it without you finding out?" Eisen asked with a wry smile, as a weird feeling built up inside of his stomach. He looked around while Mystor continued to speak of random things.

And that was when Eisen figured out what exactly was wrong right now. Even though he was told he finished the task, the quest window didn't appear to tell him that he did it.