Spending My Retirement In A Game

Chapter 928: Around the Dungeon (3)

Brody swung his new sword through the air in front of him, just giving it a shot. It moved smoothly and seemed to be a perfect fit for his hand. Of course, this wasn't the first item that Eisen had made for Brody, so making something that was suited for him in weight distribution and size was probably one of the easiest things in the world.

"How do you like it?" the old man asked, and Brody only shot a grin back at him. It was a question that didn't even need to be answered at this point. Eisen smiled lightly and stood up from his seat, getting out something from his item storage. This was something that he made a while ago when he was bored. It was an item created with a magical element that was perfect for 'repair'. It was like a troll's regeneration that was given to physical objects to return them to their former state. Though, the item would be somewhat brittle for a while depending on the amount of damage that had to be healed.

Eisen figured that this fact could be used to measure the exact amount of damage that was done to an object, helping him create the item that he was now setting up. It looked just like some black monolith. Outwardly, there was nothing special about it; it was really just about what was going on inside of it. The monolith itself was really just a mixture of extremely sturdy materials that seemed to be the best fit for the 'repair' element. And right underneath it was the control center that was actually applying this material and then doing the resulting calculations by comparing the state of the material before and after, as well as how much mana it needed to use to bring it back to its 'original' state.

"What was the strength of the attack last time again?" Brody asked, trying to rememer it himself, but Eisen just smiled lightly.

"I made some changes to it. Basically, I can tell the pillar who is using it, and then can give it some sub-information if I want it to measure some specific attack or ability. Every time it's hit by that person with that attack or ability, it uses the strongest-ever version of that attack as the new baseline, making it the score 100," the old man explained, putting in the small gemstones at the bottom of the monolith to update it for 'Brody' and 'Sword Attack'. The demon-orc halfling grinned lightly, nodding his head excitedly.

"Perfect," he replied, taking a deep breath, "In that case, step back and let me give it a shot. I don't want to hit you on accident."

"Yeah, yeah. Just make sure not to damage the data-crystals at the bottom, otherwise we can't measure the attack output," the old man said. This was a good solution that they had come up with in order to maximize the performance of different items. Considering all of the different effects that could be added onto items, it was hard to figure out the exact performance of the different items that Eisen was making for everyone. So, to make the process easier, Eisen made this strength-measuring item. He was also working on one that could measure attack-speed together with strength for multiple consequtive attacks to give them even more information, but it seemed like it would take a while until Eisen could properly make something like that considering the items and abilities he currently had access to for his item creation.

For now, Eisen wanted to upgrade this item to make it easier to change the settings for who was attacking and with what kind of attack. He was thinking about contacting the masters of the adventurer's guild and collaborating with them at some point. The adventurer's guild already measured the mana-wavelength of the people that signed up, and from what Eisen knew, about two thirds of all players signed up with the adventurer's guild, so it was the best system to take advantage of. And then, once Eisen could potentially mass-produce these items, he wanted to send them out to different places around the world.

Of course, he wasn't planning on doing that just for fun, either. Figuring out how strong players were in different parts of the continent was always useful, and if possible, Eisen wanted to use this for recruitment in the future. Though he didn't necessarily want to invite tons of players into the guild, it might be useful depending on everyone's plans. And if Eisen could mass-produce these, it was also an easy way to determine the average strength of Asgard's soldiers. That meant there were a lot of issues to fix here, but once he did, it could come in useful. For now, he was just using Brody as something of a test subject, letting him try out new attacks whenever he was in the process of developing new techniques or whenever Eisen made some kind of new item for the martial artist.

Brody stood in front of the black monolith and took a deep breath. The item he was holding was a simple, two-edged, one-handed straight-sword. It was on the 'boring' side design wise, but you could also call it straightforward and simple. Though Brody liked to play around with more unqiue techniques or items sometimes, he was the sort of person that did like to go back and refine basic techniques as much as he could. A solid base was necessary to build the highest towers, after all.

With a swift motion, Brody pushed his body forward and swung the sword horizontally at the monolith. He cut straight through the mass of combined crystals and stones, and quickly, the magic activated and the monolith repaired itself. A few moments later, all the calculations were done and a small artificial system window popped up in front of it, displaying a simple number. 126.

"A 26% improvement? Just like that?" Brody grinned lightly, "My stats really didn't increase that much since last time, and I haven't been focusing a lot on my swordsmanship-related techniques, so..."

He turned his head toward Eisen, who was watching excitedly and curiously, "So I guess it's a success. Cursed items really can make some amazingly ridiculous items, huh?" the old man laughed, and Brody nodded his head immediately.

"You can say that again," his grin only got stronger. It was to the point where the entirety of his tusks were revealed, all the way down to the base, "You got any other ideas for curses? You can up it a bit if you want. Maybe make it harder to use the item, or- Oh, I got it! Make me an item that I can only use in a really specific way. That should open up a lot, right?"

Eisen thought about it for a moment, "Hm... I mean, I could definitely do that. Maybe a sword that can only be used to slash horizontally, or an item that only gives any damage output a minute after the last attack?"

"Now you're thinking! Come on, give it a shot, these curses gotta be able to push me even further, right? We're about to fight a fucking transcendent, so we gotta make sure the equipment can keep up!" Brody exclaimed. And while Eisen was curious about what he could do with curses as well, he did have to admit that Brody didn't seem to be acting just because he wanted to make sure he could fight the monster at the bottom of the dungeon well enough. Rather, he clearly just thought it was fun.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll come up with something. For now, just make sure you talk to everyone in the group that will head down with us. You'll be the leader of the combat, so make sure you know what everyone is good at," the old man said, and Brody groaned loudly.

"Man, seriously?"

"Hey, you're the one that told me to choose the ones in that group. That means that you have to catch up now," Eisen pointed out, and though Brody was a bit annoyed, since he seemed to want to test out his new sword a bit more, he ended up walking over toward the tent where the group had gathered. And then, once Brody was done talking to them and everyone had set up... it should be possible to head down into the dungeon's first floor and see what they were dealing with exactly.