Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Now then... Are we heading off toward Kai first?" Eisen asked as he slowly turned away from looking at the island and toward Jyuuk, who slowly nodded his head.

"That’s the plan at least, yeah. I know she said she wouldn’t leave that place until I remember the reason why she was there in the first place, but I’m pretty sure she has some kind of ability to control sea monsters as well. So I wanted to ask her to get some of them to pull the Ship somehow so that we can get to places more easily." Jyuuk pointed out, and Eisen immediately replied with a nod and moved his fingers through his beard.

"Hmm, that’s a good idea. I was thinking about something similar before as well, to be honest. I’m glad we’re on the same page, though." The old man chuckled, slowly stepped forward toward the giant glass bottle with the Nidhogg in it, making sure that it was properly attached to the floor, and then turned toward Fafnir. Of course, the Sleepy Dragon was laying on the ground next to the central mast in the shade, while Sigurd was laying next to him, using him as a pillow.

"Sorry to interrupt you to, but could you possibly open the Gate? You can keep sleeping afterward." Eisen said with a smile on his face, and the two of them slowly stood up and stretched tiredly, before Fafnir jumped into the air and Sigurd disappeared in a cloud of mist, opening the door of the Dungeon gate for Eisen from the inside once it was properly built.

"Here you go." It said, and Eisen nodded his head in response, slowly rubbing his hand through its metallic hair as he stepped inside, and then he turned toward the Core Guardian next to him while they were stepping through the ’reception’ area back outside toward the area where Eisen was usually working.

It seemed like the small ’Village’ was making a fair bit of progress in its construction, because most of the buildings seemed to be finished at least on the outside. Some of the Kobolds and Lizardmen were still working on trying to furnish the places very basically.

"Hmm... How’s the rest of the Dungeon going so far?" Eisen asked, and Sigurd quickly waved her hand to the side and made a small model of the general dungeon-layout appear.

The first floor was split up into this ’Village’ area and the maze, which was running over a few ’layers’ in and of itself as well, with the small ’Recovery’ room right in front of the stairs to the second floor. The first floor had mainly wolves running around in it, as well as a few traps here and there, as well as a generally confusing layout.

The second floor was solely the ’Overgrown’ maze, with roots, vines and moss covering the walls, which she accomplished with Jyuuk’s help, and another Recovery room right at the end of it. While this floor also had the wolves, on top of that it had a few different animal-like monsters, like foxes, rabbits, and so on. The kind of thing you would find in a forest, basically.

And the deeper you went into that maze, the more diverse the different monsters became. Then there was the third floor.

Right now, it seemed like Sigurd was only focusing on opening up as much open space as possible, and was still very much in the process of doing that even now. Later when the size they wanted was achieved, Jyuuk would work on creating a Forest there with the help of the Dungeon System, with even more diverse types of monsters.

"Hmm, alright, alright... And then at the end of the third floor comes the first Mini Boss?" Eisen asked as he took a closer look at that part of the map, and Sigurd swiftly nodded its head. "Yes, although for now, it’s going to be the final boss. We’re still just Rank 1, so we can only make three floors. And then after that we can make five more floors. I already spoke about it with Evalia, who was more than just great help in designing the whole Dungeon, and she suggested that we change the theme for the floors every ten floors, so we would keep going with the forest theme and push the boss we will place at the end of the third floor to the fifth floor, and then get a harder boss for the tenth floor, and then we change the theme." Sigurd explained, before the old man slowly nodded his head in response.

"That sounds like a good idea, yes. But I hope that Evalia already came up with some ideas for other forest-themed floors then?" As Eisen was starting to set everything up for his work, Sigurd just shrugged in response.

"I’m not entirely sure, but I’d guess so. At the very least she had an idea for the ninth and tenth floor." The Core Guardian pointed out, and the old man raised his eyebrows in surprise. "Oh really? And what would that idea be?" Eisen asked it, but before Sigurd could respond, it turned to the side and looked toward the entrance.

"Well, let’s let her explain." Sigurd suggested, while Evalia approached with a bright smile, her brush on her back and some mana potions in-hand, and when she came closer she looked at Eisen happily.

"So, what are you two talking about?" She asked, and Eisen swiftly crossed his arms.

"About your floor ideas for the forest area." As the old man replied, Evalia nodded her head immediately and turned toward him excitedly.

"Oh, yeah! So, for one, my plan was to set another floor inbetween floor two and three, something like a ruin-area. Especially after seeing ’Prototype’, I had a few good ideas for that. So it’s going to be a bit of a nicer change inbetween the maze and the forest, and will probably fit in with the idea you had in mind. Then, there would be the fourth floor, now the third floor, and then we would have the fifth floor, where the first mini-boss would be... It would probably also be a bit more of a normal forest, just with more open areas where stronger monsters would gather, a few more hills, and that kinda stuff." While Evalia explained this, Eisen was trying to imagine exactly what she was saying in his mind, and figured it would be another good chance to use his visualization, and so quickly made a small mental model of it to have it float in the air in front of himself.

"For the sixth floor, I would love to just have a giant river running through it, and the exit to the next floor would be at the end of that river. Just to make it so that people have to think a little and can’t just brute their way through completely..." Evalia suggested, "And then on the seventh floor, you would end up in a bit of a lake that you would of course then need to leave and get back into the forest. For the eigth floor, the trees would start to be a bit larger than normal, you know? Like a Redwood forest, just that normal oak or birch trees are supersized. That’s just a setup for the ninth floor, though, where the whole floor would be built around a giant, really giant, Tree! And the tenth floor would be more labyrinth-like again, where you would move through the tree itself, with some sections outside of it on top of the branches, and then the boss-fight would be at the tree-crown with something in teh direction of a Dryad!"

With a smug expression, really happy with the idea she came up with, Evalia crossed her arms and nodded once, before Eisen chuckled slightly in reply and moved his fingers through his beard.

"Alright, sounds good to me. I’m sure once we actually get people inside of the Dungeon that use it like a Dungeon is supposed to be used, we’ll be able to level Sigurd and Fafnir up nicely. But your plan has a lot of large open spaces planned for it, right?" Eisen asked, before the Heavenly Artist in front of him quickly nodded her head.

"Yup! That’s why I’m here right now, I’m going to paint the walls in here." She explained, so Eisen raised his eyebrows surprised.

"Fair enough, with your element and ability, it’s going to be relatively easy to make a realistic environment like that, huh?" Eisen asked, and Evalia nodded her head immediately. "Exactly. The plan is to build a bit of a wooden wall around here directly in front of the wall so that nobody can touch it and ruin the illusion, and for the other floors, we’re going to place either cliff-walls that can’t be climbed or a dense growth of trees or something like that around the edges for that. To make it a little more realistic." Evalia pointed out. With a light smirk, Eisen then just nodded his head. "Alright, then good luck with that. Just... If we’re going to split up again on the mainland, we won’t really be able to do that, will we? At least we won’t have anything like you’re going to do for this room."

And while Eisen pointed that out, Sigurd immediately shook its head. "Well, a lot of stuff that you all do is actually now in the construction menu, you know? The Recovery room, certain traps that you guys made by hand, or these buildings here. So I’m sure that such a ’Fake World’ will become added as well." Sigurd explained to the old man.

"Huh, is that so?" He laughed in response, somewhat embarrassed that he didn’t notice that despite being the Dungeon-Master, and then simply crossed his arms. "If that’s the case, then there’s nothing to worry about. Although, would you mind maybe working on a bit of a model for what you are imagining the Dungeon Floors to be?" Eisen asked Evalia, who quickly nodded her head in response. "Of course, I’ll get right to it when I’m done with this room. Which I’m gonna start to give you some time to work on whatever you were working on." Evalia told the old man, looking past him at the different pieces for the printers, which were still laying around unassembled, before Evalia quickly made her leave toward an open area of the room to start her work.

"Alright then, if that’s all planned-out... Let’s get started, huh?" Eisen said to himself and quickly made his mana-doubles appear in their full demon transformation while Eisen himself transformed as well, scratching the proper sign into his chest under the apron while activating his Crafting Space. Luckily, this skill was close to leveling up again as well, meaning that he would be able to finish one more task for his Level-Up quest.

And then, the old man quickly got to work to assemble the rest of the printing-presses with the help of his mana doubles. With the new ability he had that allowed him to make them act out very simple motions on their own, this was much, much easier. Of course, he still had to be extremely aware of whatever they were doing, but considering that most of which had to be done was simple assembly work without much that they could break, this wasn’t an issue either.

So with the help of these doubles, Eisen managed to finish up the work on the Printing-Presses within nothing more than an hour, and could then move onto the next mass-production system.

The one meant for brewing potions, for which Eisen chose to get started with the grinder first and foremost, because it was simply the item that he made first while in his Deep Visualization as well, and figured it would be as good a place as any.