Spending My Retirement In A Game

With an excited expression, Eisen took a look at the haunted item that Jyuuk presented to him. Whenever he let go of it, it would stay floating around still in the air. It really was possessed by a ghost.

"This is pretty interesting..." The old man muttered, "I have plenty, plenty of ego-items leftover that I couldn’t give to anyone. If you have any spare souls that you didn’t know what to do with, then we can try to find matches for them and very easily increase our numbers."

"Exactly my thoughts." Jyuuk added, but there was someone else here that had another idea, which he presented while Sigurd was bringing all of the ego-items Eisen made over here. Hephaestus crossed his arms with a smug grin and said, "How about we turn some of my ’Living Ego Items’ into Haunted ones?" He suggested, and both Eisen and Jyuuk nodded their heads without hesitation, "Obviously, that was the plan." Eisen replied, and the Ego Item just stared at the old man with a wry smile.

"Oh, fuck off..." He groaned, and as Eisen put one of the ego-items that Sigurd gave him onto the table next to him, Jyuuk already got out some more of his soul stones to pick the right one for this particular item.

Meanwhile, Eisen turned over toward Hephaestus, who was already tapping the ground, waiting to get started.

"Right, right..." Eisen muttered quietly and then slowly pulled out his Multitool out of his apron, "Sorry about this, but you understand, right? I’ll make it up to you in a bit. Just stay here and wait for a bit." The old man whispered as he placed the Yang-Metal tool onto the table next to him, and then stretched his hand out toward Hephaestus.

The Ego-Item simply grinned broadly and slammed his own hand down onto Eisen’s, creating a loud slapping sound as Hephaestus’ body turned into that of a simple... handle. That was it, it was something that laid in Eisen’s hand perfectly, but it wasn’t any specific tool yet, while being able to turn into anything it wanted to at any given moment.

"Alright, Jyuuk, show me the souls you have ready for these special-unit ego-items. Better would be if they were duplicates." Eisen pointed out, and Jyuuk quickly nodded his head. The first ones that Jyuuk showed them were the souls of two ’Apex Apes’, enormous Gorilla-like monkeys that made use of ’Tremor’ magic, basically creating earthquakes with every step they took.

"Hm, alright. Then for that one, there’s really only one proper choice. A heavy warhammer." The old man muttered in his mind, and it seemed like Hephaestus had the very same idea. First things first, they had to go and pick the materials, and for that, Sigurd already created a gate for them to bring them into the dungeon-internal material-storage.

The moment they stepped inside, Hephaestus already started to transform. Not into some kind of tool, but rather into two thin leather gloves that wrapped themselves around Eisen’s hands immediately. Hephaestus then practically started to pull Eisen around the material storage while curiously trying to figure out what materials there were.

Eisen figured he should let him do as he wanted to for now, but after a little while, after noticing that Hephaestus was horrible at making choices like that because he, as far as Eisen could judge, ’loved all materials equally’, the old man stopped him by slamming his hands together as hard as he could.

"Oi, the fuck’re you doing?! That hurt, you piece of sh-"

"Be quiet. What we’re doing is simple. We’re making the base item using a special metallic potion. Well, it’s not directly a potion, more like a general concoction, since it’s not meant to be ingested, but rather just

Poured onto the ground. Basically, it creates artificial tremors in the ground. The material base we’re using his highly-infused ’Blazing Core of the Mountain’ mythril alloyed with tremor-mythril. Tremor-mythril should be far too instable to make it the base in itself. Then we also have to mix it with something stable and flexible... I’m thinking something like... Aluminum, but really just as a carrier to keep everything stable enough." The old man muttered quietly, and then continued his short monologue after noticing that Hephaestus had nothing to add to the idea for the warhammer’s core.

"Then, when it comes to the main part of the hammerhead, we can just go with a pretty basic metal alloy that’s good at making things like tremors travel through it. That wouldn’t make it a good item to be wielded by a person because of the strain that would be put onto them, but since the item is going to be fighting on its own, it’s perfect. Let’s add another bit of a gem enchanted with the tremor element onto it, then." Eisen suggested, and then stayed silent as he started thinking about more things, during which Hephaestus made another suggestion on his own.

"The shape should be supportive of making the tremors travel back to the impact zone. Let’’s make it a hammerhead with only one side that can be actually used... ah, and no fuckin’ spike, that’d be useless with the tremors."

"Right, then the backside could just be a highly crystal-based plate with enchantments on it to reflect the tremors back. And of course, let’s add enchantments into the head itself to support it. Make tremors from the front and sides of the hammerhead travel to the back, focus in one spot, and then shoot forward right out of the center of the hammerhead back into the target."

"Ooh, ’ah like that! Then if we want that, the handle needs to be neatly balanced. Wanna go with physical balance or enchantment balance?"

"There are already a lot of enchantments in the hammerhead, so let’s go with physical balance. That should make the balance of the ’Living Ego-Item’ better as well, right?"

"Ah, right! Hmm, I guess we don’t really need anythin’ like a proper handle, right? It ain’t gonna matter anyway." Hephaestus added, and everyone around him and Eisen looked at the old man conversing with his own gloves in a way that just screamed out that they wanted to see what these two would end up making together. After all, even if they were describing the shape right now, it wasn’t the ’true’ shape in the end. After all, it would change and then turn into some kind of humanoid form. And it seemed like Eisen already had the way that this transformation happened and its rules in his mind.

"Actually, I’m not sure if we should ignore the importance of the handle. The ego-items you made always attacked in basic fashions, so their arms and hands basically turned into the weapons they were supposed to be, and the rest of their body was influenced by anything that wasn’t directly related to the ’attack’ portion. I have a rough idea how it might look when turned into the ’Living Ego-Item’. We should try and predict the ways that the base-item affects the result. If we want to truly make this the best Ego-Item it can be, then we should look at it that way. Don’t make an item that was meant to be used by others, but an item that was meant to be used by itself." The old man announced, and it seemed like as his thoughts and ideas were directly transferred to Hephaestus, he quickly understood what he was getting at, although the others were still a bit confused.

And so, the two of them quickly started to get whatever items they needed together and brought them to their actual working-area. First things first, they would make the metallic potion that would act as the core of the hammerhead.

For this, Hephaestus turned into the mortar and pestle used to grind the materials down, the very bowl that the materials wer molten and mixed in, and of course the ’pipes’ connecting everything. Of course, in the process of making this metallic potion, they already included parts of the soul for the ego-item. They would add in parts everywhere, everything besides the actual very core of the soul, to try and distribute it everywhere equally.

While everything was mixing, Eisen was of course using his skills to make the combination-process easier, and was actually supported by Hephaestus by having him turn into another glove. It was really handy that he could turn into different tools at the same time, and that it wouldn’t really affect his ability in any way.

Either way, as they added the soul into the metallic potion, the first real part they had to overcome came to them. Due to Hephaestus’ special abilities, this always happened whenever he created ego-items, it was something that couldn’t be avoided. The metallic potion started bubbling up, as if things were growing from it. If this went out of control, this would just turn into an ’unstable’ ego item, pull in the rest of the soul wherever it was, and bascially turn into a failure.

But before Hephaestus could even get started on suppressing the growths from appearing... Eisen already did it for him. He carefully stirred the potion around with his mana and pressed everything back into itself, combining any parts that split off into the potion again.

"Concentrate." Eisen said in a strict tone toward the ego-item and, now even more pumped up than before, it continued and helped Eisen out. After this, the ’bubbling’ and the ’growths’ appeared on every part of the item they were making at any time, meaning that everything had to be perfectly managed at all time, but because of Eisen’s visualization and mana-copy ability that Eisen had constantly active, he was able to keep the state of the other parts of the item in mind at all times, suppressing any issue that arose before it could actually become a problem.

Just like that, Hephaestus and Eisen created their first Ego-Item together. Just when it was finished, Eisen looked at the single glove that Hephaestus had now turned into and pushed the soul core into the Warhammer, and just then did the two of them let the transformation happen, albeit still in a controlled manner.

The form of the Warhammer changed and morphed, growths appeared all over it, and things shifted around the whole time. Soon, what stood in front of them was truly a fearsome ego-item.

It seemed to look a lot like a normal ’Apex Ape’ in its rough shape, but of course with important differences. Its hands, when turned into fists, were similar in shape to the hammerhead Hephaestus and Eisen made, just that the central ’attack surface’ seemed to be able to shift around however the ego-item wanted.

It was obvious that this ego-item’s ’bones’ were made of the metallic potion as well. Not only the arms, but practically the item’s whole body was filled with the enchantments supposed to change the direction of the tremors toward the shoulders, as the upper half of the upper arms, as well as the shoulders, seemed to be mostly made of that crystal-based material used as the ’focus’ part, that would push the tremors collected in the body directly to the fists.

The center of its back and its spine was covered in flexible but strong wood that had been used for the handle, and most of the important parts that needed extra defense and didn’t specifically need extra mobility were covered in hard, thick, extremely strong leather.

And so, Eisen and Hephaestus proudly looked at the first Living Ego-Item that they created together.