Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Samuel... Who might that be?" Trygan asked in response to Eisen’s request, and the old man looked at him with a deep frown. "The Great Godess’ Father." Heexplained, and Trygan opened his eyes open in surprise.

"Oh, so his Greatness’ Name was Samuel..?" The Dragon King asked, seeming a little more shocked than surprised, and Eisen nodded in response. "Yes, and I need to know what he told the Gods in relation to what this world is." The old man explained, so Trygan slowly moved his fingers along his beard after setting town his cup of tea.

"There wasn’t much that he told us. He said that this World is one created for entertainment, for the mere pleasure of those who are now called ’Artificials’. That none of us are real, and are just ’Information’. He said it in other words, of course, but that is the gist of it. His Greatness explained other things as well, how we had to act if we ever come in contact with an Artificial, and how we should act toward the rest of the world as well." Trygan explained quite swiftly, and Eisen listened quietly, incredibly mad at the whole fact that he was saying that.

"And you believed that?" Eisen asked him, and Trygan slowly nodded his head. "Of course, why shouldn’t I believe the one with power beyond what even any of us Deities can imagine?" The Dragon replied, but Eisen just stared at him with a cold gaze.

"I’m going to ask again, you believed that? And this time around, tell me the truth." The old man said in a clear voice, but Trygan just turned to Eisen with a confused expression. "I don’t know what you’re talking about, Father. His Greatness-"

"Trygan." Eisen interrupted the Dragon with a deep stare, "I won’t allow another one of my sons to be dragged to the ground. I’m starting to remember things that never actually happened to Benjamin Theodore Joyce. They are things that happened to Eisen. And sometimes, I’m not sure who my memories actaully belong to. I know that you’re a loyal person, but your loyalty isn’t a thing that someone’s status can earn." Eisen said with pure anger in his voice. He was sure that Trygan was being manipulated somehow as well. He knew that this wasn’t just a game, that this was a real world. He didn’t know how or why or when any of this happened, but it did. And Eisen felt fatherly emotions toward Trygan as well, without truly knowing where they came from. But before Eisen knew it or could even get some sort of answer from Trygan, the Crystal Dragon King just took another sip of his tea and continued on with a completely unrelated topic.

"Father, did you get to the center of that Puzzle Box yet?" He asked, and with a bit of surprise, Eisen shook his head. "Then I think you should concentrate on that for now. But until then, I have some other matters to attend to." Trygan said with a light smile directed toward Eisen. And before the old man could say anything in response, the world around Eisen was changing back to his view from the ship.

But when just the Pavilion was left from Eisen’s dreamscape, Trygan told Eisen something else, standing up and walking off of the Pavilion as he did so, before he was slowly surrounded by a bright, twisting mist. "You are right, however. My Loyalty isn’t something that Status can buy. It is something that only a selected few have ever gotten from me. But those that have it, will never lose it as long as even a single shard of my existence is left." Trygan told him, as his body grew in size into that of a Majestic, beautiful Dragon, with Enormous horns and wings large enough to house a football arena.

And then, something floated toward Eisen from Trygan’s chest, a scale from right where they began again on his throat. It was quite large, large enough to make a giant Towershield out of if he wanted to.

"Try and keep it as a souvenir without using it for Craftsmanship, alright Father? You’re going to need it at the point at which you meet my sister." Trygan said with a broad smile on his draconic face, and soon, Eisen found himself back on the ship, still holding the scale in his arms. And now that he thought about it, considering that he went into his Dreamscape in his fully increased size... This Scale was a lot larger than Eisen initially thought it was.

But there were many more important things that Eisen needed to somehow figure out. Obviously, Trygan saw through everything as well, but he wasn’t really able to speak to Eisen about it for whatever reasons there may be. The old man still didn’t know much about how everyone was being controlled, after all.

Although, there was something that Trygan revealed to the old man. Multiple things, actually. One, Trygan knew about what was supposed to be at the center of the Puzzlebox. Two, the key to unlocking it probably had something to do with Trygan’s scale. And at last, three. Trygan had a ’Sister’. He already had a rough idea of who it might be, just looking at the rough lore that Eisen knew about this world, but he didn’t want to say so for sure.

Either way, right now, Eisen was feeling a few different emotions. Sadness that even Trygan’s memories were being manipulated like that, Happiness that Trygan wasn’t completely lost, and annoyance that he wasn’t allowed to Craft something using a part of a literal God.

And while Eisen was stemming his body up with the help of that scale, the old man noticed a few steps behid him, before he turned around and saw two draconic faces look up at him. Both of them quite curious, although for different reasons.

Kiron was curious about seeing a scale that were similar to his own, and the Paladin Half-Dragon was curious because this was obviously the Dragon King’s scale.

And before the latter could storm toward the old man, that old man quickly grabbed one of the empty boxes out of his apron meant to store large items and stashed it away inside there, causing the Bronze Half-Dragon to stare up at him disappointedly.

But for now, Eisen had something else to worry about, rubbing his eyes out of tiredness as he made his way up the stairs to the meeting room. He had to shrink down a bit, because he didn’t exactly fit inside of there perfectly with his new fully-increased size, and then just turned toward the other originals, who were sitting in here as if waiting for Eisen.

"So, what’d he say?" Brody asked, his chin pressed against the surface of the table while his wife, who was finally online again, which she wasn’t often considering that she had some other things to take care of even if her husband didn’t, comforted him by running her hand through his hair, as if Brody was a child.

With a slight smile, Eisen stood at the front of the table and crossed his arms. "That his Loyalty belongs to us. He gave me one of his scales, it seems to be part of unlocking the puzzle box... Although I really don’t know in what way. We’ll have to see in the future." Eisen explained to them quite swiftly, before he once more looked at the time and just started moving his fingers through his beard, turning toward the others to answer any questions that they had, and when the group came to a few minor conclusions that Eisen didn’t see as harmful toward being seen as necessary for ’Memory Control’, the old man chose to just sit down on his chair and doze off into a proper sleep, so that he could get back some of his stamina for tomorrow.

And before he knew it, the old man found that he woke up again, perfectly revitalized as much as could be possible. It was still pretty early, and the others still spent around two hours, real world time, out of the game even if their characters didn’t need as much sleep anymore.

That meant that Eisen would have a few more hours, in-game time, to spend on making a few essential items for the trip. And those essential items were... clothes. For himself, the size-changing Apron and Pants, and for his three monsters some new clothes as well, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what he wanted to make for them. Caria seemed to want just another cute dress, so Eisen would give that to her without hesitation. And while Melissa also did like her dress, it seemed like she wanted to set herself off a little bit from her older sister who she was following behind of constantly until now, even if she was still basically just doing that. Then for Sal, Eisen wanted to make something like a nice vest that he could wear, or something in the direction of a suit-jacket. For some reason, even if Sal was a child, Eisen figured that would look really cute and great on him, so he chose to go with that in the end.

So, the old man swiftly made his way back into the Dungeon toward the area where he was usually crafting, before first working on the monsters’ clothes.

Caria’s dress was relatively simple again, just a straight red summer dress with a ring around the hips to seperate it slightly from the chest area. And while the lower and upper parts of the dress were a nice red, Eisen made the broad ring white, just to still keep Caria’s normal color palette.

Then, Eisen worked on Melissa’s clothes. He wanted to still make something dress-like, but something that fit better with the often very sleepy Great Empress Bee. And of course, to more easily hide her literal hive-parts when she was using her element on her own body again.

And for that, one thing came to Eisen’s mind. An oversized yellow hoody and black jogging-pants.

Satisfied with that idea, Eisen quickly got to work with all of that as well and swiflty cut everything he needed out of the cloth he had available to him at the moment and put them together into clothes at Melissa’s size. Of course, Eisen also made some space for her wings in the back of the hoody, although he did make it so that she could put her wings through the slits if she wanted to actually use them, or just leave them inside of her hoody otherwise, without you really being able to see the slits when she wasn’t using them.

At last, Eisen moved onto the last clothing item for his three monsters, the vest for Sal. Considering Sal’s incredibly pale complexion, really just pure white, Eisen figured that a simple black or dark gray would be the best choice for the color, and then quickly made a simple vest out of that, although he did fancy it up with a little bit of decoration in different places.

It was a lot of fun to make these things for them, and most of all, it was just insanely adorable to watch the three of them in their new outfits.

And so, with a gleeful mood in response to the pure adorability-vibe the three gave off constantly, Eisen started working on the clothes for himself, the Apron and the pants.

As a base for those items, so that he wouldn’t waste anything, Eisen used his current Apron. It was more than large and thick enough to do all of that, after all. And for the pants, Eisen already made his way to the material storage and set one of the fabric-weavers up so that he could make the mana-crystal and wool fabric using the enchanted crystal.

And then, just a little while later, Eisen finished the actually very simple clothes up, and was more than just happy to see that they worked just like expected. Proportionally, they didn’t grow or shrink just as much as Eisen himself did, but that’s also something he expected. For example, when Eisen grew by 100%, his clothes would have grown by around 90-95%. But that was something he could deal with, in the end.