Spending My Retirement In A Game

Benjamin looked into the mirror as he recalled his actions from that day. He wasn’t sure when it was, just that it was a very long time ago. He could remember what it felt like to create that soul and that egg, and the purpose for which he created it. Just like Benjamin assumed, back then, he was trying to create an ego-item by first creating a soul that already had knowledge of anything that it needed to have. Different monsters, materials, and items. Anything, really. With that, it would obviously be possible to create the ultimate item.

A tool that was capable of creating masterpieces on its own was the kind that was fit for a master craftsman. But somehow, Benjamin couldn’t entirely remember what exactly happened afterward. He didn’t know what ’hatched’ out of the egg, if it didn’t simply end up failing. He doubted that it did fail, but it waws still in the realm of possibilities.

The old man dried his face and stepped out of the bathroom. This was definitely something that he needed to speak to the others about. And when he stepped out of the bathroom, he already saw Nataly coming out of Stahl’s bedroom.

"Ah, morning!" She exclaimed with a bright smile, and the old man just smiled back, "Morning, Evalia. Good job back there, by the way." Benjamin pointed out, and the young woman just crossed her arms with a smug expression, "Of course I did a good job. What did you expect?" She asked, and Benjamin lightly chuckled.

"Come to the livingroom in a bit, I need to tell you guys something." Benjamin announced. Nataly simply shrugged and nodded her head, "Alright, I’ll clean up a bit first though." Nataly replied, and Benjamin simply nodded his head as he made his way over to the livingroom and kitchen area already.

Jasmin and Haruo also got there roughly at the same time, presumably to get some breakfast for themselves. And shortly after the three of them met there, Andrew also stepped into the room.

"Yo." He said, scratching the back of his neck tiredly, "You all tryin’ to get somethin’ to eat?" Andrew asked, and Jasmin and Haruo quickly nodded their heads.

"Yes, I’d assume so." Haruo laughed lightly, although Benjamin quickly changed the topic to something that the others really didn’t expect, as he already noticed Nataly being close enough to hear him.

"I just remembered something from my time as Eisen." Benjamin explained, and the four other originals immediately turned toward the old man, "Oh really, what was it this time? Did you get some kinda vibes on how to beat whatever boss monster’s on that island?"

"I guess so, but you misunderstood." The old man pointed out, "I didn’t gain any direct new knowledge from my time as Eisen. I directly remembered something I did and made while I was Eisen. I remember touching my tools, I remember the sound that the floorboards made. I remember the rough location of where I was, and I remember everything that was inside of that workshop. It was a direct, vivid memory."

All of a sudden, the originals all looked at Benjamin with rather mixed expressions. For one, they were of course excited. After all, this was proof of them being able to get their memories back at some point, but at the same time, this just brought out the worries of exactly that happening again. Maybe they would change the moment they remembered who they used to be, and became a person they didn’t want to be. That was definitely possible, even if it was something none of them ever wanted to happen.

"And..." Jasmin started, "What exactly did you do?" She asked, and Benjamin simply started to explain what exactly happened. And not only what happened inside of the actual memory, but also what happened while he was ’discovering’ that memory. That white sphere in the black space that then turned golden afterward, and how the version of himself in his memory actively spoke to himself.

After Benjamin was finished, Haruo crossed his arms in thought, ’So it’s a memory that’s directly related to the Island of Craftsmanship, then?"

"Yes, I assume so." Benjamin replied, and a few moments later, Andrew voiced one of his own ideas of what it might have been, "Didn’t you just make the ego-item that was making all those other ego-items?" He asked. With a slight sigh, Benjamin nodded his head.

"I was also thinking that. I was most likely combining my experiments about creating artificial life with the process of making ego-items, and then came to that point. It was probably some kind of being that was a capable crafter, but too hard if not impossible to control. But there was probably also a reason why I didn’t just get rid of it after it obviously went mad like that." The old man sighed annoyedly, and Nataly said, "Maybe you were anticipating that it was going to start creating ego-items like that?" She suggested.

Benjamin started moving his fingers through his beard and then slowly nodded his head, "Maybe so. It might have just been another experiment of mine, then. We’ll have to see about that when we actually meet whatever I created." The old man pointed out. It was rather annoying that they still had near to no information about the actual boss despite being so close to finding something out. It was like all they needed to know was inside of a book, but it was placed too high to reach on the shelf.

"How annoying."

---

Eisen slowly opened his eyes and stood up. He stretched a little and then cracked his knuckles as he took some steps forward. He waved his hand to the side and created a gate so that he could get outside of the dungeon.

The old man activated his Draconic Demon King transformation to glide to the ground all the whilst increasing his size to the absolute maximum, soon finding himself surrounded by six figures that were towering far, far over him. It was a weird feeling to not be the largest all of a sudden, but it might be something he’ll have to get used to after reaching the Giant Country. After all, right now he was on the lower end of the average-height spectrum amongst giants. Different clans usually had different builds, and with that, different average heights. Amongst the smallest were the Moon Giants, and the largest were the Sun Giants. Although both of them were rather similar in overall power, the average sun giant was usually two to three times larger than the average moon giant.

The Fire Giant Clan that Eisen was a part of was somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, so Eisen still had to grow a little bit if he wanted to be seen as a proper Fire Giant when he reached the current Grardour.

Either way, Eisen hoped that this would be in the realm of possibility for him when he would simply rank up his racial skill up some more. Doing actions like holding the ego-mansions down, that actually required Eisen to be in the giant form, were seemingly doing an incredible job at that. Eisen couldn’t wait to reach a Giant town and be able to make items for giants. That would definitely help increase that racial skill’s proficiency a lot!

The old man took a look around, trying to figure out if anything changed during the night that the group took a break, but it seemed like everything was fine. They could still simply go on a relatively straight path toward the ego-castle without having to encounter any ego-mansion or ego-building in general anymore, which would save quite a lot of time. The group had more than enough manpower to properly hold the castle down now, so they wouldn’t necessarily require more forces than that.

The group would get inside, fight their way through, reach the boss room, and then beat the boss monster before possibly taking over the ego-castle. Although that may or may not be a rather bad idea, considering that they actually somewhat required a castle, and there was most likely everything that they needed for the town, such as the town core setup, in there.

A little while later, Eisen saw some notifications appear in front of him. They were just messages from the others saying that the groups were really good to go. And so, Eisen turned around toward the six enormous beings behind him.

They made their way through the rest of the town, with Eisen trying his best to quickly get rid of whatever regular ego-item stood in their way, which was surprisingly easy when Eisen just hit them with his giant multitool in its hammer form. He just managed to flatten everything completely, and then some of the others could come out and finish the ego-item up.

The group soon reached the ego-castle and the open area surrounding it. The moment they stepped into the area surrounding the ego-castle, it reacted. It towered up over the old man, the five ego-mansions, as well as Askr, and proceeded to rip large chunks of dirt and rock out of the ground that it was immediately throwing toward them without a moment’s hesitation.

Of course, that wasn’t necessarily anything that was an issue. Eisen and Askr could defend against that pretty easily. The ego-mansions were a bit to slow physically and mentally for that, but that was fine. They just needed to have raw, brutish strength to hold the castle down later.

But then, just when Eisen thought that they would be able to hold the castle down relatively quickly, he noticed something he should have noticed far earlier.

The way this town was constructed was simple. It had three areas. They were vastly different to each other. In the middle was this castle, then around that were the large shops and mansions, as well as other generally large structures, and then outside of that was the ’common’ area. The old man didn’t really think of it yes, as it was rather convenient, but the change was a bit too... direct. Usually, there should be something to split those areas up, like large walls, but they never saw anything like that. There was not a single town wall, despite the fact that there should be three of them. One around the castle, one around the ’rich’ area, and then one surrounding and protecting the whole town.

They weren’t there until now, but it seemed like they were simply laying out in wait. Because all of a sudden, directly surrounding the ego-castle and climbing up its body, were three giant snakes made of rock. They were each different in size, length, and thickness, so it was really obvious what they were. These were the town walls that were turned into ego-items.