Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen slowly woke up again as he pushed himself off the ground. His arms were fully regrown now and were in the same state they were in before they were ripped off, but the old man still tried his best to stretch a little bit to get rid of the somewhat stiff feeling that he had in them.

"Ah, awake!" Gran exclaimed with a bright, broad smile as he looked at Eisen, and the old man just nodded his head, "Seems like it, doesn’t it?"

"Come, watch!" The warrior replied bluntly, pointing toward the arena in front of him. There were two more people fighting there, but Eisen honestly didn’t really care about that at all. Instead, he just wanted to get started and fight some more people already. It was quicker than making items for them, and Eisen was confident that he would be able to beat a few people. And even if not, he couldn’t die, so it wasn’t a big deal if he ended up dying.

And after beating the four other people that he could fight for ’points’ that counted toward Eisen’s goal, he just needed to make gear for two other people so that he could get an audience with Gonor. And then he had to go through all this stuff eight more times.

Eisen felt annoyed after the short encounter he just had with Tony. He knew that he shouldn’t feel that way, and he knew that he was acting incredibly immature. But at the moment, his stress was too big for him to really control how he reacted to things like that.

"I mean, I just found out that I’m slowly ceasing to be human over there..." Eisen muttered quietly to himself. He didn’t even have any time to think about that. Eisen held a burning roll of paper towels and didn’t hurt himself in the slightest. Suddenly being able to do that after breaking your arm while slapping someone a few weeks prior wasn’t necessarily something normal. "I should still apologize to Tony later... And speak to the others about how they’re feeling about all of this."

With a deep sigh, the old man understood his own mistakes and chose to just move on for now. He had to get all of this done as quickly as possible anyway. Luckily Gonor gave him that little boon that he could make use of where he could just fight his way through this realm instead so that he could save time. He would spend a lot of time in all the other realms anyway, most likely, so it was great whenever he could save at least a little bit of that time in ways like this.

"Sorry, Gran. I have to go for now. I’ll be at the other arenas, challening some of the other champions. So right now might be the last time that we can speak to each other." Eisen explained to the warrior sitting on the ground in front of him. With his eyes wide open, Gran then just stood up and pushed his arms outward to the side, "Okay! Come!" He exclaimed loudly with a broad grin, but Eisen just looked back at him a little confused for now.

And seeing that Eisen wasn’t going for it, Gran did so instead and just pulled the old man in for a tight hug, "Nice see again! Live well!" Gran yelled right into Eisen’s ear, one last time demonstrating that he was unable to speak any quieter than this. Eisen just laughed a bit as he reciprocated the hug with a smile on his face.

"Same to you, Gran. If you make the choice to truly reincarnate, I hope that you’re going to live a great life."

"Haha, Gran always strong! So Gran live well always!" He pointed out smugly, and Eisen just smiled as he took a step back and looked toward Buldor, rubbing his hand over the ground-dragon’s snout, "You as well, buddy. Hope you can be by Gran’s side if you reincarnate as well." The old man said with a smile on his face, and then turned toward Gran one more time.

And while he activated his Draconic Demon King transformation so that he could just fly off, the old man gave a short nod to Gran, "It was nice to see you again."

"Aye."

With a smile on his face, Eisen pressed his foot onto the railing in front of him and kicked off of it while flapping his wings, soon pushing right into the sky followed by Ambriel, the angel that was just looking at Eisen with a fowl glare the whole time, although Eisen himself didn’t particularly care about that. It wasn’t like Ambriel could just attack Eisen or mess with him in any way. At least that’s what Eisen assumed, he wasn’t actually completely sure about that.

Eisen looked around and tried to figure out where exactly the next arena was located, and soon spotted it. After quickly flying over it, he saw that it was an arena for people that had a similar fighting style to that Assassin that Eisen made items for earlier. Light weapons, quick movement, and a lot of gimicky items.

Thinking that this was a good match for Eisen, as in that he would be able to deal with people of that fighting style relatively easy when comparing it to other styles, Eisen just stopped flapping his wings for a few moments and let his body drop down toward the arena. Of course, he didn’t fall right into it, but rather steered himself toward the place where the people that just wanted to watch the fight were seated.

He figured it would be a rather bad idea to try and land right on the Champion’s balcony again. There were still a few people that looked at him with surprise, especially once they noticed that Eisen was actually alive, but for the most part it wasn’t that bad. Eisen looked around and tried to look for the Champion’s balcony, before walking up the stairs of this area he was in and walking around the edge of the arena.

Soon, he managed to make his way to the spot that was closest to the place the Champion could be found and seemingly was currently seated as well, but the Angels that were stationed here obviously didn’t let him inside.

They held their large weapons in front of the door and just stared at him with their empty eyes from inside of their heavy metal helmets. With a slight sigh, Eisen crossed his arms, "Can I at least speak to the Champion for a bit? I want to challenge him to a duel." The old man pointed out, and the two Angels looked at each other.

They were a bit unsure, it seemed. On one hand, they knew that usually only the people that rose to the top of the arena normally had the right to fight the Champion, but they could also tell that Eisen had a special quest that was given to him from Gonor. It didn’t inherently say that he was allowed to skip through all other parts that made up the arenas’ rules, but on the other hand it still changed the situation quite a bit.

In the end, they figured they should let the champion make the decision, and one of the angels lowered his weapon and opened the door they were guarding. He went inside and closed it again to speak to the Champion, and just about a minute later, the door opened again. The Angel stepped to the side while holding the door open while signaling Eisen inside, and the old man looked at the woman that was seated on the seemingly high-quality armchair.

Her legs were crossed and she was facing the center of the arena, so her back was pointed at the old man. Eisen took a step closer toward the woman and walked next to the armchair before turning his head toward her. And as he looked at the woman, dressed in a simple cloak that was hiding most of her equipment, the old man stared at her face in particular. But he couldn’t remember her to be one of Brody’s apprentices, so the old man just got right to the point instead of trying to make small-talk.

"I want to duel you." The old man said bluntly. The champion turned her head and looked Eisen up and down before simply scoffing, "You don’t seem like a fighter to me. And you know that a duel here is only lost once one of the fighters would be dead in the land of the living? That means to you, this is a fight to the death."

"That’s fine, I won’t die. If you don’t want to fight me, that’s fine to me, I’ll just find someone else. But I’ll just tell you, I already won against one of you champions." The old man pointed out, "And it’s not like this is a duel that counts toward the rules of this arena. I don’t have the same sort of weapon you do, so it wouldn’t influence your status of Champion if you lose."

"Hm... You already won against a champion? Who was it, I wonder?" The woman asked, with a genuinely curious expression, and Eisen just replied bluntly, "Gran. He’s the champion for mounted combat."

"...You won against Gran? That battle-crazed Gran? Even amongst us heroic souls he’s a crazy one... I’m just doing this for the extra benefits we can get for reincarnation, but he is doing it so that he can keep fighting as much as he wants."

"True, but it seems like he’s considering reincarnation now after I cleaved him in half." Eisen pointed out with a slight smirk on his face. The woman immediately stood up and turned around to look at one of the angels, "Could you confirm that, please?" She asked, and the Angel slowly nodded his head as it left the room and flew away in the direction of Gran’s arena.

While this angel was listening to the request of this soul, Ambriel was seemingly rather disgusted by that fact and was staring at that Angel of Gonor as if it were lesser simply for doing so. Eisen realy wanted to puch Ambriel in the face, but he would save that for when he already received the acknowledgement of the gods... He didn’t want to start a fight with Ambriel and then have to stay around them for another week or so.

Either way, for now, that didn’t really matter, even if Eisen was annoyed by them. What mattered for now was just that the woman in front of Eisen looked at him with a determined expression, "Once that Angel comes back, I’ll make my decision. If what you told me is true, then we will duel. If it is not, then we will not."