Spending My Retirement In A Game

"I see, I see... So it takes in a signal, mana, and changes it to something else as described in those symbols in the middle. The conditions for that change to happen and to what extent are described in the outer ring, while the center describes the actual end product. And then there are special cases where the symbols in the middle are used to describe the way that the mana is taken?" Tony tried summing up the general information that Benjamin explained to him and Benji, before the old man slowly nodded.

"That’s about it, yes. At the very least, this is the most common way enchantments are done, it seems like there are a lot of other forms that such an enchantment circle can take."

After a little while of thinking about the flying-camera project that Benjamin was working on, Benji spoke up with an idea that had to do with it. "You said there were those complex enchantment cirlces as well, right? With enchantment circles inside a larger enchantment circle? Do those smaller enchantments need to be actually carved enchantments, or can they be that ability enchantment thing?" He suggested, and after thinking for a little bit, Benjamin shook his head.

"I don’t think that would work. Ability enchantments take up the whole object that they are placed on, so you can’t restrict that to a small spot like that. At least I can’t do it yet, maybe at later skill ranks, but not so far." Benjamin explained to them, and Benji continued thinking for a few seconds before making the next suggestion.

"And what if you put that ability enchantment on a separate object that you can put into place there?"

Immediately, Benjamin began to think about whether or not that might work, and came to a relatively simple conclusion. "That might work, yeah... That might be the easiest way to make a complex enchantment if it does work... I should be able to make enchantments so that it’s somewhat possible to choose which one of the sub-enchantments will be activated, instead of all of them." The old man muttered to himself as he thought about how to properly make that enchantment work. In the end, that in itself probably wouldn’t be a huge problem, but rather the different things that needed to be added to the complex enchantment.

The issue with Benjamin’s Truth Seeing Eyes was quite simple in the end, and he could probably add a mana battery or soul generator into another slot in the enchantment to supply it with all the mana it would need. After all, a golem core would only generate the bare minimum that the golem needed to operate in the intended way.

A mana battery or generator would definitely make sure that everything was properly taken care of.

Next, he would need to add the ’sender’ into another part, that would send the picture observed by the camera to some kind of ’receiver’. If he was able to enchant golem cores with superficial enchantments like ’controlling your body’ or ’ownership’ through ability enchantment, maybe that would also work for the chat function. If that was the case, it would definitely be easy to make this system work somehow.

Benjamin could simply use an ability enchantment on another separate object for another slot that would quite literally ’send’ the visuals that were observed to another place that was set as the correct ’receiver’. It may be a bit tricky to figure out how to properly display that signal, but it shouldn’t be too complicated, right?

Either way, those were four different ’modules’ to add into the enchantment, so there was definitely space for more. "Hmm, maybe I can add a storage module too?" He muttered, remembering that he did something similar for his two Automata as well so that they could actually remember things that happened a while ago.

If he could make storage modules like that again, that would be able to store what was filmed, then that would definitely be quite useful. In case they found something that’s important, Benjamin would be able to take out the storage module, replace it with a new one, and keep the old storage module in a safe place in a way that they could look at it over and over again if necessary.

"Alright, I’ll do that when I play tonight!" Benjamin exclaimed, happy to have figured out the rough way that the different camera-bots would be constructed. He placed the block of paper to the side and took a sip of his drink, before looking over at his grandson.

"So, do you have anything you want to do when you play the game?" The old man curiously laughed, while the young man simply scratched the back of his head with a wry smile.

"Not really, if I’m gonna be honest. The only things I know about the game are what you told me, since Prime Industries usually keeps pretty quiet about most actual content. But I guess I want to try out some stuff first? Like, I want to see what’s most fun to me, fighting or crafting. Usually in games I’m some Knight-like character, but from what you say, the crafting there is super interesting as well, so I don’t really know." Benji said with a complicated expresssion, leaving Benjamin to think for a bit.

"Well, when you start playing, I’m pretty sure we’ll have contacted all the originals, and maybe even talked about a spot to meet up. So I’ll come pick you up wherever you start and then we can meet the others, so you’ll probably be able to tag along with each of them for a bit, just to see what direction you want to go." The old man slowly explained, before Benji simply shrugged. "That’s fine. I mean it would be pretty cool, but I don’t wanna impose on anyone like that. I’m sure none of them want to drag around a random guy that just started playing."

"Oh, I don’t know, actually. From what I can tell, they’re all great people and just love the thing they were brought in for. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind bringing someone along on whatever they want to do. Especailly Brody, actually, he’s a martial arts teacher. So you don’t have to worry about combat and crafting either way, you should be able to try out both to your heart’s extent."

"Oh, he is? Well, I guess asking won’t hurt, right? And I know that you’ll be more than happy to show me the rope when it comes to crafting." Benji laughed lowly as he placed his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose and leaned back in the deckchair.

"Of course I’ll be happy! There aren’t many people that want to learn from me these days!" With a laugh from himself, Benjamin followed Benji’s example and leaned back as well, choosing to relax while further thinking about the camera-bots he was planning to make.

---

That night, Benjamin more than eagerly entered his capsule again so that he could dive into the world where he was known under another name, Eisen.

When he woke up, Eisen immediately noticed a change in the air. The air tasted a bit salty, and the smell of the ocean completely engulfed him while he heard heavy waves crash against a sturdy rock-wall.

The carriage itself didn’t seem to be moving, and no member of his party seemed to currently be inside the carriage either, not even Aulu or Komer. "Did we already reach the magic city? I thought it was still a few days away..." Eisen muttered to himself as he stood up and stretched a little bit, before grabbing a piece of jerky from the box on top of the barrels to quiet down his grumbling stomach, and waited for Caria and Melissa to wake up as well.

"Good morning, you two!" He said with a smile, and the small myconid and queen bee happily jumped onto him. "Caria and Melly are great!" Caria exclaimed with a bright smile as Eisen picked her up and carried her out of the carriage on his arm so that he could look for his friends.

And that didn’t take very long either, since it seemed like the group simply chose to take a break and enjoy the idillic view of the ocean, and the islands that could be just barely seen in the distance. And the group didn’t reach the magic city yet after all, but they were now apparently travelling along the coast for a while.

"Good morning, everyone." Eisen exclaimed as he sat Caria back down on the ground and watched as she ran over to the edge with pure awe in her eyes, trying to see how far this huge puddle would extend.

Quite quickly, everyone in the group turned around and greeted the old man, now that he had woken up after a few days again. "How’d you sleep?" Sky asked, setting his book to the side for a little bit, before Eisen sat down next to the group.

"Great, actually! How far are we along toward our destination?" He then asked curiously, before Sky quickly grabbed his map and took a look at it.

"Another two or three days at this rate, I’m pretty sure."

"Alright, got it! Will we be travelling by the coast all the time till then?" Eisen asked, but Sky shook his head.

"Not all the time, but most of it. It’s better to take a shortcut just before we reach the city. It’s like a day quicker or something, and it takes about 10 hours, maybe." The Fey-Kin boy explained as he once more grabbed his book and continued reading.

"Alright, got it! Well, I’ll head back to the carriage to see how the transformed materials turned out."

"Oh! I checked on them a bit ago, they’re really cool! Like, really really cool! I haven’t seen anything like that before~!" Bree yelled out after him, jumping up so that she could see what Eisen was about to make with these materials, and the others quickly followed behind.

"Is that so? I’m really curious, then!" Eisen laughed out as he stepped back into the carriage and immediately walked over to the tube in the corner, one after another taking out the transformed materials.

All of them now had a Flame of the Earth twist to them, although you could still tell what each used to be.

For example, basically all of the wood that Eisen placed in there was basically completley petrified, but you could see a light glow of flames coming out from inbetween the tiny cracks that formed, especially on the pieces of wood that still had bark on them that Eisen placed inside just to see if it would make any difference.

The crystals and gems that were placed inside had turned into slightly colorful rock structures, somewhat like geodes. When Eisen cracked these geodes open, he managed to find the transformed materials that he would be using. Different crystal or gem structures that somehow still had the same effects as before, just took up different states. Some of them were slightly hot to the touch, while others were basically just like pretty, colorful pebbles.

And next, Eisen looked at the different metals, and found quite a surprise when he looked at the small chunks of silver that he placed inside. He had actually created a variation of mythril!

And it was a quite special variation as well. Mythril was silver that was transformed through large quantities of earth-elemental mana, and since Eisen’s element was, in part, also of the earth element, it changed the silver into something similar, but at the same time very different.

Since it was a magically transformed material, it was obviously quite good at conducting mana, and even more so since its base material was a great mana conductor in the first place, which was one of the two reasons why it was so valuable to many people.

The second reason came from the earth-elemental mana. As silver was such a great conductor for mana, it took in more of the pure earth-element than other metallic materials would, which is why it was a metal that was known for how shock-absorbant it was.

As such, it was a metal that was great for all kinds of things, tools, weapons, and armor alike. Because of that, it became an incredibly precious material in the overall world-economy, and one that was experimented with immsensely. One certain quality that they especially wanted to give mithril was that which fire gave the metal.

The fire version of mythril seemed to strengthen any and all contact made with it. That meant that if you had a wall of this flame-mythril and punched it with all your force, your ’attack’ would be sent out on the other side with about 120% strength to the original. That alone would be great already, if this was actually possible. This was simply a theory that people came up with, as silver seemed to take in a little bit too much of the raw element.

If you infused it with fire-element mana, the mythril would turn into a gas-like substance that was too hot to make physical contact with. If you infused it with the water-element, it would turn into a liquid, while it would simply disappear if you infused it with the air-element.

So, quite obviously, people began experiments to figure out ways to create a good combination between earth-element mythril and fire-element mythril. Alloying quite obviously wouldn’t work, so they began at what transformed the silver, the mana.

They tried to infuse silver with all kinds of elemental mana that they came across, but it was usually only the Lava-element or different variations of it. What they needed was an element that had the qualities of both the pure fire-element and the pure earth-element, but that was still a single combined element.

They knew that there were such elements, but they were quite rare, and as such, these experiments needed to be put on halt until the person with the right element was found, while at the same time agreeing to help with the creation of this new theoretical metal.

Well, quite coincidentally, this metal wasn’t just theoretical anymore.