Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen soon woke up in the game again, standing up with Caria and Melissa in his arms and Fafnir, who seemed to have climbed onto him while he was sleeping, on his shoulders, before making his way to the main deck almost immediately, because he was sure that Stahl wouldn’t be in a great mood and didn’t want him to do anything stupid.

And sure enough, he soon found the young man sprinting out the door onto the deck before pacing back and forth, mumbling to himself. The skeleton Sailors gave him a look or two, but other than that, nobody reacted all that much.

"...fucking shit... why wouldn’t he tell me about that..." Eisen heard him say as he got closer to the green-haired boy before the old man spoke up. "Stahl, are you alright?" He asked, and Stahl immediately snapped his neck in his direction and gave him something at the level of a death stare.

"Alright? No, I’m not fucking alright! You kept that shit secret from me too!" He yelled out, and Eisen slowly nodded his head.

"I did. And I know that you aren’t feeling happy about this, but no matter how much you hate your father right now, he hates himself even more. So don’t take it out on him, alright?" He said, and Stahl kept on frowning angrily.

"Well, what the fuck AM I supposed to do? I’m fucking pissed!" Stahl yelled out, and Eisen responded with a sigh. "Come on; I have an idea. Parc and Rouge should have gotten the sword and shield you wanted ready at this point. And I’m going to give you the leather armor I made for myself a while ago. We’re going to stop for the first time today, so while the Figurehead is put on the ship and the food and materials are put on the ship, we’re going out for a little while. Just you and me, hunting down some monsters. How does that sound?" The old man suggested, and Stahl nodded his head while keeping his frown up the whole time.

"Alright, good! Then get your stuff from Parc and Rouge, I’ll grab some potions and backpacks that we might need, and then we’ll meet at the same room we were in yesterday. We’ll only be getting to town in about half a day, so until then, I want to finish some parts for the Core Guardian."

After Eisen said this, he placed his palm, which was much larger than usual considering that Eisen was currently in his Titan-Form, onto the boy’s head. Stahl turned away quite quickly because he was still mad, but Eisen didn’t mind and just made his way to his workspace, as he ran into Kiron on the way, who swiftly accompanied him there.

Quite soon, Eisen then set Caria, Melissa, and Fafnir down next to the Half-Dragon, before Eisen took a look at the Blueprints, trying to use his ’Crafter’s Mind’ skill to somehow turn them into a proper, 3D construct that he could look at and reference. And after a little while, Eisen looked through all the parts and managed to split them up into each material and material type, and he figured out that he could just think about ’inspecting’ each element of that floating 3D construct and he would get any information about it that the Blueprints gave him.

For now, he wanted to start with the glass parts, because he wanted to get those parts figured out first, considering that it was some of the most complicated. Almost the whole ’Brain’ was made of glass, with dozens of different types of it included in the entire construct, none of them being a regular, basic glass. Some just needed a little bit of infused mana, while others required a specific, precise amount of base materials to be mixed into the glass, with many different effects for each one. Some were just mixed in by fuming the glass in a specific manner, and others also needed tiny enchantments covering their whole surface area. This Core Guardian was indeed an incredibly complex project that might take a good while to finish, but Eisen didn’t mind that. He was rather excited about it. Eisen didn’t exactly know where to start, because there didn’t seem to be any necessarily direct order for anything.

"I guess I’ll just start with the simple glass, huh?" He muttered to himself as he mixed a small number of materials for a single batch of regular glass together and poured it into the crucible that he made with his magic. And during the whole process, Eisen was continuously pouring a steady amount of Mana into the materials.

Once everything was molten down, the old man soon began to work with it, trying to make seriously tiny glass parts in the shapes that he was supposed to, and when the glass was slowly cooling down, Eisen noticed that the glass was just so slightly milky, meaning that it wasn’t completely transparent and see-through, which showed Eisen that he did everything correctly for this glass.

The small, hollow spiral which was a little bit of a pain to make was then placed into the annealer, and Eisen could relax a little bit. And around that time, Stahl and Alnico joined the group in the workspace as well. Stahl still had a pretty angry expression on his face, and Al was quite worried about her cousin, but in the end the two of them just sat down next to Kiron, Caria, Melissa and Fafnir, where Al swiftly started to play with the three latter.

From then on, Eisen spent a few hours merely mixing the different glass batches and creating the tiny parts, which he all placed somewhere safe so that they wouldn’t accidentally get broken. But then, Eisen ran into a little bit of a problem. He had about two-thirds of the glass parts for the brain done, but the rest required a material that Eisen didn’t have, a particular metal for the Fuming.

It seemed to pretty rare, and a material that was needed for a few other parts as well, but Eisen was quite unsure how to get it, simply because he never heard of it before. ’Margon.’ Due to the text that was describing the functions of the metal inside of the glass and other parts of the construction, he figured that it was some sort of magic metal, but he had simply never heard of it before.

"Kiron, do you know of a Magic Metal called ’Margon’?" He inquired with the half-dragon, who swiftly shook his head. "Sorry, I have never heard of it before," Kiron answered, so Eisen scratched the back of his head with a wry smile. "That’s fine, I need to find someone that can tell me the base material for it, and then we should be able to turn it into the magic version with the infuser. I’ll be back in a bit." Eisen told them and swiftly made his way out the door, in search for either the two Fey-Kin bundles of Knowledge or Xenia, who ’literally’ knew more about magic than anyone here.

Soon, he ran into Sky, who was quietly reading a book in a calm corner of the ship. With a smile, the Blue-Haired Fey-Kin boy stood up and looked up at Eisen, "Hey there!" He exclaimed in a bright, excited manner. For some reason, Sky was only like this when he was only interacting with Eisen or Bree, but when someone else joined in, he would become pretty cynical and annoyed with everything anyone said or even thought.

"Morning, Sky! I need your help with something. Have you ever heard of the Magic Metal ’Margon’?" He asked, and soon, Sky looked at him with surprise. "Margon? I mean, yeah I’ve heard of it. It’s a Magic Metal made of Maroon, but it’s an impossible metal, isn’t it?" He asked confused, and Eisen ended up sighing loudly.

Maroon, a metal that only existed in this game. It was one of the rarest metals in this world, and was specifically known for its property of being incredibly magic-resistant, so it truly was impossible to even think about turning it into a magic metal, because it simply rejected any kind of mana from any source.

"Are you sure?" Eisen asked, and Sky nodded without hesitation. "Yeah, I’m 100% sure! In the Magic Forest I grew up in, we had a pretty large amount of Maroon, but we could never use it because of its qualities. Fairies are known for their magic talent, after all, so any metal that any type of magic is useless against makes it pretty hard for us to use. But there was this story about a Knight that wielded a sword made of Margon, and he used it to slice through magic! Maroon just acts like Magic isn’t there at all. The Magic that bounces against it acts like normal, but nothing at all happens to the metal. But Margon basically makes the magic disappear, and in the story, the Knight could use the magic that he sliced through on his own with the sword as a conduit! But Margon can’t be made, so it was nothing but a story. I was actually trying to get my hands on the book, but I couldn’t find it anywhere..." Sky answered, but Eisen almost immediately shook his head to and fro.

"No, no, it can ’definitely’ be made... But I don’t know how..." He muttered to himself, and Sky looked at him, confused. "Huh, what do you mean it can definitely be made?"

"Ah, you know about the blueprints I have for the Core Guardian, right? Well, I need Margon for that. And because it was me that made those blueprints, I’m pretty sure they’re trustworthy and wouldn’t just have some random, non-existent metal on it." He answered, and Sky jumped up excitedly.

"Seriously?! We can actually make Margon?!" The Fey-Kin boy asked with a loud voice, and Eisen replied with a light chuckle. "I think so, yes. Let’s go and ask Xenia about it, and maybe she knows something. If she has heard of it, I’m sure she looked into why magic doesn’t work on it, and that might give us some hints about how to turn it into Margon." He answered and then made his way back up the stairs to the Meeting Hall, where the other Originals were also sleeping before, with Sky in tow, and he soon met Xenia there sketching out some theoretical magic circles.

And when she saw Eisen enter the room, she soon closed the book down and looked at the old man, noticing that he was looking for her. "Can I help you?" She asked with a smile, and Eisen immediately nodded his head.

"Yes, have you heard of Maroon before?" He inquired, and it seemed like Xenia didn’t need to think long before nodding her head. "Yup, I have. It’s that anti-magic metal, right? They had a little bit of it at the Mage’s Guild in Handor, and I was allowed to test a few things on it once. It was fascinating!" She exclaimed before Eisen nodded at her with a smile.

"I see, then would you maybe have any idea what it would take to infuse Maroon with magic to turn it into the Magic Metal Margon?" Eisen asked, but Xenia scratched her cheek for a while before seemingly remembering something.

"I mean, I’m not sure if that helps, but I did find out a few things then. When using any type of element on the metal, nothing happens, it doesn’t budge in the slightest, even magic that would usually be able to lift this ship. But when I tried using all six basic elements on it, it moved just the slightest, tiniest bit. Not much, and it might have just been the floor underneath it that gave in a bit, but I’m pretty sure that it moved because of the magic." She explained before Eisen slowly moved his fingers through his beard.

"All six elements, huh..?" He muttered to himself before coming up with a small plan. "It might be a waste of money and time, but it’s worth a try. Do either of you know where we can get Maroon?" Eisen asked Xenia and Sky, but both of them shook their heads.

"I don’t, sorry," Xenia said with a wry smile before Sky tilted his head to the side. "But what was the idea you got anyway?" Sky asked, and Eisen just smiled.

"I’m going to infuse Maroon with all six elements at the same time."