Spending My Retirement In A Game

For the next hour, Fluke simply led the group further along the road, and Eisen seemed to have found someone else to speak about the creation of items with.

"Hmm, interesting, so you used gears connected to a rotary device around the core so that the different body parts can be used with more power?" Fluke asked curiously after Eisen told him about his two Automata, who were waiting on the ship, and the old man nodded his head in reply.

"Yes, although I did also create Mana-Crystal Musculature for them to support that type of movement even more, and to properly make sure they can’t move in unusual ways." Eisen replied, and Fluke instantly nodded while crossing his arms.

"Yeah, I did something similar with my big guy here. Due to the Golem Cores, they’re able to control every part of their body properly, right? But I found that when their body itself doesn’t hold them back from moving in a certain way, Golems have the habit of using the most ’convenient’ type of movement to fulfill the task at hand, ignoring that it might damage their body or what’s placed inside." Fluke said with a deep sigh, and Eisen slowly took one of his boxes, which he had placed into his large front-pocket now, because it was about as large as his backpack when he was in this increased size, wearing his large outfit.

"I have a few golems with me right now, and what I did was basically create something similar to musculature out of Mana-Thread." Eisen pointed out, swiftly taking Tank out of his box, simply because he was the one whose box Eisen grabbed first, "I’m not sure if you can see it, but if you take a look between here, you should see a slight glow inbetween the joint and the rest of the limb." The old man explained, slightly turning Tank’s elbow to expose the joint to Fluke, who opened his eyes wide in surprise.

"Damn, how’d you get your hands on Mana-Thread? Can that little spider guy make it? Ah, and you created enchanted joints to keep its body together, huh? I simply connected the joints of my big guy here to the limbs the regular way. But a magnetism enchantment is a pretty good idea, even if pretty mana-intensive. Since it’s probably a combat golem, that should make it easier to switch out damaged parts though..." Fluke muttered out as he leaned in, before noticing something else that he didn’t pay attention to yet, just because Tank was so large.

"Huh, you made a golem inspired by the Great Golems? I’ve gotta admit, it looks nearly exactly like the real thing." The Warforged said surprised as he rubbed his chin, and Eisen nodded his head in surprise, "Yeah, that’s exactly it. And what do you mean by ’Nearly exactly like the real thing’? Did you meet any of them?" Eisen asked, but Fluke just shook his head.

"Well, not exactly. But the ruins we’re heading to are their ’Resting Place’. I don’t know what exactly happened, but they apparently their Cores were slowly starting to break down, so they came here to spend the rest of their time, settled in that building, and then... Yeah. Not too long ago, it seemed like even their statues gave in, though." Fluke pointed out, before Eisen raised his brows and quickly placed Tank back into the box.

"Again, what do you mean? What statues?" Eisen asked, but Fluke just scratched the back of his neck and shrugged. "Just take a look for yourself, we’re here." The Warforged explained and pointed forward, toward a place that seemed basically like just a hole in the wall of a cliff that the road was leading to.

"I’ve turned that place into my base ever since I got to this island, and I found some pretty precious stuff in there as well, so I barricaded the entrance with another construction of mine." Fluke explained, and as the group finally reached the place they were heading to, the Warforged Tinkerer placed his hand onto the wall, before twisting his hand around, causing a circular split in the wall to appear, twisting around together with Fluke’s hand.

And before Eisen knew it, the rock covering the wall crumbled down and revealed a completely metallic door, which slowly began to fold down into itself, before just turning into a cube at Fluke’s feet.

"Come in." Fluke told them with a light smile and swiftly stepped through into the space beyond there, and Eisen could immediately tell that Fluke wasn’t lying in the slightest. There were numerous mechanical creations, some finished and others very far from being finished, laying on the floor, there was a pile of shattered Golem Cores in one corner, while next to that there were a few different precious materials such as Gold, Silver, different Gems, and so on.

And right on the other side of the door that they just stepped through were five piles of rubble. "There they are. Three of them shattered basically at the same time, and the other two shattered a day later. I tried to clean up a bit, but the materials used to create the statues were compressed an insane amount, and I somehow wasn’t able to decompress them in the slightest. In the end I managed to move them around a little bit with a piece of high-pressure machinery, but even that broke after a few minutes." Fluke explained, before swiftly turning toward the group in front of him while crossing his arms.

"Now then, why exactly did you want to come here?" Fluke asked, but Eisen just slowly moved his fingers through his beard, "We were hoping to be able to find any clues to the whereabouts of the Great Golems." The old man explained, using his Mana-Sight to try and find any hidden mechanisms, although he found something very different. In the middle of each pile was an incredibly dense mass of mana, so Eisen was more than just curious, stepping up to the pile closest to him.

"Well, my guess is they created those statues of themselves and then placed their own Golem Cores into their hands. Each of them was holding their left arm forward, and their hand seemed like it was supposed to be holding something. The Cores probably shattered and then just... disappeared." Fluke explained, and Eisen slowly turned around and looked at the Paladin Half-Dragon, who was given the task to check every tiniest thing that Fluke was saying to see whether he was telling the truth or not, and after the Paladin nodded his head toward the old man, Eisen just sighed.

"Well, let’s just see about that." He said and placed his hand on the pile of rubble made completely of heavily-compressed rock, just like Fluke said. "I just told you, they’re impossible to move. Not only are they way to heavy because they’re compressed, they’re also item-protected. As if they have an insane requirement placed on them. Not many people can place requirements on simple rocks, let me tell you that."

With a sligh chuckle, Eisen shook his head in response, and then simply picked the first rock up with ease. "These aren’t simple rocks. In the very end, these were probably the bodies of the Great Golems. And the rock may be heavy, but they’re not as heavy as you think they are. The requirements are insane though, and that’s because these are part of a Divine Quality item." Eisen said with a simple smirk, burying through the pile, "The requirement placed on these was probably something like ’Have your racial skill at most at Rank 0, level 1’. Or ’Kill a God’. Or maybe even, ’Pick me up’. Something that’s practically impossible to do because it’s impossible not to level your racial skill up just by living. Or because you can’t kill a god. Or simply, because it’s a paradox." Eisen explained, before swiftly picking up the tiny sphere in the center of the pile, surrounded by another layer of rock, which Eisen managed to quite easily remove.

"How do you know that? I couldn’t even appraise any of them." Fluke said with a frown, "And if that was true, you couldn’t pick them up either."

But in the end, Eisen just sighed while the group behind him looked at the old man with a curious expression, rather than that of a person currently listening to a crazy old man ramble on, like Fluke figured what would happen.

"It’s easy, isn’t it? Out of every person on this world, there’s always one person that can use an item no matter how insane the requirements are." Eisen said with a smile, and then took a closer look at the item in his hand.

[Artificial Soul Stone][Great Golem - Tank][Rank - 10]

With a smirk on his face, Eisen swiftly went around the other piles of rock and swiftly pushed them to the side to look for the other Soul Stones that were in there and soon enough, he had the souls of all five of the Great Golems in his possession, and Eisen couldn’t help himself but just start laughing slightly, while Fluke was trying to figure out what exactly was going on, until he remembered what this Giant old man said before.

"Holy Fuck- You weren’t joking! You created the Great Golems, so you also-" He exclaimed confused and looked around himself immediately before sprinting to the other side of the room as fast as he could, quickly sitting down in front of a table there, before a small part of his index finger opened up and dropped a small needle out of it, although it was still connected to the finger. And before everyone knew it, the needle began glowing due to heat, and Fluke began fiddling with an item in front of him using that needle.

In the meantime, while everyone was more confused about what Fluke was doing than what the old man just found, Caria, Melissa and Sal curiously stepped up to the old man, trying to take a look at what was happening there.

"Pretty rocks!" Melissa exclaimed, but Eisen chuckled in response and shook his head, kneeling down in front of the three of them. Eisen was kind of sad that none of them ended up ranking up after all, but both Caria and Melissa were at Rank 3, level 99 and seemed to need to fulfill some kind of requirement to rank up, while Sal was still a few levels away from becoming Rank 2.

"These aren’t just rocks. With these, we can bring back some really amazing people. Even more reason to bring my level up as quickly as possible to get the Ego-Item Creation skill." Eisen laughed, before swiftly stashing these soul stones away in his front pocket, which seemed to be the safest place to the old man right now.

"Now then, let’s-" Eisen started to say, but before he knew it, Fluke finished what he was working on and sprinted back toward Eisen with it, immediately activating it in front of him. And what that item did was quite simple. The one meter by one meter cube split up into about 25 smaller cubes, each of which quickly turned into a small bug-like creature, which then started to crawl all over Eisen’s body, over each and every part of his body.

"Fluke, what are you doing?" Eisen asked with a wry smile, trying not to accidentally crush one of them, and Fluke just started grinning. "You think I’m letting the chance pass to inspect an immortal being’s body? Right..." The warforged replied with a smirk on his face, curiously watching the small mechanical bugs crawl over the old man’s body.

"Erm, what exactly did you say you came to this island for?" Eisen inquired confused, and Fluke crossed his, mostly mechanical, arms, "I’m trying to become the perfect combination of something that lives, and a Machine. You’re the one that can help me achieve both, with your body!"