Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Wait, so... that was true? Seriously?" Evalia asked surprised, and Brody chuckled quietly in response and buried his face in his hands for a moment as if relieved, before sighing deeply and raising his head again with a smile on his face.

"Everything alright?" Eisen asked the Demon-Orc, who simply nodded his head. "Yup, everything’s perfect. I was kind of wondering if I’ll be able to really deal with this whole situation now that I’m becoming a Dad, but apparently there was nothing to worry about after all, huh? If I can manage tens of thousands of years single, I can manage another 60 years as a Dad." Brody smile softly, and while Eisen slowly moved his fingers through his beard, happy that Brody would be fine like this, Evalia spoke up as she was fiddling around with her own fingers underneath the table nervously.

"So... Now it’s a taken that this place is really another world..?" She asked, and Eisen looked around at the others at the table and slowly nodded his head. "I think it is, yes." He replied to her, before grasping the large cup of coffee in front of him a bit more tightly.

"For now, let me just explain why I wanted to speak here... Right now I was just testing if this place is really safe or not." Eisen started, and as the others seemed to grow more tense, the old man continued, "We didn’t really go into depth with it, but according to Serio and Ruth, it seems like we didn’t have our experience ’Stolen’, but instead ’Gave it up’." He said, and Serio immediately nodded his head in response.

"Yes, indeed. We don’t know much about it either, but when you left, that was the idea that you came up with. We don’t know any details, sorry." The Core Guardian pointed out bitterly, before Eisen just smiled at him.

"Don’t worry, I get it. But either way, now that we started speaking about a certain person again, I noticed that things don’t really add up." With a slight sigh, Eisen picked his cup of coffee back up and started to drink it again, and a few seconds later, Evalia slowly started to nod her head, seemingly understanding what he meant.

"Antonio told you that he was part of the people that stole our experience... And that he tricked us into having that done to us..." Evalia said, before Eisen nodded in response.

"Mhm, exactly. I think there are four plausible possibilities now. One, Antonio was trying to play himself up, and he wasn’t really that important in the whole ordeal. Two, he had his memories altered to think that’s what happened. Three, Antonio is somehow on our side and wants to play the bad guy to guide us, although I think that’s the least plausible one." Eisen pointed out, before Jyuuk slightly pressed his eyebrows together.

"And what’s the fourth possibility?" He asked, and Eisen just looked down at the table and started to tap it with his finger nervously, feeling like that idea is ridiculous, but at the same time would make sense.

"Four... Antonio is the Avatar of someone from Prime." Eisen told them, "And if that one is right, it might be..." He started, "Samuel."

"Samuel? What do you mean? What does he have to do with it?" Xenia asked nervously, seemingly in disbelief over that idea, and Eisen just nodded his head. "Obviously Samuel is pulling the strings here... Or at the very least, he’s there on the surface. There might be someone else above him, but Samuel became the ’father of the great goddess’, giving him enough power to control the actions of the gods. Some gods are seemingly distrusting of him, but luckily we have someone from that side with us now. And-"

Slowly, Eisen stopped speaking, because he noticed that the others were grasping their heads in pain, while trying not to lose their balance on their chair. And Eisen slowly understood what exactly that seemed to be.

"Ah, perfect. The red notifications, huh?" The old man asked, and the others looked at him surprised, seemingly really starting to see them in the corner of their sight now.

"Well, then you’ll need to know something about that, you see?" Eisen started, just smiling at them as he did so, "When you can start moving the notifications around like normal ones, you will start to feel pain in here again." He explained, and the others stared at him confused.

"Wait, what?!" Jyuuk asked, "You’ve been feeling regular pain again? Since when?" He asked, and Eisen closed his eyes in thought. "I would say a couple of days after ripping my arm off for the mass of Yang." The old man pointed out with a slight chuckle, and then slowly shook his head.

"But that doesn’t matter now. There are potions that dull pain receptors for a while, I can make them for you if you want." The old man said, and leaned back into his chair with a sigh.

"Although, now that I think about it... I should have noticed earlier that stuff is inconsistent." He muttered, making the others once more look at him confused.

"What do you mean?" They asked him, before Eisen just explained a few of the things that he meant.

"Let’s just start with that potion in itself. Why does such a potion exist if we don’t feel pain? Sure, for the ’NPCs’, maybe, but if this was a game, the NPCs wouldn’t feel pain either. Then, there is how we were told that we weren’t allowed to cause major physical or mental injuiries at the level of torture to others, but considering the existence of Slave Collars and what happened in Handor with the curses on my arm, I would say that rule isn’t taken all that seriously at the very least. And of course, there then is combat, where we are supposed to mindlessly kill any monsters that come across our path." Eisen pointed out to them, and slowly, the others seemed to also realize that some of the things they saw in the past were really weird to even exist here.

"B-But then what about stuff like our clothes that shrink or grow to fit us perfectly? We don’t need to take any shits or piss, and we never get seriously dirty! What’s with that then?" Brody asked, seemingly getting somewhat riled up at the idea of all of this, and before Eisen could reply, Serio spoke up.

"Oh, that is the God of Comfort’s doing, isn’t it? I don’t truly know why or how, but he is one of the mightiest gods in that he can actually affect our realm directly like that. It seems like a couple thousand years ago, those things you mentioned weren’t like they were now, and then the God of Comfort gained a bit more power." Serio pointed out, and while grinding his teeth annoyedly, the Demon-Orc just hit the table.

"What the fuck is going on here?!" Brody exclaimed angrily, before Eisen tried to calm him down.

"Don’t worry, we’re going to find out." The old man said with a slight smile, before swiftly moving onto a sligthly different topic again, just to give the other four here some time to think about everything properly.

"For now, let’s leave it at here. Now that you have the red notifications, you should all be able to hold on to your thoughts properly. Is there anything you four want to speak about?" Eisen asked them as he slowly stood up, but the others simply shook their heads in response, before the old man himself just smiled.

"Then let’s get out of here and go for a walk, alright? I wanted to get to the fields anyway, and with Jyuuk’s help, maybe I can level my skill up a bit faster." The old man chuckled as he made his way back over toward the platform that they could leave this room with like an elevator, and the other Originals silently stood up and followed him.

Seems like they were still really confused and weirded out about everything, but of course they were. How couldn’t they be? Even Eisen wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to think about all of this.

So for now, it made sense to take their minds off of all of this by doing some leisure farming, at least that’s what Eisen himself was thinking. The others, however, seemed to have a different idea of what each of them wanted to do.

Slowly, as the platform was lowering itself down, Brody spoke up first. "I... I think I’ll just sit down in the carriage and log off for a while... I kind of wanna just see my wife right now." The Demon-Orc pointed out, and Xenia and Jyuuk also nodded their heads.

"We’ll head somewhere alone for a little while as well... Just to think. Sorry that I can’t really help you out after all..." Jyuuk said, trying to look at Xenia for confirmation, which he swiftly got in the form of a nod.

So in the end, only Eisen and Evalia were left, and were swiftly led out of the castle, through the town, and toward the area meant for all the fields. There, a small area of green could be seen while being slowly cut down, and the two Originals quickly made their way there, because that’s exactly where Stahl seemed to be, and when the young man saw them, he quickly took a break and rushed over toward them, although Evalia seemed somewhat surprised at the fact that he was working while shirtless.

"Pretty hot day today, huh?" Eisen asked with a laugh, and Stahl immediately nodded his head. "Yup, it’s the middle of summer in here as well right now, isn’t it?" The young man asked as he just slightly smiled at Evalia, before Eisen quickly had Sigurd grab some pieces of metal and some wood from the Dungeon, before creating a forge real quick.

"Huh, what are you doing?" Stahl asked pretty curiously, and the old man started to laugh. "What, did you think I’d be plowing this whole field by hand with a Hoe?" Eisen asked, and now not only Stahl was curious about what he was making.

And before they knew it, Eisen created a dozen large pick-like long pieces of metal, just so slightly bent, before he quickly changed the forge to a table where he got to work on carving wood into proper shape for what he wanted to do, and Stahl just looked at him jealously at how quickly he was able to do all of that.

But soon enough, Eisen created a long wooden bar with a dozen small pieces attached to it, where Eisen swiftly placed the pick-like metal pieces, before he moved onto making two moveable bars with parts that could latch onto each other, specifically rounded so that they could be properly held or put in front of someone’s body. So now, the others were slowly realizing what Eisen was making for himself.

And for a little while, Eisen just carved some simple enchantments into the metal parts to make burrowing through the dirt easier. Before the old man quickly brought this large tool over toward the area where he would start his own field-work, quickly putting the rounded wooden bars in front of his body, and then, of course with his size fully increased, started to pull this Eisen-Powered Plow forward.

"Grampa, are you actually being serious right now?" Stahl asked with a wry smile, as he ran up next to the old man, who just nodded his head with a laugh. "Mhm, why shouldn’t I be? This gives me a lot more proficiency than I could get in this same amount of time, and I can cover a far larger area in total. It just makes sense, doesn’t it?" The old man pointed out, and Stahl slowly nodded his head. But in the end, Stahl had a little, fun idea.

"Gramps, you mind if I stream you doing all this?"