Spending My Retirement In A Game

"You’re insane." Brody pointed out quite clearly, trying to sum up whatever could be said about this whole thing, and Eisen just slightly chuckled.

"Maybe I am, yeah." The old man replied, while he slowly turned toward Constant with a smile on his face. "Where exactly can I put all this water?" Eisen asked him, and Constant scratched the back of his head and thought about it for a moment. "Well, about a 100 meters further that way there’s a thin river, you could put it in there. Serio, would there be any flooding along that river?" The Core Helper asked the Guardian next to him, considering that Constant didn’t know everything about anything outside of this garden.

Slowly, Serio just nodded his head in response. "It should be fine, don’t worry." The Core Guardian replied, so Eisen nodded his head and started to create a tube to lead toward that pretty small river not too far away, it was just barely deep enough to touch Eisen’s knees, and the old man then quickly connected that tube to the loop and made the water flow into there, even if the water was moving along at quite a high speed now.

Either way, afterward, the old man moved on and made his way back to the others, before properly making sure that the loop disappeared.

And then, the old man cracked his knuckles in thought.

"Alright, now I just need to get Mining a bit higher, huh?" The old man muttered to himself, and then looked over toward the other Originals with a slight smile on his face.

"Is everone ready to leave again?" Eisen asked them, and the four swiftly nodded their heads, before Eisen turned toward Serio. "Can you quickly let everyone that wants to come back with us know about it as well?"

"Of course." The Town Core Guardian quickly replied, and then disappeared in a cloud of mist, before Eisen looked at Sigurd and Constant. "Now, we’ll go get some materials from the storage, and then we’ll leave for the Harbor again." The old man told them with a smile, while the other Originals, as well as Stahl, made their way toward the place where the Carriage was set-up at the moment, while Eisen started to explain his item-ideas to Constant.

"Oooh! So you want to make items that you will be able to always use from now on?" Constant asked curiously, and Eisen nodded his head in response. "Basically, yes. I want to first make sure that I can properly create actual Ego-Items that can grow through different ranks, and then I’m going to go ahead with those ideas. What else did I make with them in the past?" The old man asked, before the Helper scratched his chin in thought.

"Well, out of any cloth you got, you made high-tier clothes that you then gave out as presents or sell them to other people in any sort of business. Yang ones you would give to nobles you befriended, artists, and even a king, once. Yin clothes you would bring to Underground markets and have them sold off to the highest bidder. Ah, once there was an assassin you were acquainted with that you gave some of those to." Constant explained, and then continued to think about it more.

"When you got crystals, you used them as a basis for enchantments or potions, although I don’t know if any of them are still leftover anywhere, or what they even really do. As for the rare instances where you got Leather or even plants, you would go ahead and do smaller things with them, like turn them into leather-based outfits or bags, or turn them into potions. Although once, you and Master Jyuuk went to another Continent and planted Yang saplings in the Underdark, and Yin Saplings directly above there in the Forest Country above." Constant explained, and then he opened his eyes wide in response when he remembered something else.

"Then of course there’s the time that you got two ’Essence Drops’ and nothing else. I think you used them on two earth Lizard eggs. Although that was something that I only heard from you myself. I think that was the first time you tried to harvest ressources from Masses of Yin and Yang, nearly a hundred thousand years ago." The Core Helper pointed out, before Eisen raised his eyebrows, starting to just laugh loudly in response.

"Huh? What’s wrong?" Sigurd asked, both curious and worried about why Eisen suddenly started to laugh like this, and the old man shook his head with a smirk. "Nothing, nothing. But this practically just confirmed one of the things that I was trying to figure out really badly. Anyway, all kinds of things can appear through that, huh? Was there any time that a finished item appeared?" The old man asked, but Constant just shook his head in response.

"Nope, not realy. Well, all of them are processed somehow, meaning that they don’t just appear in their base state... Cloth needs to be woven as well, and metal ingots don’t grow on trees." The Helper pointed out, so Eisen slowly nodded his head.

"Fair enough. Do you know what actually happens when the masses are harvested, though? I mean..." Eisen started, thinking back onto when he was interacting with the Spatial gem that he enchanted a while ago. "It looks somewhat like some sort of sub-space, doesn’t it?"

"Yeah, you mentioned something about it before, but just in passing... I think it interacts with a Demonic Realm? But I don’t really know, sorry."

With a smile, Eisen shook his head, slowly stepping into the Workshop in front of him, before turning around toward his three monsters. "You three, go ahead and check up on the flower-fields that you were working on before." He suggested, and without hesitation, the three young monster children nodded their heads and rushed toward where that large open space was, and then, Constant, Sigurd, Fafnir and Eisen made their way down to the material storage, where Sigurd swiftly picked up all of the Yin and Yang ingots, as well as a few tools that seemed useful enough to Eisen.

And then, the old man himself simply made his way over to where some of the bottles and barrels were kept. He already took most of them with him, just because they were useful, but he wanted to see if he missed anything that might be useful here.

Especially these kinds of storage methods were useful to Eisen, considering that they would just be traveling around via carriage. Of course, they could probably store a lot of stuff inside of the Dungeon while it wasn’t used, but it would probably be used a lot soon. And on top of that, once Fafnir grew larger, the Gate would probably grow larger as well, so it might not actually be possible to just open the gate inside of the carriage mid-drive anymore at some point.

But sadly, Eisen didn’t really find anything that seemed to be able to help him out all that much, and just made his way back out of the material storage together with the others soon enough. Back in the actual Workshop, the old man once more went through all of the things that they had with them and that might be needed in the future, before scratching his cheek in thought.

"I’m not missing anything, am I?" The old man asked himself, and Constant tilted his head to the side with a slight smile. "Ah, that habit again?" The Helper asked and slightly laughed, before Eisen raised his brows surprised.

"What do you mean? Did I use to be pretty forgetful?" Eisen asked, but Constant simply shook his head. "No no, that’s not it, really. It was just so that whenever you were asking yourself if you forgot anything, you had everything you needed, and whenever you left thinking you really had everything without a doubt in your mind, you always forgot something. Mostly smaller things, but still. You just got distracted a lot back then, you were a busy man, after all. Still are, of course." Constant explained, so Eisen just slowly nodded his head with a slight smile.

"I see... Then let’s hope that still holds true, huh?" The old man laughed, stepping out of the workshop as he waited for the three monster children to come back to him, which they quickly did with each a small bouquet of flowers in-hand. Caria’s was Red and White, Melissa’s was Yellow and Black, and Sal’s was as colorful as it possibly could be, having just a bunch of random pretty-looking flowers bunched together.

"Oh, how pretty! Who are they for?" Eisen asked them, and without hesitation, the three young children pushed their hands forward and held the bouquets in front of the old man.

"For me?" The old man asked with a smile on his face, and the three quickly nodded their heads, so Eisen swiftly smiled at them and took the bouquets from them.

"How nice of you, thank you." He replied, and quickly looked at them before handing two of them over to Sigurd for a moment, while Constant was looking at the scene with a weirdly bitter expression. Of course, Sal and Melissa were shaken up at having their bouquets handed away, but they, and Constant as well apparently, were quickly surprised when Eisen just gave them to the Dungeon Core Guardian so that he would be able to properly grab some leftover threads from a pocket in his apron to tie it around each of the bouquets, so that they wouldn’t fall apart just like that. Of course, Eisen was carrying all three of them with a smile on his face.

"I’ll put them into some water later, thanks, you three." The old man told them, kneeling downward to rub over their heads with his hand, all three of them more than just ecstatic at how happy Eisen seemed to be, before Eisen noticed Constant’s almost shocked expression.

"Is everything alright?"

Surprised, Constant nodded his head in response to Eisen’s question, "Y-Yeah, everything is alright..." The Helper replied, so Eisen just slightly frowned and nodded his head in response.

"Alright, sure... Well, let’s get going now. Constant, you’re joining us on our way to the Carriage, right?" Eisen asked him, so Constant slowly nodded his head.

For the whole way back toward where the others had already all gathered, Eisen really just felt Constant’s direct stare at the back of his head. He didn’t necessarily want to ask Constant about it in front of everyone, so Eisen figured it could wait until after the Dungeon gate was set up and the first people were getting inside. It took everyone a little while for everyone to settle in for the drive, and during that time, Eisen quickly stepped over to the side with all of the Core Helpers and Guardians that Eisen knew from here already, meaning Serio, the Town Core Guardian, Ruth, the Guild Core Guardian, and then the Core Helpers Constant and Jard.

And then, with his arms crossed in front of his body and a slight smile on his face, Eisen looked at the four of them and asked a very simple question.

"What was I like before?"