Spending My Retirement In A Game

With slow and calm steps, the old Demon made his way toward the Orcs that were following the players, swiftly swinging his blade around horizontally right above the players’ heads toward the nearest Orc’s neck, slicing right through it without even that much resistance to it this time around.

And so, the Orc’s body simply fell to the ground while the head was flung away, landing right in front of the feet of the other Orcs. With a single swing of his sword, Eisen then swiftly got rid of the blood that was left on his large Demonic Sword and then placed the tip of it into the ground as he smirked at the Orcs, the dark flames from underneath the cracks of his skin spiking up momentarily while all of the pig-like monsters were stopping thier pursuit.

"Run." The old man said in a deep, loud voice, and immediately the monsters did as suggested, turning as fast as they could to get away from Eisen. The only one that was left was the one Rank 4 Orc, even though even he seemed quite nervous when faced with this terrifying being.

With a loud squeal, the Orc swung his blade toward Eisen who simply had to take a step back to avoid it, the same with the attack after that and the one after that one. Again and again, Eisen simply avoided this monster’s attacks, before the old man got rather bored with this.

"Let’s just finish this one, then." He said, with a wink directed at the three players, before swinging the sword in his hands downward directly onto the Orc’s front, slicing deep into its large belly and basically splitting its face up in two.

And then, Eisen just placed the blade into the center of the Orc’s chest and pushed through, making him feel the resistance of the Mana Crystal. With another quick push, Eisen then caused a loud crack to sound out as he pressed the Mana Crystal out of the Monster’s back, breaking its spine as he was at it.

Just out of curiosity, Eisen checked up on the sword in his hand and noticed that the two Nuclei properly combined with the help of the experience this Orc had given them, although it seemed to have only been enough to bring it from Level 0 to Level 1. Technically a monster like this should have been able to give the Ego Sword a bunch more levels, but maybe the initial step from Level 0 to Level 1 took a fair bit more?

Maybe Eisen should kill a few more Orcs just to actually confirm whether that theory was correct or not, but just as the old man was moving his fingers through his rock-beard, he noticed something hitting the side of his head.

It wasn’t enough to penetrate his skin, and it just barely did any damage to him at all, but that was expected from an arrow shot by such a low-level Archer.

"Now, now, is that the proper way to thank me after I saved you?" Eisen asked with a deep sigh, while the Mage and Warrior were staring at the Archer in disbelief that he actually did something that idiotic.

But Eisen didn’t really mind all that much. Considering his current appearance, something like that was to be expected, after all. What he was more curious about was the state of these guys’ weapons. They were all incredibly rudimentary and mostly broken down, and the Warrior’s sword and shield were even quite rusted and dented, as if they just picked them up somewhere.

With a slight frown, Eisen squatted down in front of them and took a closer look. The Players themselves were a bit too nervous to even move at all, which worked in the old man’s favor as he inspected all of the weapons, making him stare at the three with pure disgust.

"Don’t tell me you just picked these items up from monsters you beat..." The old Demon asked, placing his hand into his face in disappointment while his wings were tensing up out of annoyance. Especially, when the Warrior spoke up.

"W-We did... Is... Is that not what you’re supposed to do? Use Monster Drops?" The Warrior asked, and Eisen just ground his teeth and shook his head, extending his hand forward.

"Give those to me." He said rather annoyedly as he sat down on the ground cross-legged. The Players were confused, but soon enough, the Wizard did as told, seemingly because he just wanted to get this over with. He was obviously expecting to have this weapon just taken away from him, although he was more than just surprised at what actually happened.

Eisen placed the sword down next to him, not worried at having it taken away at all, considering the stat requirements on it as well as the general, raw weight of the item, and then shifted his Demonic Transformation over toward the Yang side as he grabbed his Multitool from his Apron, swiftly pulling off the ’outer layer’ to get to the knife bit.

The boys were obviously confused at what was happening, especially what was going on when this Demon pushed his hand under his apron for a little while and fiddled around with something on his chest, but Eisen didn’t pay attention to them.

"You have a focus? Sorcery or Mana Manipulation?" The old man asked as he looked at the Mage, who looked back surprised and then swallowed deeply. "S-Sorcery?" He asked, and Eisen just stared back at him and sighed.

"That a question or your answer?" He asked as he started to carve over the surface of the Staff to change its shape into a more refined state while exposing and opening up broken or rotten parts, the latter of which he swiftly scooped out with the tip of the Knife.

"My... My Answer!" The player replied, so the old man nodded his head. "Good. But work on Mana Manipulation as well, all of you. Maybe wait until you’re maybe around Level 80 or 90, or maybe even until you’re above level 100 if you can, but bring that skill to Rank 2 and you will gain an incredibly useful element. You won’t be able to get far in this world without it." The old man explained as he reached for the mana crystal he just pushed out of the Rank 4 Orc’s body, cleaned it up real quick, and then used it to replace some of the different parts that Eisen had to remove, while filling in general gaps in the whole thing before he handed it back to the Player.

"Once you can afford it, get a proper staff made of something like Wizard’s Oak, it’s a strong and basic material. This one here is basically regular wood, won’t do you any good in the long run." The old man explained as he looked at the other two players, of which the Archer swiftly handed Eisen his bow.

"Well then, I’m surprised. This bow is completely unbalanced, but you managed to hit your target anyway. If you weren’t this rude, you might actually end up a quite skilled, popular Archer." The Demon chuckled as he pulled on the bow a few times to just test how it bent and then carved over the back of the Bow a little in different parts to fix some of the issues with it, before swiftly snapping and removing the string to replace it with some nice mana-crystal thread that he spun with the spinnerets in his Apron’s chest-pocket.

And then, the old man simply handed it back and waited for the sword and shield from the Warrior, which he reluctantly handed over. Immediately, Eisen started to just remove all of the rust and dents, and then sharpened the edges again with a handheld grindstone he had with him.

Like that, a little while later, Eisen was done with the basic ’repairs’ of these trash items.

"Now then." Eisen exclaimed as the players were looking at the re-worked items with surprised expressions as the old man crossed his arms, "I suggest you all go back to town and learn crafting skills. Warrior, you learn Blacksmithing. Archer, you Woodworking. And you, Mage, Enchanting. Those are the ones you NEED to know in my opinion, just to make basic improvements and care for your items properly. And help each other out however you can as well. So Warrior, you make arrowheads for the Archer, Archer, you make handles for the Warrior and staffs or wands for the Mage. And Mage, you enchant the other guys’ weapons properly. And learn some communication and tactics as well, if you can." The old man explained quite swiftly as he stood up and patted the dirt and dust off his pants and placed his Multitool, which had managed to level up to 9 with this little amount of work, back together and into his Apron, before he turned around with a slight sigh, his sword back in his hand.

But just when Eisen just wanted to leave, one of the players yelled after him. "Wh-Who are you?" The Warrior asked nervously, and the old man just turned around and smirked. "Just a humble Craftsman, bud."

And so, feeling goosebumps all over his body in response to being appraised three times, the old man chuckled and left, using his wings to properly propell him forward in a new manner.

He jumped up into the air as strongly as he could and propelled himself in his fully increased size where his wings were huge, and then shrunk down to as little a size as he could handle and enjoyed his quite light body being propelled forward as he used his wings to just keep gliding pretty far.

Soon enough, the old man made his way back into sight of the carriage, although it seemed like there were some problems there. Eisen should have realized it when meeting those other players just now, but this place was surely close to a starter town, so it had to be swarming with players.

And as he left the carriage alone with two people that looked like children with bright colored hair as well as a large horse that, at first glance, looks like its made of gold... That could probably invite some trouble. Which seemed to be exactly what happened.

"Come on, I just want to hitch a ride! Can’t be too much to ask, can it?" One of the players asked, while Eisen chose to just watch from inbetween some bushes until it escalated, just because he wanted to see what exactly would happen. He would never let anything happen to Sky or Bree, obviously, he just really needed to see how regular players would act in this kind of place. Players that weren’t specially chosen by Prime Industries.

"Sorry, we can’t do that! But if you follow this road, you can get to a pretty large town in just a few hours if you want to!" Bree exclaimed with a bright smile. This didn’t seem all that useful an information to the players at that moment, but it seemed like Bree was slightly panicking in the back of her head as well.

"Listen, Kid, I don’t like your attitude." A young woman exclaimed, her character’s appearance obviously completely built to look as attractive and noticeable as possible, but Sky just ground his teeth and stared at back at her. "And I don’t like yours, so get away now, please. We don’t want any problems, just leave us alone and do your own thing."

With a slow sigh, the player that spoke first shook his head from left to right and then pulled out a small knife. "Then I guess we need to deal with it this way, huh?"

Immediately, Eisen just closed his eyes in embarrassment at the intelligence of this man. Eisen checked, he didn’t even have an occupation yet... And Sky and Bree were both close to Level 200. The other player had an occupation, but she was only level 10 right now.

This was more than just embarrassing, but he figured he should just let this happen for now. Sky was pretty pissed off at those two, so Eisen thought it would be a good idea for the Fey-Kin to let off some steam.