Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Now then, what exactly is going to be my trial this time around?" Eisen asked curiously, and Marcear the Silver Dragoness slowly turned toward him with a light smile as she tried to properly gather her thoughts about what was just revealed to her.

"Originally, it would have been a trial to make you search for the truth, a riddle of sort once more. This cave is filled with quite a lot of natural mana, you see? And the type of mana is one of mystery and deception, so it is the perfect place for such a trial. But as I am aware that such things seem to be quite useless against you now, with those damned golden eyes, I will give you an alternate trial... One that is more related to my Gift." She explained with a light smile on his face as she led the group through the cave system, and Eisen raised his brows curiously.

"And what is your gift, if I’m allowed to ask?" The old man inquired, and the Dragoness slowly turned back around and smirked at him, "Let’s keep that a bit of a secret for now. Although it shouldn’t be too tough to guess what it is when you receive my trial, but let’s see about that." Marcear replied, so Eisen nodded his head with a smile, before the Dragoness led the group into a large, empty cavern, and then stood in the center of the space.

"Please, it would be good for you to stand back and stay there, if possible. I will require the space of this whole room to create the trial." She explained, so Eisen nodded his head and then just leaned against the wall, summoning his staff to create a place where the others could sit down for now. They’ve all been walking for quite a while, after all.

Over the next little while, roughly two hours to be exact, Marcear created numerous Magic Circles all around the room, layering them and putting them into combinations that Eisen thought to be insane and practically impossible if you weren’t one of the most skilled Sorcerers there were in this world. Although, for the most part, Eisen really tried his best not to pay attention to what she was doing.

The test was most likely related to reading these Magic Circles, so Eisen didn’t want to needlessly cheat by reading and decyphering them before the trial even started. Soon after she was done, Marcear returned to her Humanoid form and then walked back up to Eisen with her hands interlocked behind her back.

"Now, everything is ready. But be aware, just because I know you are somehow related to our King, although I am somewhat doubtful about whether your identity as the first that reached the top of this world is truthful, this does not mean that this trial is any less dangerous than it would be if you were anyone else." Marcear explained and then slowly turned around, to the giant array of Magic Circles behind her, with many of them simply floating in the air, connected to the others.

"Your trial is to unwrap these Magic Circles. I am not sure if you are aware, but by infusing a Magic Circle not created by yourself with your own mana, you can slowly take it apart as long as you know the right method. Basically, you are taking control of the Magic." Marcear explained, "It would usually be impossible to do, as you can only do such a thing with a finished magic circle, and those would be activated immediately in any other situation... But in this case, that is the trial you have to pass." The Dragoness explained to Eisen, before a notification popped up in front of him.

[New Quest - Ancient Silver Dragoness’ Trial]

[Description] The Ancient Silver Dragoness Marcear has given you a personalized trial to become her champion. Correctly unwrap the the complex array of Magic Circles to pass, or you will face a heavy backlash.

[Reward] Title, Marcear’s Gift

[Failure] You will not be able to take any more of the Dragons’ Trials

[Time-Limit] 24 Hours

"Oh?" Eisen asked surprised as he read through the Quest notification, slowly looking at Marcear with a smile. "You really want to give me 24 Hours for this?" Eisen asked, slowly looking over at the Magic Circle array, trying to figure out if that was a realistic amount of time or not.

In response, the Dragoness simply nodded her head. "I would say a full day may even be too little time. But for someone as great as you claim to be, it must be achievable, is that not so?" Marcear asked, before Eisen just slowly grinned in response and nodded his head.

"Sure, I’ll just have to try my best then, isn’t that right?" Eisen answered with a slight laugh, and swiftly stepped up to the Magic Circle array covering nearly the whole space of the room, starting to read the runes that were written in them, just walking around the room to see if there were any differences between them. And just a couple of minutes or so later, he just laughed loudly.

"Oh, okay, so most of these won’t even have a direct effect?" The old man asked with a light smile and turned around toward Marcear, who was more than just surprised. "You found that out this quickly..? Were you not a craftsman?" She asked, and Eisen nodded his head in response.

"Mhm, so what? I’m good at comprehending what I see, it’s a big reason as to why I even got this skilled." Eisen pointed out, and then quickly stood in front of any random one of these magic circles. In the end, while they all looked vastly different with numerous different processes and shapes to each and every one of them, they all had the same functionality. They were each connected to a number of other Magic Circles and had something like an ’order’ to them. The order at which the connected magic circles had to be deactivated, so that the current Magic Circle itself could be safely ’unwrapped’.

And because each connected Magic Circle had numerous other connections to them, it really was rather complicated to choose the right order for things, because some magic circles were needed as unlock-conditions for multiple different magic circles, meaning that there was something like a specific order to each and every one of these magic circles, all leading down to a single one that had to be unwrapped first, and that was actually rather tough to find... Or at least it would be, if Eisen didn’t have his Visualization that helped him map all of this out in a way that let him deduce the order very easily. And the skill itself even supported that deduction, because it took care of some parts that Eisen marked on its own, so the old man was really quite happy about that.

"Hmm... I see... So to unlock the first layer, it’s going to have to start... here." The old man muttered quietly as he placed his hand onto the first Magic Circle and pushed his mana inside, slowly starting to unwrap it. It was surprisingly tough to do so... But in the end, as long as Eisen could properly understand the magic circle first, he could basically use his own mana to split it up into its simplest parts and then take those parts away from most complex to simplest.

And when Eisen finished that and opened his eyes, he saw that the Magic Circle had really disappeared. This seemed to be a basic ability of Sorcery, so this would probably help Eisen level that skill up a fair bit now... "Hmm, does Xenia know about this?" Eisen wondered curiously as he quickly rushed around the Magic Circle array and then started unwrapping the second magic circle.

And then the third, the fourth, and even the fifth. With each of them, the magic circle became more complicated to unwrap, even if they didn’t necessarily look much worse than the others from the outside. But when actually trying to do all of this, it was rather annoying. "Haah... Five out of 132..." The old man sighed slightly, and quickly continued on unwrapping magic circle after magic circle, the giant array slowly getting smaller and smaller as the first ’Layer’ was properly being taken apart at a speed that Marcear couldn’t really comprehend.

Well, of course she would have been able to solve something like this within an hour at most, but this man here was merely a little over level 200..! And he didn’t even have a Mage-Type Occupation, so this was honestly just insane and something that shouldn’t normally be possible.

"Is he truly..?" She muttered quietly, slowly starting to actually believe what she was told before, and next to her, Caria, Melissa and Sal quickly started to chuckle. "Of course, of course! What do you expect from him? He’s really awesome, isn’t he?" Caria pointed out excitedly, and both Sal and Melissa nodded their heads in response, before Marcear took a closer look at these three children.

"Could you three possibly be... Monsters..? Hmm, from what I can tell, you should be from the Myconid, Antophila, and Arachnid families..." Marcear asked as she took a closer look at them, while the three monster children just nodded their heads in response. That was right, after all.

"Did you gain abilities to transform yourself into a humanoid form, much like us Dragons?" Marcear asked curiously, but now, they shook their heads.

"Nope, these are just our bodies. Evolved to look this way." Sal explained, before Marcear raised her brows surprised. "Myconids are humanoid in nature, so it may not be too surprising to see a high-ranking one in such a form... But you two are not meant to look like this in the slightest, are you? And your ranks are quite... low, at least compared to what I mean with ’high-ranking’." Marcear muttered quietly, and Melissa just smiled brightly.

"Hehe, all because of Eisen!" She exclaimed, and Marcear slowly nodded her head as she looked at the old man who was unwrapping all of these Magic Circles as easily as if they were balls of yarn, "Is that so..?" She asked, utterly astonished, while Eisen himself just continued working on the task of this trial.

Over the next few hours, all of this was just really repetitive business, and soon Eisen managed to get rid of the last, insanely complex, magic circle of the first layer. Well, it was the first layer of a total of three, so it wasn’t necessarily that big a deal just yet.

While cracking his knuckles, Eisen started to make his way around this new layer to see if there were any major differences, and then soon saw that exactly that was the case. "Really? Now I will be attacked while I unwrap them?" The old man asked with a wry smile, and Marcear slowly chuckled.

"Of course. It isn’t impossible to implant defenses into a Magic circle like that. You’ve done well so far, so keep doing your best." She said, so Eisen slowly sighed and nodded his head as he started to try and read all of these magic circles to try and figure the system of this layer out properly.