Spending My Retirement In A Game

The old man looked at the notifications in front of him, smiling as he waved them away. Immediately, they were replaced by new notifications.

[Level Up Quest Complete – Road to 300]

[Description] You have reached level 299 and as such, have gained the right to work toward reaching level 300. These are your requirements as calculated by your actions so far:

-Blacksmithing, Tailoring, Leatherworking, Enchanting and Alchemy Skills at Rank 5 (true)

-Racial Skills at Rank 5 (true)

-Occupation Skill Crafting Space at Rank 5, Crafter’s Mind at Rank 4, Ego-Item Creation at rank 3 (true)

-Mana Manipulation, Flame of the Earth Magic at Rank 5; Mana double, mana copy at Rank 4 (true)

-Woodworking, Cooking, Drawing, Tool Connection, Soul Engineering, Farming, Mining, Masonry, Woodcutting Skills at Rank 4 (true)

-All Draconic Gifts at rank 4(true)

-Become a King(true)

-Spend a total of 3 days in flight (true)

[Reward] Level increased to 300

[Failure] Not possible

---

[You are now level 300]

[Congratulations! You reached level 300 and have now gained a new occupation skill!]

[Item Combination Skill learned]

---

[Your occupation upgrade will now proceed]

[Your occupation is now \u003cGodly Craftsmaster\u003e]

[Your occupation skill Crafting Space has been upgraded to Crafting Realm]

[Your occupation skill Crafter’s Mind has been upgraded to Crafter’s Being]

[Your occupation skill Ego-Item Creation has been upgraded to Ego-Item Construction]

[Your occupation skill Item Combination has been upgraded to Item Fusion]

---

With a satisfied expression, Eisen looked through the notifications in front of him. That was a lot of information to work with now.

He pulled up all the information windows of his four occupation skills. For the most part, the Crafting Realm, Crafter’s Being, and Ego-Item Construction really just seemed to be stronger or more potent versions of their predecessors. For example, the Crafting Realm skill’s area of effect was larger and the effect was stronger. Eisen could now have as many accessories connected to a specific skill’s tool as he wanted. Before he could have only had one hammer stored no matter how many accessories he had, but now he could have ten hammers for his blacksmithing stored as long as he had ten accessories for it. The change that Eisen was most interested in was his other storage skill, basically. It weirdly seemed to make that accessory-storage skill completely obsolete though, since the ’Material Storage’ ability had become an ’Item Storage’ ability.

Most likely, it would still allow him to store materials like before, but he had the additional possibility of storing items as well. He would take a look at that later and test out how it changed, exactly.

Then, there was the Crafter’s Being skill. The visual abilities connected to it seemed to be the same as before, just that they were once more a bit more easy to use. Although, one pretty nice addition was that he was now able to directly share his Visualization with other people.

As for the Ego-Item Construction skill... Eisen really couldn’t see any sort of difference when he compared the information or abilities to what he remembered from the Ego-Item Creation skill. It was most likely a change that could only be seen when actually working with the skill, so Eisen would try that out later as well.

And then, onto the last skill. The skill that he just gained. The Item Fusion skill. It seemed rather mysterious for multiple reasons. Eisen had the feeling that he knew of this skill, like it was familiar to him, but he didn’t have the slightest idea of what it was supposed to be capable of. Beside Eisen’s regular guesses through the skill’s name, of course.

But in the end, all he could really do was guess as well, since the skill’s description was nothing more but ’Fuse items together to enhance them’. It really seemed a little weird to Eisen that there was so little information about the skill. But either way, in the end, he really just had to try it out then.

"Well then. You’re a King now, huh?" Brody laughed with his arms crossed, and the old man slowly waved the notifications in front of him away, "And the four of you are Dukes and Duchesses."

The five originals seemed rather proud of this accomplishment, Eisen rather soon noticed something else. Well, he noticed it after his attention was pulled toward it by Serio.

"And now, let us welcome another formerly lost comrade. Girland, it is nice to see you again." Serio pointed out with a light bow directed toward part of the wall, which slowly started to crumble away. Right behind the bricks that just disappeared stood the figure of a surprisingly well-maintained core guardian. Parts of the metal skin seemed to have rusted away and simply revealed the glass inside of the body, but it was something that should be fixable relatively quickly.

The core guardian had a female form and wore something like a pant suit. At the top of its forehead, Eisen could spot one singular horn that had its tip snapped away.

"I see." The Guardian, Girland, muttered quietly before stepping out of the part of the wall that was seemingly meant to keep her safe whiel she wasn’t functioning properly. She stood in front of Eisen and kneeled down on one knee, "Welcome back, my King. Please allow this humble guardian to be your advisor once more." Girland said in an emotionless voice, and the old man just lightly smiled, although he was rather focused on something else that he soon mentioned as well.

"Gladly. You seem to be quite literally made for it." Eisen laughed lightly, and then let his eyes move toward Serio, who was still slightly bowing forward, "Also, could it be that Serio is slightly scared of you?"

"I would hope so. After all, he left me in this place alone after I had to resolve to a conservation-mode to make sure that country core could not be stolen. It was a system you yourself created, my King."

"Serio." Eisen said, and the Core Guardian quickly turned around and looked at the old man with a nod, "Yes?"

"Why exactly didn’t you tell me that the Country Core Guardian was right here in this room the whole time?"

"I simply didn’t think it was the most important thing to do at the time." Serio pointed out quite swiftly, and Girland turned her head toward the Town Core Guardian, before he flinched in response to Girland’s glare.

"You see- Ah! Sorry, someone tripped on the other side of town and injured themselves. I am required for first-aid. We will continue this situation soon." Serio said, and slightly bowed forward again before disappearing in a blue mist, leaving Girland to stand there alone. It seemed like Serio was in general just incredibly intimidated by Girland, somehow.

"Now then, my King. If you would please, may you repair me? My physical and mental functions have been considerably weakened. Luckily I can still work to an extent, however." Girland pointed out. Eisen slowly nodded his head, "Alright, then let’s just head over to the garden in a bit then. I still have a little bit of time left before I finally need to head off. Also, I would just like to confirm, but you don’t exactly have the same abilities as other core guardians, right?"

With a quick nod, Girland immediately confirmed Eisen’s suspicion, "Yes. I do not have immediately knowledge of every place inside of this country. I have rough geographical knowledge, information on weather and nesting patterns of monsters, as well as the information that the individual towns have access to in a limited manner. As the country core is directly connected to this town’s core, this town of Prototype has become the capital city of Asgard, and as such I am capable of transporting myself around similarly to Serio, but otherwise I can only directly transport myself between the towns in this country with the help of the different town cores." Girland explained quite swiftly.

"As towns themselves are supposed to be managed by Town Core Guardians, I can function on another level. I can help with the organization of trade-routes internally and externally, respond to threats to the whole country, and simply manage important information far quicker than other sort of guardians might. Usually, at least. Currently, my functions are heavily inhibited. So I please once more ask that I can be repaired as quickly as feasible."

"Of course. Then let’s go." Eisen said quickly, and so, the whole group made their way through the basement area to get back to the ground floor, and then headed to the gardens, where Constant quickly transported himself over toward them.

"Welcome back, Master Eisen!" Constant exclaimed, also quickly greeting Girland and the others. Constant had met the grandmasters before, after all, the four of them wouldn’t let up the chance to see this kind of place if it was offered to them.

"Constant, get all the materials ready we’ll need to fix Girland up, and bring her over there already, yeah? Ah, and Parc, Rouge, you two please go ahead and make sure you fix up all the edges for me. I showed it to you before, right? Remove the rusted parts, make the edges smooth so that new parts can be added." The old man instructed the two boys, who quickly and excitedly nodded their heads. And so, everyone beside the five originals left toward the workshop for now, although Eisen quickly called Sky back. He needed to translate something real quick, after all.

"Oh, right, there was that... Yeah, I’ll take a quick look. I’m pretty good with translation now, hehe." Sky said with a smug expression, before Eisen took the piece of paper out of a small spatial gem. The moment he did, the piece of paper folded in half twice, and then folded open into the opposite direction again. Sky quickly grabbed the piece of paper then, and could quickly tell what it said.

"The second task is to... become a Skybreacher? But wait, you already have that title, right?" Before Eisen could actually answer, the piece of paper started folding in half twice again. Basically, it repeated the same process as the time before.

This time when it folded open, Sky looked at the piece of paper, and then read what it said again, "Become a True Champion..." He translated, and immediately the paper changed one more time.

"Become a King..." Sky said next, and once more, the piece of paper changed, just to say, "Burn me in the Giants’ Flames... This is the last task..."

And it seemed like just like that, Eisen had managed to complete all the tasks that he gave himself through the puzzlebox before any of the others.