Spending My Retirement In A Game

It didn’t take long, only about ten minutes or so, until the Angel returned to the Arena. He walked up to the champion of this arena and leaned forward, as if to try and whisper something into her ear, although Eisen couldn’t hear even a hint of something like a voice. Maybe it was something that only Heroic Souls could hear, or only the specific person that was being spoken to.

Either way, the champion turned her head toward the old man in front of her with a surprised expression, "You really did beat him... How did you-" She asked, before the angel next to her seemed to add a little bit more information to what it had been saying before, and the woman in front of Eisen seemed even more surprised. She held her hand to her chest and took a startled step back.

"Th-The first that p-peaked?" The woman asked confusedly. Eisen looked back at her before slowly nodding his head in responsed, "Yes, that’s me. But don’t worry, through different situations, I’m not nearly as strong as I used to be. I assume that this fight will be a rather tough one for both of us."

"...I see." The Champion said with a nervous expression. She turned around and grabbed her weapon, which at first glance was just a normal dagger, albeit one that was rather thick and seemingly quite heavy. Although Eisen did soon realize that this wasn’t actually the case, and that this was actually a rather interesting weapon.

"Alright, then let us start after this next fight has finished." The Woman pointed out, before looking at Eisen with a light frown, "I assume you do not plan on fighting with a dagger?"

In response, instead of using actual words, Eisen just summoned his demonic blade from his soul storage and let it speak for him. The champion stared at the large blade slightly nervously, understanding that this definitely wouldn’t be an easy fight for her either. On the other hand, she was someone that was actually quite well-practiced with her weapon and most likely was someone that heavily relied on technique. Eisen was rather rough in that sense and mostly fought using brunt strenght.

Luckily, Gran was a similar fighter in that sense, so the difference in raw skill didn’t actually matter that much. But with this woman... Eisen was already getting a bit nervous. After all, this might be the first time that he’s going to die here in this world. In his memory, at least. It made him a little nervous.

It took about twenty more minutes as the next ’fight’ was over, and it let Eisen take a good look at the actual arena. While Gran’s arena was simply an open field, in this case, the large space in front of Eisen was littered with numerous different objects. Walls, crates, even small buildings that one could hide out in momentarily.

It was made to let the fighter in question truly use the environment to their advantage. The moment that the fight was over, both of the combatists were completely ’repaired’, while the loser had to give up all of their equipment as a replacement for death.

Eisen watched as all the structures and objects that he looked at before slowly disappeared, as if falling to dust, "Oh, and just so you know... We will be using the regular rules of this arena. Otherwise, it would be a rather unfair fight." The woman pointed out. Eisen already figured that she was going to ask for this, so he immediately accepted.

"Of course. Could you repeat those rules to me?" Eisen inquired, and the woman nodded her head as the two made their way down into the arena. She pointed at the crystal floating in the center of the structure, the same kind that Eisen interacted with before.

"We will both place our hands onto that crystal later, and using both of our conscious and subconscious minds, it will create an environment that lets us make full use of our abilities. And that means that you can use any ability that you have access to right now, so go ahead and use everything you have. I actually do wonder what might be created with a man like you inspiring half of it..." With a curious expression, the champion stared at the floating crystal in front of her and was the first to place her palm onto it. Soon after, Eisen followed.

Once all five of Eisen’s fingers were pressed onto the smooth surface, the crystal started to glow brightly before soon disappearing.

The dust on the ground started to twirl up and filled out the whole area around the old man and the champion. Right in front of him, Eisen could see a glowing line of light, "Follow it. It’s going to bring you to your starting position. Once the dust-cloud disappears, the fight starts." The champion told the old man. He figured it was best to do what she said, and as such slowly walked forward, blindly trusting in the light that was literally the only thing he could see right now. But as he was walking, he heard the Champion’s voice once more.

"Right, one last thing... As I’m the champion, the environment probably changed a bit more strongly than what you just saw. Just so that you aren’t surprised."

Soon, the line of light turned into a circle, so Eisen figured that was supposed to be his starting-position, and he stepped into that circle. Once he did, he had to wait a few more seconds until the lights disappeared completely. With a sift gust of air, all the dust disappeared and Eisen soon saw the scenery around him. And what he saw was something that did actually surprise him quite a lot, even if he was warned by the champion. But even then, he quite liked it.

Eisen found himself inside of a giant workshop. It took up far more space than what was available in the arena as far as Eisen had been able to judge before, but that was probably what the Champion was speaking of when she said that the ’enviroment probably changed a bit more strongly’.

It was as if Eisen had been shrunken down and placed into a workshop that was equipped with basically everything that you needed. A lot of different materials, items and tools scattered around. And the place was made for someone of Eisen’s height while it was fully increased and combined with his Draconic Demon King form. So, it was obvious what was supposed to happen.

The old man used both of that. His perspective soon shifted and the room around him just seemed a little large, as if he was a kid again. And then with the demonic form activated, the room felt like just a normal-sized room.

"Now then, this is pretty interesting." With just a thought, Eisen summoned his demonic blade and soon watched it as it was affected by the old man’s transformation. He held the blade in his hand and started to look around with his truth-seeing eyes active.

Eisen really did have an amazing advantage like this. After all, the main reason why an environment like this was supposed to be created in the first place was so that either party could use it to their advantage in any way. For the most part, that was probably meant to be by hiding. But Eisen had the perfect way to see through any sort of attempts of hiding, and that was simply by looking around and trying to find the champion’s mana.

And soon, he saw her form, squatting behind a hammer to hide from the old man for now. Thinking that this was a good chance to test something else out, Eisen activated an ability of his that wasn’t actually related to combat in the slightest. And that was something he did by using his ’crafting realm’ skill. Due to his increased size, the range of that skill had also been increased proportionally, so it was enough to fill this whole space out right now.

Eisen wasn’t entirely sure if it really would work, but he sure hoped so. Because within his ’crafting realm’ that this arena had now become, he should be able to manipulate his tools from a distance with nothing but a thought.

Hoping that the things that were meant to look like tools were actually considered as such by his skill, the old man extended his hand toward the hammer, and just pulled it up rapidly.

Immediately, the hammer was lifted into the air, but the champion was nowhere to be seen in the space where Eisen had spotted her before. And that was when he noticed something small dropping toward his face.

The greatest disadvantage of Eisen’s increased size was that it was a lot harder to spot certain things now, just because they were so small compared to him.

And this time, what he had nearly missed, was the champion dropping right toward Eisen’s face. However, Eisen quickly stepped to the side and at the same time swung his sword toward the small figure. If she hadn’t twisted her body around, he would have hit her.

However, the champion pulled her legs up to her body to just barely dodge the edge, just so that she could use the force of the blade to her advantage. She kicked off of the blade and used the immense gust of wind created by it to propell her further forward, until she reached Eisen’s hand.

At that point, the old man increased his temperature on his hand to the highest degree he could, seemingly causing damage to the champion’s HP through it. But soon, she managed to keep climbing her way up Eisen’s arm, stabbing into his skin whenever she could. At first Eisen didn’t think she had any way to really beat him, but at some point she actually made use of her weapon for real.

She pressed a button on the handle and the blade split in half as a chain appeared inbetween those blade-halves, connecting them so that the champion could use this weapon to get quite some reach in.

But what she did now was take the fact that Eisen was trying to get her off his body and combined it with her own abilities. She stuck one of the blade-halves into Eisen’s arm, and once the old man’s palm slammed down on the Champion, she stuck it into there.

It was like the blades fused with Eisen’s body to an extent, because for some reason he just wasn’t able to get rid of them no matter how much he pulled on them. They were just damaging him whenever he tried to.

And while Eisen was doing this, the champion kept climbing up Eisen’s body to get to his face.