Spending My Retirement In A Game

After telling his son and grandchildren to go take a look without him for a bit, he left the store again and held the phone to his ear.

"Joyce here." He said immediately after pressing the ’accept call’ button, and Samuel’s answer came just as quickly.

"Hey there Benjamin! Glad I could reach you so quickly. I actually have something I need to ask you, and it’s pretty urgent, so sorry for not calling and asking about it earlier, but I was just told myself." He quickly tried explaining, but Benjamin still had basically no idea of what was going on.

"Samuel, slowly. Just ask what you need to ask." Benjamin said, and Samuel breathed out slowly to calm himself down.

"We’re supposed to release a trailer for the game today, or rather in 10 minutes, but the team that was on that trailer didn’t manage to finish it till this morning, so I only saw it about an hour ago myself. It’s using a lot of generic footage from the game, but it’s mainly using footage recorded of, well, the Originals. We told you that we may be doing that every once in a while for research purposes, but not that we’d be doing that for trailers. Because it’s still your right to choose if you want to be shown publicly like that, because your avatars are all in your guys’ image, I need to ask all of you if you’re alright with being in the trailer." Samuel then carefully explained to the old man, before Benjamin quickly replied again.

"Oh, don’t worry about that, Samuel. Go ahead and use whatever footage you have of me in whatever way you want." He told the young company executive, who sighed loudly.

"Thanks Benjamin, that’s a huge relief." Samuel said, before he then seemed to talk to another person that was in the same room as him. "Alright, send it out, we have everyone’s permission."

"Haha, so you already talked to the others, huh?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I literally went from call to call for the past half hour. Anyway, I’ll send a copy of the trailer to your email, so check it out when you have the time." Samuel then said, seemingly wanting to stop the call, but before then Benjamin stopped him and asked what he wanted to call Samuel himself for later today.

"Actually, before you hang up, we’re having a little barbecue next week, and it would be great if you could come. My whole family and a few people from around town are coming." Benjamin told Samuel, who didn’t actually need to think that long.

"Oh, I’d love to! Thanks for the offer!" He replied quite gratefully, leaving Benjamin to chuckle quietly.

"Well, then I’m going to tell you the exact time in a bit. I’ll look forward to seeing you again, kid."

"Alright, then see you next week! I’ve gotta keep working now, Benjamin, so I’ll talk to you later!" With a lifted mood, Samuel hung up and Benjamin made his way into the Gadget store to follow his family.

Soo enough, he found them as they were looking at a few different things in the toys isle, where Katy was staring at a small remote-controlled dog that could run around however she wanted it to, while Sean was playing around with a small educational model of a skeleton in a glass dome that could seemingly ’holographically’, although it simply worked similar to Benji’s smart-glasses that showed extra parts when looking through the glass, display where in your body which bone or muscle was, what the central nervous system looked like, and where your body’s veins were.

In the meantime, Benji and Tony were a few meters further along and testing out the smart-glasses that Benji wanted.

For a little while, they all simply played around with the exhibited gadgets, before Benji placed his order for the specialized smart glasses after telling the employee the strength he needed them to have.

"Alright, now, let’s go to the game shop next door." Benjamin suggested as he led the way out of the shop and toward the next, stopping shortly as they stood in front of the large poster depicting different large dragons flying around a mountain range that seemed quite familiar to Benjamin.

It definitely seemed like Dragons were the currently most important part of the in-game story. Seeing that Benjamin was in deep thought, scratching his beard as he was trying to figure out what might happen once the regular playerbase appeared in the game-world and what the next moves of the chromatic dragons may be, Katy stood next to him and scratched her chin while copying her grandfather, simply staring at the poster.

"Hmm, those are some pretty weird birds, huh?" She then slowly said as she suspiciously squinted her eyes, before Benjamin heard Benji begin to laugh in the background.

With a chuckle from himself, the old man then turned to his granddaughter and placed his hand on the top of her head. "Yep, those are some pretty weird birds, Katy." He smiled before walking through the shop’s door, taking a look around. This place was truly completely decorated with things related to ’World of Magic’, even though there wasn’t even all that much known about it.

"Hey Gramps, what’s going on over there?" Benji asked, trying to take a look at the other side of the shop where a large crowd seemingly formed around a large TV screen. With a shrug, the old man suggested to simply take a look, and as such the five of them chose to stand behind the large group, Tony picking up Sean and Benjamin picking up Katy so that everyone could see. Tony, Benji and Benjamin had no problem with that themselves, as they were all pretty tall, so it was only those two that needed help.

Now, curious at what was going on, Benjamin looked forward at the shop-employee who was standing next to the screen, connecting it to his laptop while he pulled something up on the internet.

"Alright, alright, quiet now. Let’s just watch the trailer." The young man told the group of teenagers and young adults standing in front of him before starting the video up on the large screen, and immediately, Benjamin knew what it was, since he was literally just talking about that with Samuel about 20 minutes ago. Curious to see the trailer to World of Magic now, Benjamin simply looked at the screen.

First, there was nothing there, just a pure, white screen, but soon, it became clear that it was showing a white space, as slowly a structure was approaching, and Benjamin remembered this space quite well. It was the room where he and the other originals had met for the first time, and Ari was kneeling on the center platform with her hands folded and looked down at the ground, and only when the screen stopped moving did she look up, before starting a small speech.

"Welcome, traveling soul. You have been given the chance to take up a new body, start a new life, and live out your dreams in a world full of wonders and beauty." She exclaimed with a soft smile that could probably enchant most people that saw it, before the world around her changed into a sun rising behind the peak of a mountain and her body slowly faded, while her voice was still as clear as ever.

While Ari continued talking and introducing the world and what you can do in it, different scenes came up. The first to be seen was Brody as he was fighting off hordes of monsters to protect a young child sitting behind him, causing the air to quite literally crackle and react with every punch or kick coming from him. It seemed like the Demon-Orc Halfling was fighting in a dried up wasteland, just where Jyuuk had expected him to be.

And the Monkey-Beastperson was actually the next on to be seen through a swift change from a bird flying through the air above brody to a closeup of Akatori as he was flying above a forest, where Jyuuk was surrounded by different monsters himself in a similar scene to what Brody was just seen in, but in a utterly different context.

While Brody was fighting the monsters, Jyuuk was feeding them and playing around with them, since they were the monsters that Benjamin gave to him just the other day. Seems like this was a quite recent scene.

After closing in on one quite particular Monster, the small airborn fish that was simply flowing around, the scene changed once more into an ocean filled with numerous species of fish, before the view was pulled out of the water and onto a huge town with giant structures lit up in the night, many even floating around in the air, before zooming in on a young woman casting magic by a pier.

That woman was Xenia, currently drawing something similar, but at the same time completely different, to the enchantment circles that Benjamin already knew quite well into mid-air, before a small crystal platform appeared in front of her, which she swiftly stepped onto as it rose into the air before she continued casting different magic of many different elements that all resulted in a beautiful scene of fireworks of all shapes and forms in the sky.

And as the camera got closer to those fireworks, the scene changed again and a beautiful melody began to play that Benjamin had heard not too long ago while vibrant colors filled the air, as the camera showed Evalia playing the first song she played with the guitar made by Benjamin on the day they met while the crowd around her began to cheer.

Soon enough, the picture became dark while the cheers continued on, and slowly transformed into the sound that signaled Benjamin’s, or rather Eisen’s, turn in the trailer.

It was showing him as he was working on Aulu back during the Trial given to him by Ailren. It showed the sparks flying around as Benjamin’s hammer hit the high-tensile brass that he used to make the gears and overall body of his automata, before the scene where he was actually seen constructing Aulu’s body was shown, and just after that how he and Aulu stepped through the door back toward Ailren’s treasury, before immediately cutting to a closeup of Benjamin’s face, prompting Katy to stare at her grandpa in confusion, as was standing in front of the ancient gold dragon’s real form, staring him deep in the eyes as the dragon’s body was slowly shown.

Then, the music that was playing in the background before then changed from a vivid, cheerful tone to one that signaled that there were bad things there too.

Using Ailren’s body as a base, a different Dragon appeared, pitch-black in color and smoke rising off of its scales, while Ari continued to speak.

"But beauty isn’t all that you find in the World of Magic. There are forces of evil set out to destroy everything within sight, and those rebelling against them need you to take up tool or arm to aid in their war."

Now that the good things were shown, it was time to show another aspect to everything that just happened. Again, Brody was shown first as he was ripping his way through lines of monsters before punching open the gate, causing it to crack open. In a lot swifter change of setting, Jyuuk then stormed onto grey brick as he was fighting with his pole in hand, some of his monsters around him baring their fangs at a large monster that stood in front of him. This seemingly came from back when Jyuuk was fighting in the dungeon, and this may have been the boss monster of that dungeon.

Next was once more Xenia’s turn, showing her as she called upon thunder and meteorites through her magic as she fought against a large creature made up of rocks and dirt while other warriors were trying to attack it from the ground, prompting a different scene to appear, where the warriors turned into scared townfolk that was fleeing, and Evalia’s face was shown running in the opposite direction of that townfolk, trying to somehow calm those that she managed to get a hold of.

And immediately, Benjamin knew what scene would come up for him, and there was no change of scene needed, as the camera merely needed to be turned toward the source of the panic, a demon with cracked up skin that released flames through just those flames, that was holding up a man with angelic wings by his throat with one hand, while the other was holding a large, covered up sword.

Before anything more was said, the camera zoomed in on the demon’s face, showing those eyes burning in golden flames, before the transformation slowly faded, revealing Benjamin’s face once more in the same fashion as it had been shown while Benjamin was looking at Ailren in the dragon’s cave.

It somehow felt like Benjamin himself was being portrayed as the bad guy in this, which gave him a weird feeling in his stomach, especially when he noticed that his whole family was staring at him in confusion.

After that, there was quite a lot of footage showing more of the world and many different places in it, before then showing the exact scene where the five originals met, showing cut up parts of their introductions, with everyone just saying their name and which original they were.

And with a somewhat cringeworthy ending, the trailer stopped in a way that would hopefully make up for the part where Benjamin was seen beating up what would look like an angel to most, with Ari saying one last thing.

"These five are the hope of this world and what formed it to the way that it is now. Will you come and help them out?" The goddess said with a smile while standing in the white space from before once more, with her hands behind her back.

It seemed like the five Originals would become far more important entities in the game than what Benjamin had expected.