Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Yeah, he did. Seems like he met Brody, the Original of Combat, and the both of them are on their way here. Apparently, Evalia is too, so everyone should be here in at most a week or two."

"H-huh? Wait, so that means... all those that peaked will be in one place..?" Immediately, Bree grasped her chest while you could basically just hear her heartbeat speed up in excitement.

"Exactly. Although that will happen more often from that point on, since we’ll found our guild soon." Eisen explained to them, and the two Fey-kin looked at each other in surprise. "Your guild? I thought you said you needed to reach level 100 for that first?"

"Yes, I do. But it’s just two more levels until I receive the quest to reach Level 100, and I’ll be working toward finishing that for a while. It’s not like we’re in a rush, since everyone will stay here for a while, and everyone except for Xenia, who we couldn’t contact yet, agreed to coming to the island group as well once we built the ship."

"I guess so, yeah. And there’s a Dungeon in town, so if we need to wait for everyone else to arrive, you can spend a few days in there to level up, right? You can get pretty cool stuff from dungeons as well!" Bree responded with an excited smile, simply thinking about the fact that she’s going to be able to be there when all five originals meet up. With a smile, Eisen quickly nodded, thinking that this was a good idea.

"Let’s do that. We should get some other stuff out of the way first, but I’ve wanted to see a Dungeon for a while anyway. We should find a place to stay at for the next few weeks first, though." After explaining this, Eisen turned over to someone that seemed to live in the town and asked them for directions to a nearby inn and stable, and the group made their way there.

Once again, the group followed the usual scenario of leaving Aulu, Cabarum and the Carriage inside of the stables, and everyone stood in front of the entrance of the stables to talk to each other about what to do next, while Eisen was currently placing CF-1 and CR-1 into his own backpack and Bree placed her own giant backpack on her back.

"Alright, I think we should split up for a while. Komer, you go and take a look at the commerce district, to see where we should best start selling, and make sure that we don’t break any rules. In Ornier we could just build up a random stall, but we don’t know if that’s the case here. Bree, Sky, you two should go to a library or a magician to see if you can find a proper occupation for Sky. Maybe it would be best if the three of you went together, actually." Eisen explained as he took out the receiver-display connected to CB-1 to check on the situation, seeing that the mountain-ranges of the Dwarven Country did indeed come closer, but were still a few hours away at least. The three that the old man just talked to quickly nodded while Sky smiled incredibly happily that he was finally able to get an occupation after all this time stuck at level 15.

"We’ll do that, then! And where will you be going, Eisen?" Komer asked while looking around the place in awe, and Eisen explained what he would be doing.

"Caria, Melissa, Kiron and I will go to look for information. Both about Xenia, and that wizard kid that has the last of Kirisho’s shards. I was already told some information, so I already have a general lead, but I’ll still need to figure out if everything I was told is still true. And I also have to look for Bolremgar, the Bronze Dragon that’s supposed to live near this town."

"Alright, then be careful, Eisen. And try not to let yourself be seen in, you know, ’that’ form..." Komer said cautiously as he scratched the back of his neck with a wry smile, before Eisen lowly chuckled and turned around, signaling to the three that he would go with that they were leaving. "Don’t worry about it, Komer. I can take care of myself."

And with that, the group split into two for the day, and Eisen made his way through town with a giant Bee on his shoulder, holding the hand of a girl barely half his height, and a Half-Dragon with crystal-like scales. Obviously, that got a few looks. Not only because of the two obvious monsters, but also because Eisen was walking around in an incredibly high-quality suit, while Caria, who looked like a regular human girl, was walking around barefoot with her feet dirtied through the dust, sand and dirt on the ground. Obviously there were those amongst the civilian onlookers that misunderstood, and thought that Eisen was some kind of horrible old, rich man that wouldn’t even buy a little girl shoes.

With a sigh, annoyed at the scowls and stares he received especially from elderly women and mothers, the group simply continued walking around until Caria spotted something in the distance and let go of Eisen’s hand, sprinting ahead.

"What? Caria, where are you going?" The old man asked, while the myconid girl stopped a few hundred meters ahead, looking at what seemed to be colorful flowers at a botanist’s front display. "Jeez... Melissa, could you fly ahead and make sure she doesn’t do anything there?"

With a quick buzzing sound that told Eisen that she happily did so, Melissa took off from the old man’s shoulder and rushed over to Caria, who quickly caught her and hugged her tightly. Although, that may have been a mistake on Eisen’s part. Immediately when Melissa landed on the Myconid’s arms, Eisen could hear a scream in the distance.

"Shit..." Eisen sighed loudly as he began running toward his two tamed monsters, quickly followed by his Knight Kiron.

"G-Get away from that thing, little girl! That’s dangerous!" The woman behind the stall yelled out, catching the attention of the people walking around on the street as well as some guards, who quickly rushed to the scene, getting there a little earlier than Eisen did.

Quickly, the guards pointed their blades at Melissa, obviously not frightening only her, but also Caria who was holding her. "Eh? What are you meanies doing?" She yelled out, before one of the guards reached out, trying to grab Melissa and tear her away from Caria.

"Don’t worry, little girl, everything is fine. The scary monster will be gone soon..." He exclaimed, obviously frightened of Melissa himself, but the moment that the guard touched Melissa, her trusty soldiers appeared out of practically nowhere, sitting on Caria’s cap and staring the Guard in the eye, causing him to jump backward. At that time, Eisen also finally arrived.

"Sorry about that. These are my tamed monsters, so they aren’t dangerous. So please put your blades away." Eisen explained, standing between Caria and Melissa and the Guards, the one that just tried to grab Melissa quickly responding.

"Huh? Those bees are your tamed monsters? No matter how peaceful they are, how can you let a little girl play with them?!" He yelled out, quickly supported by the onlookers.

"Yeah! How could you do that?!"

"What kind of man are you? Letting such a girl run around barefoot and play with monsters!"

"Someone should take that child away from you!"

With those yells, Eisen couldn’t help but hold his hand in front of his face, slowly responding to all those claims everyone was making. "This again..? Listen here, the ones currently with me are all monsters. Melissa the Queen Bee, Kiron the Half-Dragon, and Caria the Myconid." Eisen exclaimed loud enough for everyone to hear, trying to quickly clear up the situation that has happened far too often until now.

"A Myconid, how could anyone believe that?! Myconids are ugly monsters, Mushrooms that were infested with mana that they stood up and-" The guard exclaimed, obviously not believing what Eisen told him, but was quickly interrupted by the sound of a certain little girl trying to say something with tears in her eyes.

"U-U-Ugly...? Eisen, is Caria ugly? But Caria thought she was cute, and Melly said the same thing! Did everyone lie to me..?" She asked with a sad voice, pulling on the old man’s sleeve before he quickly kneeled down and looked at Caria, lightly rubbing his hand over her cheek to get rid of the tear rolling down. She really was a kid in the end.

"Of course I didn’t lie to you, Caria. That just means that you’re not only a super cute girl, but also the cutest Myconid in existence if this man couldn’t believe you were one."

Suddenly, Caria stared at Eisen with wide open eyes and then looked back and forth between him and the guard, before finally turning to the guard and folding her hands together. "Th-Thank you, Sir, for calling Caria that cute." She said with a soft smile, happy at hearing that she was cute after thinking she was being insulted, before the Guard sighed out loudly.

"Really? Is this some sort of game? Or does this kid really think she’s a myconid and you’re just playing along?" The guard asked, understanding that Caria didn’t seem to be in any immediate danger, and that this old man was at the very least relatively kind.

But the guard became a bit annoyed once more when Eisen shook his head. "No, she’s actually a myconid, she just evolved to look quite humanoid."

"Sir, please stop lying to me. She seems to be your granddaughter, yes? So you shouldn’t do things like that, letting her think she’s a monster." The guard explained before turning around and leaving, considering that everything seemed under control.

"Hmpf! What a dummy! Caria really is a myconid, Eisen!" Caria exclaimed as she grabbed the large hand that was offered to her again with an annoyed pout, while Melissa climbed onto her shoulder and nudged her face to cheer her up. "Thanks, Melly..."

Eisen smiled lowly and looked around, noticing that the crowd seemed to have dissipated after the guard left, and saw that the owner of the flower-stall was still looking at them nervously. "Ah, Caria, why did you actually come here? Just because there were pretty flowers?"

Quickly, Caria shook her head, before pointing at a few certain flowers. "Those flowers are in pain. They told me so..." She explained, and Eisen frowned in response to that explanation. The old man held his fingers in front of his eyes and quickly activated his truth seeing eyes with his mana sight, and immediately saw what Caria was talking about.

Intertwined with the light green, natural mana contained in the flowers were strains of deep black where you could instantly tell that it didn’t belong. Eisen followed the black strains until he noticed a small black dot at the bottom of the container where the flowers were held. After sticking his hand into that container, Eisen pulled out what simply seemed to be a black seed the size of the fingernail on Eisen’s pinky, before looking at the owner of the stall. "Young miss, excuse me. It seems that this seed was slowly making your flowers sick. I advise you take proper care of them, and exchange the yellow flowers in the bottom right here."

"Hm? No, impossible, I only placed those there this morning..." The stall owner said with a frown, looking at the flowers that this old man pointed at, before hurrying over. "What? Crap, how the hell did this happen? They really are sick! Thank you for telling me, Sir, and sorry about before. I wasn’t aware that the Bee was a tamed monster."

"Don’t worry about it, really. Oh, and do you mind if I take this seed with me? I doubt you have any use for it."

"Go ahead. You can take some flowers with you as well, if you want. Just to say sorry for what happened, and to say thank you for telling me about the flowers." The woman said, and Eisen greatfully accepted the offer, telling Caria to pick out a few that she wanted while Eisen continued looking at the seed.

This was definitely weird, and this wasn’t just a regular seed that was accidentally dropped to the bottom of the flowers either. When Eisen looked at this seed with his truth-seeing-eyes, the colored ring in front of it that told him the rank of materials and items was green, which Eisen remembered to be the color of Rank 4 items, simply judging from what he saw in Ornier a few times.

But until now, Eisen hasn’t ever seen a Rank 4 seed.