Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Of course, M’Lord, gladly." The Half-Dragon replied with a light bow, before he happily turned around and did as Eisen asked him to, while the old man himself placed down a bowl for Aulu to drink out of, while Xenia and Dien were looking at him confused.

"Erm, Eisen... Don’t tell me that black stuff is oil..." The High-Elf exclaimed with a frown, worrying for that cute golden-furred wolf laying on the ground.

"Hm? Yeah, it is. Ah, but before you complain, neither Aulu here nor the horse, Cabarum, out there are actual living beings. They are automata, and the oil is simply a lubricant to make sure their joints are working properly." Eisen explained, before Xenia looked at him in disbelief, and not of the surprised kind, but rather of the What’s-This-Crazy-Old-Man-Saying kind. With a sigh, Eisen chose to skip to something else before beginning Melissa’s clothes, considering that he really would have more than enough time for that later as well.

"Fine, just watch, then. I wanted to switch out their eyes for a more suitable material anyway. Right now I’m using regular mana crystals for them right now, but I recently got some Crystal Eyes, which are better for Visual-Related things. They’re the same thing as I used for CR-1 that you saw before as well. The small one-eyed rat."

After the old man explained this, he grabbed some of the crystal eyes as well as a small bottle filled with a midnight blue liquid, preparing for the creation of these new eyes. "Alright, since you seem pretty interested, this is a potion made with Nightcall. Usually, it increases both your Eyesight and Hearing, and because it’s apparently pretty addictive, it’s hard to get a hold of. A friend of mine gave some to me, though, so I was lucky. Anyway, instead of using regular mana crystals, I used the Crystal Eyes, which increased the effect on the Eyesight while actually completely making the effect on your hearing disappear. I’ll use this to make the eyes as well." Eisen then said, slowly creating the general shapes of the two types of eyes that he needed for Aulu and Cabarum with transmutation and mana copy, excluding the lenses of each eye.

To create that part, he actually needed a little bit more time, because he wanted to make it in a special way. First, he obviosuly created the rough shape of the lenses, before then beginning to enchant it with with a tiny enchantment circle that was meant to strengthen the sight ability enchantment that he would place on the whole eye later.

After that, Eisen simply opened up a slightly larger hole in the front of the eye to set the lense into, and filled the rest of the open space around the lense up with the Nightcall potion and closing the hole that he placed everything into the eye through up.

Now, the old man enchanted the whole eyes in the same way as he did the ones that were already used by Aulu and Cabarum, creating eyes that had a tiny visible enchantment circle in their center if one looked closely.

Both Xenia and Dien watched this whole process in awe, considering that the old man looked like he was working on multiple things at once, finishing four eyes, two large ones for Cabarum and two small ones for Aulu, in near to no time.

"And what are you going to do with those now, Eisen?" Xenia asked, already fidgeting around, since she remembered Eisen saying that he was about to switch out the eyes, meaning that he needed to do one thing first. Pop the old ones out.

"As I said, I’ll switch them out. Aulu, look at me for a second and open your eyes wide." Eisen told the Wolf Automaton in a strict voice, before he quickly placed his fingers at the edge of her eye and quickly pulled them out with only a little bit of assistance of transmutation, revealing the metallic inside of the wolf’s eyesockets.

"See? This is one of the few spots not covered in mana crystal musculature. You can see a bit of the brass here." Eisen explained as he held his hand next to Aulu’s face, while the wolf lady herself simply began wagging her tail, and Xenia simply looked away.

"Mhm, got it... You can put the eyes in now, that looks very creepy, Eisen." She complained with a wry smile, before Eisen chuckled softly and quickly placed the new eye into Aulu’s head, before they were quickly accepted as new parts of her body.

And apparently, through this new sigth, her Wisdom and Intelligence rose a tiny bit, since she was now able to see the world around her even better than before.

"Perfect!" Eisen exclaimed with a happy smile, before looking at Aulu’s eyes, where he could see the tiny enchantment circles lowly glimmer in the center of her eyes. After feeling satisfied with this, Eisen quickly stepped out of the carriage, and did the same for Cabarum, of course after making sure that nobody around was looking, considering that it was quite a horrid sight if one didn’t know that Cabarum was an automaton.

Either way, after the second Automaton also accepted their new eyes, Eisen quickly stepped back inside and then sat down in front of his worktable.

"Anyway, now let me just get to work, alright? Ah, if you’re not that interested in what I’m doing, Xenia, you can take a look at that large tube in the corner. I make the magically infused materials in there. I’m sure you can figure out how it works, it’s mostly enchantments after all." The old man chuckled before looking over at Melissa, who was being held by Caria again.

"So, do you have any idea what kind of clothes you would like to wear?" Eisen asked her with a bright grin, and the Empress Bee simply stared at him for a while, before then answering in a very simplistic way. "Caria. Cute." She muttered, and Eisen quickly understood what she meant.

"Ah, so you want a cute dress similar to Caria’s then?" Eisen asked, and Melissa began furiously nodding while being hugged by the Myconid.

"Then I’ll get to it!" With a smile, Eisen quickly took a glance at Melissa’s overall shape, and then took another closer look at her back to see the specific placement of her wings, before grabbing a role of the fabric that he bought. It was maybe kind of expected, but Eisen specifically chose a black and yellow striped fabric for this, since that just fit best to a bee in the end, at least in Eisen’s head.

Considering that the rough shape of the kind of dress Eisen was going for for Melissa’s dress really wasn’t complicated, and was supposed to have a light summerdress-esque feeling to it. So for the most part, it really was just made up of two large pieces for the front and back, that simply needed to be sewn together.

As such, it didn’t take too long for this either, and the only part that took a little longer was to properly make holes so that Melissa’s wings could be moved around properly while not making it seem like they just ripped through the cloth, and instead somewhat inconspicuously stuck through the back of the dress.

And that wasn’t too hard either, it just needed a few further adjustments, and once the sice and shape of those holes were figured out, Eisen simply needed to strengthen the edges a little bit by folding them over and sewing them against the main-fabric.

With that, after not too much work, Eisen was now holding yet another dress meant for a little girl in his hands. It felt somewhat weird to him, it has been years since he’s made clothes for children like this. Or rather, decades, since the last time he made this much was when his own children were quite young. It felt quite nostalgic and calming to him in a way.

This kind of stuff was the reason that he loved being a craftsman, especially after seeing Melissa’s happy grin when Eisen helped her put the dress on, and she began waving her wings around ever so slightly.

"Thank!" She yelled out, jumping at Eisen while slightly supporting her body with her wings as she did, since she still wasn’t properly able to use her arms and legs yet, meaning that Eisen now had to support her super tiny body with his arm, so that she wouldn’t drop down on accident again. After all, Bees weren’t meant to have that humanoid of a body, huh?

For Caria, it was slightly different, since she seemed to be the type of Myconid that was supposed to be Humanoid already. There were also Quadripedal Myconids that looked like different beasts, but Caria obviously wasn’t one of those.

"No problem, Melissa. I’m glad you like it!" The old man exclaimed, then suddenly bringing Xenia out of her phase where she was inspecting the Mana-Infusion Tube that Eisen built with complete concentration.

"Oh, done already? That was quick." She exclaimed as she lightly stretched her body, sitting down on the bench next to Kiron, crossing her legs as she did, continuing to look at the tube in the corner.

"Yeah, it wasn’t a complicated thing, so I managed to finish it pretty quick, especially after overlaying different skills of mine that all somewhat boost my hands’ dexterity." Eisen explained, and Xenia quickly nodded.

"I see, that makes sense. I did feel the mana in the room change a bit, and then back at a later point, but I figured it was just one of your skills."

At this, Eisen lightly tilted his head to the side, as he heard something quite curious. "Huh, that was probably because of my crafting space then... Could you confirm it for a second?" Eisen asked, quickly activating and deactivating his crafting space skill a few times, which he became quite competent at at this point, before Xenia slowly nodded.

"Yeah, it changes a bit. I don’t really know what it is, though. My Racial skill is only at a high Rank 2 right now, so I can’t feel much. Ah, my racial skill is ’A High-Elf’s Values’. I don’t know why it’s ’Values’, since it just lets me be more in touch with mana in general, at least so far." Xenia explained quite swiftly after noticing that Eisen was about to ask her what her racial skill did, before Dien tuned in as well.

"Well, I think it’s ’Values’ because most High-Elves are kind of... how do you say it... Pricks? Just really high-and-mighty... Ah, not you of course, Xenia!" He chuckled nervously, while Eisen was slightly ignoring him, since he still felt weird having him around.

"That’s pretty interesting. I guess this kind of thing works with mana as well then..." Eisen muttered to himself, which was picked up by the High-Elf quite quickly, before she smugly talked about the importance of magic.

"Well well, that’s quite simple, isn’t it? Everything is based around mana here! That’s how all these amazing things are done! Even non-magicians need to be able to control their own mana!" Xenia laughed out, obviously just trying to make it somewhat clear how important what she brought into this world was.

And with that, Eisen could somewhat see what Dien was talking about.