Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Really? Isn’t that a bit OP to get this early..? I thought Bree said you’d probably get it around Level 300 or something..." Stahl said, obviously pretty jealous, and the old man just chuckled in response before crossing his arms.

"Well, who knows, your old man’s old man is pretty great, so that was to be expected, right?" Eisen said with a smirk, just trying to show how excited he was that he got this skill so quickly, and then ended up slightly yawning while his eyes became droopy, all the whilst Stahl was rolling his eyes with a slight smirk.

"I’ll be heading to sleep now, really should have slept a bit earlier, huh...?" Eisen muttered quietly as he stood back up, and then made his way over toward the stairs, turning back around toward the others before walking up them, "Goodnight, all of you." The old man told them with a wave, which was quickly returned to him before Eisen made his way to the meeting room, where he quite swiftly dropped down onto his chair to get some sleep.

And then, the next thing he knew, Eisen woke up in the morning with his monsters on his lap, who the old man swiftly asked to climb off him so that he could stand back up.

While stretching his body out a little, because it seemed to start being slightly uncomfortable sleeping in a chair, now that the old man was able to actually feel things like pain in this world. Maybe he should make himself a bed sometime soon as well, so that he wouldn’t have to sleep like this all the time.

Either way, without hesitation, Eisen made his way down the stairs and toward where the Carriage was kept, before swiftly stepping into there to get all of the souls that Eisen had given a shape to already.

Although first, Eisen maybe had to actually somehow figure out how he was supposed to actually craft using souls in the first place. He was told that it was about using the souls in the crafting process, so Eisen figured maybe he should just get started with that then and try it out somehow.

After handing Sigurd the different boxes with the souls in them so that it could bring them into the Dungeon, the old man himself also made his way into that Dungeon to try some different methods out.

For now, Eisen figured something simple might as well be the, well, simplest way to start. And as such, he chose the soul in the form of a quite bland necklace with a gem in the front of it.

From what Eisen could tell, the ’gem’ was really just a piece of crystal similar to mana-crystal, so that was a great way to start. The rest of the necklace was seemingly thick metallic thread, and as far as Eisen could tell, it was something in the direction of Steel Thread mixed with Gold Thread, something that Eisen could do pretty easily.

But in the end, Eisen wasn’t entirely sure how he was supposed to do all this, and tried to take a closer look at the Soul, attempting to fiddle around with it a little to find out if anything changed.

And to his surprise, something did change. In the way that he was able to control this soul, that is. Eisen wasn’t entirely sure if this was something he could do through Soul Engineering or through Ego-Item Creation, or both, but what he was sure of was that he could pull the soul apart into its singular pieces.

For example, he could pull the gem out of the socket, pull the thread apart so that it was simply made of each singular strand. At least that’s what it seemed like at first, but after looking more closely, Eisen became aware that it only looked that way.

Most of the soul was pulled away, at least the parts that gave it a visual appearance, but there was still the basic there. It was as if Eisen was able to pull these parts away from the soul just momentarily, which was confirmed by all the pieces snapping back into place the moment that Eisen gave up direct control over it.

Like that, Eisen was sure he would be able to get this done somehow. Once more, Eisen pulled everything apart, first ’grabbing’ the gem, or rather mana crystal, that would be in the front, and then used it as a reference to cut a mana-crystal into shape with his transmutation-tools.

When the crystal was in the right shape, Eisen simply pushed the two pieces together as if he was combining two crystals with each other, and then, the small, light crystal swiftly floated back over toward the soul’s ’Base’, now seemingly having become part of it. He could still pull it away like before, but it seemed a bit harder to do so, as if it was truly inseperable from the soul itself now.

And so, Eisen swiftly got started with the other parts, quickly creating the metallic base for the gem in the exactly right shape for the necklace. Just like that, the old man was able to add another part to the soul in the shape of a necklace, at least once he managed to set the crystal properly into it. Only then did the soul connect with the metal piece.

Swiftly, Eisen then created metallic thread with the spinnerets that Jyuuk and Xenia made him a while ago, and cut it up into the right length to add to the necklace.

For now, as a little bit of a test, Eisen just placed the ends of each thread into the right places, but didn’t twist the thread around itself to turn it into proper string yet. And the moment that Eisen set everything into place and started trying to combine the actual metallic threads with their soul-version.

The moment Eisen started this, it was like the threads immediately twisted themselves into the right positions, and the string was like it was properly woven by hand.

With a slight smirk, Eisen then just grabbed the necklace and nodded his head in satisfaction, before seeing it as finished.

[Ego Necklace]

[Rank - 0][Quality - Perfect]

[Description] A Necklace with the innate ability to grow made by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. The method of creation allows the necklace to grow further, albeit slower. It was created using a Soul as the base.

[Effect] None

[Growth] 0/25

[Notice: An Ego Item will take part of any experience you earn while using or wearing it]

Surprised, Eisen looked at the information screen and the notification and then moved his fingers through his beard confused.

"So it’s an actual Crafting skill and not a support skill?" Eisen muttered to himself, pretty annoyed to see that the necklace was at ’Rank 0’ instead of Rank 4, like he would have liked it to be, and then crossed his arms with a frown.

"Well, that’s weird." The old man sighed, and then rested his cheek on his hand, looking at the necklace. "Maybe I should try another method..?" He asked himself, especially staring at the last sentence of the item’s Description. It specifically said that this item was made using the soul as a base, so maybe he could somehow use the item as a base and force the soul into that item.

For now, the Imp figured that it couldn’t hurt to try, and as such grabbed the next soul, which was in the shape of a small dagger.

And so, Eisen quickly started creating a dagger that had exactly that shape, while pulling the soul of the item over the metal, trying to literally push the part of the soul corresponding to the blade into the metal meant or it.

In the end, this method worked as well, and the soul was now connected to the Dagger, and the only thing that was left was the handle. Right now it was somewhat like a ghostly hue in the shape of a handle laying over it, so it was more than just easy to properly get the shape right, even if it was a bit more complicated to ’force’ the soul into the wooden handle this time around.

It was like the soul was practically rejecting the wood, like two magnets would when each of their positive pole was pushed against each other.

But with a little bit of extra strength, Eisen was able to properly manage everything, and once the wood broke through the soul’s first ’Layer’, he was able to move it around like normal.

And a little while later, Eisen had finished his second item using the Ego-Item Creation skill.

[Ego Dagger]

[Rank - 4][Quality - Perfect]

[Description] A Small metal dagger created by the Omni Craftsmaster Eisen. It’s simple in its outer apperance, but it had a soul implanted in it, allowing it to grow. Due to the method of creation, it can grow quickly, but has a low limit to its growth. It was created using the Dagger as a base.

[Effect] +25 Agi; +15 STR; +15 END

[Requirements] 100 AGI; 80 STR; 80 END; 50 INT; 50 WIS

[Growth] 0/10

"Oh!" Eisen exclaimed in pleasant surprise, happy to see that this time around, it was actually a proper Rank 4 Item. Weirdly enough, it seemed like the Effects were rather low, but maybe that was this way because it was suppsoed to be able to grow stronger than this dagger could be normally later on.

"Alright... Then that means there are different benefits to each type... But in general, like this I’m kind of limited to the shape of the soul. What if I use a blank soul, or one with the shape of a monster already?" Eisen muttered to himself, and quickly grabbed some soul stones with either of these qualities, starting to make three daggers that looked exactly like the one Eisen just made, one using a blank soul, one using a monster-soul, and one without any soul at all, just as a reference.

Just like that, Eisen had three Daggers that looked completely the same, but were vastly different to each other.

It seemed like using the Blank Soul, the growth was ’Average’. Meaning regular speed and regular limit, which was set at 15.

Growth-wise, the same was the case with the Monster-Soul, but its Effect-Stats were slightly different, more focused around strength and endurance than agility, an effect that seemed to have been caused by the type of monster that the soul came from.

And with the regular Dagger, Eisen was just able to confirm that the regular base-stats would be a little higher while requiring neither intelligence nor wisdom. Like that, the old man was able to find out a lot of things about which method was better for which.

The Soul-Based method was perfect if you had a soul in the truly perfect shape for your needs, something that Eisen could influence by giving them the shape himself, but this didn’t give any wiggle-room at all. The finished item would have to be in the shape of the soul, but in return, it would be able to grow a lot stronger than other Ego items.

With the Item-Based method, Eisen had a little bit more wiggle-room, but if he made the item and the soul’s shape fit together, then the growth speed would be increased. Blank souls gave items something like a ’Generic’ Growth that could be added to any item, and the Monster-Souls would give extra effects depending on which monster they came from.

And so, after coming to these conclusions, Eisen couldn’t help himself but just smirk. Because this was all really amazing in his opinion.