Spending My Retirement In A Game

"I mean, are you sure that you want to do that? You should have the best chances of meeting strong people here instead of anywhere else." Eisen pointed out, but Gran just started to laugh a bit as he looked at the old man in front of him who was preparing to head to sleep for a while, "Gran not smart, but Gran still knows. Can be strong when not fighter. Eisen not fighter, but Eisen beat Gran."

"Hm, you do have a point there. And I don’t really know what it was like during the time where you were alive, but at the very least now, magic can be very, very strong. You know about Xenia, the peaked of magic, right? I’ve heard that she managed to summon aster- huge rocks that were falling out of the sky. Wouldn’t that be something interesting to fight against?"

"Huge rocks... Aye, Gran thinks fun!" The Warrior exclaimed with a loud laugh, "But Gran no do rebirth yet. Want to use weapon and armor Eisen made for Gran and Buldor first."

With a smile on his face, Eisen nodded his head as he leaned back against one of the large pillars with a loud groan, "I’m glad that you like them that much... Well, I think we should keep speaking later. I can’t heal just as easily as you can here, after all. I’ll be back in about an hour at most."

Gran slowly nodded his head as he stretched his arm out to rub his hand over Buldor’s snout, as Eisen just smiled and chose to log off for now.

But then, before he saw the inside of the capsule, Eisen found himself in the deep-black space where all his memories were gathered, surprisingly.

There was one new white glowing sphere floating in front of him, and the old man wasn’t entirely sure what this dream could be about. Maybe it was going to be a memory about fighting, although Eisen figured he would have recovered his memories otherwise if that was the case.

Thinking that there was only one way to really find out what this dream was about, Eisen stared deep into the white sphere, and soon found his surrounding changing.

Instead of the deep-black, empty space he was just in, Eisen was inside of... a deep-black, empty space. But it was different, somehow. Eisen could feel solid ground under his feet, at least, and the air had a certain metallic, sulfuric scent to it, giving the old man a few rough guesses of where he actually was right now already.

And then, he turned around as he heard footsteps approaching, foosteps that were soon paired with a relatively dim light. Soon enough, Eisen saw the source of the light, which was just a floating, glowing orb.

"Urgh... It doesn’t move how I want it to... Did I mess up with the inscription somehow?" Eisen’s voice, albeit one that came from a version of him that was, physically, quite a bit younger than he was right now. And as if answering him, Eisen heard a light screech, and the younger Eisen spoke again, "Oh what, as if you could have done better."

Just a second after the man spoke, another bright light was added onto the other one, before the younger Eisen groaned loudly, "Trygan, I told you not to do that in caves like this. I could use my element as well if I wanted to, but I don’t, because I don’t want to blow the place up with us inside."

Soon, the old man was able to see the actual younger version of Eisen, as well as a quite young Trygan, walking past him. At this point, Trygan had grown quite a lot, and standing on his hind-legs he would probably be larger than Eisen when he was in his ’regular’ size. His scales had something slightly metallic to them, although it seemed like they were just somewhat ore-like instead of actual metal. They were quite unrefined, but more precious than the rock that Eisen had initially seen on the newborn Trygan.

The young Dragon once more opened its mouth for a slight cry, and the similarly young Eisen rubbed the bridge of his nose, "I know we’re in a volcano, that doesn’t change the fact that there might be something flammable here." He said, and slowly turned his way over toward the current Eisen, "Kids, eh? Don’t worry, this memory is gonna make sense soon. It’s just a bit longer because, well... You already know about part of this."

The old man slowly looked at Trygan as he tried to recall this. And the memory-Eisen was right. He did remember this to an extent from when he remembered Trygan himself. Although he didn’t remember everything about this perfectly, it seemed a bit familiar at least.

But then, something that Eisen didn’t expect happened, "Did we suddenly turn mute or something? It’s pretty rude not to answer when spoken to, right?" The young Eisen asked, and the current Eisen turned his head toward him.

"Wait... I can actually lead a proper conversation with you?" He inquired, and the memory-Eisen just shrugged a bit in response.

"Somewhat, I guess. We’ve already spoken in your dreams before, remember? Now that you’ve started remembering, it’s become a bit easier to replicate that time again." The memory-Eisen explained, "Ah, and don’t worry, we could have a teaparty here during the time your ’actual’ memory is going on, but you’d still remember it perfectly."

"That’s not necessarily what I was thinking about just now, but that’s good to know, I guess."

"Well, yeah it is, cause this memory is a pretty important one. That’s why we’re heading toward the place it’s happening anyway so that you can experience it like this first-hand. I just pulled the actual memory back a bit so that he can get the chance to speak like this before then."

Eisen looked back at his memory version and sighed a bit, "Fine, then let’s just get this done. First, to make this clear, you are the exact version of myself of before I... you... Erm, we got rid of our experience, right?"

The memory-Eisen twisted his eyes over toward the current one and nodded his head, "That I am. Just know that even I don’t remember everything that we used to know. I’m not complete yet, after all. But with every memory you continue recovering from now, we can hold a bit of a conversation and I can tell you the things that you ask me about, as long as I do know about it. Sounds pretty good, right?"

"Better than not knowing anything, at least." Eisen admitted, and the young version of himself, although it was technically a version of himself that was much, much older than Eisen could even really quantify in his mind, slightly laughed as he nodded his head, "Fair enough. Now, what would you like to ask me? If I can answer it, I’ll try to reply to every single one of your questions."

Eisen slowly looked forward, deeper into the tunnel that they were walking through, and then started to think about what he should ask. He didn’t really think about what he should ask the former version of himself if he really got the chance to. Although, there was one question that did pop up in his mind rather quickly.

"...What’s inside of the puzzle-box?" The old man inquired, trying to just see if he could get an answer for this, although he quickly realized that he was out of luck the moment he saw the face of the memory-Eisen right next to him, "Actually, I don’t really know about that part right now. It might pop up at some point as you gather more memories, though. But at the very least, I know that it’s worth it. It’s just a feeling, you know?"

"That’s good to know, at least. If I can’t trust my own gut feelings, then whose can I trust?"

With a slight chuckle, the memory-Eisen looked down at the ground, "Good one. Well, anything else I can answer for now?"

Eisen started to think again, and the next question came to mind, "What is the Giant Country like? Do you remember that?"

After a bit of thought, the memory-Eisen nodded his head, "It’s pretty... well, interesting to say the least. Growing up there was pretty tough. While Giants can change their size basically at will, most feel rather uncomfortable when they are the size of other races. Hence, their culture is built for people their size. Roads, houses, even carriages that are drawn by enormous beasts... It’s tough for regular people to survive there. Well, for the most part, at least. There are special houses that were constructed, actually brought on by us in the past, where whole towns for regular-sized people are constructed in the middle of the giant-cities. You know, a single giant-town is the size of a whole country on other continents. Hence, the houses for ’small folks’ are as far away from each other as regular towns are on the central continent. Travelling is pretty easy though, at least. You can get from one ’small folk town’ to another in just a few minutes if you hitch a ride on a carriage."

"Oh, really? That’s pretty... well, interesting. But is really everything just supersized over there?"

"Technically, no, I guess. You won’t find perfect equivalents of anything you can find here over there. There are similar things, like plants that are similar to potatoes or carrots, but they’re not exactly the same. They don’t even taste the same. Well, I guess the plants that you would find there that were brought over from other continents are still a fair bit larger than normal. Same with animals and monsters. That gargantuan steed you turned into an automaton? Regular horses were brought over there quite a while ago, and they ended up becoming bigger and bigger until they were thrice the size to normal. Then those were brought back, and they shrunk back down to give you the current gargantuan steed."

Eisen listened curiously to the memory-Eisen as he explained the situation of the next place that Eisen would head to after finishing everything in heaven and hell. But suddenly, the memory-Eisen sighed deeply as he looked at the man next to him.

"Listen, you should stop literally lying to yourself here. You really want to ask something else, don’t you?"