Spending My Retirement In A Game

For a while, Eisen simply kept staring at the inscriptions on the box, trying to figure out if there was any actual language involved in this. During his days of travel, he learned many different languages to very different extents depending on how long he stayed in the corresponding region.

For example, he was basically fully fluent in German, French, Swedish, Spanish and Japanese, and English of course, since he spent at the very least a year in each of those regions, and was able to at the very least handle himself in most other languages so that he would be able to ask the way to a restaurant, hotel, or the nearest trainstation. Although that was really the most of what he knew in the majority of languages he knew about, and they were just things that he picked up here and there, so he should be able to at the very least recognize it if these were real languages.

It was obvious that these things were at the very least somewhat connected to Old Norse, considering that Iötum, the language of Giants, and Dvergun, the ancient language of dwarves, were both words derived from exactly that language. Old Norse was something that Eisen picked up for fun, simply because he was fascinated with the culture.

The writing themselves also seemed quite similar to Old Norse runic letters, but in the end, Eisen couldn’t recognize any of them. But at the very least, the word and sentence structure was very different, although obviously being derived from eastern writing, to what Eisen knew about, so he couldn’t figure out if that was from an existing language in the first place.

According to what Sky and Komer could tell him, Dvergun’s word and sentence structure was quite unique. The letters of one word were written bove each other from bottom to top, and then the sentences were formed by simply placing those words next to each other from right to left.

But in the end, none of them would be able to figure out what was written there if they couldn’t figure out what those letters represented. And considering that this was already a mixture of two different languages, it wasn’t hard to imagine that there would be some third language combined with it.

"We don’t have any books about these languages right now, huh?" Eisen sighed out loud, and Sky shook his head, looking over at the pile of books he built in the corner.

"No, we don’t. All the books we have are related to either fictional stories or theories about crafting and magic. And with the path we’re taking, we’re not going to reach a town or village big enough to have a bookstore or library until we reach the magic city."

"That’s fine, we don’t need to figure that out right away. For now, let’s just test out my staff." Eisen said with a sigh as he put the ornamental box back in his ’storage’ and grabbed the staff that he had before placed to the side, stepping out of the carriage.

"Alright, now, if it really increases the efficiency by as much as it says, I should be able to create a proper forge now." Eisen exclaimed as a little bit of excitement grew in him, before he began to cast the spell by first infusing his element into his mana within his body and then moving that infused mana into the staff, as much as he could, before voicing the names of the spell he had prepared.

"Flame of the Earth Forge." Immediately after Eisen said this, all the infused mana was drained out of the staff and began constructing the structure that the spell was supposed to form, that of a simple Forge that Eisen could use.

And while it was doing so, Eisen manipulated his element further so that it turned toward each end of its transformation spectrum as much as it could to the needed amounts, and was left with a satisfying end-product. The parts that were supposed to be as solid and hard as possible turned into something like an incredibly tough rock, while the parts that were supposed to be made up of the hot flames were now hot enough so that Eisen could work with whatever he needed to, at least when it came to regular materials that he was used to from real life. There seemed to be materials in the game that could only be forged with heats that would usually melt away at even your tools or the forge itself, so obviously, this magical forge wasn’t able to reach temperatures that were hot enough for something like that.

But at the very least, Eisen was now able to poperly continue blacksmithing again! As such, Eisen smiled brightly and began to manipulate more things around the forge so that he had proper conditions as well as everything that he needed while smithing, including a rock-anvil, that would later be supported through Eisen’s Crafting Space skill to make sure it was useable as such, a solid footing so that Eisen couldn’t accidentally trip over somethingm, as well as something like a simple table where Eisen could leave the materials as well as the finished parts. It drained quite a lot of mana from him, but Bree replenished it as quickly as she could, so everything was fine in the end, and he had now created a fully magical Smithy.

"Alright, now I can finally properly get to work, huh?" Eisen exclaimed with a loud laugh, grabbing everything that he needed, including his tools and materials, and placed everything down to the side before activating his Crafting Space for Blacksmithing.

Soon enough, Eisen’s hammer quickly floated into his hand while he was grabbing the high-tensile brass which he would use now. Quickly, he threw the ingot into the forge and waited for it to heat up, using that time to start his transformation for crafting.

He was playing around with this a few times over the past weeks, and was able to figure out the best spots where to place which transformation. Overall, he only transformed himself in his arms, back, shoulders, and his ribs. Around the parts where he needed to be able to move, such as his joints or the areas of his skin that needed to stretch and retract, were transformed as far toward the flame transformation so that he had quick and agile movement, while the rest of the areas, especially around the muscles that he was using most at the time, were transformed as far toward the rock transformation for extra strength.

Eisen would then switch a few areas around on the gradient scale depending on the situation or the place which drained a little more mana, but overall, he was able to save a lot of it by just transforming certain areas instead of every little square inch.

Apparently, the staff even helped with the transformation, although not to the extent as it helped with casting the spells, but it was still enough to be able to notice it.

"Alright, let’s get going here." Eisen exclaimed as he quickly changed his outfit into the loose wool pants and his leather apron, and soon enough, the brass was hot enough to work with.

Excited at this, considering that it’s been a good while since he was last properly working with metal in this way, since he was not counting in when he was working with the mythril just now, he quickly brought the metal over to the anvil with some tongs.

And as such, Eisen began to work this glowing-hot brass with a smile, flattening it and changing its shape around as if he was molding clay with his fingers, with each time the hammer impacted on the metal accompanied with a loud sound, the brass coming closer to its final shape.

Eisen continued this work for a while, completely indulging himself in the heat of the forge and the metal lying in front of him, making the gears and bars needed in order to properly create the three different camera-creatures that Eisen was planning to construct.

And at the end of this work, something great happened as well.

[Blacksmithing reached Level 100 in Rank 2, upgrading to Rank 3]

[You can now work with low-grade non-metallic materials]

[Due to Ranking-up your Blacksmithing Skill, you gained +1 STR and +1 END]

"Non-metallic materials, huh..? What does that mean?" Eisen muttered to himself as he wiped the sweat off his forehead and placed his tools to the side while deactivating the Flame of the Earth spells, and it seemed like Bree overheard him.

"Did you rank up your blacksmithing skill, Eisen?" She asked with a curious voice, and began to explain what those materials may mean immediately after the old man nodded and told her the new ability of the blacksmithing skill. "Ah! Those kind of things are materials that you technically need to forge, but that aren’t metals!" Bree exclaimed with a smug voice, before noticing Eisen’s frown and realizing that she literally just said what the notification told Eisen already.

"Erm... The lowest-grade materials I can think of that count to that category are the carapaces of bug-type monsters... The highest grade you could get are things like Dragon Bones or something like that." Bree explained with a lightly red face, and Eisen began to scratch his beard.

"Carapaces and Bones? Hmm, I guess that makes sense... I’ll have to look into that sooner or later then. Because if I can work with Bug Carapaces, doesn’t that mean I’ll have basically infinite materials if we find a nest belonging to huge bug monsters?" Eisen asked with a soft chuckle, and Bree actually immediately nodded.

"Mhm! That’s actually what a lot of people do! There’s specialized professions that make it easier to work with carapaces, and there are a lot of those craftsmen gathered around nests like that. For example, there’s a small outpost near the Ankheg nest near Melroe just for that~!"

"Ah, I see, I see... Wait a second, Ankheg are bug-type monsters...?" Eisen asked in complete surprise, remembering back on the ankheg steak he ate on the first day, as well as on a few other occasions, of playing the game. He thought it was some kind of bird-like monster, but it seemed to have been a bug-like one instead.

"Huh? Yeah, they are... Didn’t you know that? Don’t you eat that a lot?" Bree tilted her head to the side, and Benjamin simply shook his head with a sigh. "Nope, I didn’t know that, sorry. Not that I mind, honestly, I was just a bit surprised."

Eisen definitely wasn’t the type of person to mind eating those kinds of things, he never was. He actually enjoyed eating the type of cuisine that implemented different bugs into them. It was a bit hard to get used to at first, but once he tried it a few times, he actually started buying roasted grasshoppers from street-stalls as snacks whenever he saw them being sold there.

"Anyway, that really doesn’t matter too much right now. Can you guys help me bring the parts inside, please? Oh, and be careful not to mix the piles, I’ve pre-sorted everything already." Eisen asked the group that had been closely watching the whole process to help him out while he grabbed his tools and parts of the gears and such before bringing them to the carriage, so that the group could now finally continue driving while Eisen was working on the camera-bots.

Happy to help, everyone grabbed some of the items laying around and brought them to the carriage as well, placing them down seperately to each other, before Sky and Bree sat down on the front bench of the carriage again while Eisen gathered all that he would need for the further construction of the camera-bots now, the most important materials being the Crystal Eyes that were harvested from the Crystal Bats.

And now, it was time to get to work.