Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen put away the plates that everyone ate from, quickly cleaning the grime from them when Bree rushed over toward the old man.

"We found a path!" Bree exclaimed, and the old man turned toward her, raising his brow. He looked down at his wrist at the watch he was wearing.

"Already? Are you sure?" he asked, and Bree quickly nodded her head.

"Mhm! Here, look," she got out a rolled up parchment and projected the map onto it. Placing it down onto the table, Bree grabbed a pen and started marking down the specific path that was found through the forest from their current position.
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"Oh?" Eisen let out, looking down at the map. It all seemed a bit simpler than he thought it would be. Of course, it would take a few hours to get to the destination if they followed that path, but they just had to do it, anyway.

Eisen wanted to leave right away, but looking at the others, they all seemed pretty tired. Even Bree, who had excitedly showed the old man the map, had some dark rings under her eyes, "Alright, you know what? Let's just go after resting a bit. I've got to prepare a few things for the dungeon anyway," he explained, and Bree looked up at him surprised.

"Are you sure? You said you wanted to find the dungeon as soon as possible, right?"

Eisen nodded, "Of course... I want to do whatever I can to find a transcendent monster so that we can revive Silver as soon as possible, but that doesn't mean I should make you all suffer for that. Plus, Fafnir also seems a bit tired, so letting him sleep a bit longer doesn't sound like a bad idea either," the old man smiled, and Bree slowly nodded her head.

"Well, if you're sure..." she said, and almost as if it were planned, Bree let out a long, deep yawn. She slowly blinked a few times, rubbing her eyes before turning around. Now that she was basically given 'permission' to be tired and rest, she gave it her all. Sigurd opened up a door so that everyone could go to their private rooms, while Eisen continued cleaning up a bit.

When he was done, Eisen quickly grabbed the orb that acted as the controller for the wisps and infused some magic into it. With that, all of the wisps immediately self-destructed, sending out a single last 'sensing' wave, but didn't duplicate anymore. As such, after just a few moments, all of the wisps disappeared all at once. Eisen didn't know what sort of troubles the continously-duplicating wisps could cause if just left loose, so this was a good thing to do just in case.

After that, Eisen quickly made his way back to his workshop. If he had to waste a couple of hours, then he might as well give his new ability a try. This was the first time that he was trying to make use of an ability that he didn't have before he started losing his connection to the system, so it might be good practice to let him get used to this whole situation a bit more.

From his general understanding of curses, they could be employed in a number of different ways. One of those ways was just as a 'punishment', where the curse itself was the reason it was used. This was the case in situations where you wanted to actively weaken or kill someone. That was how all the players that followed the Black Dragon used curses. But the way that Eisen was more interested in was to use them as a way to balance items.

Basically, it was all a matter of the causality that ruled this world. Let's say an item can be filled with 100 points worth of positive effects that are already filled up to boost attack damage. If a curse is added to the object, it might open up space for about 50 more points worth of effects that the item can hold within it. So, basically, it was possible to create an extremely, extremely powerful item as long as the curses were just as restrictive. And there were a few things that Eisen already had in mind.

For Brody, equipment that would completely seal any and all mana in exchange for considerable power. Considering that Brody didn't have any mana, and all his abilities relied on other energies, it was literally just a free boost. Luckily, the curses didn't know Eisen's intentions behind things when he was making something, so he should be able to imbue the item with tons of positive effects considering the usual severity of that curse. After all, most types of combat abilities still used mana as a conduit, whether it was to strengthen the physical body during the movement or to imbue a special effect into the attack. It was a fairly straightforward curse as well, so it seemed like a good way to practice.

For now, Eisen made a simple sword. Of course, one that employed exemplary materials and techniques, but there wasn't anything particularly special about it otherwise. And, in order to properly imbue it with a curse, Eisen was basically folding the cursed energy into the item as he was making it, mixing it into the metal. The rest of it was quite similar to when he was enchanting something, thinking of the exact effect that he wanted in the process of making it.

In the end, once Eisen quenched the sword, he carefully held it in his hand. The moment he did, he could feel his body tensing up and basically 'locking down'. His mana felt sluggish and soon came to a complete halt within him. It was an absolutely disgusting sensation, "Urgh..."

The old man groaned, and immediately placed the sword down. Eisen could feel his mana begin to flow again, basically defrosting, and slightly stretched. His body felt quite stiff because of that disrupted flow as well. Curses were quite an annoying matter, but he couldn't claim that this sword wasn't extremely powerful. It was one of the most powerful swords that he ever made in regard to its raw abilities despite the fact that it wasn't something that Eisen either put in any particular effort or even employed unique or special materials or techniques. If he made any item using materials that complimented this curse, then maybe he would be able to strengthen the item even more.

But now, Eisen wanted to make something with a slightly more unique curse. For a while now, Eisen has been thinking about ways to exploit the ways that this whole world really worked. After all, this was something created by people, not an actual omnipotent or omniscient deity, so it was impossible to know all the gaps or edge-cases and figure out the perfect way to work against every single possible exploit. But since that was not the case, even if this system was built and iterated over the course of literally a hundred thousand years, it was certainly not perfect. Rather, Eisen believed that him and the other originals would have purposefully sabotaged or skewed the information that was given to Samuel to make sure that there were ways to exploit the system in the future, to make it possible to fight back against that devil of a man.

So, now that Eisen had at least a surface-level grasp of how he could imbue and create a curse, it was a good time for him to try and do something... risky. It was something that he could really only try out because he wasn't quite connected to the system anymore, because he believed that otherwise, there was a failsafe in there to ensure that something like this could never happen.

It was a simple knife. Actually, it was one that Eisen made quite a while ago when he needed something to give to Sky when he wanted to try woodcarving a little bit, just to give up when he got his first few splinters. It didn't do much damage, to protect the user, and it was made for Sky's rather small hands, so it was actually quite hard for him to hold right now. But since Eisen didn't have a use for this item anymore, it was the perfect chance to give it a try.

Quickly, Eisen shaped the curse, trying to imbue it with a very particular sensation that he has been experiencing every single time he entered or left the 'game'. And again, it wasn't a particularly complex curse, but if this worked, it could be a quite powerful tool.

Carefully, Eisen held the cursed knife to his fingertip, and poked himself. And in an instant, he could feel himself pulled out of this world, right as Benjamin was forcefully woken up inside of his capsule.