Spending My Retirement In A Game

For a while, it seemed like the five Originals were stuck in a single moment, staring at the Islands in front of them, and the one that managed to snap out of it first was Eisen, who swiftly went around and ’Woke’ the others up again.

"Hey, are you all alright?" Eisen asked, trying to ignore the lingering pain that he felt in his head, and the others slowly nodded their heads, seemingly able to slowly recover from what just happened as well. And it was weird, just beyond the fact that they couldn’t really control what they were doing for a moment there. Nobody else, not even the NPCs reacted any different to normal, it was just the five of them. And Eisen was sick of it.

Without hesitation, he pulled the other Originals to the side, or rather the front of the ship, and then looked around, seeing a certain person on the other side of the ship, one of the three that helped Eisen create the sensory Organs for Ranger, and just to make sure that his suspicion was right, he crossed his arms and acted as if he didn’t notice her, leaning in toward the others before starting to whisper as quietly as he could while slowly increasing his size.

"Alright, so we’re all aware that this world is that of a game right?" Eisen asked as a start of everything, and noticing that nothing was happening, he continued, although he still left the others quite confused. "Well, we’ll be at the islands soon, and I think we should-" Eisen began to say, becoming more quiet and quiet by the moment, before he stopped speaking and clapped his hands together with as much force as he could, creating an incredibly loud noise somehow. It wasn’t loud enough to reach the other side of the incredibly large main deck, however, and if at all just incredibly queitly.

But on the other side of the ship, the ’Bland’ woman with the ’Whisper’ Element held her hand to her ear startled, and Eisen began to sigh deeply as he stared at her, pissed off beyond what he was able to show. "Get the fuck over here right this moment." He said in a relatively quiet voice, and the other Originals were still quite confused, although Eisen continued to stare at the other side of the Ship, slowly waiting for the Woman to come closer.

And noticing that she didn’t, Eisen chose to come to her. His size was increased to the max already, so all that he had to do was slowly turn into his demonic form. And it wasn’t just his basic demonic form either, but one of the two that he found to have quite recently. With Dark flames inbetween the cracks of his body that seemed as if they were swallowing the light around him instead of producing it, and wings that seemed as if a wild animal had ripped them apart with its claws, Eisen stepped closer toward the woman, and once more managed to confirm one of his suspicions.

While all the other NPCs on the deck were shaking in fear at the sight of Eisen in this horrid form, the woman simply stood there with a light smile, trying to act as if nothing was wrong.

Slowly, Eisen stepped in front of her and pressed his teeth together at the fact that his mind went into a direction other people would hold him mad for. And no matter how much Eisen wanted to convince himself that this woman was an executive of Prime Industries sent to spy on the Originals, the conclusion he came to was another one.

"You. Angel. If you don’t tell those meddling Gods to leave us be, I will rip each and every single one of your feathers out one after another. We are just about to land on the islands. If they want to speak to us, make them give us an audience, or have them wait until we see them. But I don’t like being spied on." Eisen whispered to her so quietly that nobody else could have heard it, not even any normal person standing in front of him, but he knew that someone with such an element was able to hear him.

And as Eisen expected, instead of trying to say that it ’Wasn’t like he thought it was’, or that ’He was wrong’, the woman simply began to smile broadly.

"As Expected of those even the Gods feared. I was asked to keep an eye on you, but it seems like I got a bit careless considering your lack of strength. Your wit is as in-"

"Shut the fuck up." Eisen told her angrily, and all of a sudden, even the Angel took a step backward. "R-Right. Anyway, I’m sorry, I have my orders, I can’t-"

"I told you to shut the fuck up. I don’t know what’s going on here, and how I knew that you’re an Angel, but I know one thing. You angels piss me off." Eisen said as he ground his teeth, although he suddenly felt a pain in his head that he couldn’t fight off, and a few moments later, Eisen’s transformation was deactivated and he was back in his regular size, smiling lightly while everyone on the ship that had been paying attention to what just happened was smiling as well, slowly just moving away from Eisen and the Angel, and even the other Originals stopped paying attention and were talking about some random casual stuff.

The only ones that seemed to have any idea of what just happened were Eisen and the Angel, although even the latter was confused at what was going on. "W-Wait, why is- How is everyone..." She asked confused, looking around, trying to figure out why nobody was paying attention to anything anymore, but Eisen just shook his head with a wry smile.

"I don’t know, kid. I just know that I’m tired of repeating this whole thing over and over again. There’s just one thing I want to know. You heard me say that this was a game before, didn’t you?" Eisen asked with a light smile, although all that could be noticed from his voice was exhaustion, and the woman slowly nodded her head, so Eisen moved on to the question he wanted to ask.

"Then tell me. Beside the players, the gods, and apparently you as their servants are the only ones that know about this being a game. But your perspective is different to that of us and the players, so I just need to know... Is this really a game? So much is happening that I just can’t believe that anymore." Eisen said, just so slightly clenching his fist, before the woman just looked at Eisen while shaking her head.

"I... don’t know. The gods were told that it was so by the Great Goddess’ Father. None of them understand what such a ’Game’ that he spoke about truly was, but why shouldn’t the Gods believe an Existence so much higher than them? There are doubters, such as my Master, the God of Truth, and he wanted me to follow you to see if we can find out. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you." The Woman apologized, before slowly turning around with a light smile, stepping toward the entrance into the body of the ship, while Eisen turned around as well and stepped through the small crowd of people that formed to look at the islands in the distance, all of them seemingly not having heard a single whisper of what Eisen and the Angel just spoke about.

And with an unfulfilling feeling in Eisen’s body, he moved on toward the other Originals. If this world was so against letting anyone know the truth, he would play along. He would pretend that everything was fine, that there was nothing to worry about, and most importantly, that this place was truly nothing but a game.

At least until he fulfilled the task that the blood-red notification in the corner of his sight seemed to give him, which was now fully within Eisen’s sight and could even be slightly manipulated by him to move behind or in front of him, even if he still couldn’t make it disappear.

[Speak to Grardour]

---

For another good while, the ship had to simply circle the islands to find the best path to properly get close to the central Island, and once they had found it, low tide had already set in and it was too dangerous to pass through, so they had to wait there at a safe distance from the islands until high tide set in again.

The rest of the day was spent quite leisurely by everyone. Eisen began to teach his students about Cooking while finishing up some more items, before then logging off that night, because it was time to get checked on by his Doctor again.

Slowly, Benjamin leaned up a little bit and opened the stuffy capsule up, before slowly standing up in preparation for the check-up. He was still connected to the capsule through the cables and tubes, but he was still able to at the very least reach the window to open it up and get a little bit of fresh air, although it took a few moments to realize that nothing was happening because he was trying to open it with his right hand.

"... Right..." The old man muttered to himself with a sigh and then used his left hand instead, before breathing in some of the air from the window.

He was feeling pretty good for the most part, but his legs were hurting a little bit from standing up so suddenly. He was a little hungry, or rather, his stomach was grumbling because he hasn’t eaten anyhing solid but was just supplied with nutrition through liquid.

Slowly, Benjamin looked to his right at his missing arm and then sighed, before scratching the back of his head. "Well, I guess I still have my arms in the game, huh?" Benjamin said with a smile, and then sighed deeply to himself.

"Get yourself together, old man..." He muttered and then sat down on his chair next to the capsule, just waiting there for a little while. And before he knew it, Benjamin’s Docor stepped through the door.

"Ah, Mister Joyce! Nice to see that you felt like standing up, but for now, try to wait until someone is there to help you, alright?" He asked Benjamin with a smile, and the old man nodded his head, returning a smile as well.

"Of course, sorry. I just needed a little bit of air." Benjamin explained, and the doctor nodded his head before stepping up to the Capsule with a nod, plugging a cable into some random port before opening his laptop, so that he was able to get detailed statistics on how Benjamin was doing throughout the day.

"I see, that’s good to know. Well, Mister Joyce, seems like you’re doing alright overall, but there are a few problematic spikes with your heart-rate every once in a while. The last, and probably biggest one, was just about two hours ago. I’ll go ahead and test your blood-pressure again." The Doctor explained after looking at the Latpop’s screen for a few moments before walking up next to Benjamin and pulling up his sleeve before getting to work on measuring his blood-pressure, while being asked some more questions.

"How are you feeling otherwise? Do you have any headaches, or other problematic pains anywhere?" Benjamin was asked, but the old man just sighed. "No real headaches at the moment. My eyes hurt a bit, but that’s probably just because of the bright light from the window. Other than that... It feels like I have hundreds of knives stabbing me over and over again in my right arm, I guess? That’s probably those phantom pains you hear about all the time from movies..." Benjamin explained, and the Doctor nodded his head.

"For the light, I can just suggest to get some blinds for this room so that you aren’t immediately hit by that much light when you stand up, and try to just slowly open those blinds to a comfortable level. And as for your arm, I’m afraid there isn’t much I can help oyu with at the moment. You’ll get used to your new situation in a while, and those pains should disappear with time." The Doctor reassured Benjamin, who just slowly nodded his head.

"Of course."