Spending My Retirement In A Game

Salty steam filled the air as the ocean water poured onto the hot magma. Eisen could see that even the Cecaelia’s body was slowly turning solid as it cooled down extremely quickly. And as its body cooled down, cracks violently formed all over it. With a voice that seemed to be a mixture of a regular man’s voice and a beast’s fear-filled cry, the transcended monster screamed after Eisen.

"You will regret this! You will regret this, you hear?!"

The old man, the current Eisen, slowly turned toward the tunnel that the former Eisen had run into to escape the onslaught of water, and before he knew it, the space around him started to shift and change again as it simply became the pitch-black space from before, where he now saw all the glowing golden memory-spheres floating around him.

And slowly, the old man chose to simply log off.

---

Benjamin stood up from out of the capsule as he took a deep breath inside of his room. It was a bit stuffy, so he opened the window and quickly looked outside. He was just thinking about the memory that he just recovered. It wasn’t particularly an amazing thing to remember, considering that he knew that it must have hurt incredibly, but at the same time, it was an important memory to him.

There were so many things going on in those memories that he had no idea how to really handle. Why did he need that special tree, why did the former Eisen just not care about that much pain in the moment, and what happened to that transcended cecaelia?

While he didn’t know what exactly happened to it, he at the very least knew that it didn’t die at the time after having water poured onto it. It made him feel a little bit uneasy to think about, actually.

But at the same time, Benjamin knew that there wasn’t much reason to really think about it right now. After all, it wasn’t like a monster like that would ever be able to continue living for nearly 100 Thousand years. That would be a bit ridiculous... right?

"Although, we did gain immortality... Who says that monsters can’t achieve something similar?" Deep in thought, Benjamin thought back onto what he could actually now remember of that time. Maybe he would be able to figure something out about that situation if he went to the place where he met the Cecaelia.

"Hm?" A bit surprised of himself, Benjamin pushed himself away from the window, "Why do I even want to know what happened then? Not like it matters that much, I’m immortal now." With a deep sigh, Benjamin turned around and scratched the back of his head. For now, he just chose to head to the bathroom for his short break, since he just needed to take a shower. He was a bit sweaty, considering the blasting hot weather of the past few days on top of the heat that the capsule itself naturally produced. It was like he had turned into a waterfall or something. A bad-smelling waterfall.

And so, Benjamin stepped into the shower and let the water pour down onto his body. But somehow... for whatever reason, he didn’t really feel the heat, no matter how hot he turned the water. Usually at some point he would feel a certain level of discomfort, even with how much his body was used to heat, but this time around, it actually felt more pleasant the hotter he turned it. His skin wasn’t even turning the usual red that came with showering in such a heat.

And he could tell that he wasn’t imagining it either. He could feel that it was hot, it just wasn’t as uncomfortable as before. It was nearly as if-

"What the..." The old man immediately stepped out of the shower. The mirror was completely fogged up as well, but Benjamin just grabbed his towel and tied it around his hips before rushing out the door, steam pouring out of the extremely hot room that could only be compared to a sauna at this point.

The old man rushed through the hallway, leaving behind wet footsteps as he made his way to the kitchen, where Benji was standing with his phone in his hand. He raised his head and immediately froze up as he saw his grandfather be just covered by a towel, "What are you doing..?" Benji asked, but his grandfather ignored him completely as he walked over toward the fresh cup of coffee standing right next to him.

It was literally steaming, so Benjamin could tell that the young man in front of him was just waiting for it to cool down before drinking it, but he didn’t really care about that right now. He had to test something.

Without hesitation, Benjamin grabbed the cup by its rim, with his palm nearly pressed down onto the opening at the top, before turning it around above the sink.

The extremely hot coffee poured down onto Benjamin’s remaining hand, and Benji freaked out. He nearly threw his phone to the ground as he looked at his grandfather, "Jesus christ, just what’s going on with you?!"

Immediately, Benji ripped the cup out of the old man’s hand and placed it into the sink as he turned the faucet on and let lukewarm water flow, because it was better for burns than cold water was, and forced Benjamin’s hand under it immediately.

"Seriously, are you..." Benji started with a loud groan, truly worried for his grandfather, before noticing that Benjamin was just staring at his own palm. The young man took a look at it as well, before noticing that... It was just like before. It didn’t blister, or even change color in response to the near-boiling hot coffee. It was just like Benjamin’s palm was normally.

Confusedly, Benji picked up the cup from the sink and confusedly looked at the old man. The cup was still hot even now after having some of the luke-warm water poured over it.

"What’s going on?" With a deeply concerned and confused stare, Benji looked at his grandfather. But the old man didn’t reply. Instead, he went over toward one of the nearby drawers and pulled it out, and after drying his hand on his towel, grabbed a matchbox that he had laying around in there.

The old man pulled one of the matches out of the small box and pressed the box into his mouth, before rubbing the match-head on the side of the box. It quickly lit up, and Benjamin didn’t hesitate to turn the match around and let it drop onto his palm. There, he just let it burn for a few moments, but nothing happened.

A bit startled by what was going on, Benji took a step back and couldn’t react in time as Benjamin stretched his hand out toward the roll of paper-towels that was standing there.

"M-Maybe it’s just not enough..?" Benjamin muttered confusedly as he pressed the lit match onto the roll of paper-towels and had it catch on fire before grabbing the roll tightly.

Soon, the flames poured out from the sides of Benjamin’s hands while peaking out from inbetween his fingers every once in a while.

"D-Dad!" Benji screamed, absolutely scared of what his grandfather was doing. His voice reached the corners of the whole house, and it didn’t take long until everyone that heard him came running. Of course, the first of those was Tony, as he was the one that was called in the first place. Right behind him was Nataly, who heard Benji’s voice scream like that.

And the two of them stood there as they looked at the old man who was standing there practically naked with only a single towel covering him up, while bright flames were ravaging around.

Tony choked up immediately as he started to panic at this sight, trying to figure out what was going on before rushing over toward Benjamin. But the old man just turned his head toward him and in a clear tone said, "It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt all that much." The old man explained. The flames of these paper-towels weren’t all that hot compared to some of the things that Benjamin worked with sometimes.

Of course, that didn’t mean that anyone could do what Benjamin was doing right now. The only reason that he was even able to do so was because he was quite different to begin with. His soul wasn’t fully of this world anymore.

Benjamin threw the burning paper-towels into the sink and poured water onto them to put them out, before cleaning the soot off of his hand that he then showed to Tony. There wasn’t any trace left on the old man’s palm that could lead anyone to the realization that his hands were just enveloped in flames.

"Dad, how did you..." Tony asked with a deeply concerned frown, but Benjamin didn’t know what her was supposed to answer. So, he gathered his thoughts and then tried his best.

"I’ve been remembering a lot of things lately. During the last memory I recovered, I was able to hold a proper conversation with a fraction of my former self. And now, all of a sudden, I’m not affected by heat anymore. Not even flames like this."

Benji and Tony were looking at the old man confusedly, because they didn’t really understand what exactly was going on. On the other hand, Nataly was understanding it. After all, she had something to announce herself.

"I’ve been feeling spouts of times where I’m taken over by Evalia as well... So at some point, we’ll really turn into them even here..?" She asked nervously, and Benjamin turned over toward her with a conflicted expression, "I don’t know. Maybe... I’ll be the first to go through all of this. I will warn you if anything happens to me... But as far as I can tell... we probably will slowly change."

Nataly was staring back at Benjamin nervously. Sure, Evalia was a human herself, but even then it was kind of scary to imagine slowly getting the sort of abilities that someone that peaked in that world must have. Even Evalia had quite a few peculiar abilities and skills that changed the way that her body worked, so Nataly was obviously scared of what might happen if she was to slowly change into that as well.

"You can get rid of that ’probably’." All of a sudden, Andrew stepped into the room as well, his head covered in a hood, which was quite rare for him. He barely even took notice of the fact that Benjamin was half-naked. The old man could already see that something was off, but he couldn’t tell all that well right now.

And that was when Andrew pulled back his hood and raised his head properly, revealing two black growths on the man’s forehead. Andrew was growing horns.