Spending My Retirement In A Game

Over the next few hours, Eisen simply did his best to properly level these Ego-Items up. It was relatively easy for the Tool, once he finally found a proper use for it, but the other items, meaning the charm and the Accessory-Glove, didn’t really gain all that much experience at all.

Eisen figured that especially these things had to be passively leveled up through combat, because there usually wasn’t a direct use for them, at least not as far as he could tell. He wasn’t even aware that charms like these extisted before he made these Ego-Items and knew what ’type’ of item they were.

But for the most part, Eisen figured that he could just wait for another little while and just keep them with him, because it wasn’t like they didn’t grow at all. The Charm was rather annoying because it didn’t seem to grow unless directly held, but since the tool could be held in one hand, it was mostly fine.

Either way, for now, the only item that Eisen could ’Upgrade’ was the tool, and it was surprisingly tough to do so, simply because there was more resistance in the metal than usual, as if it simply didn’t want to change its shape. He figured that he wouldn’t be able to actuallly break this tool down into its raw parts and retain something like an ego-item effect, but it seemed like this level of change was fine, meaning that Eisen didn’t need to worry about enchanting these at some point, or re-adjusting them for different purposes or situations.

Once Eisen placed this tool into the next soul and had them combine again, the tool had pretty high growth capabilities, meaning that this time around it would probably take a little while to get it done again. The necessary ’Experience’ for the next growth-level seemed to grow nearly exponentially for these, and because this tool now had roughly 15 more growth-levels available, that would mean some extra time that was needed for sure.

Either way, for now, the hammer that Eisen was holding was roughly like an actual hammer that he could use for creating metal-based objects, so he spent another little while just preparing more ego-items while using the item as the base, now experimenting with different blank- and Monster-Souls.

For example, he wanted to see if there was any difference making multiple of the same item, using a soul with each similar soul-strength, just with different ’stat’ focus on each soul.

It would take a while to actually see a difference, but again, this just meant that Eisen had something to do while travelling around. He still had to reach level 300 for the ’Quest’ that the puzzle-box had given him in the form of the small notes.

Considering the amount of time the leveling itself would take, Eisen was sure that he had more than enough time to work on that. But the most important thing was to, for now, rank his skill up some more so that he could make Ego-Items with Ranks and Levels, which was the point at which they also gained something similar to ’thought’, at least that’s what Eisen was hoping.

From the information that he had about Ego-Items so far, that seemed to roughly be the case, however.

Then, he would do a few things to start things off. For one, he would try and place the souls of the Great Golems into his ’Great Golem Reincarnations’ to hopefully ’revive’ them somehow.

And then, he would also start working on his Yin Weapon and Yang Multi-Tool, so that they could properly grow as well.

The only thing Eisen wasn’t sure about was if there was some sort of Growth Limit even if he ended up being able to give them Ranks, which was something he really, really hoped not to be the case.

Either way, he would just have to wait and see. And that, Eisen would be doing tomorrow morning, because for now, he wanted to get some sleep.

---

"Yo." Brody said, squatting on the table in front of Eisen while holding the Ego-Sword that Eisen gave him yesterday, "Gimme another one. This one’s at its limit." The Demon-Orc explained, and the old man looked at him with a slightly surprised expression.

"I just woke up, wait a moment." Eisen replied with a laugh and then stood up, before taking a proper look at the sword that Brody was holding.

"Hmm... Yeah, it did already reach the Growth-Limit... Could I see the other Ego-Items I gave you for a moment?" The old man asked, setting the monster-kids down onto the ground properly to let them go off and play for a while, and Brody quickly grabbed the different items, which Eisen also quickly inspected.

"Hmm, these aren’t at that high a growth-level yet... But from what I can tell, it really focuses on your stat-exposition, huh?" Eisen muttered to himself quietly, and then looked over at Fafnir with a smirk on his face.

"Could you open the Dungeon?" The old man asked, before the small Dragon did so and Brody and Eisen quickly stepped through the gate. And on their way over toward the place where Eisen was usually crafting, Eisen turned over toward Brody.

"Now, it seems like you liked this sword?" He asked him, before Brody immediately nodded. "You can say that again! It’s unconventional in its shape, but it’s light, fits perfectly into my hand, and it’s nice to see something literally grow better like that. It’s a shame that it’s at its limit, but otherwise I’d say it’s pretty neat." Brody pointed out, and Eisen just chuckled at him before he grabbed the crystal-box with the soul for the next ’layer’ in it, while pointing over toward a small spot right next to them.

"I’ll get this one done in a moment, you can take a look at the others if you find anything interesting. Those are actually Rank 4 weapons instead of Rank 1 ones, so they might be suited to actually be used. I made some of them to fit the image I had of the Monsters whose souls I used, so don’t be surprised." Eisen explained, and Brody looked at him with a smirk.

"I’m gonna take a look, but what exactly do ya mean with ’get this one done’?" He asked, and Eisen pointed at the box in front of him. "This is the whole reason I gave you this sword, I’m trying to ’layer’ different Ego-Items on top of each other. It resets the growth, but the starting stats and the growth-potential are higher." The old man explained as he slowly started to grind down some parts of the sword, bend some others, and add some smaller parts all over it, before Brody looked back at him surprised.

"Oh damn, really? Can you do that with these as well?" He asked, but Eisen just looked at him with a shrug.

"I didn’t get to try yet, but I’m sure I could. There’s probably a limit and rules to it, but I’m going to try my best to figure everything out." The old man pointed out, and then slowly started to push the sword in his hand into the soul in front of him, swiftly creating the next layer for this Ego-Item. And so, with a broad smile on his face, the old man handed it back over toward Brody, who seemed to have picked out a few different items as well.

"Let me know when you brought something to its growth-limit again, and I’m going to try to reset it." Eisen explained, and the Demon-Orc nodded his head immediately, happily taking these different weapons with him. "Thanks, old man! These are some really neat weapons!" He exclaimed, and Eisen just slightly chuckled in response, looking back at his status.

"Just a few more levels till Rank 2, huh..?" Eisen muttered to himself, before he grabbed another soul that was right next to him.

Now, he wanted to try something else out, just to see how well it would work. It would also allow him to use the Ego-Tool on a ’bigger’ project, but that wasn’t the main reason for trying this out.

First things first, Eisen created a golem made of metal, using the body of one of the Goblins in this Dungeon as a basis. They looked a bit different than Goblins that existed in the ’wild’, like the one this soul came from, but at the very least he could reference them to fill in the gaps that the soul was showing.

And then, after a very, very simple and rough Golem body in the shape of a Goblin was created, incomparable to the complexity of the five Great Golem Reincarnations, Eisen created a Golem Core, mixing the crystal with a soul-stone crystal and a mind-crystal, because the Ego-Items didn’t have their own ’thought’ just yet, and then enchanted it in the different ways necessary, before placing the Goblin-Soul into the center of the Golem Core.

Then, Eisen placed that Golem Core into the Center of the Goblin-Golem’s Body and activated it. Immediately, like normal, the Golem Core reacted to the Body, just that something else interesting happened.

Certain parts of the metal bent in weird, or rather unusual ways. Usually the Golem’s body wouldn’t do that, but in this case, it was as if it was changing the body to get used to the soul’s shape better.

Especially the face, which Eisen didn’t really spend all that much time on, became far more detailed, and before the old man knew it, the Goblin stood there slightly hunched over and looked at Eisen before jumping backward as if scared of him.

"Come back." Eisen said in a commanding tone, and while the Goblin did as asked pretty quickly, it seemed like it just really, really didn’t want to do that at all.

"Huh..." The old man muttered to himself quietly, before sitting down in front of the Goblin-Golem while moving his fingers through his beard, trying to figure out how much Souls really influenced the Ego-Item itself. Right now, it seemed like the Ego-Golem was able to ’think’ like normal because of the mind crystal, but otherwise, it probably wouldn’t be able to do that.

For the most part, Eisen figured he should maybe try and see how much like a Goblin this Golem really was, after all, this was the most insight into an Ego-Item that the old man had gotten so far.

And so, for the next little while, Eisen spent more time trying to figure out this Golem’s behavior than doing anything else, watching it interact with the monsters of this floor while he himself was still working on some different items. For the most part, it really did seem like this Golem was just a normal, boring Goblin, just that it had a metal body.

Of course there were differences, for example it was far less angry and aggressive, but it seemed to be pretty curious about a lot of things and spent a fair amount of time following the Dungeon-Goblins around as well while they were preparing for their work that would start sometime in the next few days.

Throughout the whole next day, this Ego-Goblin was running around wildly, although when it was time for Eisen to go to sleep again after spending the whole day making more ego-items and finally bringing his new skill to Rank 2, the old man figured it was the best choice to take the Ego-Goblin apart again, and do it another little ’favor’.

The old man was aware that even souls with the shape of the monster they inhabited actually wanted to have another shape, and while Eisen didn’t give a form to souls that already had a form a lot so far, he knew that he could still do it, even if it was slightly annoying to do so.

And so, after helping him out in his research, Eisen took the Ego-Golem Core out of the metallic body and opened it up, taking the soul out of it again, before interacting with the interface to start the ’Form-Giving’.