Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen walked silently, following the nomadic giant clan amongst his own people. As he walked, he did some of the more simple work on the figures that he could, like placing the eyes into the otherwise finished wooden animals. It was a good distraction for him, to say the least. He still didn't know what happened last night. Sure, Eisen often got lost in his work, but never like this.

Never to the point where he quite literally lost track of time. It was like the whole night was merged into the timeframe of a couple of minutes, and he wasn't able to recall any particular single moments within that memory. But this wasn't just restricted to last night either.

They were all walking in a perfectly straight line through these grasslands for now until they would reach a more mountainous area. But even so, every time Eisen glanced up while working, the position of the sun changed considerably. It was like every time he blinked, a few minutes passed. And it wasn't as though he was suddenly slow in his work, rather, the opposite.

Like in a trance, he continued doing the task he had set out to do, and was practically finished before he knew it. Now, the only thing that was left was for Parc and Rouge to make the golem cores, a task that Eisen promised to entrust to them.

But even worse, whenever he looked around, he started mistaking things for others, as though he misremembered the context he found himself in. For an instant when looking at the clouded outline of mountains in the distance, he thought he was alone, traveling the lands in search for materials.

When he looked at one of the little girls walking hand in hand with her friends, surrounded by crowds of people walking alongside them, he practically found himself in the capital of a long-forgotten kindgom during a festival celebrating some mundane tradition. His mind was running rampant, but he was calm.

The memories didn't feel out of place. It was like he was supposed to be there. Like he was actually there all along, and not here. Sometimes he started wondering if his current life was the dream and this memory was his current reality, but before he knew it, he had become aware of what was truly going on and snapped out of it. Though maybe that was the wrong term for it as well.

'Snapping out of it' implies that something was wrong, but it didn't feel wrong. Even after the fact, Eisen didn't feel that things were wrong. He felt like something was going on, and he had become aware of these thoughts after the fact, but after a few seconds, he could just barely remember what memory he had been pulled into.

However, he could still remember the feeling whenever it happened. And it was similar to when he actively remembered something from his past using that space within his mind. So considering that, Eisen had at least a good guess as to what was really going on.

If his blocked-off memories were water stuck behind a dam, then him actively recovering one of those memories would be opening the valves to let some of the water through to the other side. But every time that the valves were opened and closed, they ended up receiving some stress and damage from the process. And now, the valves were growing weaker.

They were leaking, letting memories just flow through the dam. Right now, it was still a little. He was only remembering things here and there, and it was messing with his perception of the world around him and the way that he perceived time. But what if the damage kept accumulating through that little bit of water running through the pipes?

If that was the case, then it was just a matter of time until the dam cracked and shattered, and the valley flooded. And when that happened, the current Eisen might drown in all of those memories, torn apart until there was nothing left of him to even bury.

If this was the result of recovering more of your memories, then the others should be warned as well. Their bodies were changing rapidly on earth, so their minds changing on top of that would be absolutely terrifying for everyone involved. Not just Brody, Xenia, Evalia, and Jyuuk, but their loved ones too.

Especially Brody's wife had been suffering, seeing her husband change practically overnight into something that you couldn't recognize as human anymore.

Evening came quickly. Much more quickly than Eisen had hoped. To him, it barely felt like an hour had passed when the glare of the setting sun started to blind him. The nomads set up some of their tents, and Eisen's soldiers also got ready to stay the night. Askr knelt down on the ground, and Fafnir's gates opened to let people go in and out of the dungeon to get supplies.

Soon, Eisen's apprentices also walked down the stairs from the dungeon onto the grassland.

"Did you two sleep well?" Eisen asked with a smile, trying to hide his current mood, and the two young men quickly nodded, "Yes! We're well-rested, we can get started and finish up the golem cores now!" Rouge exclaimed with an excited tone of voice.

"...You two don't have to finish them tonight.

I'm sorry about yesterday, I lost track of time and you two suffered from it," the old man pointed out, but the two apprentices looked at each other a bit awkwardly, "Well, we were tired at the end, but it was still a lot of fun to do all that work yesterday..." Parc explained, and Rouge quickly continued, "And if we have all night again, we can definitely finish the golem cores!"

Eisen smiled lightly at the two, walking past them. With a wave of his hand, he created the temporary workshop area using his element again, so that they may work under the night sky as they did last night.

"If you two say so, then let's get started. But... if you two feel exhausted, come and tell me, alright?"

"Right, of course... I mean, we tried last night, but you were so entranced in your work that you couldn't hear us," Rouge laughed slightly, as he grabbed one of the prepared mana crystal cubes, without knowing that his words were like a dagger to Eisen. Not to any fault of Rouge's, of course, but just because Eisen felt even worse that he let things get that far last night.

However, there was no need to wallow on things like that right now. He would just have to try and avoid the same thing happening again, "Could you two make a smaller batch of golem cores first? Once they've helped set up the tents over there, I'm sure the kids from yesterday will come by already."

As asked, Parc and Rouge quickly got to work. And since Eisen was done with his side of things, he took this opportunity to actively watch the two of them work. The way their hands moved, the way they used their mana. Just so that he knew their habits and could help guide their craft into the right direction. Not that there were any particular mistakes that would need to be corrected.

Sure, they had their strengths and weaknesses, but their weaknesses were more in the direction of accuracy and speed, as well as the fact that a lot of these processes still didn't come naturally to them as they did to Eisen. But those were issues that could only be solved with time, patience and experience.

While they did make some mistakes here and there, they knew how to correct them without becoming nervous, and if one of them was struggling with something specific, then the other quickly moved in and helped out.

For a moment, Eisen was worried that this meant that they would only do the parts they were good at while letting the other do the things they were bad at, but it was more like the complete opposite of that. Each of them did whatever they could to help the other grow into their own. They were a great team, the two of them.

While watching them, Eisen did have a few memories flashing in his mind, of times when he took on more apprentices, or just of when he watched other craftsmen work. But they quickly passed. Eisen was able to focus on the moment well enough, that soon, he didn't seem overtaken by the memories anymore.

"Alright, we're done with the first batch," Rouge pushed forward the bowl filled with golem cores, each with slightly different qualities depending on the form the toy figurine it was for would take on. The horses were supposed to act different to the wolves, after all.

Eisen smiled lightly as he took the bowl. He didn't struggle as much with the memories this time around, but he still felt time somewhat weirdly. But that was fine, this was a process. He took the golem cores and walked over to the already-prepared figurines, taking a seat so that he could place the golem cores into their intended spot.

As his apprentices kept working and Eisen's hand ran over the wooden animals, he took a deep breath, swearing to himself that he would concentrate on what he was doing so that time wouldn't slip through his fingers. He would make the most of this moment.

If he couldn't avoid the memories of his past flooding into him, then he could at least make sure that he built strong enough memories in the here and now so that he could withstand the breaking of the dam.

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