Spending My Retirement In A Game

"You think it’s going to be tough in there?" The Monkey Beastperson asked, and as the group started to move toward the castle’s entrance, the old man thought about that question a bit, "I’m sure it’s not going to be a walk in the park. The problem with castles like that is that they have a lot of different places inside of them. They usually have an Armory, things like internal workshops with a lot of tools, weapons or armor, and most likely also laboratories where different people are trying to create things like potions or simply research magic. Most likely, we’ll encounter a high variety of ego-item types, although they should all be pretty high-quality, being so close to the boss." Eisen suggested. The others were really thinking the same thing, they just all kind of wanted the confirmation from someone else that their guess was right.

Either way, for now, they would need to make sure to properly head inside first and foremost. There was a lot they would need to take care of, definitely. Especially those mock ego-items would be incredibly bothersome.

Soon, the large group reached the front entrance of the castle, and they simply forced their way into it by pressing open the door with as much power as they could. The hall that they now stood in was eerily quiet, and surprisingly clean. All the others had rubble everywhere, or were at the very least a bit dirty and the things inside were displaced. After all, everything was somewhat ’alive’, so they would eventually move out of the way. But no, not this time. This time, everything was in peak condition. They couldn’t even feel the structure moving around at all, as if the ego-castle’s internal structure was manipulated to be perfectly level at any moment in time. If that was the thing, Eisen would really appreciate it, after all, it would make their job a lot easier.

But of course, things weren’t as peaceful and nice as he hoped they were. Eisen activated his truth-seeing eyes and turned on their mana-sight, and immediately let out a deep groan.

"Alright, everything in here is an ego-item, without exception. And it doesn’t even seem like they’re the ’mock’ kind. They have actual soul cores in their bodies." Eisen pointed out as he sighed, pulling his Ego-Sword out of his soul storage before just stabbing the tip of it into the red carpet they were standing on and ripping it across its surface.

The moment he did so, the carpet started wiggling around and everyone jumped off it as soon as they could. The cut that Eisen created inside of it was seemingly integrated directly into the body of the ’Ego-Carpet’, as instead of being something like a wound, something like a black abyss formed beyond it and teeth grew on its inside. The cut was turned into a mouth. A mouth that soon let out a loud screech.

But just a few moments later, Eisen reached the Soul core and simply cut through it. It was an ego-carpet, it was basically impossible to hide the soul core anywhere. It was just out in the open. The point of this all was probably to have people walk on the carpet and then accidentally step onto the soul core, which would probably hurt the ego-carpet and make it react, then trapping the person without them being able to react. But that obviously didn’t work out too well.

When Eisen made sure that the mana that had been spread throughout the carpet properly dissipated, the old man heard a grunt from behind him, "Oh, perfect. That loud-ass screech woke the others up." Brody pointed out annoyedly, but Eisen simply looked around the room and smiled, "It’s fine, they should be easy to destroy. Here, I’ll mark the soul-cores for you."

With that said, Eisen activated his Visualization ability and shared it with everyone here, creating literal targets right around where their soul cores were so that everyone could focus their attacks on them. After all, all the things in this main entrance hall were ego-items, but their form wasn’t changed. They were basically just running around and trying to move in the shape of tables, chairs, and paintings. Or so Eisen thought at first, since the group hadn’t seen the ego-items actively change their shape. There would be the ego-potions that would end up turning their glass into weapons if it was shattered, but beyond that, nothing like that really happened.

But this time, it was different. Everything that was inside of here changed their shape into something else. The furniture in this room and the adjacent ones that the group could look into from here shifted and turned into beasts like boars, wolves, wildcats, or even horses. The soul cores were right where those animals’ hearts would be, so Eisen could just get rid of the ’targets’ he placed onto their bodies and everyone would still be able to know where to attack, but this was still pretty troublesome.

The carpet that Eisen cut up wasn’t the only one in this room, there were still thin ’walkway’ carpets placed along the other rooms or up the stairs, separate from the one that Eisen destroyed and killed. Those carpets quickly rolled up along their length, turning into long, red cloth-snakes. Then there were the paintings, that each turned into numerous butterflies, which was the most surprising sight today.

It seemed like each swarm was a single entity, as only one of them held the soul core. But at the very least, once that one was destroyed, all of them died. They had a lot of good archers, as well as Jyuuk’s birds and Melissa’s bees, so those were quickly taken out. Some of them attacked Eisen though, and they cut into his skin immediately. The cuts weren’t deep, and only worth around 1 or 2 HP of damage each, but considering that each swarm had at least a hundred of these, that damage would stack up pretty quickly. They were a rather troublesome enemy, really.

Either way, the moment after one of them cut slightly into Eisen’s skin, the old man just activated his Draconic Demon King transformation and literally just burnt them up, which happened rather easily due to their material that was weak to fire.

Due to the large amount of people participating in this, all the enemies were taken care of rather quickly, and the group could set up whatever they needed to here for now, so that the ’scouts’ of the group could really go and look for the boss room.

"Hm..." Xenia muttered quietly, wearing her Mana-Spectacles that Eisen made her so that she would be able to see things like mana as well, "The soul core is just in the position of the heart this time. It seems like its the throne room in there, so that’s probably the boss room." The young woman suggested, but Eisen had a pretty different idea of where the boss might be.

"I don’t think so. A throne room is not a good place to make items, and seeing how well in-order everything is in here, I doubt that that would be the only place that’s messy and changed around. I think rather the boss is in the workshop area." Eisen pointed out, "So right around here on the bottom floor, or the basement even."

A few moments later, Jyuuk nodded his head. The color of his irises had faded a bit, showing that he was currently looking through the eyes of one of his tamed monsters, "Yeah, I think so as well. That up there is the throne room, but it’s just open to enter, seemingly. There’s some ego-items in there protecting the soul core, but beyond that I don’t think the boss is there."

"Then should some people head up there and take care of the soul core?" Brody asked, "Or at least the ego-items around the soul core, if you guys wanna take it over."

But quickly, Eisen shook his head, "I’m not sure if we’ll need to do that." The old man pointed out, we should all head toward the boss room together. It’s safer that way. I hope we’ll be able to get through this without actually having to kill the boss, much like with Argon in Prototype. And if we can, then we’ll have all the ego-items passively under our control anyway."

"Huh." Evalia said, "Then there’s no reason not to try that." She pointed out. And with that, the group decided that they would just go and look for the workshop of this castle, because that’s most likely where the boss was.

As far as Eisen could guess and figure out through that memory he received last night after heading to bed, it was obvious what exactly happened. Eisen created a new sort of ego-item, or created an ego-item with a new technique. The ego-item then went rogue and started creating ego-items on its own, and was then turned into the boss monster of this island after everyone’s ’control’ of this town slipped up.

While Eisen wasn’t entirely sure how he treated this ego-item in the past and what the ego-item thought of him, he hoped that he would be able to convince it to stop somehow. Eisen would take ’ownership’ of it again to ’eliminate’ the boss and take over the island, like they did by simply having Jyuuk tame Argon back then for a few minutes so that the boss room would be taken down that way.

The large group made their way through the castle, soon finding stairs that led down below into the basement area. The entrance to these stairs was rather hidden, so everyone figured that this was exactly what they were looking for. And it didn’t take long either until that was confirmed, as they could start hearing the sound of someone forging metal at the end of this stairway.