Spending My Retirement In A Game

"So, that’s your ego-item?" Jyuuk asked curiously as he walked all around it, and Eisen slowly nodded his head, "Yes it is. It took on the qualities of the soul and the item that we created perfectly, just like I had in mind." The old man pointed out with a light smile. He ran his fingers over the surface of the Ego-item with the Apex-Ape’s soul in it before turning over toward Hephaestus.

"And you really can’t create other sorts of ego-items?" Eisen asked, and the Ego-Tool slowly shook his head, "Nope, whenever I try anythin’, it morphs, shifts, and shit like this happens. I ain’t even that amazing at makin’ regular items. They’re not bad, they’re just kinda... you know, mediocre."

"Huh..." Eisen muttered quietly as he looked at Hephaestus, who just stared back slightly uncomfortably at being looked at so intensely, "What is it? You’re givin’ me the creeps, man."

"Oh, sorry, I was just thinking... What if you weren’t actually a ’failure’?" Eisen suggested, and Hephaestus stared back at him with a frown, "Eh? The fuck you mean?"

Never having seen anyone be insulted by not being called a failure, Jyuuk slowly turned away to continue forming the Ghost out of the second Apex-Ape soul, while Eisen explained what he was on about. "You see, in the past, it seemed like I was obsessed with creating artificial life. So... what about if you were never supposed to be a normal tool, but a tool that was supposed to assist me in that obsession?"

"..." Hephaestus silently stared back at Eisen for a few moments, trying to figure out if what he was saying did actually make sense, before scratching the back of his neck with a load, discomforted groan, "Ah fuck it, maybe? I don’t fucking know, man. So what, I was an Ego-Item creation tool?"

"Yeah, would that be so unlikely?" Eisen replied bluntly as he placed his hand onto the Apex-Ape-shaped Warhammer’s arm, "I mean, after all, just by trying to make a regular item you’re able to cause something like this to appear. Then what if we directly tried to create something that was meant to be alive? Wouldn’t that be on a level beyond that?"

Hephaestus looked back at Eisen in thought before grumbling quietly, "Well... That ain’t a bad idea, I guess." The Ego-Item pointed out, "But fuck that for now, let’s just keep makin’ ego-items for the fuckin’ war island now. That’s the priority, right?"

"Right, of course." Eisen said with a slight nod and then turned over toward Jyuuk, and right next to him was able to see a shift in the light. It was like he was seeing the silhouette of an Apex-Ape just standing there, shifting the light around it like it was made of invisible, hot asphalt.

"Then I’ll try it out now." The Beastperson suggested, trying not to get involved in the obviously pretty complicated atmosphere between Eisen and Hephaestus, before he started to move the Ghost that he just created over toward the Living-Ego-Warhammer. Immediately, slight changes started to happen. The Ego-Warhammer twisted its limbs around in unnatural ways, as if it was about to destroy itself. Jyuuk was just about to pull the soul back out, but Eisen quickly stopped him.

"Wait... It’s using force, but it’s not using excessive force... It would have been able to actually break the crystal parts already, but it’s not. It’s probably trying to figure out its physical limitations." Eisen suggested, and Jyuuk looked at the Apex-Ape-shaped Warhammer in front of him. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was like if a being like that was actually haunted, or if it even did anything or not. It might have just been a waste of time.

Although, it seemed like that wasn’t necessarily the case.

"Hm... Brody, come over here." The old man said as he picked up a thick metal shield from the ground and threw it over toward the Demon-Orc, who had been watching this whole time. He maybe wasn’t particularly interested in craftsmanship in and of itself, but he was more than just interested in different weapons and the process of their creation, so he usually came to Eisen’s workshop to watch him when he had the time to.

"Gotcha. So just defend against it, right?" Brody asked. Without hesitation, Eisen nodded his head and then stared at the Ego-Item in front of him, "Attack the shield." Eisen commanded the ego-item, and it quickly pulled one of its arms behind its back, before quickly swinging it toward Brody.

But before the Apex-Ape hit the shield, Eisen increased his size nearly instantly and, with the strength he gained from that, pulled Brody a few meters further away. Of course, everyone was confused and surprised at the old man doing this, but they were even more surprised when they saw what happened next.

The movement of the Living Ego-Item didn’t stop. Its fist continued moving forward at the exact same speed as before, practically just pulling its body after it until its fist hit the shield Brody was holding. The force seemed to still be rather extreme, albeit obviously weakened, but Brody still groaned loudly and glared at Eisen while placing the shield down on the ground.

"The fuck was that?! You ruined my whole stance! That hurt like shit, I was supposed to divert the shock to the ground, man, but ’cause of you, I couldn’t!" Brody exclaimed with a loud voice, but Eisen just looked at him with a slight laugh while he shrunk back down.

"Sorry, sorry. But hey, at the very least, we now know that it’s worth it to turn even ego-items like this into haunted items. The ghosts possessing them will support the ego-items’ movements to a logically impossible degree. The Ego-Warhammer was literally flying after its fist without any major loss of speed. It was floating for roughly a second or two."

"I see..." Jyuuk muttered quietly, "So it’s basically like with the regular haunted items. It’s still kind of like the ghosts possessing them are just holding them, leading them along in different ways. If that’s the case, then it would really be worth it to go for this kind of thing." Jyuuk pointed out, and Eisen slowly nodded his head in response, "Yes, but I still think we should focus on turning regular items we usually wouldn’t have a use for into haunted items. These Living Ego-Items can fight on their own anyway, but that’s just not the case with regular old items."

"That’s fair, then I’ll concentrate on that. Once Stahl is back, I’ll have him help me a bit. We’re taking a bit of a break before really getting started on the island of war anyway, right?"

"Mhm, exactly. Let me know if you need any help." Eisen suggested, and then turned back toward Hephaestus, who was tapping his foot on the ground, acting like a brat without patience of any form, "Can we continue now, or what?"

Eisen slowly looked over at Hephaestus and then nodded his head, "Sure. Let’s take a look at the souls we have leftover that we could use." The old man suggested, and then slowly walked over toward Jyuuk, who had already split his soul stones up into those that he wanted to use for the regular ego-items to turn them into haunted items, as well as the soul stones that Eisen and Hephaestus could use.

Next, they chose the soul of a simple snake, a constrictor type. The item that they would make for these was pretty simple. Shackles. It seemed like this soul belonged to a monster with similar properties to Xenia’s darkness spirit. Of course, it didn’t have the darkness element, but rather, its only real ability was to constrain its pray and stop them from moving while it tried to slowly kill them, so something like shackles really seemed like the best idea.

And since this particular snake was one that would restrict the whole body, Eisen and Hephaestus chose something similar. It would be shackles that were supposed to directly pull the legs together, and then separately pull the hands together, and then also pull the arms and legs together. Basically, a hogtie behind the back to stop someone from moving.

For this, there was really only one requirement material-wise. It had to be somewhat bendy, but not malleable. Things that were rigid were easy to crack apart, so it was better if it was bendy. But if the material was too bendy, there was the risk of the shackles simply being pulled wider by force. That’s why they had to make sure it wasn’t malleable, and basically ’remembered’ its base shape so that it could return to it immediately once no force was put onto it anymore. That meant if the shackles were tight enough, they would be far harder to escape by brute force than simply solid steel shackles.

After they found the right material, Eisen and Hephaestus got started, and worked on the item, once more doing their best to suppress all sort of growths that might happen in the process while creating the ego-item.

While making this, Eisen actually noticed something important he had never really thought about. It was possible to make chains in this world far, far more durable than anything ever achievable on earth, even if the exact same material was used.

On earth, while creating chain-links, it wouldn’t be possible to perfectly close it up. Most chain-links had a slight gap, since that was simply how it worked, as they were made by making thin metal bars that were just bent to be round and interlocked with each other. Even if you tried to fuse them shut by reheating just that part, it would still be a lot weaker than the rest of the chain-link.

But here, just by using transmutation-based combination, it was possible to fuse the two ends of the metal bar together perfectly without there being any sort of difference in quality in any part of the chain-link. Weirdly enough, that was a detail that made Eisen somewhat excited, actually. These small discoveries and realizations were often far more satisfying than even creating amazingly complicated mechanisms and items over here, somehow.

Either way, these chains were made with a special method either way, as they were different types of special thread just woven together to be stronger, and then cut up into segments to replace the metal rods for the chain-links. Eisen then fused the ends of those ’chain-rope-links’ together with transmutation continued with the rest.

And just like that, after they finished the item, they were standing in front of a thin but long, actually rope-like black snake that was capable of slithering around someone’s body and restraining them perfectly.

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