Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Tsk, sure. Let’s see... Oh, what a surprise! His level is quite high. And he’s just starting out as an adventurer now?" The man asked in surprise, and then looked over to the old man, little girl, golden wolf and mushroom standing by the entrance to the hall. "Ah... it’s just an old man... wait, but why are his skills so low then? And his stats are a bit high, aren’t they? Not to mention that he even has the Charisma stat." He then muttered out, alternating between looking at Eisen and the piece of paper in his hands.

The employee frowned in confusion and leaned over to take a closer look again, and after a few seconds of mental calculation, she nodded her head slightly. "Yeah... With that level and the bonus stats from ranking up your skills, they shouldn’t be this high... Wait, is it that? Isn’t limitbreaker something amazing?"

"I’m pretty sure it is. There are a few people with that title here in town. I heard that it can give you bonus stats as well..."

"Is that so..? Well, anyway, get to work you lazy bum." The employee said and grabbed the piece of paper out of the man’s hands again.

"Then get out and let me, will you?" He responded with an annoyed voice, but the employee crossed her arms.

"You know that I have to stay here and watch, so just do it."

"Fine... But keep quiet for five minutes, will you?" The man nearly yelled and the employee returned in front of Eisen with a bright smile.

"Everything’s ready. Now please, if you don’t have any weapon with you, take one of ours." The employee explained, "Since there is quite a level difference between you and that guy, he will only fight with a wooden training weapon so that he can’t fatally injure you or destroy your equipment."

Eisen nodded with a light smile and turned to Bree, who already grabbed the cloth-wrapped Zweihänder that was sticking out of the top of her backpack.

"Thanks. Now then, I hope this won’t take too long." Eisen said with a smile and stepped forward while unrwapping his sword. He knew that it would probably be best to change into his leather armor, but this was simply a test so that the guild would have a general idea, and since the man wouldn’t be able to cut Eisen’s suit apart with a wooden sword, there wouldn’t be any damage to it either. Besides, he wanted to go to other guilds later that seemed more business-minded just judging from their names, so he had to make a good impression, so wearing a suit would be the best choice there too, meaning that Eisen would need to change back into it again anyway.

He stepped forward and held the sword tightly in both of his hands.

The man that Eisen would now be fighting looked at him with eager eyes, grasping his own sword.

"Come at me whenever you want!" He exclaimed, and Eisen began to chuckle in response.

"Here I come then." Eisen said and jumped forward, slashing his sword down at the man. Instead of jumping to the side as Eisen would have expected, the man simply blocked the attack, which was quite a surprise considering that he did so with a thin wooden blade.

Seeing that Eisen didn’t have any chance against this man by trying to simply overpower him with brute strength, he shifted his feet around and made his body follow behind in a circular motion and slashed at the man once more, this time from the bottom left side.

The man shifted slightly backward and caught the attack to try and take it to his advantage by letting Eisen’s blade slide off the smooth wood surface.

However, Eisen expected this and twisted his sword just a slight bit to catch the wooden weapon with his Zweihänder’s parry hook.

He moved his sword’s tip behind the man in the hope that the hooked wooden sword would be pulled out of his hands, but different to what Eisen expected, or rather hoped, the man was able to simply resist the force that Eisen put on his weapon.

Since that was the case, Eisen slid his hooks further up the wooden sword to be as close to its hilt as possible, and then continued twisting and turning his own sword as hard as he could.

Now even this incredibly strong man couldn’t do anything against this and the wooden sword was pulled out of his hands, landing a few meters away.

While the man was jumping back to gain distance now that he lost his sword, Eisen simply attacked once more with a regular slash toward the man’s torso.

Considering his strength, Eisen was sure that an attack from himself would be fatal to the man, and he was absolutely right. Instead of being hit by the attack straight-on, the man simply deflected the blade with his bare hands and pushed it down onto the ground with an amount of force that Eisen couldn’t even fathom, strong enough to make him lose his grip on the Zweihänder so that it fell down onto the ground.

"Alright, that’s enough!" The Female Employee yelled out to let both of the fighters know that the examination was over now. "Congratulations, Sir, you have passed the entrance examination for the Adventurer’s Guild! You fought quite well, especially considering that you’re a Crafter rather than a Fighter. Just don’t be disheartened by the fact that you lost, Garon may be an idiot, but he’s the Guild Master, so he has to be strong." She explained while smiling happily and completely ignoring the man, Garon, as he was complaining about the treatment the woman was giving him.

Eisen didn’t really know what it meant to be a Guild Master, but at the very least it sounded like quite an important position.

"You can say that again. Not many people can disarm me like that." Garon said with a somewhat smug smile, while the employee continued ignoring him.

"Well then, Sir, if you would please follow me to the front I can explain the basics to you and give you your tag." She smiled and waved Eisen back to the front of the guild. But before then, he turned to Garon and held out his hand.

"Sorry for not introducing myself before, my name is Eisen. So you are the Guild Master here?" He asked, and Garon nodded.

"Oh, it’s fine. I’m from a larger town, the nicest adventurers there are even ruder than the thugs here in Melroe, so you don’t need to worry. And yeah, I’m the guild master. There isn’t much to do, usually, but every once in a while I can move around a lil’ bit like this." Garon laughed and placed his fists onto his hips while showing his white teeth in a brigh smile.

There was another thing that Eisen was wondering about, but before he could ask about it, Garon said something that both surprised and confused him, which Garon apparently noticed as well. "I just wish my wife Jaz would be a bit nicer to me... Ah, yeah, she doesn’t act like we’re married, huh? She’s a bit shy, haha." Garon laughed and picked up his and Eisen’s weapons, handing Eisen his Zweihänder before putting the wooden sword back to the other weapons. Eisen chose to simply ignore the matter of the female employee Jaz for now then, since it really was none of his business to pry further.

"By the way, did you make this weapon? I haven’t seen a sword with hooks like that before." Garon asked curiously and leaned in to further inspect the finely crafted steel in front of his eyes. Happy that someone wanted to know more about his items, Eisen nodded his head with a soft chuckle.

"Yes, I made it. It’s called a Zweihänder, and as you can probably guess, these hooks are meant for parrying. And since the sword itself is quite heavy, it’s easier for me to control the other person’s weapon than it is for the other person to control my weapon." Eisen simply explained and Garon nodded in response.

"Huh, interesting. Say, what’s your rank at the Crafter’s Guild?" Garon asked curiously, but he didn’t expect Eisen’s answer.

"I’m not part of the Crafter’s Guild yet. I meant to go there to register after finishing my business here."

"Oh, now that’s something unusual. You’re a crafter, right? What guild are you part of, then?"

"Actually, I’m not part of any guild at all."

"Now that is quite a surprise... Most people are part of at least one guild, especially at your age." Garon explained, but Eisen couldn’t do anything but smile uncomfortably.

"I guess I’m a bit of a special case in that regard then. Either way, thank you for going easy on me during the examination." Eisen said with a smile while preparing to end the conversation and making his way to follow Jaz back to the front of the Guild Building.

"No no, I couldn’t have fought you seriously, that doesn’t become of a Guild Master... and Jaz would have probably started nagging me about it for a week... Well, I’ll see you around, and thank you for choosing our Guild to be your first."

Eisen smiled and nodded before walking back to Bree, Aulu and Caria who were waiting near the door to the hall they were still in, and together they made their way back to the front of the building where Jaz was already waiting.

He stepped back around the counter before Jaz placed a small wooden tag onto the counter. "This is your Identification Tag for the Adventurer’s Guild. As you can see, we have already marked it with your unique mana signature. I heard you telling Garon that this is the first Guild you have joined. Do you need me to explain the basic system?" Jaz asked, and of course, Eisen nodded in response. He could have Bree explain it to him, but considering that they were already here talking to a Guild Employee, it couldn’t hurt to have her explain.

"Alright! Basically, we work with a Rank system as well. It’s the regular 0 to 10 as you should be used to. Every rank has a representation as a material as well. In ascending order, it’s Wood, Clay, Porcelaine, Rock, Iron, Steel, Copper, Bronze, Gold, Platinum and at last Crystal. As you may be able to guess, this is also represented in the identification tags. Whenever you rank up your position in the Guild, you will gain some new privileges, including but not limited to being able to accept higher ranking quests, accessing certain information, or being allowed to use more of the Guild’s different services. As a Rank 0, you are able to accept only one quest, and once you complete that quest successfully, you will immediately rank up to 1. As such, we suggest to get that first quest out of the way as quickly as possible. All you need to do to accept a quest is bring one of the flyers describing quests of your rank over to an available counter, and it will be processed by one of our employees. These quests can be turned in or accepted at any Adventurer’s Guild Branch. Would you like to accept a quest?" Jaz asked with a bright smile and speech that somehow had monotone undertones to it.

Of course Eisen wanted to accept a quest right now and complete it as soon as possible, but he was currently just thinking about how the first person that really seemed like a programmed NPC at times was a bureaucratic official.