Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Hm? Oh, I spend most nights simply at the research room I rent from the guild. It’s pretty cheap compared to rooms at an Inn, although I do need to take care of my own food." She explained with a light shrug, before Dien sighed out loudly. "I wouldn’t say what you do ’taking care of your own food’, Xenia... If I didn’t make you eat something proper every once in a while, you’d simply live off those food pills all the time."

"And what’s wrong with that? This way, I don’t have to waste time with cooking, and can simply continue playing around with magic!" She exclaimed with a grin, before Eisen chuckled softly.

"Ah, I know how you feel, Xenia. Sometimes I want to just continue crafting all day every day, especially if I’m working on something large or incredibly interesting, but in the end, I get my best ideas after sitting down with my friends and having a nice meal."

"Really? Hmm, then maybe I should take some breaks as well sometimes, if it may actually help with my research..." She muttered out, scratching her chin in thought, before Dien looked at Eisen with a glad expression, happy that someone that Xenia apparently acknowledged as Skillfull at this point was able to convince her to lead a happy lifestyle. And of course Eisen noticed Dien’s facial expression too, and the old man began slowly warming up to this person that seemed to quite obviously care very deeply about those around him, but he still didn’t want to show this just yet.

He wanted to make sure that Dien really was like this, and it wasn’t just all an act. So, Eisen chose to quickly change the topic to something else he was curious about right now. "So, what are those food pills?" The old man inquired, before Xenia quickly burrowed through her pocket and held some small round pills, similar to the pills Eisen made from potions at least in size, forward. "Here, that’s what they are. Simply dryed and long-lasting foor that has been heavily compressed with alchemical transmutation. Each pill has enough to count as one full meal."

"Interesting. Seems like you can do a lot of interesting things with compression... Actually, a friend of mine who helped me learn Alchemy blew up half his workshop with an item enchanted with compression. It was all just squeezed into a tiny ball." The old man chuckled, and Xenia did the same, although slightly worried about the kind of person that would make an item like that.

"Alright, this is it. I’ll get the room, just wait for a second." Eisen said, before quickly stepping up to the front counter to get a room large enough for him and his companions to stay at for a while, and then made his way there together with his two tamed monsters, his Knight, and these two Mages.

And it didn’t take long for them to be joined by the rest of his group, after telling Komer the room number through their chat, of course.

"And, what kind of people are your companions?" Xenia asked, just a few moments before the rest would enter the room, and Eisen answered her with a smile. "They’re great kids. One of them is an Omega, and he’s our group’s merchant. It took a while for him to get there, but he’s great at it, really. The other two are both Fey-Kin, one of them I rescued from that monster shop I mentioned, where I also met Kiron. They’ve been getting him an occupation for the past few hours. And then there’s the girl that joined me first, I met her back in Melroe, she’s the supporter and Carrier of our group." Eisen explained, while Dien was growing more and more stiff and nervous as he sat on a chair in the corner, the longer he listened to that last explanation. Eisen didn’t know why he acted like that just yet, but he was about to find out.

The moment that Sky and Bree stormed into the room, with the Blue-Haired boy especially gleeful and happy, Bree stopped moving as she laid eyes on Dien, and Dien simply stared back at her.

"B-Bree... It’s really you..." Dien muttered out to himself as he tried to figure out what to do after seeing Bree.

"Dien... what are you doing here..?" She asked, with a complicated expression on her face, made up of a mixture of anger and joy, as if Bree couldn’t decide what to feel. Not knowing what was going on, and what the right choice of action was, Eisen simply chose to wait and see what was about to happen, and step in when everything escalated.

"I... I moved here, after we ... And..." Dien stuttered slowly, before he stood up and walked over toward Bree, who now finally decided on her facial expression. Instead, nobody else knew what kind of face to make, as Dien was pulled down down toward Bree and... kissed her.

"Say what now..?" Xenia exclaimed as she stood there, with wide open eyes and her chin basically scratching against the floor as she gasped in surprise.

After a second or two, Bree and Dien finally stopped kissing, and now instead simply hugged each other passionately, before Bree looked over at Eisen, who was simply standing there with a frown.

"Wait, Dien... You... don’t tell me it really was all of you that broke Kirisho’s amulet..." She asked with a concerned look on her face as she stared up at Dien, who simply slowly nodded. At this point, Eisen simply had to get involved. "What’s that supposed to mean? Bree, you knew who did it after I told you about it? So when you were talking about the party of players that left you behind, it was Dien’s party and they threw you out at Ailren’s cave?" The old man asked angrily. He loved Bree like a granddaughter, but something like this made him incredibly agitated even then.

But then, Bree immediately shook her head. "N-No! It’s not like that! When you told me about John, I was surprised to hear that, but I thought it was a coincidence, because Dien isn’t the type of person to do that! And they didn’t leave me at Ailren’s cave either, after they left me, I had to walk for a whole day before I reached Melroe! Believe me, please!" She asked of Eisen, who sighed loudly as he ground his teeth.

"He’s not the type of person to do that? But I thought he left you behi-"

"No! I didn’t! I... I thought Bree left!" Dien immediately interjected, refusing to be insulted like that. "They tricked me! Back then, while I was sleeping, they dragged my body away from our camp in front of the cave after secretly packing up at night. They told me they had to leave after some argument with Bree, and that she left. I only found out long after that, that they actually tricked me and simply didn’t want to share the money we got at the cave with her... That’s why I left them and moved here..." Dien muttered as he formed his hand into a fist, staring down at the ground.

"Bree, tell us exactly what happened then." Eisen said, as he sat down on one of the chairs, and Bree and Dien looked at each other before nodding.

The exact story of what happened back then was as such. Bree was swiftly hired as a carrier by Dien’s party when they were all still in Ornier, and as they were travelling, Dien and Bree got closer to each other due to different circumstances. While Dien also wasn’t highly appreciated amongst his party, it was even worse for Bree herself, and she was basically just seen as a tool to be used by them.

And then, they found that cave, with a surprisingly high amount of treasure inside. The source of that was unknown, but it was probably some kind of hidden treasure vault for some rich guy that lived nearby, and after the group set up camp for the night after finding it, Bree was completely abandoned, with only a letter nearby telling her what was going on, while Dien thought that the party had to leave after being ambushed by some monsters, and Bree ran away without them.

Quite coincidentally, the heartbroken Dien and his party found their way to Melroe not long after Bree did the same, and then everything at Ailren’s cave happened.

At the end of the story, Eisen only had one thing to ask. "And who can say that you weren’t just like those other guys and tried to use Bree too?" Immediately, Bree took a step forward with an expression that Eisen hadn’t seen before on her face. Anger.

"Eisen, Stop! Dien isn’t like that! He’s-"

But before Bree could continue, Dien interrupted her as he held his hand in front of her. "No, no, it’s fine Bree. I can understand him, really, especially since he couldn’t possibly know what I am. Actually, I’m not a full elf. I’m a half-elf, I was just lucky that my face ended up looking like a full elf’s. My Mother is an Ocean-Elf. There aren’t many of them anymore, so you may not have heard of them, but they are a very small sub-race of the main elf species, similar to what Dark-Elves or Forest-Elves are. My father on the other hand, was a ’Blood-Chimera’." Dien explained, showing a bitter expression, slowly unbuttoning his shirt before taking it off together with the white cotton gloves he wore, revealing different things all over his body.

First, the center of his back was covered in midnight-blue scales, while his skin from his shoulders to his elbows was completely covered in bark, and his hands were more like a wolf’s claws in the shape of a person’s hand. Once Dien then pulled up the leg of his pants, he revealed deep brown fur growing on his calves. Eisen was somewhat familiar with the concept of a chimera from some greek myths, and if he had to say what a chimera in human form would look like it was probably this. He was just confused at what the term ’Blood-Chimera’ meant, which Dien apparently meant to elaborate on further.

"Something that has the blood of so many different races mixed together in them to the point that you wouldn’t be able to appoint it a specific race is called a ’Blood-Chimera’. A Faun, a werewolf, a Dryad, and even a Blue Dragon. Those are the races that mostly affect my own body. Of course, something like that can’t be hidden from people that you spend all day and night with like those in a party with you, but since I wasn’t able to become anything but an adventurer because of my race and my body, I had to live like that, and even though they weren’t good people, I had to somewhat put my trust in them, despite them treating me like utter trash." Dien quietly explained while Bree began comforting him slowly, and after this explanation, all the dislike he felt for Dien up until then simply disappeared.

He wasn’t sure if he was just feeling sympathetic for an outcast of society, or if Dien’s genuinity simply broke through his thick skull, but Eisen just couldn’t hate him anymore. Bree also genuinely seemed to love this man, and if two people that he trusted could vouch for him, Dien really couldn’t be a bad guy in the end.

But that wasn’t the only thing that got stuck in Eisen’s head at this point. There were numerous outcasts surrounding him right now. Xenia, who had been judged for studying something ’fictional’ and ’nonexistent’, and could only now really enjoy the thing that she oh so deeply loved. Komer, who was looked down at by even his brothers despite being in exactly the same position as them, with only a few years of experience less to speak for him.

And then of course Kiron, the son of a literal god of this world, that was kept as a simple product to sell for monetaryr gain. Obviously Bree and Sky as well, who had been split from one another throughout their whole life, and that have both gone through numerous hardships simply for being half-monster, without even acting or looking like it, and with a mother of a race that was supposed to be incredibly kind deep down.

And now, even Dien, who managed to live a life as a good man despite being mistreated, finally finding someone that truly loves him while looking past his exterior, only focusing on the interior.

This was a world somehow filled with a lot of mistreatment toward specific people, and Eisen was sure that there was something he could do. No, something he had to do. For himself, and those that he cherished now and will in the future.

He knew what he wanted to create the most right now.