Spending My Retirement In A Game

Chapter 945: Combined Zone

Eisen woke up and quickly looked down at his body. The injuries that he gathered during the battle with the giant centipede were healed. Now, it was time to just get a change of clothes and rejoin the group. He was sitting on the stairs right now, opening his item storage. He walked inside and changed his clothes there into some that weren’t torn up from acid, and then decided to walk over to where the rest of them were waiting and taking a breather.

"Welcome back!" Caria exclaimed loudly, jumping at the old man and giving him a hug, "Are you okay? Feeling a bit better?"

Eisen smiled as he rubbed the girl’s back, "I’m fine. Thank you for asking."

"Great! Here, you should come take a look at the next area! It’s pretty cool!" Caria grabbed Eisen’s hand and pulled him along. He had only gotten a few glances of it until now, but because he didn’t want to waste more time than he was already going to, he just made sure that the entrance area was actually safe and then sat down and logged out.

The stairway ended in a tunnel, but beyond it was a wall of light that he wasn’t able to see through right now. Stepping through into the outside, Eisen was surprised to see that this floor was really a bit more impressive than he thought it would be. From a certain point on, dungeons could create ’artificial worlds’. It was basically what Eisen had Evalia draw on the ceiling of the first floor’s entrance area to make it all look like a ’real’ world and make it seem like there was a real sky above them. Similarly, this floor had a full, artificial sky that was hanging above them.

And below that sky was a vast, deep canyon that was stretching on for miles and miles. It was basically like the grand canyon, just... even larger. It reminded of a particular area of the wastelands. Either way, it looked like this was now a floor that was based on its size. Worst-case, it was a special zone that made advantage of a particular function that dungeon had access to. And considering the prospective rank of the dungeon master, it was likely that this dungeon had access to almost all potential functionality that Eisen could think of.

The old man rushed over to Bree, who was looking around and glancing a map, biting her nails and thinking about what she was seeing, "Is everything alright? Did you find anything troublesome?"

"Oh! You’re back! Uhm, yeah, I’m just a little confused about some of the things I’m finding here. The flow of mana in here is completely off."

"... Is it a combined zone?"

Bree quickly nodded, "It is. The entire third zone is on a single floor, but that’s not what’s weird. Even accounting for that, the amount of mana on this floor is off. The mana here is way too dense. Come, look over there," she said, pointing into the distance, "Do you see that mountain range there?"

"Mhm," in the distance, there was a mountain clad in clouds, stretching up into the sky. It was far, far, far away. So far that the idea it was here on this floor was a bit ridiculous, no matter how big it was.

"It actually is on this floor. I used a single-point scan to figure out the distance between us and the mountain. It’s nearly 250 miles. With that sort of distance, the mana should be spread thin like it would be on the surface, but no, it’s not that at all. It’s around four or five times more mana than there should be. Plus, this size should be impossible for a combined zone like this anyway. Maybe on one of the later floors, sure, but here? So early? So, I have an idea of what’s going on..."

Eisen raised a brow, "Multiple zones were combined into one floor?"

Bree slowly nodded, "If I’m right... it’s three zones. Floors 21 to 50. I think the boss is trying to just whittle down on the intruders in any way possible. This time, it’s through distance."

"... Disregarding that this shouldn’t be possible, this is actually great. Transcendent monsters have special, unique abilities that can seem like they’re breaking logic, so maybe its abilities adjusted to the dungeon after a while, and allowed it to circumvent certain rules. But... how high is the ceiling, Bree?"

"The ceiling? The boundary in this area is around 2 miles above us right now, but it’s going to be much higher once we get to the mountain."

"Perfect," Eisen stretched slightly, "Have you seen any flying monsters in the distance?"

"Only around the mountain itself."

"Even better," the old man said, "This means we can effectively skip 30 floors. That should whittle down the prospected clear time quite a bit, right?"

"If you fly us there, we should be able to move a week’s worth of time into maybe a single day?"

"I’ll get everything ready, then. Can you go and let the others know that we’re doing it like that?" Eisen asked, and Bree quickly nodded, running off excitedly. Looking around, Eisen searched for Brody. He was sitting at the edge of a cliff, looking out into the canyon just relaxing for a bit. The old man sat down next to him.

"Yo. Feeling a bit better?"´

"Yeah, I’m feeling a lot

"Mhm, and I already figured we’re doing it that way, anyway. Why not just skip all these boring monsters and move on to the real threats, you know?" Brody laughed, "You got stuff to carry us all around?"

"Yeah, no worries. I might not be able to fly as fast as normal, but I can get us there faster than anything else we can do. Should take half an hour to the mountain," the old man explained, stretching his neck lightly, "Started breathing fire earlier."

"Hm? You were breathing fire with the centipede? That a new kind of attack you’ve been playing around with?"

"No, no, that’s not what I meant. It was like five minutes ago," the old man said, and Brody turned his head a bit confused.

"Your magic is coming through?"

"Yup. Was sitting in one of the garden chairs outside, just taking a breather, looking at the sky... and then my shirt caught fire. My physical body is adjusting to magic a lot more. I was able to just conjure flames and even turn that fire into rock right there. So... my personal magic is just fully there in my body now."

"... And how’re you doing with that?"

"I’m a little pissed, but you probably know how that feels," Eisen scoffed a bit, looking at the half-orc. His and Jyuuk’s bodies had changed the most by far. But while Jyuuk was still able to hide a lot of his changes, like by tucking away his tail and wearing long shirts and trousers to make it look like he just had a pretty thick, short beard, Brody wasn’t able to do that.

Neither his tusks or horns could be gotten rid of. They had actually considered pulling the tusks, and surgically removing the horns, but that didn’t seem like it would work. For one... knives couldn’t even penetrate Brody’s skin anymore. Skin which was an unnatural dark gray that made it look like he was just incredibly ill all the time. That could be fixed with makeup, sure, but that still had its limits.

"Actually..." Brody started, "I don’t mind all of that anymore. Honestly, the idea of going back to how I used to look makes me feel worse. It’s weird. I spent 80 thousand years here in this world, clearly trying whatever I could to get back... Didn’t take a lover even once because I just wanted to get back to my wife. She doesn’t mind my appearance either. Rather, I think she might be into it a little, but that’s beside the point. Things just feel right in this world. Like I belong here. It’s just that I had a single thing that never let me really feel at home here, because my real home was wherever my wife currently was. And now... I don’t know. She’s going to start playing soon as well. We can move out of your place now. After the incident a few weeks ago where Samuel somehow broke the rules you guys agreed on, nothing else has happened. So once we’re moved out, she’s going to play with me, and..."

"... Brody. If you were to choose, would you want to live here , or on earth? Of course, everyone you want to be there with you will also be in that place."

"That’s an easy choice. Here," he shrugged, "Again, this place just feels right. You know it as well as I do, but this world is our home, more so than earth ever was. Maybe that was the first little while, where our past selves were just trying to get back home, but at some point it wasn’t about that anymore. It was about freeing this world from Samuel’s rule. The fact we were preventing a cataclysmic, apocalyptic change to earth was more of a side-effect."

Eisen wanted to protest against that, but he wasn’t wrong. In a hundred thousand years, it was hard to not feel a little detached from the mere 70 that Benjamin lived before. Of course, their memories and state of mind have been ’reset’ fully as their minds were wiped, but at this point, that detachment was flowing into them with almost every other memory they recovered.

The old man stood up, "... I’m going to get things ready."