Spending My Retirement In A Game

Chapter 604 Preparing for War

Eisen was unsure about what exactly Brody was trying to do just now. What kind of reasoning did he have to do something like this? Stacking the swords up in that way really just defeated the purpose of having the sword like this at all. It didn’t increase the strength or weight of the Giant Greatsword all that much compared to normal, and Brody wouldn’t be able to shoot the blades out like he had been doing up until now.

And it was basically like Brody noticed the old man’s confusion, and was then trying to clear it up and ’explain’ it to Eisen as Brody ran back toward Kiron.

For a little while, they simply regularly fought using the giant greatswords, although it seemed like this kind of gave Kiron a slight advantage. After all, Kiron had been fighting with this particular blade for quite a while now, although this was the first time that Brody was fighting with such a large blade. Although he was rapidly growing more used to it as the fight went on.

But at some point, Brody took a few steps away from Kiron, as if trying to take a slight breather. That’s what it seemed like at first, at least. But no, it really was anything but that. Brody held the blade high above his head, before proceeding to swing it downward in a completely irregular pattern, twisting the blade around and swinging it sideways every once in a while. And while that was happening, Brody was continuosly pressing the button that would disconnect the blades from the handle.

And just like that, a literal storm of blades of different sizes flew straight at Kiron. And without a moment’s hesitation, Brody ran through that flurry of blades with the smallest-sized blade attached to the handle, skillfully using the larger blades to hide his body. And while Kiron was busy defending against all these flying blades, Brody managed to sneak behind the half-dragon, and once none of the blades were a threat for Kiron anymore, he pressed the tip of his blade against the center of Kiron’s back.

The half-dragon sighed out loudly and slowly let down his blade, before he turned around and looked at the Demon-Orc that he just fought against, "Really, that was quite a tough fight, Sir Brody." Kiron said with deep, loud breaths that came from ovious exhaustion after this fight that seemed to have dragged on longer than both of them expected.

"Oh yeah, you can say that again. Good job!" Brody immediately agreed, something that seemed to make Kiron quite happy to hear. After all, having the best combatist in the world acknowledge your ability was something quite special, there was no doubt about that.

"But truly, that is an incredible weapon. I was surprised to see t hat it was capable of shooting the blades forward. Although, it was even weirder to see that one blade was always hiding one that was bigger than the last."

"Heh, yeah, it’s pretty cool, right? It was a great idea on Eisen’s side, combining meelee with distanced combat in that way. And really, it just gives me so many more possibilities for blades that I could make use of in the future." Brody laughed, although the old man in question soon approached the demon-orc from behind, "You know, that was never actually my intention when making that item. I think that would really just be a small... ’bug’, I think that’s what it would be called at least. You were never supposed to be able to shoot the blades like that."

Brody stared at Eisen with a surprised expression, "Wait, what? But it was just so... perfect! I figured it was supposed to be on purpose!"

"Well, it wasn’t. However, I can take the sword with me again and start carving things onto the blades to make them fly further and faster." The old man suggested. Maybe he should try and include things like this in more items from now on. Or he should try and find uses for things or mechanisms that he rejected as practically ’useless’ in the past to see if there were any ways to use them that he hadn’t thought about before.

Immediately, Brody nodded his head in response to that suggestion, "That’d be awesome, yeah!" He exclaimed, and was then just about to go and collect all the blades in the intended, ’correct’ method from before, the reverse matryoshka method.

But just before Brody left to do that, he slowly turned back around toward Eisen, "Also, you know... Sorry ’bout accidentally telling the others about what happened over there." He said apologetically, but Eisen just shook his head as he slowly rubbed his thumb over the amulet around his neck, "There’s no need to say sorry, we managed to clear everything up now. But still, thanks."

Still wearing a slightly awkward smile on his face, Brody continued collecting everything before Eisen turned over toward Kiron.

"So, great fight just now." The old man chuckled with a reassuring smile, and Kiron looked at Eisen with smug and proud grin, something that Kiron didn’t actually show anyone all too often, "I know! It was a great fight, was it not, Grandfather?"

"Yes, it really was. Although, I was wondering, are you sure you don’t want me to make any proper changes on your sword at this point?"

"I’m sure, Grandfather. It is great how it is now." He explained, so Eisen slowly nodded his head and took a closer look at the sword that he was holding in his hand, "Well, would you mind if I at least went and sharpened it a bit more again? And cleaned it up for you a little?"

"Actually, that would be amazing! I was quite unsure about how I should best take care of it until now. I thought I was slowly breaking it..." The half-dragon explained, and with a slight laugh, Eisen placed his hand onto the half-dragon’s head as he increased his size a little bit so that he could properly hold this sword and manipulate its angles however he wanted to without any issues.

The old man quickly created everything that he needed to, for example the grinding wheels. Eisen made them spin around as much as he needed them to to get started, before slowly sharpening the blade a little bit again in this way, before he moved on to taking care of it with a whetstone, and was properly showing Kiron how he was supposed to use this specific kind. It really did seem like Kiron had been applying way too little pressure until now. It might have been enough for other kinds of swords, but because of the specific metals, alloys, and techniques that Eisen used, it was a little bit harder to sharpen this blade properly. Not to mention the sheer size of the edges that needed to be worked on.

Sure, Kiron did manage to sharp it a slight bit using his whetstones before, but it never really returned to anywhere near the sharpness that it had back when Eisen first made this Giant Greatsword for the Half-Dragon.

Meanwhile, as the old man was getting this done, the others were slowly gathering as well, warming up a little and preparing themselves for combat on the literal Island of War. Slowly they all made sure that everyone’s items were in peak condition, handed out different potions that should help them in the fights. Some specific squad leaders also got special items that they could use to communicate with the other squads, or that could be used to quickly heal some people from their squad if they got heavily injured for some reason.

Either way, for now, they gathered inside of the dungeon like this, until they finished up and slowly made their way outside. Because now, they finally docked on the island. Slowly the troupes were gathering outside on the island’s beach, and for now they set up a small protective camp around Fafnir so that they could enter and exit the dungeon whenever they wanted to, as they were using the dungeon as their main-camp, while making sure that the young dragon wouldn’t end up being injured due to enemy attacks.

Because nobody could really tell what would happen if Fafnir somehow died while hundreds of people were inside. Of course, Eisen would never allow Fafnir, and with him Sigurd, to die in the first place, but the fact that all those people might die if Fafnir dies while they’re in the dungeon was also a pretty scary thought in Eisen’s opinion, so he wanted to be extra sure that nothing could happen here.

For now, the large group sent out scouts, whether people or monsters, to take a look at what was going on on this island. And to their surprise... There really wasn’t all that much going on, apparently. It seemed like there were different tribes of monster on this island, and they were fighting against each other a lot, probably just waging war whenever they could.

And they weren’t even necessarily all humanoid monsters with such groups, there were a lot of beast-type monster tribes around as well. The problem with this, however, was that it was pretty unclear where exactly the town core and boss were going to be.

At first, they were trying to take things slow, especially now that the Originals knew they could somewhat take their time and could relax a bit more. They wanted to prepare properly with this, but at some point, it seemed like scouts from the different monster tribes appeared around their camp, sometimes even without any of them noticing before it was actually too late.

And within just a day of them arriving on the island, something rather surprising happened. It was something that they were already thinking might happen, as it didn’t particularly seem like the monster tribes were waging any ’serious’ wars, but simply less-serious things that may be called ’war games’, but the different tribes banded together and properly turned into the larger army. Or rather, it was like they were part of the same army in the first place, considering how well they were working together all of a sudden.

"It ain’t like I didn’t expect this, but shit... This really is a bit annoying, ain’t it?" Brody asked with a slight groan as he looked at the Map they had managed to prepare for this island, marking the rough position of the troupes of monsters on it. They really had to be far more careful this time around, as they were definitely heavily outnumbered, even considering all the undead, special haunted items or living-ego-items, tamed beasts and golems that they had fighting with them.

It really seemed like this island was inhabited by some of the smartest monsters they had seen so far, because not only did the Originals’ side have such things, but the side of the monsters also had strong necromancers and beast-tamers with them, apparently.