Spending My Retirement In A Game

Chapter 828: The New Statue

The mountain had been reduced to nothing over the course of the past 10 days. Eisen worked constantly, procuring the materials that were needed for him to replace the 'God of the Mountain'.

He came across a few veins of ore and some other rarer mineral deposits as he was working that he couldn't use for the statue, so he had simply placed those aside so that he could figure out what to do with those later. They had been stacked up into a small mountain on their own already. But even though Eisen was done now, he couldn't concentrate on them yet.

The old man landed in the camp by the edge of the city. There, next to the hill of highly-compressed blood, stood Jyuuk, using some of his skills and special spells to figure out the composition of the mountain gobbler's blood.

"Oh, are you done already?" Jyuuk asked with a raised brow, looking at the pillar of stone that now held up the mountain above the capital city, "I thought there was still a bit left."

"There's a couple of golems still on their way, but they should get there soon. In the meantime, I figured I should get started on the design of the statue," the old man pointed out, and Jyuuk just smiled lightly, "Yeah, about that..."

Jyuuk placed down the items in his hand and waved Eisen over to follow him. The old man raised his brow and did as he was told, following Jyuuk over to Fafnir, who was sleeping in the center of the camp, allowing the dungeon to be used as a base of operation.

Eisen felt a bit bad, since Fafnir hadn't been able to stretch his legs for more than a week now, but luckily he would get the chance to do so soon. As Eisen and Jyuuk stepped into the dungeon, they already quickly made their way to one of the lower floors. This was supposed to be one of the desert floors, but instead, there was a large, ten-meter tall tower standing in its center.

And when Eisen took a closer look, he raised his brows confused.

"Wait, did you guys..?" the old man asked, and Jyuuk nodded his head, "Of course. Evalia has been working on it for a few days."

"I know that you said you'd do it yourself, but... well, this is my job, isn't it?" Evalia asked with a broad smile, "I was just finishing up something down here, but it should be good to go."

Eisen looked at everything more closely. Him and the others had briefly come up with an idea together earlier, but this truly overcame all his expectations. Though, they did have a point; Evalia really should have been the one to do this from the beginning. The artist smiled at Eisen, "It wasn't just me either, we all worked on it together."

"Except Brody, of course. He's been out hunting to gather enough food for the town to last for a while during all the repairs," Jyuuk replied, "Xenia is also currently putting together the materials she will need to cast some protective barriers onto the statue.

She said she wanted to create a new barrier for the town altogether and have the statue act as its centerpiece, that way this place will never be destroyed again."

Eisen smiled broadly, "I see... In that case, I shouldn't waste any time anymore either, huh?"

"...speaking of time," Evalia started hesitantly, "How long do you think this is going to take you?"

Eisen looked at the statue in front of him, letting out a slight laugh at the ridiculousness of what he was going to be working on, "A month, maybe? The sheer scale of this is... ridiculous. I'll be overseeing the reconstruction of the city during that time as well, though, so please, return back home for now."

Jyuuk quickly shook his head, "No, we will not leave you here alone."

"You have to go back," Eisen replied, "We can't leave everything alone for a full month. We don't know what kind of stuff Samuel is planning, so you guys need to be there to take care of everything. Not to mention... you being here is going to halt your own progress with a lot of things. You're all still figuring out your memories, and Evalia, you're working on a level-up quest right now, right?"

Evalia slowly nodded her head, feeling bad about the idea of leaving Eisen here on his own, "But... are you going to be fine alone?"

"Well, I won't really be alone anyway. And the five of us will see each other when we log out anyway, right?" Eisen pointed out with a smile, "Every night, 8pm, like always."

Evalia and Jyuuk slightly smiled. During that last big meeting, where Eisen's 'system resistance' skill revealed itself, they had decided on one thing; every night, they were going to eat dinner together. That was, every night on earth, meaning every third day here in this world.

"Just leave things here to me," Eisen told them. He had to stay here and take care of things. It was his responsibility; not only was he the trigger for all of this happening in the first place, but this was the country that he had been born in, at least in this world. These were his people.

He had to take care of them until the end, and pay them back for the sin that he had committed by dragging all these people into this. Eisen turned back toward the statue that Evalia had created with Jyuuk's help. The reason why Jyuuk's assistance was needed was simple; Jyuuk had a way of keeping track of the dead.

It was one of his abilities, 'The Grim Reaper's List'. He mostly used it as a way to keep track of his own undead, but if used differently, it was able to completely catalogue each and every death that occured in this city due to the catastrophe. That included names and basic information about each dead person, as well as a simple imprint of the shape of everyone's soul.

Their appearance from when they lived.

This wasn't a city that existed because of the protection of some divine being; this city was raised from the ground up by the people that lived in it. By the people that spent every day here alongside each other. And Eisen wanted that to be shown, to be remembered. That was why the new statue wasn't going to be just some vain representation of what Eisen felt would look good.

It was going to represent the ones that truly mattered.

The hundreds of thousands of lives that had been lost, side by side, holding each other up, and together, holding up the mountain above their loved ones. They would forever be by their side, watching over them, ensuring that they could live a safe life. That was the statue that Eisen was going to create.

And just a few hours later, that is exactly what he started doing. Using the smaller statue that Evalia had painstakingly created using the information left behind in Jyuuk's skill, Eisen created a blueprint that he overlaid onto the tower of stone blocks.

For now, he flew around that tower and used transmutation to get rid of the large overhangs so that he only needed to go in and actually work on the details. He was going to do this one by one. Of course, he would use his duplicates to a degree, but they were only going to create the general form of the statue.

Eisen was the one that was going to finish carving each and every individual person on this tower. He was going to engrave every single face into his mind as he did with the stone.

Eisen knew that this was going to slow things down a lot. But he felt like he had to do so. He couldn't take any shortcuts in this. The memory of the people that died because of Eisen's own mistakes in treating this situation too lightly, and underestimating what Samuel was capable of, were going to be treated with the respect and care they deserved.

And with each person that was going to be placed onto the tower, Eisen would once more clear and define his anger and hatred of Samuel, strengthening his resolve in what he had to do to stop him.