Spending My Retirement In A Game

And slowly, a hand grasped onto the side of the pier, as Merc climbed back up, now completely drenched. The water would dry pretty quickly, but it would still take a few minutes until then. "You goddamn fucker... Who do you think you are that you’re just going ahead and treating me like this?" Merc asked with his teeth grinding against each other, before something suddenly shot across the pier and hit Merc into the side, as he wasn’t paying attention.

It was a spear of ice that soon disappeared again. The spear wasn’t large, and neither did it do a lot of damage to Merc who simply shrugged this sudden attack off, but the wielder of this was most likely aware of this. With a grin, Eisen turned around and looked at Komer who was holding his selfmade coins of fate in his hand.

"A-And who do you think y-you are?" Komer stuttered, obviously nervous, but still trying to overcome his older brother in his own way. Immediately when Merc layed his eyes on the young man, his face twisted in anger.

"Oh, the little kid wants to play too? Alright, then be my fucking guest!" Merc exclaimed as he began to step forward swiftly, immediately making his way over toward his younger brother, but he wasn’t able to do anything, as Brody immediately stood in his way after pushing Merc’s goons into the water.

"Well who’d have thought a little prick like you could be such a nice host? But sorry kid, this ain’t your party." He replied, and Merc simply glared at Brody and tried to keep going. To him, there were only two people that were a threat to him. His older brother, and the smirking Demon that was just watching this whole thing. "Shut it, loser. Plebs like you would ne-"

As Merc began to speak, he suddenly felt a quite surprising change in his environment. He was only blinking, but when he opened his eyes again, the whole world had already turned on its head! At least that was what went through his mind at first, because he felt the rough reality bump against his head. "Oh? So I’m a Loser now?" Brody asked, and just then, Merc remembered the face of this man that was introduced to the world as the ’Original of Combat’.

"You know what, yes you are!" Merc yelled out, his temper as annoying as ever, as he stood up and got into a combat stance. At least to him that was a combat stance.

"You’re tryin’ to call me a loser and then butcher boxing by just trying to get into a stance? You’re way too stiff, kid! In a fight, you need to be tense at the right places at the right time, but otherwise just be completely relaxed so that you can react to your opponent as soon as you can!" Brody yelled out, apparently actually more personally insulted by the way Merc was trying to fight than by his actual insults, before the Demon-Orc moved behind Merc with a few swift motions of his feet.

"Stop slumpin’ over like that! Keep your back straight and your shoulders further back!" He exclaimed as he grabbed merc’s shoulder and placed his palm onto his back, simply pulling on the former and pushing the latter to correct his posture, before starting to fix all the little mistakes that Merc had in his stance.

And that didn’t go unnoticed by the others either. "Is... Is he actually trying to give him tips on how to fight better? Before he would end up fighting him?" Zyra asked confused, and Komer was just staring forward, trying to hide the fact that he was shaking in fear over what his brother might end up doing in real life after all of this was over.

But there was someone else that was still freaking out over another event. "Wait, are you all just going to ignore that Eisen just threatened me? Didn’t you see what the hell he just did?! He was looking at me the whole time!" Samurai exclaimed toward the members of his new group, but Stahl and Alnico just looked at him with a shrug.

"You mess with our grampa, you mess with life and death." Stahl explained quite simply, and Samurai just stared at him with the same expression he had before, and asked a new question that just popped up in his mind. "What the fuck does that even mean?!"

In the meantime, Brody had continued giving Merc a few tips, although the Combat Merchant ended up grinding his teeth in response. "Fuck this shit! Just stop this already!" He yelled out angrily and looked at Brody angrily, instantly just throwing gauntlet-covered fists at him. But of course, he would need to practice a little more if he wanted to even put a scratch on Brody.

With a swift motion, Brody kicked away Merc’s feet from the back, causing him to fall backward. But instead of letting him hit the ground, Brody catched him by placing his foot in the place where his neck would end up. And with a simple stick that he picked up from somewhere a little bit ago, he pushed against his knees from below, causing his shins to stand up off the ground perfectly vertically, while the rest of his body was perfectly horizontal. And this was a pretty tough position to quickly stand up from.

"Alright everyone, get on the ship, I’ll keep this moron busy in the meantime. We have everything we need for departure, right?" Brody asked as he looked at Komer, who nodded his head in response, just quickly rushing past Eisen, Brody and Merc onto the ship, where he was now safe.

They swiftly removed the ropes safely binding the ship into place in the harbor, while the skeletons were preparing to start sailing. Now, only Eisen and Brody were missing. And Eisen took this chance to once more look at Merc with a grin.

"Should have just left us alone." He said with a grin, before looking around at the other players, whose pupils were all glowing red as they were either taking pictures or recording this. With a sigh, the old man then stepped onto the ship just before it began moving, looking at Brody with a nod.

And so, the Demon-Orc swiflty kicked his leg up and caused Merc to flip mid-air before slamming back onto the ground before Brody joined the others on the ship, which now immediately began moving, while the attention of the players shifted from the ship over to Merc, who was glaring at the departing group angrily.

But on the ship itself, everybody was staring at Eisen, some of them a little scared, and some of them just annoyed. Although that all swiflty changed when Eisen deactivated his transformation and everyone calmed down a little bit. The people that came along from the church, which were the ones that were scared, slowly calmed down and then made their way back to their regular routine, while the ’central’ group that actually knew Eisen more closely, which were the ones that were annoyed, came up to the old man.

"And why the hell did you have to pull that just there? Who even was that?" Xenia asked with a frown, and Eisen moved his fingers through his beard. "That? That was Komer’s older brother, and the person that owns the Monster Shop that I freed Sky, Kiron, and a lot of the monsters, that Jyuuk now has tamed, from." Eisen explained, and immediately, everyone that wasn’t there for that event and wasn’t aware what Merc looked like now slowly nodded their heads in understanding at Eisen’s reaction. With the exception of Samurai, that is, who swiftly showed how horrible he was at reading the mood.

"Huh? Who’re Kiron and Sky?" The young man asked, and the two in question quickly looked at him with a frown. "The more important question is, who the hell are you?" Sky asked as he held one of his books under his arm, and Kiron nodded his head, also wanting to know the same thing.

"Heh, good that you ask! I’m the Great Samurai! Bask in my glory!" He exclaimed before pulling his sword out of his sheath and pointing it up into the air, before Eisen sighed loudly. With a frown, Sky looked through the book he was carrying until he found the correct page, before placing his palm on it while continuing to stare at the man in front of him.

"Come out, Samurai." He exclaimed, and Samurai the player tilted his head to the side, before noticing the small letters detaching themselves from the page before twisting around themselves and forming a pure-black figure about a foot taller than Samurai, wearing a full set of Eastern Armor while it had its hand on the long, thin sword by his hip. Slowly, Sky looked back and forth from the figure that just appeared and Samurai, before nodding his head.

"Thought so, you’re not actually the ’Great Samurai’. Eisen, do you want to answer for him?" The Fey-Kin boy asked while both Jyuuk and Kyla were freaking out over the fact that Samurais were an actual thing in the game world, before Eisen nodded his head.

"He’s an Alpha. A rather annoying one, but he’s going to be forming a party with Stahl, Al, Kyla and Zyra." He explained, before continuing with a sigh when he noticed that Samurai was looking at the Inkheart-Samurai in front of him with a stupid grin, "And he’s not ’The Great Samurai’, his name is ’Samurai’ and he has a way too big ego." The old man added, before Sky slowly nodded his head, although he still kept frowning at the man currently looking the Inkheart-Samurai up and down.

"If this is someone you trust, then so be it, Grandfather." Kiron added, before Eisen shook his head with a sigh. "I don’t directly trust him, but he doesn’t seem too bad." The old man answered before he turned around and looked at the person that he wanted to talk to about something that happened just now.

"Komer, what was that you just used on Merc?" He asked, and Komer slowly held up one of the Coins of Fate. "I used one of these... The effect was to either shoot an ice spear against a target, or to freeze my arm over..." Komer explained, and Eisen scratched his cheek with a frown.

"Is that so? How many more of those coins do you have?"

"Not many, just a handful, really." Komer answered, and Eisen nodded his head. "Alright, then only use the ones that can harm you yourself when others are around." He said, and the young merchant replied with a nod.

"Alright..." He answered, before making his way to an open spot to continue the quest, and the old man himself chose to make his way to the carriage to properly sort through the items that they gathered from the Mother of Spiders.