Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Hm? It’s obvious, isn’t it? You five were the perfect people that we could choose, but now I don’t need you anymore." Samuel explained way too casually, "I would have let you be if you didn’t start remembering, but-"

"That’s an obvious lie, Samuel. You manipulated my son-in-law even before we figured things out. You know exactly there are different reasons for this, otherwise you wouldn’t have given us tasks like making us take over the islands and found a country so that you can have the control."

"Ah..." Samuel replied quietly, "Yeah, that’s fair. Well, there are a few reasons, and I do have to admit, I panicked a bit when we figured out that your old selves weren’t completely erased and could be recovered again... But one of the things I said was right, we don’t need you anymore. Not in this world, that is. You know, your souls are neither those of this world, nor souls of that world. You’re a bit inbetween. And if you die here, your link to this world will disappear, and you will become wholly people of that other world for all eternity. And while your soul is becoming that of the other world... We can play around with it a little, much like how you have been making use of soul engineering." Samuel explained, seemingly slowly growing used to the pressure of Benjamin’s voice. He still seemed to be manipulated by him a bit, considering how much he was just openly revealing like this, but he was at the very least able to speak in coherent sentences without stuttering anymore.

"So basically, you want to turn us into slaves?" The old man asked, and Samuel grumbled a bit in response, "Well, ’Slave’ is a strong word, don’t you think..?" Samuel pointed out, but Benjamin immediately replied.

"A little while after I first met Bree, I was faced against some human in a duel, and I tricked him by giving Bree a broken slavery collar and having him agree to messed-up rules. I couldn’t tell back then, but the way that this slavery system worked was by actively inscribing similar rules used by Golemancers into the soul of the affected ’Slave’. So it’s not a ’strong word’, that’s exactly what it is that you’re speaking of."

For a little while, Samuel stayed silent, and Benjamin continued, "But in the end, that doesn’t matter. The moment we remember, it’s too late for you."

"...Wasn’t this call supposed to be something that makes me want to kill you less? If so, then you’re doing a pretty bad job." Samuel pointed out, but Benjamin really didn’t care too much. Well, after all, it was Eisen was that speaking right now, not Benjamin.

The old man slowly stood up and walked over toward Tim, before squatting down and whispering ’Sorry about this’ into his ear. And then, the old man proceeded to pull one of Tim’s glass-eyes out of his head before Eisen bit right into his own palm to cause it to bleed heavily.

Eisen pressed his bleeding palm right over Tim’s open eye that was currently missing the glass-eye, before Eisen continued speaking, "Samuel! Listen to me! You seem confident in yourself, then let’s bet! Let’s bet on who will win this fight, this was between you and us!" He exclaimed, before he suddenly started to push his tongue onto his canines, literally carving different patterns into its flesh, raising his voice and continuing to speak without being affected too much in spite of these wounds!

"It will be a war only held in the other world, and not here! You may not kill, or even injure us, in any way, shape, or form, whether direct or indirect! No further manipulation of others to cause harm to us, or anyone else, in this world! If you manage to win the war between our factions in that world without a single doubt, we will forever follow your command until all of us die! But if we manage to win instead, you will set the girl free, and you will never be able to go to that world ever again! You hear me?!" He yelled out, thick, dark-red blood pouring out of the corners of his mouth and down Tim’s face, while nobody in the room understood what exactly was going on. Well, nobody beside Eisen and Tim. Because Tim was feeling something that he had felt many times before in the other world when helping Eisen or Xenia out a bit here and there.

Eisen was currently borrowing one of Tim’s, or rather Komer’s, abilities. He wasn’t sure how exactly he could access it from all the way over here, but it seemed to work.

And soon after, Samuel, riled up by Eisen’s voice and his words filled with emotion, did something that he shouldn’t have.

"Hah, fine! Let’s do this, I can’t wait to have you crawl on the ground in front of me, you old bastard!"

Samuel agreed to Eisen.

But Eisen simply grinned in response to Samuel’s words, "You know... As long as there are witnesses besides the two parties, even a verbal contract is viable in front of the gods. And luckily, we have five people right here that can act as a bridge for the gods to view this world if they so wish." The old man pointed out, "And with that, you and I have formed a contract supported by the Goddess of Fate herself.��

"Wait... wait, what? The g-goddess of fate, but that’s... You fucking piece of-" But before Samuel could continue speaking, a spark of electricity appeared between Eisen and the phone laying on the table, followed by an instance of silence as both Eisen and Samuel saw the first instances of true, otherworldly life on earth. Well, it wasn’t really life. The Enforcers were just made of mana, after all.

Eisen pulled his hand away from Tim and instead stretched it out toward the figure of pitch-black mist floating above the phone. Eisen’s bloodied fingers touched it and immediately the mist proceeded to cover the old man’s skin, simply climbing along him into his shadow, just to disappear there.

"What the fuck did you just do..?" Samuel asked, and Eisen just continued to grin, his body slowly catching up to what just happened as his voice became raspy and cracked continuosly, "You mean... what did ’we’ just do... right? As I said, it’s a contract... one supported by the goddess of fate. You can’t escape this anymore, Samuel. Let’s have fun on the... other side... kid." And with that, the old man tapped the screen of the phone laying on the table in front of him to end the phone call, before dropping to his knees and holding his hand in front of his mouth before throwing up blood onto the floor.

"What just happened? Eisen, just what-" Andrew exclaimed as he jumped up and came to the old man’s side, but Benjamin couldn’t respond anymore. He had completely lost his voice for now, and his tongue was in a pretty bad state as well. Not to mention his extreme exhaustion right now. But instead, someone else replied for him.

"He used my ability to make Fate Items... and created a Fate Contract with his words." Tim slowly explained, but the others couldn’t really believe that this was possible. But Benjamin simply raised his head and nodded toward them, so that he could let them know that Tim was right, and that this was exactly what he did.

"That’s totally insane... How is he able to do something like that here?!" Jasmin asked with a deep frown as she started to slightly panick at seeing Benjamin like this, but Nataly asked a much more important question, "And why did he do that?! Eisen, why would you do this to yourself?!" She asked, but the old man did his best to push himself off the ground while looking at the others.

He really couldn’t speak at all right now, so he tried his best to communicate via hand-motions. Slowly, the old man pointed at the four people in front of him, and then down at the floor, before shaking his head. He then pointed at the door, and then nodded his head.

"...so that we don’t have to be here, and can be out there?" Haruo asked quietly, and Benjamin immediately nodded his head, and at that point what exactly Benjamin, or Eisen, said just now caught up to everyone.

"Samuel can’t do anything to us anymore, at least not in this world. That means we’re... safe, right? We can go home, and return to our ’regular’ lives outside of this?" Nataly asked quietly, before Benjamin immediately nodded his head. Particularly, he was looking at Andrew, who was arguably most affected by this, having lost his unborn child because of this whole ordeal.

Immediately, Andrew stepped past Benjamin and placed his hand onto the old man’s back while he was at it, "Once your tongue healed, I’ll buy you a drink or two." The man said with a broad smile on his face, before he proceeded to run toward the entrance to the basement as quickly as he possibly could.

"Come on, Eisen, Komer, let’s get you two cleaned up a bit." Haruo suggested as he helped the two of them to the closest bathroom. The group had been alone in the livingroom, and everyone that didn’t know about the situation between the two worlds was outside and hadn’t been able to hear them.

But of course, this would be something relatively hard to hide for a bit, so Benjamin had to at the very least tell Tony and Benji, or else they would freak out even more after hearing about this. He would probably be able to come up with some other excuse for the others.

But either way, no matter what anyone else said, Benjamin was glad that he did this, even if he injured himself in the process. He would need to apologize to Tim for suddenly pulling out his glass-eye, but it seemed like he understood. Really, in Benjamin’s mind there was no doubt that he made the right choice to teach that little scammer the right way to do things back then. Otherwise, they probably would have died to Samuel’s roundabout attacks sooner or later.