Spending My Retirement In A Game

The old man landed down there, and went back to his normal size. It was pitch black, but he could just use his elemental flames to easily light up the place for himself. He was standing in still, muddy water up to his ankles, and the air was filled with a musty scent that came with long-abandoned places like this. While he at first thought that this was just some underground pocket of air, it seemed like he was wrong. This place was created artificially by someone. He was looking at straight walls and an utterly rotten door right now, after all. Granted, they were covered in what was left behind by the corpses of bugs and whatever else dropped down here accidentally over time, but it was still clear that the room itself was just perfectly cubic.

Eisen tried to stretch his mana out forward to try and get a model of the space beyond the door first, but once he figured that it wasn't any particular danger, he just stepped through the door impatiently. Eisen stood on a semi-circular platform, while a huge open cavern stretched out in front of him, reaching deep into a bottomless darkness.

"...What is this, another gate to hell?" Eisen scoffed, as he created another rock cloaked in bright flames to throw down into the darkness. But then, as if something swallowed the flames up, they just disappeared after a few dozen meters. Eisen wasn't sure whether it was a creature, or some sort of water or mist, however. He didn't hear any sound, so it most likely wasn't water, and he doubted that any sort of being could survive down here for this long. It had been abandoned for millennia, after all.

Eisen opened his storage space, and grabbed a spear out of it. He infused it with his element to make it burn brightly, and then put all the strength into his arm, throwing the spear down into the darkness. But again, the glowing spear was just swallowed up by something. And since it didn't make a sound, it probably wasn't anything living, at least.

The old man took a deep breath, figuring that he should go about this the easiest way he could. With a quick step forward, he lunged down into the darkness, ready to catch himself when necessary. Before he knew it, Eisen himself was being completely swallowed up by darkness. And not just metaphorically, it was like the darkness had come to life just to wrap itself around him, pulling him deeper into itself. He could feel the shadowy darkness become solid, tying itself around his limbs like chains. But at the very least, this slowed Eisen down before he reached the ground, so he didn't mind too much, even if it felt a bit uncomfortable around his wrists. He infused himself with his element, making himself as radiant as he could. The darkness was forced out of the way immediately, and he dropped the last few feet to the ground below him. He spread his elemental mana around, trying to cover as much of the walls as he could, now that he knew how large this cave actually was. And then, he made his mana glow with bright white flames, before pulling it closer toward a common centerpoint right above himself.

The darkness was forced to try and retreat wherever it could, compressing itself into a solid mass to avoid the bright light. And then, Eisen pulled it down, grabbing some mana crystals from his storage, creating a thin bubble around the glowing sphere created by his own mana. To make sure that it couldn't escape no matter what it was, Eisen even fused some soul stones into the mana crystal, and then used this crystal orb to force the living darkness into an even smaller space. There were apparently some traces of it left, slithering across the walls of the cave like snakes trying to get away from Eisen, but they couldn't really do much against him right now.

Eisen kept the sphere, now the size of a head, in his hands and started to take another look around. Now that he could actually see every part of the cave, he could tell what was going on. This place, even if it looked much more like one, wasn't a natural cave either.

Eisen was inside the ribcage of an enormous dead giant, even more enormous than a normal giant. But it was definitely the case. Now that the idea sprung into his mind, he couldn't unsee it anymore. Rather, he was seeing more and more evidence for the idea that this was simply a huge, fossilized giant's skeleton. And if that was the case... then was this sentient darkness a soul, or an undead created from the trapped giant's soul? No, that most likely wasn't the case. This just felt different.

"It's the trace of another Demon, huh?" The old man finally figured. It was a demon walking on the path of yin. But if that was the case, it wasn't a full demon, but just a splinter that split off from the true demon that had been here before. At first, Eisen thought that maybe it was a part of himself, but he quickly got rid of that idea. He could tell that it wasn't part of his own being.

But then how did this get here? There was no way for another true demon to just coincidentally appear right below the town that was built around Eisen's workshop. He let out a deep groan, trying to figure out what was going on. Maybe the giant corpse belonged to the demon, and this was simply what was left behind after its death. Either way, Eisen had to explore this place more. There was another exit on the other side of the cave.

He flew up to the door and stepped through. Eisen was pretty sure that the well led to something like a space within the area of the giant's stomach, so right now, he was making his way to the giant's head. While landing on the platform in front of the door, Eisen spotted something that seemed like the base for a bridge to be built between here and the platform on the other side.

He walked through the door, making his way through a hallway built within the giant's throat. Soon, he was inside the skull. And all that he could see was a small, ritualistic alter. And the moment that Eisen laid his eyes on it, it was like he had been punched in the face. Immediately, he closed his eyes to try and access the memory he just unlocked.

Eisen stretched his hand out toward the glowing sphere, and hesitated for a moment. If he did this, then he couldn't undo it again later. He just sat there for a few moments, until he moved his hand the last bit, touching the sphere. And immediately, he was transported back into the smithy that he had found earlier today.

An old Eisen, maybe a few decades before he peaked, stood in the center of the room. Letting out a deep groan, the former Eisen turned around, looking at the man that had entered this space, "You could have just ignored this. It's nothing you want to remember, trust me."

"...And why is that? Because we did something horrible to people who were supposed to be our friends?" Eisen replied with a deep frown, but the former Eisen simply scoffed, "You may call it horrible, I call it the right thing. Trust me, you would make the same choice. Or well... you already have."