Spending My Retirement In A Game

Seeing the flaming, demonic figure of an enormous giant standing in the middle of their camp, those three reacted quickly as well. One of them immediately started casting an attack spell, pulling a boulder's worth of rock from the ground and throwing it at Eisen at immense speed.

At the same time, one of the others shot off from the ground and pulled his arm back, preparing to attack this creature in front of him, while the last, the oldest in the group, had started drawing a magic circle into the air. However, Eisen didn't even have to do anything to defend himself here.

Practically before he could even react, Kiron had already jumped up into the air, using his grandfather's leg to climb up to a somewhat higher position first, and then slashed through the boulder with his sword. Though, at the size of his blade, it was more like a mixture of crushing it into pieces and cutting it.

It definitely had a clean slice in its center, but the mere pressure and weight of Kiron's greatsword was enough to make the two halves shatter apart. Some of those rocks still hit Eisen, somewhat fast as well, but his skin was much harder than that. It barely even put a scratch on him.

Meanwhile, after his slice at the boulder, it initially seemed as though he had been vulnerable to an attack from the second of those three, the pugilist that had jumped toward Eisen.

Upon seeing the half-dragon, he had changed his target, but before he could pull through, his whole body was suspended mid-air as he became entangled with Sal's powerful threads, which had been expertly wrapped around the area with the help of Melissa's bees, who had flown into the directions that Sal had instructed in order to tighten the threads at the exact right time.

Meanwhile, Caria had made her way through the crowd without being spotted somehow, and was now standing right in front of the two magic users. As though she were blowing a kiss, she blew out a cloud of spores, which quickly caused a number of small Myconids to sprout on their bodies.

Though, they quickly popped off, instead of restraining the two of them like the ones that Caria had made use of just earlier. Instead, they were now walking around the magic users, actively disrupting and absorbing their magics as they tried to use them. That also included that nearly-finished magic circle, which simply fell apart when the mana disappeared.

The more the magic users were trying to use spells or sorcery, the more the myconids grew and adapted, all the whilst Caria was simply dodging out of the way of that earth-mage's attacks, who did seem to have some training with a blade. But Caria was fairly experienced in combat at this point, and her stats were far from anything to scoff at either.

Despite the type of Monster she was, technically being a plant-type monster, she had a rather high agility stat. Of course, it wasn't as though either of the magic users had much of a chance to really attack her anyway.

Caria was nothing more than a distraction that was meant to weaken the magic users, and in the meantime, Kiron had landed safely on the ground and had come rushing over toward them, expertly fending off the physical attacks of the earth-mage.

The sorceress, having her mana sapped from her the moment she tried to use anything like magic, wasn't able to do much except try to run away, but by this point, the couple of Myconids that had been grown with her mana were large enough to block her way.

It had only taken about thirty seconds for the three strongest members of this group, at least amongst those that were present, to be completely taken down. And that wasn't even through Eisen himself, who was still exerting his influence and charisma to pressure the whole camp, which was pretty successful at stopping the idea of an attack from even popping into most of their minds.

That being the case, this still went over a bit too easily. For a group of people that were capable of tricking the city's guards, breaking through the barrier that was erected to protect the God of the Mountain, not to mention damaging said statue itself to the point where 'blood' was apparently drawn from it... they were far too weak.

Eisen crossed his arms, continuing to look around the camp. There was nothing much here that was worth talking about. Nothing that seemed particularly extraordinary. But that didn't mean that he could just leave them be. There was clearly a secret here, one that gave them a clear advantage in regard to achieving their goals.

Eisen bent downward, flicking the body of the pugilist that had jumped at him, who was still suspended mid-air by thick, magically enforced threads, and he shot down into a thick mound of snow. Being freed, he of course tried to get up immediately to keep fighting, but before he could, the snow that he was in had become petrified.

The old man had established his Demonic Domain, making it spread out into the whole Camp. All of the snow that they walked on had turned into frozen stone, with deep cracks spreading through them. The cracks were filled with light blue flames that emanated a freezing chill. Eisen himself too, changed like this.

The colour of the crystals in his cracks turned into that same icy blue as he shrunk his body back down. He stopped at about four meters tall, which was enough to still put a lot of pressure on the non-giants here just through size alone, while it was also much easier to talk to who he wanted to talk to.

Eisen snapped his finger, and a stone throne shot up from beneath the snow, that the old man quickly sat down in. And the moment he sat down, a number of small, imp-like creatures climbed out of the snow, also all taking on the same colour and material that Eisen had used for the Domain in this place. They were Eisen's Demonic Spawn, which he was able to summon after spreading his Domain somewhere.

As for why Eisen changed the colour and temperature of his flames this much for the Domain; after playing around with this new ability for a while, Eisen found out that the Domain seemed to both have stronger effects and took much less mana to create if he adjusted it toward the surrounding area.

And since his Demonic form was deeply intertwined with his magical element, he was able to do so more than easily.

The old man didn't like playing the 'Scary Demon King' role all too much, but he had to admit that it was useful. And in moments like this, when he was either mad or annoyed, it did relieve some stress as well. Eisen's demonic spawn surrounded the three leaders of the group, forcing them each onto their knees before Sal tied them down with his threads.

Kiron also stood right behind them, his hand wrapped around the handle of his sword, so even if they managed to escape from the threads, things looked bleak for them. As they had basically become hostages, they were a great way to truly stop the rest of the camp from trying to do anything stupid as well.

Eisen tapped his finger on the armrest of the throne. He kept staring at those three, impatiently waiting. Seeing that none of them were getting the cues that the old man had set up, he just let out a deep sigh, "Do I have to spell it all out? Tell me what's going on here."

"What's going on here?" the Sorceress asked with awry, confused expression, "You're the one that just attacked us!"

"Well, I didn't 'just' attack you. We came up here to talk, but were immediately attacked. And just a couple minutes ago, I was threatened by that woman that you sent out to talk to me. So all I'm really doing is making sure that you know your place."

"Pah! Know our place?" with a loud scoff, the Pugilist shook his head, "The hell's that s'pposed to mean? Are ya some kinda noble, trying to fuck with us because we're doing somethin' 'unsightly'?"

While Eisen couldn't deny that he was a noble, or rather beyond that, as he was a King, that was obviously not why he was here. He didn't really consider himself particularly 'King'-like either.

This whole medieval-monarchy setting was something thought up by Samuel, while Eisen and the others were just forced to make sure that the world was curated perfectly to allow the company's vision to come to life.

Eisen sighed, "Rather than that, I'm just an old man trying to educate some kids," he replied, rubbing the bridge of his nose to try and avoid a migraine from all of this, "But to do that, I need to understand you lot first. One of you, and I absolutely don't care who, start talking. I'm sure you know a few more details of the motivation behind all of this.

Why the hell are you really trying to reveal the 'truth' behind the God of the Mountain?"