Spending My Retirement In A Game

At least the ones that he was making for the envoys from the giants' country left him with a bit more energy in the end. Eisen looked to the side, where Xenia was currently excitedly waiting for him to be done.

"Are we good to go?" She finally asked, and Eisen turned toward the trains and carefully nodded his head. Over the past few days, some monsters had been instructed on how to operate the locomotives, and apparently, the 'Riding and Driving' skill was useful for trains as well, which is why they recruited specifically monsters that already had high ranks of that skill.

They still needed to be trustworthy of course, but that didn't seem to be an issue. Serio had run some background checks on them and all the monsters that had been chosen seemed to be ones that worked in close cooperation with them in Prototype until now.

They had already been driving the locomotives around Prototype's island in the areas where the rails had already been constructed to make sure that they could all properly drive the trains.

"Give me a little while first," Eisen said, spreading out his wings and shooting up into the sky again. While he knew that the rails were perfectly fine, there was something that he was a bit more concerned about; the bridges between the islands. They were extremely long, massive bridges, something at a scale that wasn't even done like this on earth.

They slithered along the coastlines until reaching the the most effective route, where support pillars could be constructed where the water was even just slightly less shallow.

Eisen and Xenia had worked on all the enchantments together to ensure that the bridges could resist the wild ocean of the archipelago, but he was still worried that something could go wrong, but there were also plenty of 'sensors' set up along the bridges that would immediately report an issue if any part of the bridges were damaged.

Luckily, the one thing that they didn't have to worry about were powerful monsters. With Jyuuk's help, who had been collecting information on monster habitats all over the country, they were able to select routes with minimal monster interference, and the rest was done through some monster-repelling enchantments placed on some floating buoys near the bridges to stop monsters from even coming close.

But none of this stopped that Eisen was incredibly, incredibly nervous. This was such a massive project that he had only minimal involvement in; he wasn't able to do it all on his own, of course, he was only one man, despite what his doubles might make others believe.

After double and tripple checking the nearby bridges, Eisen let out a long sigh, "Fine, I guess I'm worrying over nothing, huh..?"

At the end of the day, Asgard as a whole and in particular Prototype had some of the best craftsmen around, not just including Eisen. As many of them as possible had been made to help in the construction and quality control, working closely together with the construction drones that Eisen already knew did an impeccable job.

Trying to stop his anxiety, Eisen just flew back to where Xenia was excitedly waiting, landing on the train platform. This was just a temporary starting point while train depot was yet to be built, and since the central station also wasn't finished yet, this ended up being the best spot.

"Alright, which one are you taking?" the old man asked, and Xenia thought about it for a moment, "I think I'll head toward the central continent. Unless you want to take that one?"

"I'm fine with either, don't worry."

"In that case, it's settled!" Xenia clapped her hands together, making her way over to one of the two trains. Right now, it was time to bring the two locomotives and their respective carriages over to the harbors where all the envoys were going to arrive. Their arrival was still a few days off, but it was better to get everything there ahead of schedule if possible.

Xenia got into the one of the passenger carriages, whichever one she found most comfortable, really, as the train's engine started rumbling, The wheels slowly started to turn as the locomotive began to drag the large amount of carriages.

It took a while to really get it going with that much weight, but before long, Xenia was waving at Eisen from the window of one of the middle carriages, and the old man watched the train leave. And then, it was time for Eisen to leave as well. He made his way inside of the giants' train, sitting down in the place he felt like he could relax the best, as the soft rumble of the train started.

As the scenery beside the window started to slowly pass by, Eisen leaned back in the seat. It was time for him to relax a bit. The reason why he was here was to make sure that the train was going to arrive at its destination safely. In the case of any sort of emergency, Eisen would be able to respond to it right here, and Xenia could respond to it in the other train.

However, the trip would take quite a while. Eighteen hours if the train travelled without stopping. And Eisen was basically being forced by the others to just take it easy during the journey. To the other originals that meant 'no crafting of any sort', but for Eisen, that didn't really feel fair, so he ended up bringing a few things for himself that he could work on during the trip.

But obviously, nothing all too much.

Eisen was going to be crocheting.

It was something that he took up a long time ago as something that he could do easily wherever he went, even during actual trips. It was an easy way to keep his hands doing something. But at the same time, he hadn't crocheted anything in a long time. Probably... more than a decade?

Either way, it was a good way to spend this train ride. Eisen started feeling nervous when he wasn't doing anything with his hands for this long. Though, he also packed some whiskey and a book that seemed interesting, so he definitely would have plenty of things to do during the journey. Not to mention, being able to view the scenery like this in this world was a surreal experience.

He never could have imagined riding a train in this world.

Just the fact that they had created these was a massive step in changing this world.

Eisen was convinced that there was nothing Samuel could do once trains were introduced on the central continent; he already knew that plenty of players were complaining about the time that it took to travel across the continent, especially when it came to meeting up with their friends that had to start out in other regions for a number of reasons.

Once players would start hearing that trains were under construction, that was a rumor that even Samuel wouldn't be able to put a stop to.

And then, when the trains were introduced, spreading any sort of new items and technologies across the world would just be that much easier as well. To Eisen, it was basically a given that once the train came to be in the world, Samuel had lost the battle of keeping this world paused in time.

Maybe that was the reason why Eisen actually felt comfortable enough to try and relax like his friends wanted him to.

Knowing that they were slowly but surely gaining the upper hand over Samuel fulfilled him in a deep, almost instinctual way. As though the former Eisen still slumbering within him was laughing, happy to see that bastard's ploys run into the ground.

Eisen picked up the crochet needle and his ball of yarn, quickly getting to work with a slight whistle, enjoying the soft rumble of the train below him.