Spending My Retirement In A Game

A giant spider, the size of an ancient dragon, stood directly in front of Eisen, but what he stared at was not any one of its eight crimson red eyes, but rather an information window that he had just pulled up. His friendslist. There were three modes to the names there. They could be green, which meant that the player was online. They could be grey, which meant that the player was sleeping or offline, and they could be red, which meant that the player died and the death-penalty was currently put on them.

But luckily, Stahl’s name was currently grey, meaning that he had managed to find a safe place to log off. Eisen wanted to follow his example, but he was unable to log off due to the fact that he was mid-combat.

That meant that Eisen had to take care of that Spider first. He immediately activated all of the skills that gave him stat bonuses and grasped his Zweihänder tightly, before using his Truth-Seeing Eyes to check the most basic information of the monster.

[Mother of Spiders][Rank - 4][Level - 15]

[HP - 10000][MP - 10000]

[Titles] -[Area Boss]

"Oh great, me alone against a Rank 4 monster...?" Eisen muttered to himself and immediately attempted to build up a distance between him and the ’Mother of Spiders’ and began to think about how he should go about this. Monsters with Boss titles were said to get a massive boost to their stats, which was also shown in the fact that it had so much HP and MP.

He fought against a Boss monster before, back in the goblin town, but this one was a rank higher and probably quite a pain to deal with alone. But at least Eisen had a slight advantage in one sense.

The giant spider continued to attempt and trap him in its silk which was moving around as if it had a mind on its own, but all that Eisen needed to do was to heat his body as much as possible with his element, which was simple to do considering that he was in his demonic form at the moment. He even took his staff out of his soul storage to attempt and make his fire even hotter.

But at the moment, Eisen was still running from it without even trying to attack it somehow. He was lucky that the clearing was large enough for that; otherwise, he would have had an even harder time. "Think you moron, think!" Eisen muttered to himself. He was even considering just letting the spider kill him and have that be that, but he felt like that was the absolute worst choice at the moment, so he continued trying to figure out ways to kill the spider.

When Eisen finally came up with an idea, he immediately reversed his movement and twisted his body around, before sprinting at the spider, choosing to aim at the legs first and foremost. In Eisen’s head, it was the best idea to pick the hind legs, because that might cause the spider’s back to slump down, which might, in turn, allow him to climb onto it so that he could attack its abdomen, with that being one of its weak points.

While Eisen was trying to destroy or at least damage the legs, he covered each one in a thick layer of rock made with his element, while trying to focus the high heat inwardly that would hopefully roast everything in its way.

He would have tried to do the same directly to the abdomen, but it was too far away, so Eisen didn’t have any direct control over it. It was hard enough as it was to try and do it to the lowermost area of the Spider’s legs, but anything else would have practically been impossible.

After a while, the leg seemed to be pretty damaged and quite fragile, so Eisen unsummoned his staff and instead grasped his Zweihänder and large hammer, pointing the tip of the sword against the cracked up leg and basically used it as a chisel with the help of the hammer, which made it possible for him to instantly destroy the leg which hindered some of the spider’s movements.

For about ten minutes, Eisen then attempted to do the same thing to another one of the legs, and due to the sheer weight that the legs were carrying, for just a brief moment, the abdomen slammed against the ground, giving Eisen the chance to climb onto it. ’Literally’ stabbing the Zweihänder into it to keep himself up there in case the spider tried knocking him off his body by shaking around, Eisen slowly climbed further and managed to get all the way to the top. But that wasn’t the weak-spot that Eisen was going for, he was looking for the thinnest part of a spider’s body, the area where the abdomen and the sternum of the spider were connected. Carefully, Eisen slid down to the front of the abdomen, of course not forgetting to do as much damage to the spider as possible on the way.

The old man swiftly summoned his staff again while still using his sword, and even using his wings to support somewhat and stabilize himself so that he wouldn’t fall off, and then heated the area as much as he just possibly could. Of course, the spider tried twisting and turning, even crushing Eisen between its body a few times so that the spider nearly killed him, but luckily, Eisen could still hold out.

Eisen repeatedly checked the information of the spider to see if it was losing health, and it was currently at about half its total HP, which was still nearly four times Eisen’s total HP, but now it came to the moment that the old man was waiting.

The connective area became so dried up, hot and brittle that Eisen could stab his sword right through it. With his leg, he stomped against it a few times, and then even grabbed his staff to push it deeper into the spider’s body. That immediately reduced the Mother of Spiders down to about a fourth of its original HP, so now Eisen just had to finish it.

He placed his hands over the opening that he created and filled it with his element, to include every nook and cranny. It probably wouldn’t do as much damage as Eisen wanted it to, but it should still do a large amount, considering that Eisen was about to turn all of the rock that he poured deep into the wound into hot, hot flames.

It turned out to be actually quite explosive, and the body was ripped into two parts, killing the spider immediately while Eisen dropped down to the ground. Surprisingly, he was able to catch himself with his wings, but that wasn’t what Eisen was thinking about, ignoring the notifications that appeared all around him, Eisen picked up his sword from the ground and just grasped it in his right hand while holding his staff in his left hand. His size was fully increased, and he was in his complete demonic transformation before he logged off.

---

Immediately, Benjamin tried standing up out of the capsule, but of course, that took a little longer than he wanted it. He could hear some yelling in the living room, coming mostly from Benji, so the old man tried to go there as fast as he could. The fight took him about an hour total, after all, so 15 minutes passed here in the real world. A lot can happen in 15 minutes.

But just when Benjamin nearly reached the living room, he heard Tony speak up, angrier than he ever heard him in the past few years.

"What, do you think I want my past to be that? Do you think that I hid that from you for shits and giggles? No, I hid that from you because I was embarrassed and always hated myself for making such a dumb mistake! No, for making those dozens and dozens of dumb mistakes! Ever since then, I paid for the mistakes I made, but I always tried to keep you out of that! I gave you whatever you wanted! Even when my car broke down and we were missing some of the money to repair it, I always got you the newest videogame console! In the short time that we had ’literally’ not enough money to eat, I gave you all of my food and then ate the leftovers. Benjamin, I love you more than anything in the world, so why are you mad at me for something that happened before you were even born?!" Tony yelled out angrily toward his son, who he only called in his full name when he was talking about something serious, while Benjamin-Senior made his way to Sean and Katy’s room to make sure they didn’t hear anything about the fight that even hurt the old man’s heart.

Benjamin never liked seeing his son like that, scraping for money to even be able to buy food, and he offered him more than enough money to buy more money than a restaurant used in a year. The only times that Tony accepted was when it came to Benji, Sean or Katy. For example, once as a child, Benji was extremely sick, and Tony was worried about paying the hospital bill, and since his wife was currently pregnant with Sean, he immediately accepted Benjamin’s offer to pay for it so that he wouldn’t cause too many hardships for his wife, son and soon-to-be-born child.

While Benjamin was trying to keep his youngest grandchildren distracted, he could still hear a little bit from the fight in the distance, so he attempted to speak loud enough over it so that Sean and Katy couldn’t listen to it. In the meantime, he also grabbed the gadget that was connected to the capsule to send a message to Komer and ask him to grab the carriage and some people and bring it to the front of the town. With his last thought before logging off, Benjamin commanded Cabarum to run back there, because he wanted someone to use the carriage to come over to the forest so that they could gather the materials of the Mother of Spiders that he so hastily killed.

He probably ruined a lot of excellent materials, but anything is better than nothing, so Benjamin didn’t want to pass on the items coming from a boss monster.

"Grandpa, there’s skeletons in the game, right?" Sean asked curiously, and with a bit of surprise, the old man nodded his head. "Yeah, there are. A friend of mine is a necromancer, which means that he can control them. We have them sailing our ship at the moment, so that’s pretty fun." He chuckled a bit before Sean began to look at his grandfather with bright eyes.

"Whoa, that’s so cool!" He exclaimed, and Benjamin placed his hand onto the boy’s head. "Of course, it is. But I wasn’t aware you liked Skeletons that much, Sean." Benjamin added, and the boy’s face immediately lit up.

"Mhm! They’re scary and fun, and cool!" The young boy giggled, but Katy just grimaced at the thought.

"No, they’re icky! Cute, fluffy furbabies are much funnerer!" Katy exclaimed as if wanting to start a fight with Sean. But despite rarely speaking more than a few sentences at a time, Sean was quite witty at times.

"You have a skeleton inside of you right now, you know?" He responded immediately and placed his finger onto the center of his sister’s chest before Katy began to look at him in confusion and a bit of horror.

"S-Say like right now!" Katy responded, and now Benjamin looked at her in confusion and a bit of horror considering the fact that she knew that type of language at such an age, but before the old man could comment, Sean continued.

"I won’t! Do you know how your whole body hurts sometimes? Dad says that it’s ’Growing Pains,’ but in reality, it’s just a skeleton trying to take over your body!" He exclaimed with a blank expression before Katy immediately jumped up as the color in her face completely drained.

Swiftly, she turned around, stepped to the door, slowly took the first step outside, and then sprinted toward the living room with tears in her eyes, "Daaaddddyy!"