Spending My Retirement In A Game

The swarm of small insects burrowed through the metal of the cannonball. They were small beetle-like creatures, tearing apart the metal like it was paper. Eisen pulled his hand away, feeling the stinging sensation of them biting into his flesh. They were moving scarily fast, almost too fast for Eisen to really keep track of what was happening.

He instinctively used his magic to burn the beetles off of his skin. They fell to the ground in crispy black mounds. They clearly didn't have a lot of health, if even Eisen was able to kill them this easily. That was why one of the soldiers, a fairly skilled pyromancer, was able to get rid of them extremely fast. He burnt off the initially escaping bugs and then shot a flame inside of the hollow interior of the cannonball, which basically turned into a furnace in an instant.

"What the hell? So these cannonballs are filled to the brink with monsters?" Brody asked, leaning forward as the fire settled down. But Eisen shook his head, clicking his tongue while using a healing potion to get rid of the fresh wounds on his hands. He knew what these things are.

"It's not actually a cannonball. It's an egg," the old man groaned, "Steelclippers. Or at least, that's what I know them as. They usually have fangs that cut into metal like scissors, but these are more like... steelburrowers. The 'metal' isn't actually steel, even if it looks like it. It's an alloy created from any metal that the bugs' mother had eaten recently. Something about their bodies processes the metals in a unique way, so I've been looking into having Jyuuk breed some of them so that we can produce special alloys."

"Wait, wait, wait, these are fucking eggs? Seriously? More bugs?"

"Yeah. It's very possible that the dungeon master is an insectoid monster as well," Eisen explained, placing his hand onto the surface of the metal egg-sack, quickly pulling it out back toward the stairs, "Let's stop here for a second. I should be able to make use of this somehow to help us through the hallway."

Though Brody was clearly extremely curious, he refrained from asking what this was about. Him and the soldiers stepped onto the stairway, as Eisen moved the ball right in front of the trap's trigger zone, in a way where he wasn't actually activating it. It seemed like he could 'take his time' to some degree here.

Making an item that could help them through this more easily was really the most important thing. And luckily, Eisen had a pretty good idea of what to do. After all, there was a fairly big 'safe zone' that came with these cannonballs. Since the diameter was almost as big as the square hallway's width, allowing it to take up most of the space, the corners beside the ball were 'safe'. Of course, they couldn't just crawl through there. That wasn't feasible. There were dozens of trigger zones that were going to continuously cause new of these balls to spawn. Crawling through there was impossible for everyone. Plus, the safe zone wasn't actually big enough for anyone here, with the exception of one person, to move through comfortable. The one person that could do so was Eisen when he shrank down considerably.

So, what Eisen should do was simple. He just had to get to the end of the hallway on his own, while the others waited at the top of the stairs. The cannonballs would move so fast that they could reach the top of the stairs, but there, it would just be shot into the former floor and then disintegrate. This was a dungeon monster, technically, and these monsters were unable to exist outside of their floor. The metal balls might still stay there, but the Steelclippers inside were going to die instantly.

And so, Eisen just had to make himself an item that would allow him to easily and quickly traverse the corners. With how this hallway was constructed, he would be unable to dodge in time if one of the cannonballs was shot atz him. Instead, it was safest if he could move around quickly and efficiently while taking up as little of the corner as possible.

For this, Eisen quickly heated up the metal. Whatever process the metal underwent within the steelsnippers, it gave the metal a more crystaline structure. And in this worlds, these crystal structures allowed for the housing of particular amounts of magic, while at the same time being easy to shape and manipulate with transmutation. It still needed a bit of heat, but it was far more malleable. Eisen had wanted to get his hands on this type of metal because it allowed small, complex metal structures to be made with high durability and precision, even without the use of complex injection molds.

So, he didn't technically need to use this metal for this item, but he figured he might as well use whatever materials he got on hand. Quickly, he plucked small parts of the heated, softened metal off the cannonball, shaping it into perfectly round balls. With his ego-tool Bai, Eisen then quickly started carving some enchantments into the surface.

Specifically, Eisen made use of a mixture of 'magnetism' and 'gravity' enchantments here. The great thing about magic was that you could make use of magnetism even outside of metallic objects. You basically just had to tell the enchantment what the object had to act magnetic toward. And Eisen quickly chose the stone wall.

Meanwhile, the gravity enchantment was one that very simply skewed the direction of gravity by 90°; right forward down the hallway. This meant that the metal balls, if Eisen let go of them now, were going to fall forward while sticking to the stone bricks on the wall, only slowed by the natural friction of the air and the additional friction that came from contact with the walls.

Now, he just needed to create a housing. It was like a small metal tube, where the top and bottom slightly encased the metal balls in a way that didn't allow for them to escape. With some simple enchantments that heavily decreased the friction within that casing, the balls could move without trouble.

And then, to ensure that the small tube would stay in place and stick to the corner, Eisen enchanted two separate small strips parrallel to each other, each strip going from top to bottom of the tube, with that same magnetism enchantment so that the tube wouldn't wildly spin around during the drop, and so that the item stayed safely in the corner.

Now, the tube also had to be enchanted with that same gravity enchantment, but in addition to that, needed to be able to exert its force inward, so that Eisen's weight wasn't going to jeopardize the efficiency. So Eisen's own gravity was going to be shifted forward as well once he was inside the tube.

And at last, there was one more thing that Eisen needed to add to the tube. An extremely powerful shock-absorption, so that Eisen didn't just die immediately on impact.

"Okay, I'm done. Everyone, stand back from the entrance. The first shot will bring the initial cannonball with it as well, so there might be some extre debris," the old man warned, as he placed the dropping, rolling tube along the wall, only stopping it with a small piece of a mana crystal wedged into one of the wall's cracks. He quickly shrunk himself down and squeezed into the tube. With a deep breath, he then removed the mana crystal wedge, and could quickly feel himself starting to fall down.

It didn't take long until the first cannonball shot past him. And then the second, and then the third. He made it past each of the force traps that were used to accelerate these cannonballs. Luckily, force traps worked better on objects than on living beings, which was why they were often used in similar ways to this in dungeons. So, while the tube slowed down because of the metal casing, Eisen's own weight and the momentum that he had built up into the opposite direction were enough to push the item past each trap. It actually helped keep Eisen's speed low enough that he didn't feel worried about potentially dying from the fall after all. Rather, the impact was surprisingly... unimpactful.

The improvised item came to a stop in a large room, and Eisen could hear the scurrying of insects. Without hesitation, he jumped out of the tube and increased his size to as large as he could make it here. There were a few more insects here. For one, there were tons of fully-grown steelsnappers that were rushing at Eisen. There was also a steelsnapper 'mother', which was continuously and repeatedly laying the metal eggs. Since it was a dungeon monster, it was probably able to force this to happen. And then, whever one of the metal balls was shot out, one of the larger beetles quickly pushed another one into the small 'loading dock', where it could then be shot forward when needed.

Either way, it was fairly easy to deal with them all like this, especially since Eisen was alone. He activated his demonic transformation and spread out his own domain into every part of the chamber, burning the smaller, weaker steelsnappers to a crisp. With his sword, he was able to cut through the larger ones and the ones that weren't killed with the initial attack, as well as the 'mother'. These guys weren't actually that strong, probably since all the mana on this floor was used for the traps.

The old man quickly let the others know that they could come here, and then started heating up all the remaining 'cannonballs' to kill the steelsnappers inside of them as he waited for everyone to arrive.