Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Careful!" Eisen pulled back one of the soldiers, because he was about to be hit by one of the acidic monsters' spit attacks. The area where the soldier stood until now was eaten away, leaving behind a deep hole as the acid completely destroyed the rock.

As this happened, Brody cut through the monster, killing it with a single slash. The rest of the monster's group was also quickly taken down.

"Are you alright?" the old man asked the soldier, who slowly nodded. He had seemingly gotten a bit of acid onto his leg, and it damaged his boots in an awkward way, making him trip while trying to get away. So, Eisen quickly grumbled, trying to figure out how to best repair this, "Alright, I'll take a look when we set up the camp later. For now, just stand in the back and support everyone with your attack magic. You had decent ranged magic, right?"

"... Mediocre at best, but it should be of some use."

As the soldier nodded, he repositioned himself in a different part of the group, and Eisen let out a slightly relieved sigh. That was the closest call they really had to someone being seriously injured, so things were going pretty well overall. But just when Eisen thought they were going to keep going, he noticed the slightly awkward stares of the soldiers. Confused, he walked over to Brody, "Did something happen that I didn't notice? Is my fly open?"

Brody shook his head with a laugh, "Nope. Do you not realize what you just did?"

"Hm?"

"You were standing at least 10 feet away from him, and you grabbed the guy with your feet steady on the ground. Your arm fucking... stretched. This ain't One Piece, you know?"

"... One Piece?"

"Nevermind. But seriously, what did you just do?" Brody asked, crossing his arms, clearly curious. Eisen hadn't even really noticed what he did. But now that he thought about it, now that he was using his skills in a different way, his instinct had taken over in a new way.

Basically, what Eisen did was grow his body with his Giant racial ability. But with the skill no longer restricting him, he didn't have to grow every part of his body at once. He could completely manipulate each part of his body separately. And not just that, but he didn't have to grow his body in every dimension equally. So... he could isolate his growth to his arm, and only stretch it forward, not upward or sideways.

Eisen had been practicing this for a little while now, but he hadn't realised that it already became so ingrained in him that he did it subconsciously. Either way, it was a pretty useful thing, though it was hard to keep up. While he could 'stretch' himself out in each dimension independently, things would equal out pretty quickly. So after stretching his arm forward, he would grow upward and sideways as well and shrink a bit from the forward direction, as if everything was 'bouncing back'. It will still have made his arm grow in size compared to what he started from, but it was just like things were equalizing a bit.

After showing this new use of his abilities to Brody, the demon-orc halfling just stood there in stunned silence.

"That's... huh," he let out, crossing his arms, "That is creepy as hell. It just doesn't really feel... right. It looks wrong. Maybe it's just instinct cause I know what that ability looked like for at least the past 80 thousand years. At least, y'know, subconsciously."

"No, I get it, it feels weird to me as well. This is definitely a newish thing, though I think I'm also weirdly proficient with it," the old man pointed out, "I think it's possible that the system wasn't always quite as rigid as it is now. That there was a time where our abilities could be used more openly."

"And then the system came along and forced the entire world into a specific set of rules," Brody clicked his tongue, getting annoyed just thinking about it, "Anyway, do you have any other abilities that you can change in this way?"

Eisen thought about it for a moment, "Nothing of this level, really. But I feel like my stats can be applied in a more unique way. Like the longer I live without the system's influence, the more... effective it becomes. Like the strength stat, it feels like it's giving an equal amount of strength to every part of your body. But now? It's like it's really shifting to the muscles that I'm actually using. Not that it's something I'm actually controlling."

"Oh, shit, yeah I never thought about that. I guess it's for that whole 'power fantasy' schtick that Samuel wants to give to everyone. No matter how they level up, they should become super powerful all throughout," Brody figured, and Eisen agreed. That seemed to be the gist of it, or at least how he understood it, "And there's nothing this whole thing is affecting negatively?"

Eisen wanted to say no almost instinctively, but he stopped himself. Even if he hadn't quite thought about it, using certain abilities was harder and more finnicky, like some level of guidance was taken away from him, "Crafting things. It's sort of embarrassing to admit, but it's harder to get the result I want from an item I make. Not in the way that the process is harder; I never relied on the system for that anyway. But actually making an item have the exact effects feels like it requires a lot more concentration on that effect while I'm working. I'm glad it was a gradual change for me, otherwise it's possible that the items I make would become useless."

Brody sighed relieved, "Yeah, you can say that again. I was worried for a while that the items you make would stop having any effects. Like they're just... things like on earth."

"No, no, it's nothing like that. It doesn't work like that in the first place. The effects come from the magic bestowed onto the item through the crafting process, it doesn't technically have anything to do with the user's abilities. The skill level just changes how much magic someone is able to naturally place into an item that way, and how precise they can be with it."

"Hold on... does that mean what I think it does?" Brody asked, taken aback, and Eisen just grinned.

"Yeah, I feel like you're thinking what I've been thinking as well. Skills don't just bestow, they limit as well. For us five, our respective field's skills don't really have much to bestow anymore. Definitely not now that we've connected to our pasts. The only thing they can do is limit our capabilities now. And without that limit, there's nothing technically speaking against me creating a transcendent item. And trust me, I've been trying... but it doesn't work just yet. I feel like I'm on the way there, though. There's already so little of my system coming through that my name apparently isn't shown right in the description."

"Shit, alright..." Brody replied, hesitating for a few moments. Instead of speaking, he just side-eyed Eisen as they were walking, grinning lightly, and the old man let out a loud laugh.

"Yes, Brody, I'm going to make you a transcendent sword as soon as I possibly can."

"Sick, thank you."

And with that, the group moved on from their short break after that last encounter, making their way further through the dungeon. They had passed through three floors of this zone so far, not including that special floor with the railgun-hallway. These floors weren't really all that complex. It really just seemed to be some kind of ancient town that had fallen to ruins, and now had all of these extremely deadly insects and plants infesting it. The thing with these sorts of monster was that they were extremely dangerous due to their extremely strong ability in one particular area. Acid wasn't the easiest thing in the world to defend against, and if you couldn't, it was not just painful but incredibly deadly.

But monsters that were extremely potent in one specific field simply became easy opponents once you had the correct countermeasures for that single specific field in place. Hence why they were making pretty good progress, and were able to put most of their focus on things beside the actual combat. Of course, they were still careful, but this zone in particular gave a ton of information.

Because either, there used to be a town near this dungeon, and this zone was a natural creation by the dungeon because of that, as this sort of default setting, or it was influenced by the actual dungeon master to take this form. Luckily, they had a perfect scan of almost the entire dark forest because of the wave of sensors that Eisen sent out to find the dungeon in the first place. They knew that there was no trace of a town nearby, so it was very likely that this ruined town related to the dungeon master somehow.