Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Alright, perfect!" Eisen said with a happy smile and nodded in satisfaction. Now he only needed to properly connect Cabarum to it so that he could pull it through the streets. For that purpose, he already added something on the Horse Automaton that would make this far easier. On the side of its body, he added some connectors, letting Eisen simply connect two poles to its body and then to the pole at the front of the carriage used to pull and steer it.

Cabarum also had two connectors by the sides of its mouth where rope could be connected to more easily control his movement while Eisen or Bree were sitting on the small bench at the front of the carriage.

So Eisen quickly prepared those two poles and pushed them onto the connectors at the side of Cabarum’s body and then to the carriage, before attaching the rope to the horse’s mouth.

After slowly packing up a few scraps and placing them into an empty crate that he already had, Eisen quickly cleaned up and then opened the large wooden door leading to the streets of Melroe to test how well the carriage can drive. Considering that its quality was high enough to break through woodworking, despite the fact that breaking through skills was supposed to be harder now that he reached the peak of his title, it should probably work just fine, but Eisen still wanted to see if there were any little tweaks needed and what kind of enchantments would be good to add to the wooden frame of the carriage to make it more stable and durable in total.

He first wanted to see how well the enchantments on the wheels helped before deciding on what else to place onto it, since Eisen wouldn’t be able to just erase the enchantment. At least not yet. Morrom explained to him what would happen if you just tried to erase an enchantment without the appropriate rank in the skill. It would basically cause a surge of energy to explode either outward or inward depending on the enchantment, quite easily being able to destroy the item or surface it was placed on, as well as damage the one that was removing the enchantment. That was also why Eisen placed the enchantment on the inside of the metal ring, so that it wouldn’t scratch up and be destroyed while they were driving.

So, If Eisen wanted to remove an enchantment safely, he would either have to wait until his Enchanting skill reached a higher rank, or fully remove the piece that he enchanted. And since that would just be a waste of time, he wanted to try and make sure the enchantments were as appropriate as possible.

After he opened the door to the outside, Eisen brought Aulu inside the carriage and set Caria down on her back, while Bree was waiting outside on the street to make sure Eisen wasn’t crashing into anything. After all, this was the first time in quite a few years that he steered a carriage.

Once they were finally on the outside, Bree quickly closed the door back down and joined Eisen on the front bench. "Alright, Cabarum, slowly walk forward now." Eisen commanded the Automaton, and it did as told. What they would do in order to test the carriage was to drive it to "Everything Magic", Morrom’s shop, and grab those Barrels that Eisen prepared not too long ago. This way, they were able to test out different scenarios perfectly. First, driving up or down a mountain, and then driving with or without cargo.

So this was the perfect way to look at what kinds of enchantments they needed. But as far as Eisen was concerned, this carriage seemed to drive quite well, and didn’t seem to shake all that much. It might be a bit different inside, but he’ll just have to see about that in a bit.

Not too long after they started driving down the slope, they reached Morrom’s shop, and Eisen told Cabarum to stop walking and had Bree wait with the carriage while he went inside to grab the Barrels.

Luckily, Eisen’s strength stat was quite high, so he more than easily managed to carry the barrels on his own and placed them down into the back of the carriages. And once he thanked Morrom for giving him the barrels in the first place and letting them be stored in his workshop, Eisen stepped into the back of the carriage and asked Bree to start driving back up the slope. However, at first, Cabarum didn’t listen to Bree.

That was obviously because she wasn’t his owner, and both Bree and Eisen forgot about that for a second.

So, Eisen commanded Cabarum to also listen to Bree’s commands, and now Bree managed to also properly drive the carriage back to the Woodworker’s.

During the ride, Eisen noticed a few things already. It was less shaky than he expected, but it was definitely still way too shaky to actually do anything major inside. What he was crafting would probably suffer a lot from the movements of the carriage. At the very least, the barrels seemed to be standing quite stable, so they would only need to worry about that if they had a lot of cargo or if they were driving on an especially unstable ground. But if that was the case, he could simply tie everything together or to a bit in the wall to make sure it couldn’t move, so that wasn’t a big deal.

But this definitely gave Eisen all that he needed to know, and when they got back to the woodworker’s, Eisen had Bree park the carriage by the side of the road so that other carriages could still pass along, and then squatted down onto the ground while taking out a few needles and mana crystals out of Bree’s backpack.

"What kind of enchantments are you putting on it now?" Bree asked curiously, looking over Eisen’s shoulder while he began carving the enchanting circle into one of the corners of the room. It seemed like she was basically treating him like usual again, which Eisen was more than just glad about.

So with a soft chuckle, he began to explain.

"I will place four enchantments inside of here, one in each corner, that will stabilize the space inside of here further. I’m not entirely sure if it will work, but I’m pretty sure it should. And that’s about it. I’ll enchant the outside with defense enchantments at some point, but that can wait." Eisen explained while carving the enchantment into the wooden board. Enchanting just got easier and easier already, and Eisen was actually able to make the enchantment circles quite easily with only minimal use of tools, so he was quite happy about that.

Once the four enchantments were carved into each of the corners, Eisen placed four mana crystals that were enchanted so that they could store mana behind the boards of each corner.

Now it was time to set up the mana supply system. It was really quite simple.

Eisen flattened a relatively large mana crystal and formed it into a disc, before carving out a small space on the wall next to the door at the back of the carriage to place it into. He then carved a simple enchantment that was supposed to transfer the mana that it got to the eight mana crystals all around the carriage.

The old man wasn’t entirely sure if this would work properly like he did it, but he would find out soon. The image that Eisen used for the enchantment was simply the structure of the carriage, with the locations of the mana crystals highlighted. This way also definitely meant that he had to redo the enchantment whenever he added a new mana crystal battery to the carriage, but at least mana crystals really weren’t expensive, so that fact didn’t matter too much. And it would be especially easy once he was able to erase enchantments.

Anyway, now it was time to try the enchantment out, and Eisen placed his palm onto the cold crystal surface before pouring his mana out of his hand and into the enchantment.

Immediately, the mana split up into eight thin streams, each moving toward a different one of the mana crystals. Eisen continued providing the enchantment with his mana until the eight streams disappeared, which was probably a sign that they couldn’t be filled up any more than that.

With a satisfied nod, Eisen stepped back through the opening in the front of the carriage and sat down on the bench, taking Cabarum’s reigns back into his hands. "Now we have the most important thing to start traveling! Should we get to work with supplies now? Do you have any suggestions on what to buy?"

Eisen asked Bree while starting to drive the carriage toward the place where he remembered some good food-shops to be. The Fey-kin thought for a bit, before starting to tell Eisen her opinion.

"I think we should mainly see to taking food that we can keep for a long time with good nutrition. So a little bit of dried meat, but mainly dried fruits like apricots or plums. I think that finding a wild beast would be far easier than finding fruits, so it would be more important to find that. And then we can of course get different long-lasting herbs, as well as salt, pepper, and a bit of sugar. But all in all, we shouldn’t take too much." She explained, and Eisen began to frown in light confusion.

"What do you mean? Why shouldn’t we take a lot from here?" Eisen asked, and immediately understood Bree’s reasoning.

"Ah, well, Melroe is a mining town, and we don’t really have any major fields, so most of the produce that’s sold here is imported. And since we’re going to Ornier next, we should pass by a farming village within a few days. I’ve been there once before, and they have high-quality produce for cheap, so it wouldn’t make too much sense to buy it from here, since the quality will be a bit worse while being more expensive. We should just stock up enough to last us till we get to that farming village, and then buy larger amounts of supplies there."

"I see, that definitely makes sense. Then how about you take care of the purchases and get us all we need food-wise, and I’ll go somewhere and buy some crafting supplies. I’ll leave the carriage to you, so just put everything inside."

"Okay~!" Bree agreed with a bright smile while Eisen got to a stop in front of the first few stores, then hopped off of the bench, telling Aulu to stay and by the carriage while he placed Caria onto his shoulder.

Eisen made his way toward a few stores that he was interested in, although he directly skipped over one that only sold metal, since he had no way to smith inside the carriage anyway.

But instead, he visited a few stores selling different fabrics, leathers, or types of wood that Eisen could craft different smaller things in the carriage to raise his skill levels. He could have also visited the shops of his skill-teachers to buy materials directly from them, but Eisen felt like that would be nothing different than treating them like cheap material sources, and he didn’t want that. Besides, like this he could buy all of it while in one place, and didn’t have to make his way all across town again.

On top of these simple materials, Eisen also bought some different seeds for Caria to practice her plant control skill on.

Now, all that Eisen needed to do was say goodbye to all those that helped him.