Spending My Retirement In A Game

Eisen walked out of the cave with a slightly annoyed expression. Dealing with that dragon was more than just annoying. Not because it was powerful in any way, of course. The black dragon itself just annoyed Eisen with the words that it used and the choices that it made. He knew that the chromatic dragons he would meet on his journey of becoming a champion for their side were going to be particularly evil, but he didn't expect something like this.

As far as Eisen knew, in order to make sure that the people siding with one side of the draconic war would be more likely to stick to that side, instead of flip-flopping between them, the dragons that were given the ability to choose a champion in this war were all toward either one end of the spectrum of good and evil. This way, it was also easier to sway public opinion. The metallic dragons would be seen as good to the core, while the chromatic dragons would be bad to the core. That would make the 'story' being told a lot more straightforward.

Either way, as the old man left the cave, he was left with that sour feeling in his mouth that he got whenever didn't quite sit right with him. In the first place, who was the one that cursed this black dragon? Something as sinister as this cursed energy can't come from the side proclaiming themselves as 'good'. At least, Eisen knew that it didn't come from his his son, Trygan. The crystal dragon king was someone that the old man had complete trust in. Sure, apparently he had made some choices that Eisen wasn't particularly happy with, but Eisen knew that Trygan wouldn't resort to anything that he found unjust, and something like cursed energy basically embodied injustice, at least that's what Eisen felt to be the case.

"Eisen! You're okay, what happened in there? We noticed all the cursed energy, and then the ground started shaking, and..." Bree had jumped off the carriage, clearly still extremely worried about the old man, but Eisen just shook his head while trying to calm down the half-fae girl and the kids.

"Don't worry, I'm fine. The dragon was weak, so I was able to slay it quite easily," Eisen explained, "I also heard where a dungeon is here in the forest, so let's head over there and check it out at least. From how it spoke, the dragon seemed rather apprehensive to speak about it, so I feel like there's something down there."

Bree quickly nodded her head, clearly extremely relieved that Eisen was doing well, scrambling through her backpack to take out her map of the forest, "Great! Where did it say it was?"

Eisen took a quick look at the map, "It said in the center of the forest, underneath a massive dead tree that acts as the entrance."

"Alright, so, apparently the monsters in the forest get stronger the deeper you go inside, so if it's in the center, it would make sense if the dungeon is a particularly large one," Bree explained, looking at the map and taking a few notes. She was quickly marking down a few different territorries based on the information she had gathered in town, as well as on what she saw while they were travelling here, "I would guess that it's around... here?" she explained, putting a small marker onto a part of the map.

Eisen figured that it was a good place to start. Once they got to the area, they could send out Melissa's bees and have them search for the dungeon more precisely.

"Perfect, then let's head out right away. It's about to get dark, so I would like to get as close as we can until then," Eisen explained. The kids quickly got back into the carriage, and Eisen put the harness on Fafnir to have the living dungeon pull the carriage. And with that, they got moving. Just as Bree explained, the forest got a lot more dangerous the deeper they got.

The trees were larger, and the forest got darker as the forest's crown got thicker and refused to let in light. You could barely see anything, so Eisen sent out some wisps of fire, of course too cold to actually light up anything in the area, to light up the path ahead. But somehow, as night came closer, the forest's already unnatural darkness grew only deeper and more sinister.

The light of Eisen's flames seemed to not travel as far as it should, and a deep chill was clinging to his skin, even when he tried to heat himself up wtih his magic. Clearly, this forest was affected by some kind of deep, powerful magic. If the dungeon laid at the center of this, then the possibility that a transcendent monster was hiding out there was growing higher and higher by the minute. Especially because the monsters here certainly were not weak by any means. Rather, some of them seemed to be a bigger challenge than the black dragon was. Though, that was more of a sign of how weak the black dragon had become due to the effect of the curse.

Eisen had to get off the carriage to fight off the monsters quite a bit, though he would usually just get rid of anything from his seat or have the kids take care of it if there were only weak monsters to deal with. But it didn't take long until he couldn't just do that anymore. At some point, Eisen could feel the air itself become poisonous. It wasn't much, really, but with every breath, Eisen could feel his mouth go more and more numb. He had to stop for a while and quickly alter the carriage for a bit, adding an enchantment that would create a detoxifying barrier right around it to make sure that everyone was going to be alright.

But that wasn't all either. Just in case, Eisen had placed a few simple markers around the area. Nothing special, just mana crystals filled to the brim so that Eisen could track the path with his truth-seeing eyes. And even though they were supposed to have gone in almost a straight line toward the center of the forest, Eisen soon saw his trail of markers in front of him. The forest was... distorted. The magic flowing through here had some spatial elements to it, but they were completely random, like the forest was trying to stop people from reaching the dungeon.
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Which was... possible. The dungeon was probably extremely high-level, so this area was probably altered in such a way that it wouldn't allow players to enter here until a later chapter of the game. But if this was man-made, then there was definitely a way to break through. And Eisen tried a few different ways to do that.

He tried to push through the roof of the forest to fly toward the center, but the whole area above the trees was covered in a thick fog. And whenever he entered that fog, Eisen would get turned around and end up in a completely different place, so that wasn't an option either. After finding the carriage again, though it took quite a while, Eisen sat down and tried to think.

And that was when Sky came to him. He had borrowed some local storybooks from the town and had finished looking through them, "Eisen, I think I found something."

"Have you? Is it about the forest's distortion?"

Sky quickly nodded, a broad grin on his face, "Uhum. Basically, there's some kind of myth about the forest, and how some people found their way through. It looks like there might be some kind of pattern to it."

"Hm..." Eisen ran his fingers through his beard, "Interesting. So if it's not just about turning away anyone that comes, there's we can figure out how the magic works and find our way through... That, or..."

The old man smiled lightly. It would take a little while, but he could spare a few hours.

"Fafnir, come on, open the door. I need to work, so we're setting up camp here. I've got an item to make."

Though the others were curious about what Eisen was planning, the old man just said to wait it out. Fafnir opened the door to his dungeon, and everyone went inside. Eisen even parked the carriage inside, and then closed the door, locking it behind him. And then, he would make something to lead them through the forest.