Spending My Retirement In A Game

Holding his forehead, Eisen looked into the space in front of him. The noise-level was much higher than he expected, despite his repeated attempts at making them all quiet down. People were talking over each other, discussing things, and getting quite heated.

He had no idea what this place would be like if it weren't for the relaxing decor and flowers spread through the room, meant to prevent exactly this.

The only reason that Eisen didn't intervene yet was because nobody was being insulting and nobody seemed to be genuinely mad about things. Of course, Van Horgh and the holy empire's envoys were saying some annoying things, but the giants already seemed able to ignore them quite well.

Luckily, the group that Eisen was actually a lot more worried about, the Cloud Giants, were holding back and staying quiet. It almost seemed like they were only here as a formality and to be able to report back later on. Even if it did come to a war, Eisen was sure they would never get involved, simply staying in their cloud city.

From what the old man could tell, the cloud giants, who despised anyone that wasn't one of their clan's kin, thought so little of the people of the central continent that their words couldn't insult them. They simply scoffed at the idea of being treated as slaves, since it seemed so ridiculous.

It was at the level of a toddler saying something slightly mean; nothing to be taken seriously, and actually almost cute. Eisen was worried a lot about what would happen if the cloud giants and the holy empire started exchanging insults, but since the cloud giants didn't seem interesting in talking, things worked out fine.

Different to them, the envoys of the holy empire seemed a lot more hot-headed to the point where they would most certainly react to the aggressive words of a 'lesser species' like the giants, which would only make the situation much, much worse.

But instead, the envoys of the clans that were more sensible were taking the lead, not giving the holy empire's envoys anything to cling onto and twist, nor really paying much heed to the things that they were saying.

That all being the case, things were still quite messy. They were discussing all the numerous matters that were important to each clan or country, talking over each other and making it particularly hard for the old man to follow along. Luckily though, there were a couple of magic items in the room recording and transcribing everything that was said, no matter how much they were talking over others.

It would need to be properly sorted and stitched together later on, but Xenia made sure to make the enchantments intelligent enough to take care of that almost on their own. The full transcript would just need to be proofread later on. Explore new worlds at m,v l'-novelbuddy.net

Eisen's eyes landed on the large clock on the other side of the room. It was about dinnertime now, and the conversations were ebbing a little since people were growing exhausted, so Eisen stood up, immediately drawing attention toward him. The old man quickly spoke.

"I am quite glad that these discussions seem to be going well, but it is growing rather late, so we will be serving dinner shortly. All the documents in front of you can stay as they are; we will cover them with new tops so you can stay seated here and eat, and then return to the discussions.

If you would like, we can take a short break after dinner, but I do please ask you to keep all discussions related to the treaty inside of this room," the old man explained.

As Eisen spoke, seeing that everybody had pulled their hands away, Eisen placed his hand onto the large table. He let his mana pour into it and activated one of its functions. The tabletop was slightly lowered, taking all the books and documents with it, before new tops folded out and covered the table.

Just then, the door to the hall opened up, and plenty of the servants that the originals had brought here stepped inside, pushing tonight's dinner into the room with some carts. They quickly served the food depending on everyone's preferences and dietary restrictios.

Eisen had created a menu that would work for everyone here, and then made some slight adjustments to really perfectly make it fit everyone.

As the food was placed in front of them, it seemed like the envoys finally realized that they hadn't eaten much all day, and quickly got properly seated, enjoying themselves. Some of them, particularly the giants, were asking for some wine or liquor, but Eisen quickly shut that down. The discussions were going to continue after dinner, after all, and Eisen didn't want any of them to be drunk.

While everyone was eating, Eisen took the opportunity to excuse himself and take a slight break. He had been sitting here all day, listening to political nonsense that frankly didn't interest him whatsoever. There was a reason why he left most of those things to others. The old man stepped out onto the balcony at the side of the building.

This part wasn't protected by the special array and materials covering the rest of the hall, but it was still a separate place. Since the meeting hall was soundproofed, nobody would be able to hear Eisen speak out here.

He leaned onto the railing and let out a loud, annoyed groan. Xenia, the only other original that had stuck around the whole time, didn't seem to be in a much better mood, "That is all quite... a lot."

The old man scoffed, "That sounds like an understatement."

"The fact that they're basically discussing human rights here is kind of..." Xenia muttered, "And we just let Samuel force us to keep it like this?"

Eisen slowly turned toward her, nodding, "Clearly. Or maybe we just stopped caring at some point. Living in a stagnant world for that long... Hah, and even then, it took so long to get all of his demands done..."

The high elf looked at Eisen silently, "... He wanted the 'perfect' world, didn't he? Of course it would take a long time to make this all happen."

"...We took tens of millennia to make this world into what it is. Is it really realistic to expect we can change it all of a sudden? What if Samuel set up some kind of contingencies to make sure that we can't? Or hell, what if we were the ones to set up those contingencies ourselves because he told us to?"

"Where is this coming from all of a sudden? Isn't everything going pretty well? The envoys seem to like the watches and are clearly interested in them, and I don't think there's any country here that didn't want to adopt the trains. Plus, the the peace treaty is surely going to come about. If not today, then tomorrow. Things are going well, right?"

Eisen nodded, staying silent for a moment, "Things are going almost too well. There's no way that he just gave up. What next? Is he going to try and drop a fucking bomb on my house on earth? Will he personally try to start the war somehow? Or maybe he just gave up on the war and is instead pulling forward whatever next 'event' he had planned. frёewebnoѵēl.com

Plus, this whole thing has been keeping me so busy that I haven't even had the chance to properly execute the plan to stop the dragon-war..." the old man groaned, "I just feel like something big is about to happen. I don't like this at all."

Trying to figure out what she should say, Xenia placed her hand onto Eisen's back, "Don't worry. We can do this. From everything we've figured out, our past selves have done everything they can to make sure our current selves can fight back against Samuel. If things are going well, then it's because of thousands of years of preparation!"

Eisen turned his head toward his friend, slowly nodding his head, "You're right... Let's just concentrate on getting things done. I'm just worried about what the 'big thing' here at the meeting will be, because let's be honest... that shoe always drops at one point or another."

Though she wanted to continue cheering Eisen up, Xenia wasn't able to say anything against that. Eisen was right, though she didn't want to admit it. Something did always seem to go wrong, even if everything worked out in the end somehow.

And especially considering all those petty attempts at messing things up they've been dealing with, nobody could deny that things were working up to something bigger.