Spending My Retirement In A Game

"What... what do you mean? Like, the 'Filth' is from another realm?" Xenia asked, not totally sure if she was understanding Eisen correctly, but the old man immediately shook his head.

"No, not another realm. Not hell or heaven or whatever magical planes exist here; a different world. Like how earth is in a different world from this one," he explained, "And it looks like it's bleeding into this one. And in return... this one is bleeding into that world too. It's probably somewhat like how Samuel wants to introduce mana to earth."

Xenia silently turned her head. That cloud of dust was fully concealing the Filth, and she shuddered at the thought, "So it's... what do you... How even?"

"I don't know how, but you were researching a way to get us back to Earth independently from Samuel. But it looks like you... might have created a connection to a new world instead. And since then, it might have become easier to connect to the world that this thing is from."

"I..." Xenia's eyes darted around in thought as she tried to think about what was going on, attempting to properly comprehend the situation. As she did, the high-elf winced and held a hand to her forehead, as though she were in pain, "That feels familiar, but... does that mean that there's even more worlds out there?"

Eisen quickly nodded, "I'll explain what I remembered to you later, but I think for now, we should deal with that thing properly. It looks like it has something similar to mana; at least, it's similar enough that my truth-seeing eye can detect it. It's some kind of... wrong energy, dirty and disgusting. Filthy, like that thing's name would imply."

"Do you think it's dangerous? Or particularly powerful?"

"I don't know if it's powerful or not, but it doesn't follow the rules of our world. It could be incomprehensibly different, to the point where it might be worse for us if it 'dies', if that's even something that's possible," Eisen pointed out, and Xenia glared at the 'thing'.

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"I'm not sure if that's something we need to... worry about," she replied, "Even if it's from a different world, right now it took on a form that's of this world. Yes, there's a lot wrong about it, but if it was that easy to just ignore the rules of the world we're in, then Samuel never would have had to go through such immense effort to try and bring mana to earth."

"Let's hope you're right," a little nervously, Eisen looked at the magic circle on the ground, "Do you think you could try and figure out a way to open the gateway again so we can banish that thing?"

Xenia looked at the summoning circle on the ground and slowly shook her head, "Not right now, no, but... I'm feeling a really, really strong connection to these memories right now, so I should be able to get to it quickly if you can buy me the time I need."

"Of course, that should be doable. I'll help the others out as much as I can, so we should be able to hold out for quite a while, but even so... don't take too long," Eisen told the high-elf as she quickly nodded her head. She knelt down on the ground and closed her eyes, before her body turned translucent, glistening crystals.

From his soul storage, Eisen took out his demonic sword, clutching the handle tightly. He took a deep breath, increasing his size for just a moment before huffing and puffing, and blowing it all away. The cloud of dust that was surrounding Jyuuk, Brody and the Filth immediately disappeared, being pushed out through the ravines.

Both Brody and Jyuuk looked at the old man, "Bragging?"

Eisen scoffed, swinging his sword down at the Filth, "I can't see with all that stuff there. This thing's energy makes it hard to see its physical body."

As he said so, Eisen's massive sword cut through it's body, cleanly splitting it apart. But even so, it regenerated immediately, almost before Eisen even fully cut through it, as if its self-healing ability was speeding up. However, if they let up even momentarily, the Filth tried to attack them, its hundreds of hands trying to reach out to tear it all apart.

More and more, it seemed to grow more hands, but somehow, its body only shrank down. Or rather, it seemed to become more compressed. More dense, and harder to cut through.

The three's attacks were becoming less and less effective, and Brody let out a loud groan, "Jyuuk, blunt impact aint gonna work anymore. You got some heat on ya? Like, literal heat, we should try burning its flesh."

"Oh, do I?" Jyuuk grinned, pulling back for a moment. At the same time, Brody pulled out a weapon from his armoury, a chain sword. Swinging it around like a whip, Brody cut the Filth's body into tiny parts. Meanwhile, Eisen was doing the brunt work, swinging his giant sword into it to keep it busy with rough, gnawing cuts.

And then, the chunks that Eisen was creating were cut into even smaller parts by Brody, while Jyuuk was preparing some powerful flames.

Of course, both Brody and Eisen had access to fire as well. But right here, it was better to split it up and let everyone focus on a different part of the process, so Brody concentrated on the cutting force of the chain whip. Meanwhile, Eisen's fire wasn't useful for this. His flames weren't particularly powerful in combat, meaning that they didn't actually damage others all too much.

The pain was certainly there, but in terms of point damage, it was absolutely minimal. So, Jyuuk doing it was probably the best idea.

His Mantis Shrimp form quickly faded away, and the chitin on his body turned back into fur, but then quickly turned into glowing red feathers as a halo of flames was drawn around his head. Swinging his monkey staff around, sparks were flung around the area.

With a quick push forward, a swirl of fire was shot toward the small pieces of the Filth's flesh that was being thrown around the area, quickly scorching them. However, despite the flames, the flesh seemed to learn how to recover even faster.

"It's energy is still decreasing," Eisen pointed out, seeing that the Filth was clearly trying to pull in whatever it could from the gateway in order to continue sustaining itself, which is why Xenia had to quickly wake up.

She had to come back with the knowledge of what they had to do to banish this thing that just refused to die even with this constant, combined barrage of attacks from Brody, Jyuuk, and Eisen.

And then, they could try and close the gateway and then immediately question Van Horgh to figure out how the fuck the holy empire learned about something like this, as well as why they would ever even consider doing something like this.

Despite their behaviour, Eisen thought they had at least some level of integrity behind their actions. The reason they despised monsters was because they thought that they went against the laws of the world and were beings that didn't understand the divine doctrines. Which, of course, was absolute hogwash.

But at least they were consistent throughout their opinions regarding this part of their beliefs, and then they turned around and tried to use something like this, from a whole other world? That made absolutely no sense.

But really, who knew what they were thinking? Eisen still didn't know how they even learned how to do this ritual, but in the end, it didn't matter much. They went too far, making an innocent young woman sacrifice herself for some kind of large-scale cult, becoming a martyr for a false cause.

Eisen sure as hell hoped that Evalia was keeping a good eye on them, because if something happened to the envoys from the holy empire, the old man would go on a rampage. He had to give them what they deserved himself.

Before long, as the cycle of cutting, dicing, and roasting was being repeated again and again and again, Xenia finally woke back up. She jumped up from the ground, "I know what to. Eisen, come and help me out here!"

Immediately, the old man pulled back, and Brody immediately went into the next gear to make up for his absence.

"What do I need to do?" Eisen asked, looking into the concerned high-elf's face.