Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Fortress in the mist?" Eisen looked around at the large scale spell that Sky had just cast. It was a transformative spell, taking the things that already existed here as a basis and empowering them with the power of the 'Story' that the half-fey was trying to tell. Eisen squatted down and tried to feel the thin mist that was covering the ground. It was cold; freezing, almost. Like the mist that poured out of a freezer on a hot day, "What's the actual story about?"

Excited to be able to talk about it, Sky held his thick storybook tight to his chest, "Okay, so. Basically, the main character is a grizzled soldier that went through years and years of war at the frontlines, fighting back against his enemies. These corrupted, mindless creatures; not monsters, mind you, but evil constructs created by an evil god. In this world, monsters and people actually already coexist! Anyway, he always managed to get out of it by just barely coming up with tricks, being promoted again and again as he levelled up. And then, one day, he's stationed at a fortress in the most dangerous parts of the frontlines. Due to the constant barrage of these evil constructs, the fortress is in bad shape, but due to the main character's ingenuity and skill, he manages to take advantage of the fortress' natural capabilities and unlocks a unique class that lets him change the fortress to exactly what is needed in the blink of an eye. And, uhm, he-"

"Calm down, Sky, you're going to choke on your own breath at this rate," Eisen laughed, looking down at the young man. Despite the fact that they looked so young, Sky and Bree were both already adults, in their early 20's. But even so, after hearing what they went through throughout their lives, these siblings never actually had the opportunity to be real kids even when they were younger. Eisen wanted to do what he could to allow them both to live out their passions safely, so that they could play around a bit and figure out what they were going to do in the future. After all, as half-fey, they were going to live extremely, extremely lives. Hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of years. Considering that, they basically were still children, and though they didn't like to be treated as such, Eisen wanted to make sure they could make up for lost time. So that they started their long, long lives the right way.

The old man looked around, "So how does this story present exactly? Does it equally strengthen everything, or can we change things later on?"

"Ah!" Sky quickly flipped the book open, "That's the great part about this story! The genre!"

"The genre?"

"It's a choose-your-own-adventure story," Sky grinned broadly, "I have different 'paths' set up for the story. That way, it lets me literally change between any of the different 'modes' however I want. But I'm going to need to read out each mode's section first before the change happens, so I'll need about... a minute or so to properly get there."

Quickly, Sky gave Eisen a rundown of all the different modes for the fortress. While there were some sub-sections, it could overall be split up into offensive, defensive, and balanced modes. The offensive modes would make all the weapons more powerful, or focus on one specific type of weapon, and all the Inkheart Soldiers that were running around the area were going to focus on that sort of attack. The defensive modes would strengthen the walls, and the Inkheart Soldiers would equip shields and stronger armour. And the balanced mode was, well, a mixture of both. Currently, the story was in its 'default' mode, so Eisen told Sky to move it into the defensive mode for the time being so that they could prepare for the first wave of monsters that were currently approaching. According to Bree, they would be here in just another couple of minutes.

And while Sky was preparing the defensive mode, Eisen went back over to Bree, who was currently keeping something of a 'sensor barrier' deployed. It was basically just a special application of her skills that allowed her to figure out whenever something stepped into the ability's range. In exchange for losing the ability to actually figure out any details whatsoever, whether about the monster or the terrain in the range of the ability, that actual range was increased by a few times over.

The old man was standing next to Bree, waiting for the signal so that he could pass it on to everyone else. And then, almost just a moment after Eisen properly positioned himself, Bree opened her eyes and looked up at the old man, "They're here!"

"Got it," Eisen immediately activated his microphone with a small pulse of magic, "Everyone! Be prepared for incoming monsters!"

The soldiers got ready immediately, staring into the different tunnels ahead of them. Before long, the ground started shaking. The mist was acting as a sort of extra warning system, creating small ripples that reacted to the approaching monsters. But that made something extremely clear. What they were dealing with wasn't just a couple. No wonder the monsters didn't attack right away. It wasn't some sort of kindness prepared by the dungeon master, but rather, a trick. As many of the monsters were gathered to allow them to overrun the intruders all at once.

If that was the case, however, that was good in some way, at least. It meant that once they took those guys down, they were done. Eisen got out his sword, glancing around the area. At some point, Melissa's bees positioned themselves in front of each of the tunnels. Eisen quickly counted them, giving the information to the soldiers. Melissa's scout bees were keeping track of how many monsters were approaching from which tunnel, and these bees were giving them the information in real time, telling them which tunnels to focus on the most.

Before long, the first of the monsters came into view. It was a true stampede of bull-sized ants. A wave of murderous cars practically came driving straight at them, so even Eisen felt a bit nervous. But then, the first shot was fired, and one of the ballistae was shot. A massive projectile was fired at the ants, boring through them as though they were made of cotton-candy. Once the projectile burrowed into the ground, it exploded and shattered into hundreds of small pieces that further dug into the ants' caparace, cutting off some of their legs. Considering how clustered these guys were, these sorts of attacks were actually extremely effective.

And with the first, initial attack, the barrage began. The ants were hit by massive bolts and nets and boulders, basically whatever Eisen had been able to prepare as projectiles that he thought could help for this right now. Wide-scale magic was deployed as well; in particular, earth and fire magic. The earth magic was used to make the tunnels thinner, so that the ants would cluster together more, allowing for the attacks to destroy even more of them at once, while the fire magic was simply extremely effective here in such a narrow space, with so many things to burn as fuel.

The ants lit up like firewood. It was like they were made to be burnt to ashes as they were. Things were going well so far, but there were always a few individuals that came through. It seemed like most of them were worker ants. But between the cars that were plowing through, there were also a couple of trucks; soldier ants. They weren't as weak to the weapons that had been prepared, so they became the target for some specialized magic attacks. Sometimes Eisen also stepped in and cut through them whenever needed. And considering the amount of ants they were all dealing with, that meant that Eisen was jumping from place to place, barely able to keep up in time.

But since they had more and more of these soldier ants to take care of as time went on, more and more of even the workers started to reach the walls, attempting to tear them down. However, at this point, the close-range soldiers were able to take care of them, so not a single of them managed to breach the perimeter whatsoever.

While this was happening, Brody spoke through the communication channel to inform everyone that he had now encountered the main boss; the massive worm. Once that monster was taken care of, it was very likely that the rest of these guys would also cool down a bit. Either that, or they would have to kill all of them for this boss battle to count as 'cleared'. Either way, they had to keep killing as many of these as possible.

And luckily, it was time for the tide to be turned already very soon, as Bree had finished analyzing all of the ants, and managed to come up with a countertactic that could allow the mass of them to be absolutely slaughtered.