Spending my retirement in a game

chapter 2

It's been four whole years since that Interview when Benjamin sat in front of his chimney, adjusting his reading glasses while tapping on his phone to browse through his E-Mails. Amongst requests for custom-made items that he has already long rejected, there was one mail that caught his mind.

"'Prime Industries - Thank you for your help!', huh? What was Prime Industries again...? Was it that game company?" Intrigued at the memory of back then, Benjamin quickly tapped on the mail to read through it.

[Dear Mr. Joyce,

Due to your immense help in the past, it was possible for us to complete a big part of our project in even more detail as we could have wished for.

Thus, especially after hearing about your recent condition, we once again want to give you the offer of being one of the first players of 'World of Magic'. This would make it possible for you to continue your craft as much as you want without further damaging your real body.

If you are interested in this concept, please inform us and we will talk about the details.

Of course, you will not have to pay the regular monthly fee for the game nor the initial payment for the capsule, and instead, the company will pay for it completely.]

We would love to hear from you,

Your friends at Prime Industries

"I can continue making stuff, huh? Well... Maybe it isn't that bad of an idea after all." Benjamin mutters to himself. Four years ago during the interview, he had no plans of ever playing the game that Prime Industries told him about. But that doesn't mean that he is or was ignorant to what this kind of technology means, he just wasn't interested in playing it himself. He actually is also very knowledgeable about modern technology.

He even hesitated for a month before agreeing to do the interview, after he finally realized that this would be the best way of passing on his will. After all, neither of his two sons nor his daughter ever had an interest in his crafts. Of course, he was proud of them no matter what they chose to do in their life, but he was still sad to see that the knowledge he worked for within the many decades of his life would vanish together with him someday.

Thus, after carefully being told about the concept for the game as well as the level of realism, Benjamin agreed to teach Prime Industries some of the things he learned. Of course, he didn't only give them the info they could gather during the interview but also gave them copies of the journals he kept throughout the years so that they truly gained as much knowledge as he could give them.

After that, he would have been fulfilled just quietly working on random items for the rest of his life. That was until one day around two years ago...

Seeing that the lights were off in Benjamin's house, a thief broke a window and stepped inside, only to find the old man working in the back inside his workshop working on a commission. The thief, startled at seeing a mountain of a man bearing a weapon in his direction, jumped backward into a pile of steel scrap that Benjamin got from a steelyard just the day before, knocking it over completely.

As a chain reaction, the metal fell on top of some tools laying on a table near Benjamin, flinging them right into the opening to the hot coal-filled forge. Of course, as one might expect, some of the burning coals were thrown out of the opening through the impact, directly onto Benjamin's right arm, melting into his flesh.

Benjamin may be resistant to hot temperatures for the most part after working as a Blacksmith for so long, but burning-coal coming from a forge that was heated above a thousand degrees Celsius is nothing any human being can handle.

The thief ran away after seeing the old man lying on the floor, screaming in pain. The police tried finding him, but it seems like he got away successfully.