"Holy shit, Dad! What the hell is that?" Natsuo yelled out excitedly as he stared at the spinning top, moving incredibly fast in the distance before Eisen responded with a laugh.
"It's my version of your spinning top. Some friends and I will make our way to a pretty dangerous island soon, and I'm just always looking for things that will make it easier. If I can make a bunch of those spinning tops, it definitely will be a whole lot easier." Eisen explained before he looked away from his son and over to his grandchildren, who were all staring at their grandfather in wonder.
"That's so fucking awesome," Benji muttered while looking at the literal tornado of flames currently cutting up Goblins. "It is, isn't it?" Eisen answered with a laugh and called the spinning top back over toward himself before telling it to deactivate.
"That's the kind of thing that I can do with my skills in this game. Some of my friends can also do quite incredible things. One can summon a whole meteorite, and another one can cause shockwaves to appear with a single punch. Then there's, of course, the Beastperson that has an army of monsters and undead, and the world-wide renown artist that has the ability to enchant a whole town with a single song." Eisen said with a laugh before Samuel stepped up next to him.
"That's pretty interesting, though. You can turn anything into an even more amazing version, huh?" He asked before Eisen slowly nodded. "I'm trying my best to."
After the old man said this, things just escalated even more, and everyone got incredibly excited, trying to have fun with all of these fantastic abilities until it was time to log off again a few hours later.
---
Benjamin stepped out the capsule and swiftly stretched as he watched the others slowly do the same. Once everybody was out, Samuel stepped in front of the group with a bright smile. "Now then, we're slowly coming to the end of our tour. We just spent about one real-life hour in the capsule, and it's a little after lunchtime now. Want to get to the café and grab a bite to eat,? it's on the house."
As Samuel said this, Melody, in particular, looked around confused, searching for a clock. She was the only one that didn't get the concept of time dilation, except for Katy and Sean of course, but those two didn't care, and she didn't understand what was going on.
"It's been about three or four hours though, hasn't it?" She asked, confused, and Tony turned to her with a nod. "From our perspectives, yes. The game has a time dilation function. You could say it pushes four seconds worth of information into our brain every second, so it feels longer for us. But only one hour passed here." He explained before Samuel swiftly supported him.
"That's a good way to put it, yeah. These first two weeks that Benjamin was playing the game, it actually felt more like two months to him because of that. We're working together with a lot of homes for the elderly and hospitals because of that fact. Old or sick people that don't have much time left or can't use their body like they used to benefit largely from this game in general. If they have only a year left to live, that year will feel like four years instead." Samuel began to explain while he began to lead them back to the café a few floors down.
"Is that so..?" Melody asked as she looked down at the ground with a sad frown, before looking up again. "Erm… Can this also help people that are blind?" She asked before Samuel looked at her in surprise before nodding.
"Yes, actually. The current player phase is being used to test exactly that as well, amongst other things, so there's a bunch of deaf or blind people participating. It's working without any issue, actually. They can see and hear inside the game. Don't ask me how it works. I'm a business guy, not a science guy."
Slowly, Melody rubbed her neck before explaining her question. "Oh… I'm a teacher working at a school that combines elementary, middle, and high school where we live, and I'm involved in a lot of different things outside and inside. And there's this one boy, just 16 years old, that was diagnosed with cancer some time ago that destroyed his eyes. They had to be removed to make sure the tumors couldn't spread further, so he has gone completely blind … Could the 'capsule' help him?" She asked, and Samuel nodded immediately.
"It definitely should, yes. We actually have a program for cases like that, where the disabled can get the capsule for either a heavily reduced price, or completely for free. I'll give you my business card, so please give my info to them and tell them to contact me directly. The kid will need to go through a psychological assessment to be able to get into the program though so that we can make sure we're not actively promoting to the mental decline of anyone. But for the most part, it should most likely be quite helpful to him. We have specific counselors and actual support groups within the game that are part of the current testing phase as well to make sure they get used to being able to live like that again."
"Huh, that's quite noble of you, Samuel," Benjamin said with a sentimental smirk before Samuel himself slightly chuckled. "Nothing like that. There's just this one deaf kid that always comes to work with his mom that works at a nearby coffee shop. Because they're already paying for tons and tons of treatment in this horrible healthcare system we have, they could never afford something like the capsule. That gave me the idea for the program. That's all." Afterward, Samuel explained his reasoning for the program and began talking about a few other things that slowly turned into him complaining about the fact that he just wants to be able to sleep for a full night without being annoyed by anyone because of the game and capsule release.
"E-Erm, Mister Morgan, I'm not sure if you should say that…" Samuel's assistant cut in at some point when things were escalating before Samuel shot him a quick glare and clicked his tongue. "Sure, if you say so… Well, not like they can throw me out at this point anyway, except if I somehow turn the game into 'Sword Art Online.'" He chuckled, and Natsuo, Tony, and the three teenagers Benji, Sophia and Kyle released a quiet laugh as well, while the others were just confused at this reference.
Once he noticed this, Samuel shrugged with a loud sigh. "Anyway, let's just eat for a bit, alright?" He suggested instead before he opened the door to the café and led everyone inside.
In the café, Benjamin and family sat down in a few small groups, since they couldn't all sit down at one table together, and talked to each other about the game and some of the other gadgets and facilities they managed to see there while they ate a little bit.
And after finishing his food, Benjamin chose to sit down with the group of three teenagers, those that would actually join him in the game at some point. After all, Kyle had already pre-ordered the capsule and would start playing only a week after Benji and Sophia due to that, and since Sophia and Kyle were best friends, it only made sense that they would hang out in the game as well.
"So, how did you like testing the game out a little?" Benjamin asked with a slight grin before Benji leaned back in his chair with crossed arms with a rather bored expression and shrugged. "It was pretty nice, I guess. Totally not like you're the best Grandfather in the history of Grandfathers or something."
"Nah, it's totally like that… I love you, Gramps." Sophia said immediately afterward, and even Kyle ended up nodding. "You're not my grandfather, but even I have to admit that it's the case… Like, you created a murderous Beyblade that you control with your thoughts… how cool is that?"
With a laugh, Benjamin looked at the three of them and grinned. "If you think that is cool, then just wait until you see the life-like horse and wolf I made out of gears and tubes." He said as he took a sip of his coffee, surprising them immensely.
"Wait. What? I think you mentioned that before, but… Are they like actual animals?" Benji asked with a frown before Benjamin immediately nodded. "Yes, they do. I created them in a way that they would act like animals as well. I'll upgrade their Golem Core at some point because I've learned a bunch of new things now about enchanting and alchemy and such." The old man explained and continued to tell them about this and that, all simple information that is useful to know before they began to play, including that they, under no circumstances, should spread who 'Eisen' really was, the first person that peaked.
"Uhh, and why shouldn't we say that? It's going to open up a whole lot of paths for us, right?" Sophia inquired and her grandfather swiftly explained.
"At some point, when we found the town and have brought it to the stage of a Kingdom, I doubt we'll have any major problems with it and it might actually be helpful to reveal it while dealing with other countries, but other than that, there's this cult that's kind of worrying. They worship the five that peaked as gods, and I have been told they are pretty extreme. I'd rather avoid having to deal with them if possible." He said, which seemed to make sense to the three of them, but Benji was currently worrying about something else.
"And what was it that you were doing in that other room that Samuell brought you to?" After Benji asked this, the old man shrugged. "It wasn't actually that much. He introduced me and the other originals to the gods of the game world and told us a bit about the islands were going to in a while, but that's really about it." He explained, and Benji snickered lightly at what the old man just said.
"Yeah, right, nothing much. I mean, you meet gods every day, am I right?" Benji laughed, and Benjamin frowned in a joking manner. "Don't talk like that. I mean, one of them is basically your uncle." He said, and now the three of them were confused again, so Sophia tilted her head to the side a slight bit and asked, "What do you mean? Was there a god that acted or looked like uncle Natsuo?"
"Oh, no, not at all. Well, my character's actual backstory is that 'Eisen' is hundreds of thousands of years old and hatched the egg of a Dragon that later ascended to becoming a literal god. I mean, he calls me 'Father,' anyway."
"Grampa, what the fuck…" Sophia muttered out without being able to help herself, and Benji had a similar reaction, "Yeah, Soph, sounds about right…"
"It's not my fault, not like I actually went and did that. I didn't come up with my character's background story." Benjamin defended himself, but his grandson stared at him suspiciously.
"Sure, you didn't… you sure you didn't actually spend all those thousands of years in the game world after all and did all that? I mean, everything from the story that you've told me about sounds a lot like you."
With a sigh, Benjamin looked at Benji before standing up with a smile. "Don't be ridiculous. Anyway, you've all finished eating? Let's see if Samuel still has something planned for us." He said with a smirk and stepped back over to the table where Samuel was sitting at with his children while thinking about the fact that it was the right choice not to tell them about how some of the minor gods freaked out over meeting him.