Spending My Retirement In A Game

"Hmm... Well, what it all comes down to is one thing... I can’t make wings for you yet, Des." Stahl sighed loudly as he finished looking through the different books about animals and their anatomy, before the others all looked at Stahl confused.

"What do you mean? I thought you wanted to use cloth for that?" Bree asked with her head slightly tilted to the side, and Stahl nodded his head.

"I thought that would be a good idea, yeah, but in the end, it’s just really not. What I had in my head was a wing structure like you have, Kiron, but Bird wings work completely differently, with the different feathers somewhat layered on top of each other. I thought I could just add a little cloth somewhere, maybe strengthen it with some wire, but it seems like that’s not a good idea. I’m going to wait until I get transmutation or something to make feathers for Des so that I can construct some proper feathers." He explained, before looking at his undead once more in deep thought, while Kiron then looked at him with a frown.

"And what do you plan on doing instead now, Stahl?" He asked, but Stahl just shrugged. "I’ll replace the joints, and make some simple plans for when I actually do have the Alchemy and Enchanting skills. I want to first work on the bones and inner bodily structure before starting with anything on the outside." Stahl explained, before Sky’s head slightly perked up.

"Inner bodily structure? What do you mean?" He asked curiously, and Stahl just shrugged and scratched his cheek.

"I’m not 100 percent sure yet, but I’ll just try to figure out some ways to strenghten them even more. Like, maybe I’ll slowly turn them into zombies instead of skeletons by adding more organs, or I’ll add some unnatural functions to them, like putting a storage module inside of them. I really don’t know yet." Stahl said with a sigh, and Sky chuckled.

"Damn, I’m impressed. You were reborn a few days ago, and you’re already working that hard?" He asked, and the young man just smirked. "Who do you think you’re talking to here, of course I am! Would be boring if I wasn’t working hard!" Stahl exclaimed, before he grabbed some wood and just got to work on replacing the joints.

That didn’t take all that long, because there were only about half a dozen that needed actual replacements there, and everything was being held together by his necromancy, so he soon enough already didn’t have anything to do.

"I guess I could give you guys a bit of a paintjob while I’m waiting, huh?" Stahl muttered and stood up from the table, picking up Des as he did so, before stepping back to the door. "I’ll go back to Evalia’s Atelier for a while. See you guys later." Stahl said with a smile as he left, Thul attached to his arm, while the skeletons with a few wooden joints were following him as Sky, Bree and Kiron continued with what they were doing as well.

And a few moments later, Stahl had reached the door to the Atelier and stepped inside, where he found Evalia and Alnico still practicing some musical skills. "Alright, stop killing the cats or I’ll call Peta." Stahl said with a grin, before Al instantly glared at him.

"What are you doing? Don’t you need to learn stuff from Jyuuk?" She asked with a frown, but Stahl just shook his head. "Nope, done with that. Brody and Xenia aren’t online at the moment, so I’ve got to pass the time. Oh, and by the way, these are my undead and my cute little tamed beast." He said with a broad grin, and immediately Al came rushing over.

"Wait, is that an octopus? What, want to turn him into a Kraken?" She asked with a smile, and Stahl shrugged. "I mean, that’d be dope, but technically Kraken are a type of giant squid, you know?" He replied, before swiftly turning to Evalia. "Anyway, I want to give my skellies a paintjob, so can you sponsor the actual paint again?" Stahl asked, before Evalia nodded her head.

"Sure! What’s the color palette?" She asked, before Stahl scratched the back of his neck in thought before looking at Des the Desert Crow Skeleton which he was currently holding, and then thought about what he should go for style-wise, and came to a swift conclusion, because there was only one real possible choice he could make.

"Dias de los Muertos, obviously." Stahl replied, and Evalia looked at him surprised. "Oh, I thought you’d go for something like graffiti. I mean, you’ve seen the controversies about that one artist painting stuff like that, right? ’Cultural Appropriation’, and whatnot, so do you think that’s a good idea with two top content creators on board?" She asked, and Stahl just scoffed for a second.

"What do I care, it’s my culture." Stahl replied, but Evalia looked at him with a frown. "Dias de los Muertos is mexican..." She muttered confused, before Stahl slowly nodded.

"I’m Mexican... Well, Half-Mexican, Quarter-Japanese, and then whatever my Grampa is. I think he has German roots?" Stahl explained in a questioning tone before looking over at Al, who just shrugged.

"I guess?" She answered, before Evalia looked at both of them with an embarrassed smile. "Oh... Well, I guess I should never assume, then." Evalia chuckled nervously, before Stahl shook his head, although his expression was getting softer and sadder the more the conversation progressed.

"Nah, don’t worry about it. My Mom didn’t look very hispanic either... And even the Genes in my Grandfather’s body are extreme, so neither my dad, Al’s mom, or both of our uncle look very half-japanese." He laughed, before Evalia looked over at Al because she was feeling a bit unsure due to Stahl specific word choice of speaking in past tense about his mom, and she slowly nodded her head, so Evalia kept quiet about it.

"Well, either way, ’Dias de los Muertos’ means black, white, and other than that simple vibrant colors?" Evalia asked with a smile, and Stahl nodded. "Mhm. Well, I probably won’t need white, the bones are sun-bleached already, but the rest should be useful. Ah, for the heck of it, give me some white just in case." Stahl said with a grin, and Evalia nodded her head before taking a few small wooden cups, one after another filling them with one color of her magic paint each.

"Alright, thanks! We should really sell your paint, it’s so high-quality!" Stahl laughed, and Evalia chuckled as well. "Well, we will do that actually, yeah." She replied, so both Stahl and Alnico looked at her a bit surprised.

"Really now? That was supposed to be a joke... Wouldn’t that be a lot of work?" Stahl asked, but Evalia shook her head. "Nope, once Eisen gets his Enchanting skill to rank up one more time, he’ll make an automatic mechanism or something." The artist explained, and Al nodded her head,

"Sounds like Grampa. Anyway, Stahl, stop bothering us. We need to keep going with this!" She complained and Stahl just glared back at his cousin before sitting down at the table in the corner of the room with Des directly in front of him.

"Now, let’s get to work, shall we?" Stahl muttered to himself before taking a closer look at the whole coloring of Des’ and the other skeletons’ bodies to make sure everything was fine, and then dipped the tip of his paintbrush in the black paint before starting to trace over the most important ’outlines’, and then moved onto the different, vibrant colors, choosing to go with the same colors for all five of them, just to keep something like a ’theme’.

And at the end of it, he actually came to a conclusion. "Alright, I’ll come up with something else to get you to fly, bud. You look way cooler this way." He said as he looked at Des, who was simply sitting there on the table without moving in the slightest.

"Guess I have to wait to get you all to Rank up, huh?" Stahl said with a smirk, hoping to somehow get these to turn into a special type of skeleton that actually just looked like this colorful type of skeleton, for different reasons.

One, he somehow had to embrace the artistic side of his skills, which would be the one he was the least-likely to use for the most part. And this was a good way to do that.

Two, they just looked really cool.

And Three, he suddenly felt the urge to dive into his mother’s culture a bit more.

As Stahl was deep in thoughts, staring at his skeletons, he barely noticed the fact that Al tapped his shoulder just now. "Soo... it’s pretty late, and we should probably log off, right? It’s nearly lunchtime as well." She asked, before Stahl nodded his head with a smile.

"Alright, sure. Let me just clean up a bit, and I’ll join you for lunch in a few minutes." Stahl responded, and Alnico nodded her head before taking a seat by the wall, before her body swiftly turned completely white as a sign that she logged off.

With a wry smile, Stahl then just did what he said he would do, simply putting away the cups with the leftover paint that he was given by Evalia and then grabbed something out of his pocket together with a pen, starting to fill his new Journal up with what happened during this in-game day, once again doing so from the pure perspective of an NPC, even coming up with in-game plausible reasons why he knew about Dias de los Muertos type painting, which was simply that he ’just knew about it, and didn’t know why’. It was his grandfather’s usual excuse, so it would most likely end up fine.

And after a little while, just when he finished up transcribing everything, he heard someone approach him from behind, placing her hands on his shoulders.

"Erm... Evalia, that you?" Stahl asked with a frown, and the young woman leaned forward, pushing her head next to his so that she could take a look at what he was doing.

"Yup. Writing a diary now, huh?" She asked with a smirk, just to tease Stahl, who just nodded his head. "I mean, I prefer calling it a Journal, but I guess that’s all it is." He answered, so Evalia chuckled a little before staying silent for a few seconds, then saying something in a calm tone.

"See, I just wanted to say sorry about before for being so insensitive." Evalia said, taking her hands off his shoulders and sitting down on the other chair.

"As I said, don’t worry about it... You only said stuff about being Mexican. I was the one that mentioned my mom." Stahl replied, simply scratching his cheek as he did so.

"I guess... But if you want to talk about it, you can tell me, you know?" She asked, slowly moving her hand closer to his, before Stahl just smiled at her. "Maybe at some point, don’t really feel like it right now though." He replied with a light smile, and then in turn moved his hand slightly closer to hers as well.

"... You know, I was in Mexico during Dias de los Muertos once on vacation, it was really nice." She said with a smile, and Stahl nodded his head. "I’ve heard... I’ve never actually been there myself, although it’s on my bucket list."

"Oh, you definitely should go, it’s so nice! There was this one girl that was supposed to perform during a parade, but she was nervous because of all the people. And like in movies, I actually gave her a little ’believe in yourself’ speech because she was a fan of my music and I didn’t just want to let her be like that, although it had to be translated by my friend, and she ended up singing in front of everyone. She messed up here and there, but overall, it was a total success."

In a light laugh, Stahl looked deep in Evalia’s eyes, before his expression turned serious. "Trust me, I know. The truth is, I just lied. I was in mexico before, and that was where we met. Evalia, that girl was me." He said with a smile as the fingertips of the both of them just barely touched, and Evalia quietly laughed as she and Stahl slowly locked their fingers together.

"You’re an idiot."

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