Spending My Retirement In A Game

The meeting hall, with the tables and chairs removed, had now been turned into the banquet hall. A lot of different food had been prepared, with most of it having been prepared by Eisen himself. All the ingredients were procured either through Jyuuk's farming or Brody's hunting as well. Your next read awaits at m v|l-e'm,p| y- r

The music and decoration was taken care of by Evalia too, using some assistance from Xenia to cause some magical effects in the air, turning the ceiling of this banquet hall into a beautiful night sky like you could only see in your dreams.

Before long, most of the envoys had gathered in the room, making casual conversation with each other. Of course, the giants and the envoys from the central continent were basically split across the middle of the crowd, not interacting with each other all too much.

There were also those like the cloud giant envoys orthe envoys from the holy empire that didn't seem to want to engage with anyone at all, be it the other side of the upcoming meeting or their own.

Of course, there were a few individuals that seemed a bit more ready to make conversation, one of them being Aaron. But even he didn't seem particularly confident in simply walking up to them considering the atmosphere in the room, so a certain merchant quickly came up to him to help him out.

"What are you doing? You're acting like a little boy in love," Komer scoffed lightly, speaking to the young royal that he had recently befriended. Due to the work that Komer was doing for Asgard, he was basically the main contact-point for everyone that wanted to have anything to do with Asgard at all, and that included Aaron.

As they already shared a friend in Benji, they ended up getting close rather quickly.

"Oh stop it, I'm simply trying to collect my thoughts. Matters like this shan't be taken lightly," Aaron explained, nervously straightening his tie, but the merchant just let out a long sigh.

"What, you're not used to this kind of thing yet? Just go to talk to them, they won't do anything," Komer sighed, patting the prince on the back, "Come on, I'll introduce you."

"Wait, you already met them?"

"Hm? No, not at all. I'm just going to introduce myself, and then introduce you," as if it were perfectly obvious, the merchant walked forward as Aaron nervously followed behind, trying to regain his composure. Once in front of the first of the giants, who Komer recognised as the Grandour, the two quickly bowed.

"It is a pleasure to meet you. I'm Komer, the head of the Starlight merchantry," with that quick introduction, Komer hoped to break the silence between the two sides, "I haven't had the opportunity to visit personally yet, but I hope to do so soon."

The Grandour raised his brow curiously, "Starlight? That was the group workin' for Eisen, right?"

"Well, working with Eisen and the other originals, but yes," Komer corrected quickly, "While we are directly affiliated with the country of Asgard, we are still a separate party. At least officially."

Seeing Komer's slight wink, the Grandour let out a hearty laugh, "Ya've got some guts, eh?" he pointed out, pressing his hands onto his hips.

"I appreciate the compliment," with a smile, Komer nodded to thank the Grandour, and then slowly held his hand out toward Aaron, "But more importantly, my friend Aaron here wanted to come talk to you. He's quite the curious man, and has always heard stories of your country."

The grandour looked at Aaron with a curious expression, "Is that so? Well, it's very nice to meet ya. I'm the current Grandour, the chieftain of the fire giant clan."

Aaron quickly nodded his head, "Yes, of course! I have heard a lot of stories about you! I was very excited to meet you since I heard that you created your workshop in the volcano near the fire giant clan's capital!"

"Hm? That story spread all the way to the central continent? And here I thought I had kept it under pretty good wraps," the grandour muttered quietly to himself, as if he was actually quite annoyed about this fact.

But in the end, Aaron quickly shook his head, "I don't believe that it's a commonly-known fact, but just a small rumour that I've heard around a few times... I'm the Crown Prince of Litgern, we get plenty of travellers ready to tell us stories from across all the world.

Of course, they're usually exaggerated, but if you heard grow up listening to stories like that, you learn to pick up on the commonalities and nuances of different versions."

Surprised, the grandour raised his brow, "The nuances? Could I ask what exactly you mean?"

After a bit of contemplation, Aaron seemed to come up with a pretty good example, "For one, I heard there was an ancient, evil fire dragon inside of that volcano that you had to defeat. The term 'Fire Dragon' generally refers to the Red Dragon, but chromatic dragons outside the central continent are practically unheard of.

Metallic dragons would make a bit more sense in that regard, but there's no metallic dragon that enjoys the presence of such high heat," he started, but he didn't even give the grandour any time to either refute or agree with what he said before he continued, "Not to mention, while smaller than other dragons, ancient red dragons are amongst the largest dragon species.

And the region around the fire giants' capital doesn't have any exposed volcanoes, but vast underground caverns, so the 'volcano' in question must have been an underground volcanic cave, but there's no way that an ancient red dragon would make its way down there voluntarily where it's unable to escape easily in case of an attack. Older chromatic dragons are quite paranoid, after all.

Of course, there's always the possibility of it having retreated for safety, but in that case it probably would have tried to converse instead of attacking directly... so basically, I assume rather than a fire dragon, it was something akin to a Salamander?"

The grandour had listened to the prince's explanation, and in the end slowly nodded his head, "You're correct. It was a salamander, but the story that spread was that it was a dragon. This specific one had evolved powerful scales, and after I returned with a scaled, somewhat draconic-looking armour after creating my workshop, the story that it was a dragon apparently started to spread.

I didn't bother correcting them, but I haven't heard anyone figure out that it was a salamander instead. Or at least, they didn't tell me directly."

Clearly curious to see what else this young man could do, the grandour quickly waved over someone, "Yo, kid, come over here for a bit."

Hearing the grandour call for him, the young man quickly stepped over. Compared to all the other giant envoys, he was wearing the most extravagant clothes and seemed to have some of the best etiquette. Though rather than it being 'good' etiquette, Aaron figured it was probably just more correct to say that the man was trying to keep up the etiquettes more common on the central continent.

Aaron knew that the giants' country was a bit different culturally to Litgern or the other countries of the central continent, so he already expected that none of them would care about things like etiqutte the same way that Aaron was used to, but this clearly wasn't the case with this man.

And it didn't take Aaron long to figure out who this man was either; it was the Irngrad, the king of the giants' country. He looked at Aaron with a light smile, bowing forward just so slightly, "It's very nice to meet you," the irngrad said, slowly turning toward the grandour, "So, what is it you called me here for?"

"The capital's got a lot of rumours and mysteries right? You got one fun one you want to run by this kid to figure out?"

Aaron's stomach quickly dropped. He didn't know how 'knowing to discern truth from within rumors' suddenly became 'figuring out mysteries', but he felt like he shouldn't complain about it all too much. Aaron wanted to build up a friendly relationship with the giants, and especially because they had to be here while shrunken down, Aaron wanted to be a bit more forthcoming toward them.

He would just give it his best shot. As long as he made his explanation interesting, it shouldn't be a massive bother even if he was wrong about the mysteries, right.

The irngrad cupped his chin curiously, "You'd like to try your hand at one of our mysteries, huh? Well, I would have a pretty good one in mind..."