Chapter 1 | The End and the Beginning
1
In the year 2138, there exists something called a “DMMO-RPG.”
This stands for “Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.” While connected via an intracranial nanocomputer network called a “neuro-nano interface,” which combines the best of cyber- and nanotechnology, players experience physical sensations as if they were really inhabiting an imaginary world.
In other words, you play as if you’re actually in the world of the game.
And among all the various DMMO-RPGs that had been developed, one stood above the rest.
Yggdrasil.
It had been released twelve years earlier, in 2126, by a Japanese developer who had been waiting for just the right moment.
Compared to other DMMO-RPGs at the time, Yggdrasil gave players an incredible amount of freedom.
For example, consider the class system, a fundamental element of character customization. Counting the advanced classes as well as the base ones, there were well over two thousand. Since each class had only 15 levels, players could have seven or more classes by the time they hit the overall level cap of 100. As long as they met the basic requirements, they could dabble as they pleased. Though it would be inefficient, a player could acquire one hundred classes at level 1 if they wanted to. In other words, the system was such that, unless they were deliberately created that way, no two characters would ever be the same.
Then, by using the creator’s tool kit—sold separately—players could edit the appearance of their weapons and armor, as well as the advanced settings of their in-game residences.
The environment awaiting players who ventured into this world was enormous. In fact, there were nine worlds: Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Nidavellir, Midgard, Jotunheim, Niflheim, Helheim, and Muspelheim.
A vast world, a staggering number of classes, and graphics that could be tweaked to one’s heart’s content—it was precisely the amount of customization that poured nitroglycerin onto the Japanese creative spirit and led to the game’s explosive popularity. It got to the point where in Japan the word DMMO-RPG was practically synonymous with Yggdrasil.
But that was all in the past now…
In the center of the room, a gigantic circular table shone with an obsidian gleam. Around it were forty-one magnificent seats.
Most of them, however, were empty.
Once, all the seats had been filled, but now only two figures remained.
One wore an extravagant raven-black academic robe with purple and gold trim. The collar was perhaps a bit overembellished, but strangely, it suited the wearer.
The bare head of the figure in question had neither skin nor flesh—just bone. Reddish-black flames burned in his gaping eye sockets, and something like a black halo shone behind him.
The other one wasn’t human, either. More of an amorphous black blob, almost like coal tar. His constantly shifting surface meant that he had no fixed shape.
The former was an elder lich—an undead being that was what remained of a caster who had pursued magic ability to its extreme—and the most elite type: an overlord. The latter was an elder black ooze, which was a slime race that had some of the most powerful acid abilities in the game.
Both races occasionally appeared as monsters in the most difficult dungeons. The various types of overlords used the highest-level evil magic while the elder black ooze had the ability to corrode weapons and armor, so both were famously hated.
But these two weren’t monsters.
They were players.
The races players could choose from in Yggdrasil were split into three main categories: basic humanoid races (humans, dwarves, elves, and so on); subhuman races, who weren’t pretty but performed better than humanoids (goblins, orcs, ogres, etc.); and grotesques, who had monster powers and got more ability points than other races but were penalized in other ways. Including all the elite races, there was a total of seven hundred at the users’ disposal.
Naturally, overlords and elder black oozes were two of the elite grotesque races that players could become.
The overlord spoke without moving his mouth. Even for what had once been the pinnacle of DMMO-RPGs, it had still been impossible to animate expressions to align with conversation.
“It’s been a really long time, HeroHero. Even though it’s the last day Yggdrasil’s servers are open, I didn’t think you would actually come.”
“For real—long time no see, Momonga,” another adult male voice answered, but compared to the first, it sounded pretty lifeless.
“It’s been since you changed jobs IRL, so…how long ago was that? Two years?”
“Mm, yeah, about that. Geez, it’s been that long.…Damn. My sense of time is messed up from working so much overtime.”
“Sounds rough. Are you doing okay?”
“My health? It’s pretty much in tatters. Not doctor-visit level, but pretty close. Ugh. I really wanna just run away from it all. But I gotta eat, so I’m working my ass off and getting whipped like a slave.”
“Yikes…” The overlord Momonga leaned back to exaggerate his wince—this conversation was kind of killing the mood.
“It’s seriously awful.”
Momonga was already put off, but HeroHero’s follow-up sounded exactly as awful as he said things were.
Their gripes about their jobs in reality gathered steam: how their subordinates had no communication skills, how the spec documents were liable to change from one day to the next, how their bosses would grill them if they didn’t meet their quotas, how they could barely ever go home because there was too much work, their abnormal weight gain caused by the crazy hours they kept, the increasing number of pills they took.
At some point, it was like a dam broke inside HeroHero, and Momonga shifted to a listening role as the complaints flooded out.
Talking about one’s real life in a fantasy world was frowned on by many. “Please keep your reality out of my daydream” was certainly an understandable sentiment, but these two didn’t feel that way.
There were two requirements that all the members of their guild, Ainz Ooal Gown, had to meet. One was that members had to be working adults, and the other was that they had to play grotesques.
Since that’s the type of guild it was, real-life work woes were a common topic of discussion, which was fine with the members. The conversation these two were having was an everyday occurrence in Ainz Ooal Gown.
Enough time had passed that HeroHero’s muddy flood of grievances had calmed to a clear stream. “Sorry, I don’t mean to just whine. But I can’t really talk about this stuff IRL, you know?” A part of him that must have been his head wiggled.
Momonga took it as a bow of apology and said, “Don’t worry about it, HeroHero. You accepted my invitation to come tonight even though you’re exhausted, so listening to some complaints is the least I can do—I’ll take as many as you’ve got.”
HeroHero seemed a bit livelier than before and gave a weak chuckle. “Really, though, thank you, Momonga. I’m glad I was able to log in today and see you after so long.”
“It makes me glad to hear you say that!”
“But I should probably get going soon…” HeroHero’s tentacles began moving in midair. He’d opened his menu. “Yeah, it’s getting late. Sorry, Momonga…”
Momonga paused for a breath so as not to betray his emotions. “Ah, that’s too bad. Time really does fly when you’re having fun…”
“I really wanted to stay till the end, but I’m just too tired…”
“Yeah, I can imagine. Log out and rest up.”
“I’m really sorry… Momonga—err, no—Guild Master, what are your plans?”
“I’ll think I’ll hang around until the forced log out when the servers shut down. There’s still some time left, so there’s a chance someone else might show up.”
“I see… Honestly, I was surprised this place still even existed!”
Times like this, Momonga was truly grateful that their expressions were fixed. Otherwise, his grimace would have been immediately apparent. In any case, his emotions would have been evident in his voice, so he had to keep his mouth shut to suppress them.
Hearing something like that from a guildmate after having worked so hard to maintain their base precisely because it was a place they had all built together elicited feelings in Momonga too mixed to explain. But those feelings vanished when he heard what HeroHero said next.
“As the guild master, you kept it going so we could come back anytime, didn’t you? I really appreciate that.”
“Well, we all built it together, you know? Making sure members can come back anytime is the guild master’s job!”
“I think having you as our guild master was what made this game so fun for us. I hope to see you again…in Yggdrasil II!”
“I haven’t heard any rumors about a sequel…but yeah, I hope so, too.”
“If it happens, let’s definitely play together! Anyhow, I’m falling asleep here, so I’m gonna log off. I’m glad I got to see you at the end like this. It’s been great playing with you.”
“…” Momonga choked up for just a moment. Then he managed his final good-bye. “I’m glad I got to see you, too. Nice playing with you.”
Ba-ding! A smiley emoticon appeared over HeroHero’s head. In Yggdrasil, expressions didn’t change, so players used emoticons when they wanted to convey emotions.
Momonga opened his menu and picked the same emoticon.
HeroHero got the last word in. “See you again somewhere.”
With that, the last of the three other guild members who had made the farewell gathering disappeared.
Silence returned to the room, a silence so deep it was hard to imagine anyone had been there. No echoes, no vestiges of anyone’s presence.
Looking at the chair where HeroHero had been sitting until a moment before, Momonga murmured the words he’d suppressed. “I know you’re tired, but it’s the last day—the servers are shutting down. Won’t you stay until the end?”
Of course, there was no reply. HeroHero was already back in the real world.
Momonga heaved a sigh from the bottom of his heart.
There was no way he could have said that.
It had been evident from their short conversation and the tone of HeroHero’s voice how extremely tired he’d been. A guy that exhausted had read the e-mail Momonga had sent and came out for the last day. That was more than enough to be thankful for. Any further requests would have overstepped the bounds of nostalgia and just made Momonga into a nuisance.
Momonga stared at HeroHero’s empty chair and then shifted his gaze. There were thirty-nine other chairs. The places where his guildmates used to sit. He looked around at all of them before coming back to HeroHero’s seat.
“‘See you again somewhere’…?”
See you again sometime.
See you later.
He’d heard those words many times. But they almost never came true. Nobody ever returned to Yggdrasil.
“Where and when exactly are we going to meet, huh?” Momonga’s shoulders shuddered violently, and the true feelings that had been building up all this time suddenly gushed out. “Don’t fuck with me!” he roared, pounding the table with both fists.
The game’s system registered his motion as an attack and began computing countless parameters, such as his unarmed attack strength and the table’s defense stats. The result appeared above the place where his hands had struck: “0.”
“This is the Great Tomb of Nazarick! We built it together! How can you all abandon it so easily?” After the intense anger came loneliness. “No…I know that’s not right. I know it wasn’t easy at all. They were just forced to choose between reality and a daydream. It’s not something they could help. No one betrayed us at all. It was a hard decision for everybody…,” Momonga muttered to himself as he stood up. In the direction he faced, a staff hung on the wall.
It was based on the god Hermes’s staff, caduceus, and consisted of seven intertwined snakes. Each writhing snake held a different-colored jewel in its mouth. The grip was made of a transparent crystalline material that gave off a pale glow. Anyone who saw it would know it was a top-tier item—it was a Guild Weapon, so named because each guild could have only one. This staff was the symbol of Ainz Ooal Gown.
It was meant to be wielded by the guild master, so why was it on display here?
Precisely because it was the symbol of the guild.
If the Guild Weapon were destroyed, it would mean the collapse of the guild. So, in most cases, a Guild Weapon was stored in a safe place, its mighty powers untested. Even the weapon of a top guild like Ainz Ooal Gown was no exception.
That was why even though the staff was made for Momonga, he had never once held it.
He reached his hand out and then stopped himself. Did he really want to taint the glorious memory of all they had built together now, at this moment before the servers shut down?
He recalled the days when the guild members had gone questing together to craft the Guild Weapon. They had split into teams and competed to see who could collect the most resources, argued about what the design should be, summarized the opinions each member brought to the table, and built it up piece by piece.
Those were the glory days of Ainz Ooal Gown.
There were people who were tired from work but forced themselves to show up anyway. There were people who slacked on their family obligations and got into huge fights with their wives. There were people who laughed and said they took a sick day.
Sometimes they’d wasted the whole day just chatting. They’d get so excited about the silliest things. They’d plan quests and hunt for treasure like there was no tomorrow. Once they mounted a sneak attack on a castle that was an enemy guild’s base and stormed right in. Once they were nearly annihilated by one of the strongest secret monsters in the game, known as World Enemies. They’d discovered some previously undiscovered resources. They’d positioned all kinds of monsters in their base to take care of any intruders.
But now there was no one left.
Out of forty-one players, thirty-seven had quit. The other three had remained members in name, but Momonga couldn’t remember the last time they had come before today.
Momonga opened the menu to access official data and looked at the guild ranking. Now there were slightly fewer than eight hundred guilds. Once they had been ranked ninth, but they had fallen to twenty-ninth. This is our rank on the last day, huh? The lowest they’d ever been was forty-eighth.
That they had only slipped that far was not thanks to Momonga’s efforts, but to the items left by former guildmates—what remained of the guild’s former glory.
It was a wreck now, but it had had its heyday.
And the fruit of that period was their Guild Weapon, the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown.
Momonga didn’t want to tarnish the memories harbored there, but a rebellious feeling also smoldered within him.
Ainz Ooal Gown valued majority rule. Although Momonga’s title was guild master, the duties he performed were mostly routine, often communications-type tasks.
Maybe that’s why now that no one was left, he thought for the first time that he’d like to try claiming a guild master’s rights.
“Well, I can’t do it looking like this,” he muttered and went into the menu. He would equip himself in a manner befitting the master of a top guild.
The gear in Yggdrasil was classified by how much data it contained. The more data, the better the item. Players started off with low-tier gear, then medium-tier, upper-tier, superior-tier, legacy, relic, legend, and finally god-tier, the highest possible.
Nine rings, each with their own power, adorned Momonga’s ten finger bones. His necklace, gauntlets, boots, cape, cloak, and circlet were all god-tier. From a monetary point of view, each item was an astonishingly rare and valuable treasure. The splendid robe mentioned previously hung from his shoulders.
A reddish-black aura shimmered up from beneath his feet, giving him an ominous, evil appearance. But he wasn’t using a skill—the robe data had room, so he had just plugged in an “ominous aura” effect. It wasn’t like anything would happen if someone touched it.
Out of the corner of his eye, Momonga saw various numbers pop up to indicate his stat increases. Having fully equipped himself, he nodded in satisfaction. Now he looked like a guild master. Then, he reached out and grasped the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown.
The moment it was in his hands it began radiating a shimmering, dark red aura. Anguished human faces would occasionally form, warp, and dissipate, seemingly so real one could almost hear their tortured cries.
“…Maybe we went a little overboard.”
Finally, on the last day the servers were running, this elite staff was in the hands of its rightful owner. While confirming the icons indicating his dramatic stat boosts, he still felt lonely.
“Well, symbol of the guild, shall we see what you can do? Or should I say ‘symbol of my guild.’”
2
Momonga left the room they called the Round Table.
Unless they specified a different location, anyone with a guild member ring would appear there when they logged in. If anyone was coming back today, they would be standing by in that room. But Momonga understood that there was practically no chance of any other guild members making an appearance—that he was the only player left who wanted to spend the final moments of the game in the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
Suppressing the surging waves of his emotions, Momonga walked silently through his palace.
It was a majestic, ornate world reminiscent of Neuschwanstein Castle.
Chandeliers hung at regular intervals, shining warm light from the high ceilings. The polished floor of the wide hallway reflected the light as marble would, gleaming as if it were full of stars. Upon opening any of the doors to the right or left, the grandeur of the furnishings inside would take one’s breath away. If any nonmember came here, they’d be amazed—amazed that such luxury could exist in this legendary place, the notorious Great Tomb of Nazarick, where the largest army in the game’s history (an alliance of eight guilds, plus other affiliated guilds, mercenary players, mercenary non-player characters (NPCs), and so on, for a total of 1,500 men) had once arrived on a punitive expedition only to be completely wiped out.
The Great Tomb of Nazarick was originally constructed with six levels, but after Ainz Ooal Gown conquered it, it was dramatically transformed. At present, there were ten underground levels, each with its own distinct features. Levels one through three made up the grave. The fourth was an underground lake. Five was a glacier. Six was a jungle. Seven was lava. Eight was wilderness. Nine and ten were a shrine. This was the headquarters of a guild that broke the top ten back in an era when there were thousands, the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown.
What better word for this world than divine? Momonga’s footsteps echoed throughout the halls accompanied by the hard clack of his staff on the floor. After walking a ways down the wide corridor and turning a number of corners, he saw a woman coming toward him from up ahead.
She was gorgeous, with abundant blond hair falling around her shoulders and distinctive facial features. Her clothing was a maid uniform with a broad apron and a long, unobtrusive skirt. She stood about five feet, seven inches tall and had long, delicate limbs. Ample twin swells asserted themselves by straining against the chest of her outfit, but the overall impression she made was one of modesty.
Soon the gap between them had closed; the woman moved into a nook and bowed deeply to Momonga.
He responded with a small wave.
Her expression didn’t change. There was such a slight hint of a smile that it was difficult to tell if it was there or not, just as before. In Yggdrasil, expressions never changed, but in her case, the implication was a little different.
This maid was an NPC, a “nonplayer character.” She was not controlled by a human but moved on her own according to her AI—a program. Basically, she was a walking mannequin. No matter how sophisticated she was or how politely she bowed, it was all just according to her programming.
Momonga’s response might have seemed a foolish way to treat a mannequin, but there was a reason he wanted to show some consideration.
The forty-one NPC maids working in the Great Tomb of Nazarick were all based on custom drawings. The artist was a guild member who made his living as an illustrator and who was now serialized in a monthly manga magazine.
Momonga gazed fixedly at the maid. He was looking at the girl certainly but mainly her outfit. It was surprisingly detailed. The meticulous embroidery on the apron was especially impressive. But how could he expect anything less when the artist was a guy who said, “A maid’s uniform is a battle-deciding weapon!”? Momonga fondly recalled the graphics producer’s screams.
“Ahh, right. Even back then he was all about ‘Maid uniforms for great justice!’ Actually, even the manga he’s doing now has a maid as the heroine. Are you making your assistants cry with all the detail work, WhiteLace?”
HeroHero had designed the AI program, along with five other mates.
In other words, this maid was another former guild members’ collaboration, so it would be sad to simply ignore her. Just like the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown, this maid was a shining memory of the good old days.
As Momonga reminisced, the maid, who had straightened up, cocked her head as if to say, May I help you?
Oh, is this the idle pose she would strike if you were near her for a certain amount of time? He searched his memory and was impressed by how detailed HeroHero’s program was. He knew there must be other secret poses. He was taken by the urge to see them all, but unfortunately, time was running out.
He checked the semitransparent watch face on his left wrist.
He indeed had no time to waste.
“Thanks for all your hard work,” he said to the maid out of sentimentality and then slipped by her. Of course, there was no reply, but he felt like it was the proper thing to do on this last day.
Leaving the maid behind, Momonga continued walking.
It was not long before a grand staircase with its primarily red carpeting came into view. At least ten people could walk abreast down it with their arms outstretched. Momonga slowly descended to the deepest level of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, the tenth level.
The stairs led to an open hall where he found several people.
The first one he saw was an old man superbly dressed in a traditional butler uniform. His hair was completely white, as was his beard, but his back was as straight as the blade of a steel sword. Conspicuous wrinkles in his chiseled Caucasian features gave him an air of kindness, but his penetrating eyes were like those of a hawk targeting its prey.
Behind him, trailing him like his shadows, were six maids. These, however, were equipped completely differently from the one before.
They all wore armor based on manga-style maid uniforms featuring metal vambraces and greaves of silver, gold, black, and other colors, with white lace headpieces instead of helmets. They also each carried a different weapon. Basically, they were maid warriors.
Their hairstyles were varied as well: a chignon, a ponytail, a straight cut, braids, rolled curls, a French twist. The only thing they had in common was how beautiful they were, but even their beauty came in various types: bewitching, wholesome, Japanese…
Naturally, they were also NPCs, but unlike the earlier one who was made pretty much for kicks, these existed to intercept raiders.
In Yggdrasil, there were perks for guilds who possessed a base of castle size or larger. One was that there were NPCs who would protect said base. The Great Tomb of Nazarick had undead mobs. They could be up to level 30 and it didn’t cost the guild anything if they died—they’d just respawn after a set amount of time. The only thing was that the appearances and AI of these auto-spawning NPCs couldn’t be edited, which made them too weak to repel other players.
But then there was another perk: the right to create the guild’s own NPCs from scratch. Even a weak guild that occupied a base of at least castle size would get at least seven hundred levels to dole out to custom NPCs as they liked. Since the level cap in Yggdrasil was 100, one could, for example, make five level 100s and four level 40s. And for this type of NPC, it was possible to adjust their looks, AI, and gear for those who could equip it. With this system, guilds could station guards far stronger than the auto-spawning mobs at key locations.
Of course, there was nothing forcing people to create NPCs with combat in mind. There was one guild, the Great Cat Kingdom, that made all their NPCs cats or other members of the Felidae family. It wouldn’t be mistaken to say that this ability was meant to bring out the personalities of the guilds.
“Hm.” Momonga brought a hand to his chin and looked at the butler bowing before him. He didn’t come here very often, since he normally used teleportation magic to go from room to room. That must have been why the sight of the butler and maids here made him feel so nostalgic.
He stretched his fingers out for the menu and opened up the members-only guild page. Checking a box there instantly caused the names of all the NPCs in the room to appear over their heads.
“So that’s what you’re called.” He cracked a smile. It was part pained wince for not remembering their names, but also part nostalgic grin, as memories of the dispute over what the names should be surfaced from his fragmented recollection.
Sebas the butler’s background said he could perform all the duties of a house steward. The team of combat maids, known as the Pleiades, reported directly to him. Besides them he was also in charge of the male servants and assistant butlers.
There was probably more detailed background info in the text log, but Momonga wasn’t interested in reading any more. He didn’t have much time left, and there was somewhere he wanted to be sitting when the servers shut down.
Incidentally, the reason all the NPCs, including the maids, had detailed backstories was that Ainz Ooal Gown was full of people who loved to write them. And because there were so many illustrator and programmer members, everyone was really obsessed with getting the graphics right, which in turn spurred on the writers’ imaginations.
Sebas and the maids were meant to be the last line of defense against raiders. Not that anyone thought it was possible to repel players who managed to penetrate this far, but at least NPC guards could buy some time. That said, no players had ever gotten to the tenth level, so all the guards had ever done was wait.
They had never received orders from anyone, but just stood by wondering if or when an enemy would arrive.
Momonga tightened his grip on the staff.
It was stupid to feel sorry for NPCs. After all, they were just data. If it seemed like they had emotions, it just meant the human who designed the AI had done a good job.
But…
“A guild master should make his NPCs work!” While teasing himself in his head for sounding so arrogant, he added, “Follow me!”
Sebas and the maids acknowledged the order with a bow.
Momonga’s guildmates didn’t mean for these NPCs to leave this area, and Ainz Ooal Gown valued majority rule. It was unacceptable for one person to do what he wanted with things that everyone had made together.
But it’s the last day. Everyone would surely forgive me on the last day, he thought as he continued on with multiple sets of footsteps sounding behind him.
Presently they arrived at a large domed hall. Crystals in four colors on the ceiling gave off white light. There were seventy-two alcoves dug into the walls, most of which contained a statue. There were sixty-seven in all, each in the form of a demon.
This room was called Lemegeton after the famed grimoire also known as The Lesser Key of Solomon. All of the statues, carved out of ultrarare magical metals, were golems based on Solomon’s seventy-two demons. The only reason there were sixty-seven instead of seventy-two was that the person making them got bored partway through.
The crystals on the ceiling were monsters. During an enemy raid they could summon the major elementals (earth, wind, fire, and water) and simultaneously bombard the enemy with wide-range area-of-effect magic attacks. If all of them were mobilized, it would be enough power to take out two parties of level-100 players (twelve people) with ease.
This room was the very last line of defense before entering the heart of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
Momonga took the servants with him as he crossed Lemegeton to stand in front of a large door. It was a huge—probably more than sixteen feet tall—double door with extraordinarily detailed carvings: a goddess on the left and a demon on the right. They looked so real it seemed like they might jump off the door to attack. Despite that, Momonga was fairly sure they didn’t move. “If a bunch of heroes manage to get this far, we should welcome them. A lot of people say we’re evil and whatnot, so let’s lie in wait for them here like final bosses.” The suggestion was adopted by majority rule.
“Ulbert…” Ulbert Alain Odle had been the most obsessed with the word evil out of anybody in the guild. “That guy just never got through adolescence…”
Momonga took another sentimental look around the grand hall.
“…Okay, you’re not going to attack me, right?”
His anxiety was not unwarranted. Even he didn’t know how everything in this labyrinth worked. He wouldn’t have been surprised if one of the retired members had left a twisted “parting gift,” and the guy who made this door was definitely the type to do something like that.
Once, he said he wanted to show Momonga a powerful golem he had just made, but when Momonga booted the golem up, a bug in the combat AI caused it to start throwing punches at him. He still wondered if that had been on purpose.
“Hey, Luci
Fer. If you attack me today of all days, I will be seriously angry.”
Momonga touched the massive door with caution, but his worries had been for nothing; it opened automatically but slowly, with appropriate gravity.
The mood changed.
The previous room had already been as tranquil and solemn as a shrine, but the scene here surpassed even that. The new atmosphere exerted a physical pressure; the exquisite workmanship could be felt weighing on one’s entire body.
The room was huge—a hundred people could come in and there would still be space left over—and the ceilings so high. The walls were primarily white with ornamentation done mainly in gold. The magnificent chandeliers that hung from the ceiling were made of jewels in a rainbow of colors and cast a dreamy sparkling light. On the walls, hanging from the ceiling to the floor, were large flags, each with a different crest—forty-one in all.
On the far side of this lavish gold-and-silver room was a short flight of ten stairs. At the top was a throne carved out of a giant crystal, its back practically tall enough to reach the heavens. Behind it was a large scarlet tapestry bearing the guild’s crest.
This was the most important location in the entire Great Tomb of Nazarick, the Throne Room.
A “wow” escaped Momonga’s lips as he admired the overwhelming room. He was sure the workmanship was the best, or maybe second best, in all of Yggdrasil. That made it a perfect place to spend the last few minutes of the game.
It was so large, the sound of his footsteps seemed to vanish into the room as he entered. He eyed the female NPC standing next to the throne.
She was gorgeous, wearing a snow-white dress. Her faint smile was like that of a goddess. Her lustrous hair was a black the exact opposite of her dress and reached all the way to her waist. Her golden irises and vertical slit pupils were odd, but they didn’t detract one bit from her peerless feminine beauty. She did, however, have thick horns that curled forward out of her temples, like a ram’s. But that wasn’t all. Black angel wings sprouted out of her back near her hips. Perhaps because of the shadows caused by her horns, her goddess smile seemed like it might be a mask hiding something else. She wore a glittering golden necklace like a spiderweb covering her shoulders and chest. In her delicate silken-gloved hands, she carried a strange wand-like object. It was about eighteen inches long, its end tipped by a black orb that floated there with no supports.
Momonga hadn’t forgotten her name. How could he have? She was Albedo, captain of the Great Tomb of Nazarick’s floor guardians. There were seven floor guardians, and she was the NPC who oversaw them; she was the character at the top of the NPC hierarchy in the Great Tomb of Nazarick. Which was why she was allowed to stand by in that innermost room.
But there was some harshness in the way Momonga looked at her now. “I knew there was one World Item here, but why are there two?”
There were only two hundred of these extraordinary items in Yggdrasil. Each World Item contained an absolutely unique power. There were even game-breaking items that allowed their owner to demand the admins to change a part of the game’s system. Of course, not all of them were so extravagant. Even so, if a player were able to own one individually, one can imagine how far their reputation would spread.
Ainz Ooal Gown was in possession of eleven World Items. That was more than any other guild—far more, in fact. The guild with the next most had only three. Of Ainz Ooal Gown’s, Momonga had gotten permission from the guild to carry one as his own, and the rest were scattered around the Great Tomb of Nazarick, although most of them stayed in the treasury, protected by the Avatars.
There could only be one reason that Albedo had come into possession of one of these secret treasures without his knowledge: The guild member who created her had given it to her.
Ainz Ooal Gown valued majority rule. It was unacceptable to move the treasure everyone collected together around on one’s own. Momonga was somewhat offended and felt he should probably take it back. But today was the last day. He decided to take that guildmate’s feelings into account and leave the item where it was.
“That’s far enough,” Momonga said to Sebas and the Pleiades in a dignified tone when they’d reached the steps to the throne.
Then, he started up the stairs, but after he had gone up a couple, he realized he could still hear footsteps behind him and winced (although, of course, the graphics of his skull face didn’t move a bit). When it came down to it, NPCs were inflexible programs. They wouldn’t take an order unless it was one of their set phrases. Momonga used NPCs so rarely that he had managed to forget that simple fact.
Since the other guild members left, Momonga had been doing all he reasonably could to go treasure hunting and raise the funds necessary to maintain the Great Tomb of Nazarick. He never teamed up with any other players and stealthily avoided the kinds of difficult areas the guild had quested in back when the members were still around. Every day he just threw money into the treasury like it was his job and logged out. He didn’t have much occasion to meet NPCs.
“Stand by.” The footsteps stopped when he gave the correct command. Then, he climbed the stairs and stood before the throne.
He scrutinized Albedo without reserve. He never really came to this room and couldn’t remember ever taking a good look at her. “I wonder what her backstory is…” All he could remember was that she was captain of the floor guardians and the most elite NPC in the Great Tomb of Nazarick. With curiosity fluttering in his chest, he accessed the menu to look up her info.
And there certainly was info—writing flooded his field of vision. Her backstory was the length of an epic poem. If he were to take his time reading it, the servers would shut down before he was done.
If Momonga’s expression could move, his face would have been screwed up in disbelief. He felt more or less like he’d stepped on a land mine. How could he have forgotten that the guild member who created Albedo was so obsessed with backstories? He was extremely disappointed in himself.
He was the one who had looked it up, so he resigned himself to browsing the bio. He barely even skimmed it, scrolling in one big swipe to the bottom. The last thing it said caught his attention: “By the way, she’s a bitch.”
His eyes nearly popped out of his head. “Huh? What the heck?” he yelped in spite of himself. No matter how many times he doubted his eyes and reread, the words didn’t change. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t think of anything for them to mean besides the first thing that popped into his head. “It’s gotta be ‘bitch,’ the insult…”
All forty-one members of the guild had set up at least one NPC. He wondered if someone would really give the character they created that sort of background. If he took his time and read the whole thing, maybe there was some deeper meaning?
But there were some people who came up with the craziest backstories… And the member who had created Albedo, Tabula Smaragdina, was one of those.
“So you’re into that unexpected contrast, eh, Tabula? Still…” Isn’t this going a bit too far? The NPCs the guild members made were like the legacy of the guild. If the one on top of the hierarchy had this in her bio, it seemed pretty…
“Hrm…” Was it okay to mess with someone’s original NPC due to personal feelings? Momonga thought for a moment and then gave his answer. “I’m gonna change it.”
Now that he was carrying the Guild Weapon, he was guild master in both name and substance. He figured it would be okay to exercise the privileges he’d mostly ignored in the past. Using the fuzzy logic of “If a guild member makes an error, it should be corrected,” he broke through his hesitation.
Momonga pointed his staff. Usually one would need the creator’s tool kit to edit bios, but he could access them with his guild master privileges. A couple menu inputs later and the sentence about being a “bitch” was gone. “I guess that’ll do.” Then, he thought for a moment and looked at the space he’d opened up. Maybe I should put something in there…
“This is so stupid.” Momonga winced at his own idea and input the characters via the menu keyboard. It was a short sentence:
“And she’s in love with Momonga.”
“Ugh, how embarrassing.” He put his hands over his face. He felt he might collapse due to sheer mortification, as if he’d made up his own ideal lover and written a romance about it. He fidgeted. He was so embarrassed he considered changing it again, but he decided it was okay.
It was the last day. This embarrassment would disappear in just a few more minutes. Plus, both sentences had the same amount of words—what perfection. Deleting it and leaving an empty space would be a bit of a waste.
Momonga sat on the throne and distracted himself from his slight satisfaction (and thus multiplied shame). He looked out across the room and noticed Sebas and the maids standing stiffly at the bottom of the stairs. In this room, their rigid postures seemed somehow lacking. Oh right, I think there was this one command…
“Genuflect!” Albedo, Sebas, and the six maids all dropped to one knee at once and bowed as if they were his subjects.
Momonga lifted his left wrist and checked the time: 23:55:48. Made it just in time. By now the game masters are probably making announcements nonstop. There are probably fireworks… But Momonga was cut off from all that, so he didn’t really know. He leaned back in the throne and looked up at the ceiling.
He had thought a party might show up to storm them on the last day, since this was the base of the guild that had crushed that punitive expedition. He’d been waiting. As guild master, he was ready to take on the challenge. He’d sent an e-mail to all of his old guildmates, but only a handful replied. He’d been waiting. As guild master, he was excited to welcome his old mates.
“Is this guild just a relic of the past?” he wondered. Now there was no one around, but it sure had been a lot of fun. He moved his eyes to count the flags hanging from the ceiling. Forty-one. A flag for every guild member with their crest. He pointed a phalanx at one of them. “Me.” Then, he moved his finger one over. That flag had the crest of Ainz Ooal Gown’s—no, the entire game’s—best player, the one who originally proposed starting their guild. He was also the one who had united its forerunner, the First Nine.
“Touch Me.”
The next one over was the crest of Ainz Ooal Gown’s oldest member age-wise, a university professor in the real world: “Death Suzaku.”
Momonga’s finger sped up as he went. The next was one of the guild’s only three women members. “Ankoro Mocchi Mochi.”
Momonga continued naming all the guild members according to their crests, with no hesitation. “HeroHero, Peroroncino, BubblingTeapot, Tabula Smaragdina, the Warrior Takemikazuchi, Variable Talisman, Genjiro…” It didn’t take very long for him to say all forty of his guildmates’ names. They were still burned into his brain.
He slumped down in the throne, somewhat tired. “Yeah, we had fun…”
The game was free to play, but Momonga spent about a third of his monthly salary on microtransactions. It wasn’t that he was making so much—he just didn’t have any other hobbies, so Yggdrasil was all he spent money on.
Once he put so much into a lottery that came with a bonus that he blew straight through the bonus. He went to all that trouble and finally got the rare item he’d been after, but Yamaiko, a guildmate, won it for the price of a single lunch out. Oh, did that suck. He’d writhed around on the floor.
Since Ainz Ooal Gown was made up of working adults, almost everyone was buying stuff in-game, but Momonga was definitely up there in terms of spending. He was probably pretty high up even among everyone on the server.
That’s how hooked he’d been. Questing was fun, too. And playing with friends was even more fun. To Momonga, with his parents already gone and no friends in the real world, Ainz Ooal Gown represented the awesome times he’d spent with his friends.
And now he was going to lose it.
How miserable, how awful.
He tightened his grip on the staff. Momonga was a normal office worker. He didn’t have the money or connections to do anything. He was just another user whose only choice was to silently accept the end.
In the corner of his field of vision, he saw the time: 23:57. The servers would shut down at midnight.
There was almost no time left. His fantasy world was ending, and soon all his days would be spent in reality.
It’s only natural. Humans can’t live in a daydream. That’s why everyone left. Momonga sighed.
He had to be up at four tomorrow morning. If he didn’t go to bed as soon as the servers went down, it would affect his work.
23:59:35, 36, 37…
Momonga counted down along with the numbers.
23:59:48, 49, 50…
He closed his eyes.
He counted the moments as they ticked off the clock…to the end of his fantasy… Here comes the blackout—
0:00:00… One, two, three…
“…Huh?”
Momonga opened his eyes. He wasn’t back in his room. He was still in Yggdrasil in the Throne Room.
“…What’s going on?”
The time was accurate. He should have been booted by now.
0:00:38…
It was definitely after midnight. The time displayed by the system clock could not possibly be off.
Unsure how to proceed, he looked around for any information.
“Was the shutdown postponed?”
Or is there some kind of loss time?
Countless possibilities crossed his mind, but they were all far from convincing. The most likely was that for some reason, some unfavorable reason, the server shutdown had been postponed. If that were the case, the GMs would probably be making announcements. He rushed to turn the communication channels back on—his hands stopped.
His menu wouldn’t come up.
“What the…?”
Feeling slightly uneasy and confused (but surprised by how calm he was), Momonga tried to use some other features: forced system access that bypassed the menu, chat, a GM call, force quit. He couldn’t get to any of them. It was like he’d been locked out of the system.
“What is going on?!” His irate voice echoed across the spacious Throne Room and faded away.
This is the last day. It’s unthinkable that something like this could happen on the day that is supposed to be the end of it all. Are they teasing us? What came over him now was irritation at not being able to make a beautiful exit at the game’s glorious end. It could be felt in each word he spoke and almost sounded like he was taking out his anger on someone, but there shouldn’t have been any response. However…
“Is something the matter, Lord Momonga?”
It was a woman’s pretty voice, and he was hearing it for the first time.
Dumbfounded, Momonga looked to see where it had come from. When he saw who had spoken, he was absolutely shocked.
It was an NPC who was looking up at him—Albedo.
3
Carne.
It was a small village not far from the Tobu Woodlands at the southern edge of the Azerlisia Mountains that formed the border between the empire and the kingdom. The population was about 120. Twenty-five households was not an uncommon size for a village on the frontiers of the Re-Estize Kingdom.
Carne mainly relied on agriculture and the bounty of the forest, and the only visitor apart from an apothecary who came to acquire herbs was the tax collector. The phrase like time had stopped was an apt descriptor of the place.
The day started early in the village. Villagers generally awoke at dawn. Unlike the larger cities, they didn’t have magically maintained Continual Light, so they rose and slept with the sun.
Enri Emmott’s mornings began with fetching water from the well near her house. Fetching water was women’s work. Her first chore was done when the large pot in her house was full. By that time her mother would be finished preparing breakfast, and the four members of their family would sit down together to eat.
Breakfast was barley and wheat oatmeal, sautéed vegetables, and on some days, dried fruit.
After that, she would go out to work in the fields with her mother and father. Her younger sister, soon to be ten, would gather wood near where the forest started or help in the fields. The bell in the center of town on the edge of the village square rang at noon. They would take a break from their work and eat lunch.
Lunch was brown bread baked some days earlier and soup with bits of preserved meat in it.
Then, it was back to the fields. When the sky began to redden, they would return home and eat dinner.
Dinner was the same brown bread as lunch and bean soup. If a hunter caught an animal, they would sometimes get a share of the meat. After the meal, they would chat as a family and mend clothes by what light remained in the kitchen.
They usually slept around six PM.
Enri Emmott had lived her whole life, from the moment she was born to her current age of sixteen years, as a member of this village.
She thought her uneventful life would continue on the same way forever.
One day Enri awoke as usual and went to fetch water. She hauled the bucket out of the well and filled her small pot. It took about three trips to fill the large one at home.
“Oof.” She rolled up her sleeves. The parts of her skin that weren’t tanned were glaringly white. Her arms were slender but well toned from working in the fields—she even had some muscle.
The pot was quite heavy once it was full of water, but she picked it up like usual. If I had a pot one size bigger, maybe I could reduce my number of trips? Oh, but I probably wouldn’t be able to carry it. Enri was about to head home when she thought she heard something and looked in the direction it came from. Something set the air roiling and her heart frothing.
Off in the distance, she heard the sound of something wooden being crushed. And then—
“A scream?” It was like the cry of a bird having its neck wrung and yet altogether different. Something cold raced down Enri’s spine. No way. It’s just my imagination. I misheard. Words to drown out her anxiety bubbled up, popped, and disappeared.
Panicking, she started to run. The scream had come from the direction of her house. She abandoned her pot. It’s too heavy to run with. Her feet got tangled in her long skirt and she nearly tripped, but luckily she managed to keep her balance and run on.
More voices.
Enri’s heart was pounding.
Human screams. No doubt about it.
Run. Run. Run.
She couldn’t remember ever having run this fast. She felt like she was going to trip over her own feet.
Horses whinnying. People screaming. Shouts.
It was all getting louder.
Still quite a ways away, Enri saw an armored figure swinging a sword at a villager. The villager screamed and crumpled to the ground. The sword followed up with a finishing stab.
“Mr. Morger!” There was no one in this small village she didn’t know—they were all like family—so of course she knew the man who had been killed. He could be a bit loud at times but was a good-natured person. He certainly didn’t deserve to die like that. Enri nearly stopped in her tracks, but she grit her teeth and pushed herself to sprint even faster.
This distance never felt terribly long when she was carrying water, but now it seemed like she would never arrive.
Angry shouts and curses reached her ears on the wind. Finally her house was in sight.
“Mom! Dad! Nemu!” she called out to her family as she opened the door.
Their three familiar faces were frightened but all present, huddled together. As soon as she burst in, their expressions softened into relief.
“Enri! You’re safe!” She felt her father’s rough farmer hands on her back as he hugged her. And the warm hands of her mother.
“Okay, now that Enri’s here, let’s get out of here!”
The Emmott family was in a pretty bad position. They didn’t want Enri to come home to an empty house, so they’d missed their opportunity to escape. The danger must already be closing in…
That fear soon became reality.
As the four of them were just about to make a run for it, a shadow appeared in the front entryway. Standing there with the sun at his back was a knight in full armor, the arms of the Baharuth Empire emblazoned on his breastplate. In his hand was a naked blade—a longsword.
The Baharuth Empire occasionally invaded its neighbor, the Re-Estize Kingdom, but usually the fighting was centered around the fortress city of E-Rantel; the enemy had never made it as far as Carne.
But now the village’s peace had been shattered.
From the icy stare coming through the gap in the close helmet, Enri could sense that they were being counted. She hated the feeling of his eyes moving over them.
A squeak from his metal gauntlet announced that he had tightened his grip on the sword. He moved into the house—
“Yaaargh!”
“Urgh!”
Enri’s father tackled the knight, and the pair of them tumbled out the front door.
“Go! Hurry!”
“You bastard!”
Her father’s face was lightly smeared with blood. He must have cut himself when he rushed the knight. The two of them thrashed around on the ground, her father struggling to keep the knight’s dagger at bay, the knight struggling to keep her father’s knife at bay.
Seeing a family member’s blood right before her eyes made Enri’s mind go completely blank. Should I try to help him or escape?
“Enri! Nemu!” The shout brought her back to reality. Her mother, though anguished, was shaking her head.
Enri took her sister’s hand and started to run. Hesitation and guilt made her reluctant, but she had to just run as fast as she could to the forest.
The whinnies and screams of horses, angry voices, the clanging of metal, and…the smell of something burning. From all over the village, the sensations bombarded her eyes, ears, and nose. Where is that coming from? She was frantic to know even as she ran. In open areas, she moved in a half crouch, trying to stay in the shadows of houses.
Fear that made her blood run cold. The exertion of running wasn’t the only reason her heart was pounding. The only thing keeping her moving was the little hand clasped in hers.
My sister’s life…
Her mother, running a few paces ahead, was just turning a corner when she suddenly stiffened and shrank back. She motioned with a hand behind her back to run the other way!
When Enri realized why, she bit her lip to hold back a sob.
She squeezed her sister’s hand and ran to get as far away as they could.
She didn’t want to see what was going to happen next.
4
“Is something wrong, Lord Momonga?” Albedo repeated her question.
Momonga wasn’t sure how to answer. This series of mysterious events had short-circuited his brain.
“Please excuse me.” Momonga gazed at her absentmindedly as she got up and came up close to him. “Is something the matter?” She leaned in with her beautiful face. A faint but wonderful scent tickled Momonga’s nostrils. Perhaps kick-started by the fragrance, his thoughts began to return to him.
“No, I’m all right, thank y—It’s nothing.” He lacked the particular naïveté required to speak too terribly politely toward a mannequin, but as soon as she had spoken to him, he felt compelled to answer. There was something undeniably human about the way she spoke and moved.
The situation he and Albedo were in was way off, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on why. He did his utmost to suppress the confusion and amazement that such a vague understanding generated, but he was just a normal guy—it didn’t seem possible. Right as he was about to scream, he remembered the words of one of his guildmates: “Panic breeds failure. One must always have a composed, rational state of mind. Calm your heart and broaden your outlook. Don’t let your thoughts take you prisoner. Keep your mind quick, Momonga.”
With that remembrance, his calm came flooding back to him. He mentally gave his thanks to the man known as the guild’s Kongming, Squishy Moe.
“Are you all right?” Albedo asked, awfully close to him. She’d tilted her head adorably and leaned in so far that their breaths were overlapping. With this gorgeous girl in his face, the calm Momonga had just regained threatened to fly straight back out the window.
“The…GM call isn’t working.” Swallowed up by Albedo’s glistening pupils, he found himself consulting with an NPC.
A member of the opposite sex had never approached Momonga with this look in her eyes before, especially with such a lack of propriety. He knew it was just an NPC someone had made, but the flow of her expressions was so natural it was unsettling.
But somehow he noticed those feelings settling down already, as if they were being held back. The lack of wider emotional fluctuation, however, gave him a touch of anxiety. He had thought it was due to his former mate’s words, but is that really it?
Momonga shook his head. Now wasn’t the time.
“…Please forgive me. I am so ignorant I fear I am unable to answer your question regarding this ‘GM call’ you speak of. Nothing would make me happier than a chance to clear myself of the disgrace of failing your expectations. Your wish is my command…”
…We’re having a conversation. No doubt about it. The realization assailed his entire body with a petrifying amazement. Impossible… This can’t be happening.
An NPC was talking. Well, there were macros that allowed them to do that. Players had been passing around data for battle cries and cheers, etc. Still, conversation was impossible. Even just a minute ago, Sebas and the maids wouldn’t respond to anything that wasn’t a simple command phrase.
So how is this happening? Is Albedo just special?
He motioned for her to step back and glimpsed a flicker of reluctance as he looked away to Sebas and the maids, who still had their heads bowed.
“Sebas! Maids!”
“My lord!” They answered in magnificent unison, raising their heads in a slick motion.
“Come to the foot of the throne.”
“Yes, sir.” Their voices aligned again, and they sprang to their feet. The group walked together with beautiful posture to the bottom of the steps leading to the throne before each dropping again to one knee and bowing.
From this exchange, Momonga learned two things. First, although he had purposely avoided using command phrases, they could understand his intentions and carry them out. Second, Albedo was not the only one who could talk. At the very least, something weird is going on with all the NPCs in the Throne Room.
As he was reflecting on these things, he had the same feeling as before that something was off about both Albedo and himself. Wanting to understand it, he scrutinized her.
“Is everything all right? Have I done something wrong?”
“Agh!” When he recognized the root of the incongruity, a sound that was neither word, gasp, nor choking noise escaped his lips.
It was the changing expressions. Her lips were moving, and he could hear her words.
Flustered, he brought his fingers to his own lips. And spoke. “Im…po…”
My jaw is moving…
In the world of a DMMO-RPG, that went against all common sense. Mouths moving and words coming out?! Expression graphics were fixed; they didn’t move. Otherwise why would the developers have made emoticons?
Plus, Momonga’s face was a skull—he didn’t have a tongue or a throat. Looking down at his hands, there was no flesh and the bones weren’t even anatomically correct. Continuing along the same lines, he probably didn’t have any internal organs, not to mention lungs. So why could he talk?
“Impossible…” He felt the internal logic he had built up slowly over time begin to crumble away—and an equivalent panic replace it.
He wanted to scream but held it in. As expected, the heat in his chest was abruptly soothed by a wave of calm.
Momonga pounded the throne’s armrest. As he thought, the number showing damage didn’t pop up.
“What should I do? What makes the most sense…?” He was in an incomprehensible situation, but venting wouldn’t get him anywhere. First, he needed information. “Sebas!”
The expression on Sebas’s face as he lifted his head was earnestness incarnate. He looked like he was really alive.
I can give him an order, right? I’m not sure what’s going on, but I can assume the NPCs in the Tomb are loyal to me, right? Actually, I don’t even know if these are our NPCs…
Countless questions, and the anxiety that went with them, arose in his mind, but Momonga tuned it all out. In any case, there was no one better to send out for reconnaissance than Sebas. He did glance momentarily at Albedo, who was waiting off to the side, but he made up his mind to give the order to Sebas.
He imagined what executives at work were like when directing regular employees and tried to act like he was one of them. “Leave the Tomb, and confirm our surroundings within a half-mile radius. If there are any intelligent life-forms, negotiate to bring them here on amicable terms. You can give them practically whatever they request in return. Avoid combat to the extent possible.”
“Understood, Lord Momonga. I will leave without delay.”
In Yggdrasil, it was definitely not possible to take NPCs who were built to protect a base and send them outside, but here it was. Well, I won’t know for sure until he actually makes it outside, but…
“Take one member of the Pleiades with you. If you’re attacked, have her retreat immediately to bring back any information you have.” With that, Momonga had made at least one move.
He let go of the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown. It didn’t clatter to the ground, but instead hung in the air as if someone were holding it. It was against the laws of physics, but it was just like the game. In Yggdrasil, it wasn’t uncommon for items to float in the air when one let go of them.
The staff’s aura of anguished faces twisted around his hand as if reluctant to dissipate, but Momonga calmly ignored it. Not that he was…used to it, but that sort of macro wasn’t so strange; he shook his wrist to get rid of it.
Crossing his arms, he thought what his next move should be. I suppose… “I need to contact the admins.” The administration was sure to be the most informed of anyone about this abnormal situation. The problem was how to reach them. Usually a shout or GM call would work, but if they didn’t now…
“A message maybe?”
There was one magic spell that was a way to contact people. It could only be used in specific places and situations, but it seemed like it would be effective now. The only problem was that it was usually used to communicate between players; he wasn’t sure if it would work to contact a GM. He didn’t even have any guarantee that magic in general would work normally in this crisis.
“But…” He had to find out.
Momonga was a level-100 magic user. If he couldn’t use magic, his area of operations and information-gathering powers would be severely limited, not to mention his combat strength. Right now he had no idea what the situation was, so he needed to confirm as soon as possible whether or not he could use magic.
In that case, I need to go somewhere I can test it out… He looked out over the Throne Room and shook his head. This was an emergency, but he didn’t want to disturb this room’s sublime tranquility for magic experiments. But then where? he thought and came up with an ideal location.
It was also necessary to test the extent of his influence. He had to see whether he had maintained his authority as guild master. So far everyone he had met was loyal to him, but there were several NPCs in the Great Tomb of Nazarick at his level. He needed to make sure the rest of them were still loyal, too.
But… He looked down at Sebas and the maids who were still on one knee and then at Albedo beside him. What is it? her faint smile seemed to say. She was beautiful, but the shadows cast by her horns made it seem like something was hidden behind her smile. It made Momonga nervous.
Is the loyalty they have now inviolable and unchanging? In the real world, a boss who makes stupid moves all the time loses support. Does it work the same way here, or is it once faithful, always faithful?
If I suppose their loyalty could change, how do I maintain it?
By giving them rewards? The treasury contained vast riches. It would pain him to lay a hand on the items his former guildmates had left, but if it was to keep Ainz Ooal Gown going through this crisis, they would forgive him, wouldn’t they? Then, of course, he didn’t have any idea how much he should pay…
Or displaying the excellence you’d expect of a ruler? What constituted excellence, however, was unclear. He had the feeling things would work out if he just kept maintaining the dungeon.
Or… “Maybe through power?” The Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown flew automatically into his outstretched hand. “Overwhelming power?” The staff’s seven jewels began to sparkle, as if appealing for their vast magical power to be used. “Well, I guess I’ll think about it later.”
He let go of the staff. It swayed in the air for a moment and then clattered to the floor like someone going to bed in a huff.
Anyhow, it seemed like if he acted like he was in charge, he was unlikely to meet hostility anytime soon. It’s hard for animals to turn their fangs on one who doesn’t show any weaknesses, and the same thing went for humans.
Momonga raised his voice. “Pleiades! All of you besides the one going with Sebas, go up to the ninth level and be on the lookout for any raiders coming down from eight.”
“Yes, Lord Momonga.” The maids behind Sebas complied.
“Now go immediately.”
“Understood, Lord and Master,” their voices echoed. Sebas and the combat maids all paid their respects to Momonga, stood at once, and set off.
The huge door opened and then closed after them.
I’m so glad they didn’t say no or something. Relieved, he turned to the last remaining NPC—Albedo was still waiting beside him.
“Now, then, Lord Momonga. What may I do for you?” she asked with a gentle smile.
“Oh, uh…right…” Momonga leaned out of the throne to pick up his staff. “Come here.”
“Yes, sir!” She sounded overjoyed and sidled right up. Momonga worried about her wand and the black sphere floating on the end of it for just a moment, but decided to forget about it. She was closer than last time, all but clinging to him.
She smells so good—but what am I thinking? The thought popped up again, but he promptly dismissed it. He didn’t have time for that sort of nonsense now.
Momonga reached out and touched her hand.
“…Ngh.”
“Hm?”
The look on Albedo’s face said she was in pain. He whipped his hand away as if he’d been electrocuted.
I wonder what’s wrong. Did I creep her out?
Mixed in with the numerous sad memories (like having cashiers drop change into his hand from above to avoid accidentally touching him) flitting across his mind, he found the answer.
“…Ohhhh.”
An overlord was a higher rank of elder lich, and one of the special abilities an elder lich could acquire by leveling up was the dealing of damage by touch—normally as an attack. Maybe that’s it?
But even if that was the case, there were still questions remaining.
In Yggdrasil, the system would judge mobs and NPCs within the Great Tomb of Nazarick as belonging to Ainz Ooal Gown. Friendly fire for guild members was always off so allies couldn’t harm one another. So did that mean she didn’t belong to the guild? Or that friendly fire had been turned on?
The latter is a distinct possibility, Momonga decided and said to Albedo, “Sorry, I forgot to turn off Negative Touch.”
“Never you mind, Lord Momonga. That level of damage wasn’t even damage. Besides, I would suffer any agony for you… Eek!”
“Oh, uh…huh… I see. But I’m sorry,” Momonga stammered, not knowing how to act toward Albedo as she made that cute little shriek and covered her blushing cheeks with her hands.
But it did seem like the issue had been damage from Negative Touch.
Averting his eyes from Albedo, who was going on about a virgin’s pain, Momonga tried to think how to temporarily turn off a passive power—and suddenly, it dawned on him: Using any of an overlord’s various powers was now as natural an act as breathing. He found himself laughing in spite of himself at what an extraordinary situation he was in. After all the strange things that had happened so far, it didn’t even surprise him. Adaptability is a terrifying thing.
“I’m going to touch you.”
“Oh…!”
After turning off the ability, he reached out and touched her hand. Countless thoughts came up—how delicate it was, how white—but Momonga dismissed any that stemmed from his being male. What he wanted to know was if she had a pulse.
She does.
The beat was a steady ba-bum, ba-bum. It would be only natural for a living thing.
Yeah, for a living thing…
Momonga took his hand away and looked at his own wrist. There was no skin, flesh, or anything besides a pure white bone. He had no blood vessels, so of course he had no pulse. That’s right, an overlord was undead—a being who had transcended death. Of course he wouldn’t have a pulse.
He looked up at Albedo. He could see himself in her glistening pupils. Her cheeks were awfully flushed—her body temperature was probably skyrocketing. Noting these changes in her was enough to shake him up.
“…What’s going on?”
This is an NPC—just some data, right? What kind of AI can make data look like it’s actually alive? It’s practically as if Yggdrasil has become reality…
That’s impossible.
Momonga shook his head. It can’t be anything as crazy as that. But once the idea had lodged in his mind, it wouldn’t come unstuck so easily. Feeling vaguely uncomfortable about the changes he was noticing in Albedo, he hesitated about what to do next.
His next move would be his last. If I check this last thing, all of my hunches will turn to convictions. The balance that shows whether this is reality or not will swing one way or the other. So I have to do it! I wouldn’t be surprised if she attacked me with that weapon she’s holding…but even so…
“Albedo… Can I touch your ch-chest?”
“Huh?”
The atmosphere froze solid. Albedo blinked, bewildered. The moment he said it, Momonga felt he might die of embarrassment.
Sure, he’d had no choice, but what kind of thing was that to say to a lady? He had the urge to howl that he was the worst person in existence. I’ve abused my power in order to sexually harass a woman—I really am the worst.
But I can’t help it. Yeah. It has to be done.
He forcefully talked himself down and regained his mental equilibrium rather quickly, then mustered all of his coercive power as a superior. “You don’t meow—Mind, do you?”
Utter failure.
His timid words caused Albedo to beam as if she were the sun making all the flowers bloom. “Of course, Lord Momonga! Please have your way with me.” She puffed out her chest and her substantial breasts were thrust into Momonga’s face. If he had had the ability to gulp, he would have surely done so several times.
Her breasts were giving her dress great lift, and he was about to touch them.
On the one hand, Momonga was feeling oddly nervous and shaken, but some corner of his brain was being calmly and objectively self-observant. He started to feel incredibly stupid. Why is this the test I thought of, and why am I actually doing it?
For some reason when he peeked at Albedo, she stuck her chest out even more as if to say, Go ahead, her eyes twinkling.
Was Momonga aroused or ashamed? He willed his hand to stop shaking, made up his mind, and reached out.
Under the dress, he felt something a bit rigid, but beneath that he could feel something soft.
“Ahh… Ngh…” Amid Albedo’s sticky moaning, Momonga got the information he was after.
Assuming he was still sane, Momonga had two hypotheses for explaining the current situation.
One was the possibility of a new DMMO-RPG. In other words, at the same time Yggdrasil had shut down, Yggdrasil II had started up. But that didn’t seem terribly plausible after what he’d just experienced.
In Yggdrasil, doing anything rated R was strictly forbidden. Even PG-13 could be considered out of line in some cases. Violators were dealt with severely: Their names were posted to the list of abusers on the game’s website and their accounts were suspended. That’s because if a log of it were made public, the operators could find themselves afoul of the adult entertainment business laws. Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have surprised Momonga if what he’d just done had been against the rules. If he was still in a game world, there should have been some measure in place to prevent it. In the first place, if the GM and admins were monitoring, they would have tried to stop him, but there was no sign of that.
Additionally, the cyber-tech laws that governed DMMO-RPGs viewed forcible, nonconsensual participation in a game as kidnapping for ransom. If someone were forced to be a test player, it would be immediately exposed. The inability to force quit would probably be seen as illegal confinement, too.
If that was what was going on, the game’s proprietary console had to keep a week’s worth of records by law, so exposing it would be easy enough. When he didn’t show up for work, someone would probably come over to check on him, and once the police investigated the console, that would clear things up.
But was there really a company stupid enough to commit a crime so easy to get caught for in an organization-wide way? Of course, if they said, “It’s an early demo version of Yggdrasil II,” or “We just released a patch,” there was a gray zone, but he couldn’t believe it would be worth it to the developers or admins to take that kind of risk.
So there had to be something at work besides the developers’ intentions. In that case, he needed to make a fundamental change in the way he was thinking or he wouldn’t get anywhere. The problem was that how he should think was unclear. There was one other possibility…
That the fantasy world had become the real world…
Impossible. He promptly rejected the idea. There was no way something so outrageous—so illogical—could be true. On the other hand, the longer this went on, the more he wondered if it might actually be the case. He remembered the fragrance coming off Albedo earlier.
The senses of taste and smell were altogether banned from fantasy worlds by the cyber-tech laws. Yggdrasil had a system for eating and drinking, but anything players consumed only affected their in-game stats. Even touch was regulated to some extent. This was all so that the game couldn’t be mistaken for the real world. As a result of all the limitations, fantasy worlds featuring sex hadn’t really caught on.
But here he could smell.
The reality of that hit Momonga so hard it completely blew away all his What about work tomorrow? and What if I can’t get out of here? type of worries.
“If this weren’t reality… Just in terms of the bandwidth that would be required to run this fantasy, it’d be impossible…”
His mouth was bone-dry, but he swallowed anyway. Even if he couldn’t understand it, his mind had already accepted it.
Finally, he let his hand fall limply from Albedo’s full chest. He felt he’d been groping her a bit longer than necessary, but he told himself it was something he had to do for confirmation. It certainly wasn’t because she was so soft he couldn’t take his hand away… At least, probably not.
“Sorry, Albedo.”
“Ahhh…” She exhaled hotly, and he could feel why her cheeks had turned so red. Then, she said, looking slightly askance, “So here it is, my first time.”
“Huh?!” Momonga let out a confused yelp in spite of himself. It took him a moment to understand what she was saying. “First time”? For what? And what’s with that look on her face?!
“What shall I do with my clothes?”
“…What?”
“Would you like me to take them off myself? Or did you want to do it? If I keep them on, um, they might get dirty… Oh, but if my lord prefers it that way, I have no objections.”
Finally her words sank in. Actually, Momonga wondered if he even had any brain left for them to sink into. Once he understood where all this was coming from, it grated on him. “Stop. Stop it, Albedo.”
“Hm? Yes, sir.”
“Right now we can’t… Er, we don’t have time to be doing such things.”
“M-my humble apologies! I shouldn’t have prioritized desire when we’re having some sort of emergency.” She jumped away from him and went to prostrate herself, but Momonga put out a hand to stop her.
“You’re fine. It was my fault. All is forgiven, Albedo. More importantly…I have orders for you.”
“Anything you wish, my lord.”
“Contact the floor guardians and tell them to gather at the Amphitheatrum in the sixth level one hour from now. I will let Aura and Mare know myself, so there is no need to contact them.”
“Understood. To repeat, you would like me to contact all the floor guardians besides those of the sixth level and tell them to meet in the sixth level’s Amphitheatrum one hour from now.”
“Right. Now go.”
“My lord.” Albedo turned to leave the Throne Room with slightly quickened steps.
Watching her go, Momonga heaved a tired sigh, and once she had left, he let out an agonized moan. “…What the hell. It was just a stupid joke. If I’d have known this would happen, I wouldn’t have done it. Have… Have I defiled the NPC that Tabula created…?” He could think of only one reason Albedo would react to him in that way: the text he’d edited into her bio, “And she’s in love with Momonga.” It had to be connected to that.
“Ahhh, crap!” he groaned.
Tabula Smaragdina had put his all into filling that blank canvas with Albedo’s backstory. Then, Momonga condescendingly painted over it for his own selfish reasons, and now this was the result. He felt like he’d vandalized a masterpiece.
But he had to put that issue aside for now. Still wincing—though it wasn’t obvious, given that his face was a skull—he stood up from the throne. He told himself he could figure that problem out after taking care of the more urgent tasks.