The knight in full plate armor stood before the girl and her little sister, his sword raised high.
His blade gleamed in the sun, and he poised himself, ready to end their lives in a single merciful stroke.
The girl squeezed her eyes tightly shut and bit her lower lip. She had never asked for this. She had been forced into her present circumstances. If only she had some strength, she might have resisted the enemy in front of her and fled.
However — the girl did not have that strength.
Thus, there could only be one outcome to this situation.
That would be the girl's death, at this very place.
The longsword fell—
—and yet there was no pain.
The girl gingerly opened the eyes which had been squeezed shut.
The first thing she saw was the suddenly motionless longsword.
Then, she saw the sword's owner.
The knight in front of her was frozen in place, his eyes looking somewhere off to the girl's side. His completely defenseless posture clearly displayed the fear that filled him.
As though drawn by the knight's gaze, the girl could not help but turn and look in the same direction as him.
And so — the girl gazed upon despair.
What she saw was darkness.
It was an infinitesimally thin, yet unfathomably deep blackness. It was a half-oval of obsidian that seemed to protrude from the earth. It was a mysterious sight that filled the ones watching it with a powerful sense of unease.
Was it a door?
The girl could not help but think so after she saw what lay before her.
As her heart lurched, the girl's conjecture was confirmed.
Something seemed to be coming out of that shadowy passage.
And in the moment that it resolved itself in her eyes—
"Hiiiiiiii!"
—a deafening shriek came from the girl.
It was an opponent which humanity could not overcome.
Twin points of crimson light burned brightly within the empty eye sockets of a bleached skull. Those two points of light coldly scanned the girl and the others present, like a predator sizing up its prey. Within its fleshless hands it grasped a magic staff that seemed divine in nature, yet inspired dread in equal measure. It was like a crystallization of all the beauty in the world.
It wore an intricately detailed black robe, and it resembled nothing so much as an incarnation of death, born from the darkness of another world.
In an instant, the air seemed to freeze.
It was as though time itself had stood still in the wake of a Supreme Being's advent.
The girl forgot to breathe, as if the sight had stolen her soul away.
Then, in this silent realm, the girl began choking, and gasped for air.
This avatar of death must have manifested itself in order to guide her to the land of the dead. It was only natural to think so. But then, the girl who thought this way suddenly realized that something was wrong. That was because the knight who had been planning to kill her from behind was now completely still.
"Gaaah..."
A cry that sounded like a wail crept into her ears.
From whose mouth had that sound come? It felt like it could have come from hers, or that of her little sister, shivering in fright, or from the mouth of the knight that had been about to kill her.
A skeletal hand slowly extended itself — its fingers spreading as though reaching for something, and they moved past the girl, toward the knight behind her.
She wanted to look away from it, but fear kept her gaze in place. She had the feeling that if she averted her eyes, she would see a far more horrible sight instead.
"「Grasp Heart」."
The incarnation of death clenched its fist, and the girl heard the sound of crunching metal from behind her.
Though she was afraid to take her eyes away from the figure of death, curiosity got the better of her and the girl wrenched her eyes away, whereupon saw the body of the knight. He was sprawled motionless on the ground, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
He was dead.
There was no doubt that he was dead.
The danger that had almost claimed the girl was no more. But this was no cause for celebration. The death that stalked her had merely taken a more concrete shape.
That death drew close to the girl, who watched it with terrified eyes.
The darkness in her field of vision grew ever larger.
It's going to swallow me up.
As the girl thought this, she clutched her sister tightly to herself.
The notion of escape no longer existed within the girl's head.
If her opponent were human, she might be able to cling to some faint hope and struggle desperately for her life. But the being before her shattered that hope like spun glass.
Please, at least let me die without pain.
That was all the girl could hope for.
Her shuddering sister hugged her tightly. All she could do was apologize for her weakness, for being unable to protect her sister's life. She prayed that her sister would not be lonely as they went on to the afterlife, because they would be travelling there together.
And then—
The End and the Beginning
Part 1
In the year 2138 AD there was a term: DMMO-RPG.
That word was an acronym for "Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game".
These games were played by connecting a dedicated console to the brain via a neuronal nano-interface — an intracerebral nanocomputer network, created from the fusion of cyber- and nanotechnology.
These were games that allowed one to enter a virtual world and experience it as though it were real life.
And among the myriad DMMO-RPGs that thronged the market, one of them stood head and shoulders above the others:
YGGDRASIL.
This game had been painstakingly developed and released twelve years ago, in 2126.
Compared to other DMMO-RPGs of the time, YGGDRASIL's selling point was "player freedom".
It had over two thousand basic and advanced job classes.
Every class had a maximum of fifteen levels, and so in order to reach the overall level cap of one hundred, one would need to take at least seven different classes. However, players could take as many classes as they wanted as long as they met each class's prerequisites. A player could even take a hundred classes at level one each, although that was very inefficient. As such, in this system, it was virtually impossible to make identical characters unless one was deliberately trying to do so.
In addition, one could use various creator tools (sold separately) to fully customize one's armor, weaponry, flavor text, appearance, and other cosmetic settings.
A vast playing field awaited its players. There were nine worlds in total: Asgard, Alfheim, Vanaheim, Nidavellir, Midgard, Jotunheim, Niflheim, Helheim, and Muspelheim.
It boasted a massive world, numerous classes, and freely customizable appearances.
These features ignited the creative spirits of its Japanese players, and sparked what would later be known as a stylistic revolution. So popular was it that whenever the word "DMMO-RPG" was mentioned in Japan, listeners would immediately think of YGGDRASIL.
—Still, all these were things of the past now.
A gigantic table carved of gleaming black stone sat in the center of the room, surrounded by forty one luxurious chairs.
However, most of those seats were empty.
Once, every single place had been filled, but now only two were occupied.
One of the seated people was clothed in a magnificent black academic robe, edged in violet and gold. The collar seemed excessively gaudy, but somehow it fit the overall design.
However, the exposed head was a bare skull. Points of dark red light glowed in its large eye sockets, and behind that skull glowed a halo of black radiance.
The being in the other seat was not human either, merely a mass of a black, sticky substance. Its tar-like surface roiled and writhed continuously, never staying in the same shape for more than a second.
The former was an Overlord — the highest-ranked of those magic casters who had become undead in order to learn the most potent spells. The latter was an Elder Black Ooze, which boasted the most powerful corrosive ability of the slime families.
One might encounter these monsters in the most difficult dungeons. Overlords could use powerful spells of the highest tiers of magic, while Elder Black Oozes were dreaded for their ability to degrade weapons and armor.
However, they were not game monsters, but players.
In YGGDRASIL, players could choose their character races from three broad groups; humanoid, demihuman and heteromorphic.
Humanoids were the basic player type and comprised humans, dwarves, wood elves, and the like. Demihumans tended to be ugly, but possessed superior attributes to humanoids. Examples of demihumans were goblins, beastmen, ogres, and so on. Finally, heteromorphic races had monstrous abilities, but despite their stats being generally higher than those of other races, they also possessed various drawbacks. There were around seven hundred playable races in total, including the advanced versions of these races.
Naturally, the Overlord and Elder Black Ooze were among the high-tier heteromorphic races that were playable.
The Overlord — who was speaking at the moment — did not move his mouth. That was because even the most advanced DMMO-RPGs of the time still could not overcome the technological hurdle of properly modelling the changes on a character's face in response to emotions and speech.
"It's really been a while, Herohero-san. Although this is the last day of YGGDRASIL, I didn't expect you to show up."
"Indeed it has, Momonga-san."
The two of them spoke with the voices of grown men, but compared to the voice of the former, the latter's words lacked force, or perhaps it could be said that they lacked energy.
"You stopped coming online after you changed your job IRL, so how long has it been... about two years?"
"Ah — seems about right — wah, it's been so long… this is bad. I've been doing so much overtime recently that my sense of time is starting to go weird."
"That's really bad, right? Are you okay?"
"My body? Well, it's a mess. I haven't had to see a doctor yet, but I'm almost there, it's really bad. A lot of times, I feel like I want to run away from it all, but then I think about how I need money to live and then I go back to work like a whipped slave."
"Uwah—"
The Overlord — Momonga — lowered his head in an "I can't take it" gesture.
"That's terrible."
As though following up on Momonga's comment, Herohero delivered a grim monologue, his words laced with an unimaginable reality.
The two of them griped loudly about the foolishness they encountered in their working lives.
Subordinates who did not know how to report, communicate, and discuss things, spreadsheets that changed by the day, scoldings by their superiors for not meeting various KPIs, working late every day until they could not go home, gaining weight because of their irregular lifestyles, and the increasing amounts of medicine they had to take every day.
Herohero's grievances burst forth like a broken dam, and Momonga lent his ear to him.
A lot of people were averse to discussing reality in a virtual world. It was fairly normal for people to not want to talk about their offline lives in a game.
However, this was not so for the two of them.
The guild they belonged to — a group that was founded and managed by players. Ainz Ooal Gown — had two conditions that each of its members had to fulfill. The first was that everyone had to be a working member of society. The other was that they had to play heteromorphic characters.
Because of these rules, the topics they discussed often revolved around their jobs in the real world. Any member of the guild would field these questions and, as such, the conversation between the two could be considered standard fare for the guild.
After about ten minutes, the torrent of words that flowed from Herohero dwindled to a trickle.
"...I'm sorry for making you listen to my whining. I can't complain much IRL."
The place corresponding to Herohero's head seemed to sway, as though he were bowing in apology. Thus, Momonga replied:
"Don't worry about it, Herohero-san. I made you come online despite you being busy, so listening to your complaints is only expected. I'll hear you out, no matter how many you have."
Herohero seemed to have recovered some of his old energy, and with a somewhat more energetic laugh, he replied:
"Ah, I'm grateful for that, Momonga-san. I'm glad I could meet a friend after signing on."
"I'm very happy to hear you say that too."
"...Although it's about time for me to log off."
Herohero's tentacle waggled in mid-air, as though he were operating something. Indeed, he was operating a menu.
"You're right, it is getting pretty late…"
"I'm sorry about this, Momonga-san."
Momonga sighed gently, as though he didn't want Herohero to sense the regret in his heart.
"Well, if it's like that, then it's a shame… time flies so fast when you're having fun."
"I really did want to stay with you to the end, but I'm about to fall asleep."
"Ah — well, you do sound pretty tired. Then, you should log out soon and have a good rest."
"I'm really sorry… Momonga-san. Although, how long do you plan to stay, Guild Leader?"
"I intended to stay on until I was automatically logged out once the servers shut down. Since it's still a ways off, maybe someone might come by in the meantime."
"Is that so… still, I really didn't expect this place to be so well preserved."
At this moment, Momonga was grateful that he had no way to show his expressions. If he did, Herohero would probably have seen his face twist up. Even then, his voice would betray how he truly felt, so Momonga kept quiet, in order to suppress the feelings surging up within him.
He had worked hard to maintain the guild precisely because he had built it up along with everyone else, but hearing words like these from one of his guild members sparked a mix of complicated emotions in his heart. However, these feelings dispersed like mist as Herohero continued.
"Momonga-san, you must have kept the guild going as its leader so we could come back to it at any time. Thank you very much."
"...It was a guild built by everyone, so it's my job as guildmaster to keep things going so that the members can come back at any time."
"Yes. We had fun with the game because you were our guildmaster, Momonga-san… I hope that when we meet again, it'll be in YGGDRASIL II."
"I haven't heard anything about a second game… but like you said, I'd be glad if we could meet like that."
"I'll look forward to it! I'm having trouble staying awake… I think I'll log off first. I'm glad I could meet you in the end. Goodnight."
"..."
Momonga wanted to say something, but he hesitated for a moment, and then he spoke:
"I was very happy to meet you too. Goodnight."
A smiley appeared near Herohero's head. Since characters in YGGDRASIL could not express emotions through their facial expressions, they used emoticons instead.
Momonga worked his control interface, and produced a similar smiley.
Herohero's last words were, "Let's meet up again somewhere."
—And so, the last of the three guild members to come online tonight vanished.
Silence descended once more — it was as though nobody had ever been here in the first place. Nothing was left behind.
Momonga looked at the place where Herohero had been sitting, and he muttered the words he wanted to say.
"Today's the last day of the game, I know you're tired, but we'll never have a chance like this again, why don't we stay together until the end—"
Of course, there was no response, because Herohero had already returned to reality.
"Haahh."
Momonga's sigh came from the bottom of his heart.
In the end, it was better that it had remained unsaid.
During their brief exchange, he could already tell how tired Herohero was from the sound of his voice. Still, despite his fatigue, Herohero had still responded to the e-mail he had sent, and logged on for the last day of YGGDRASIL before it closed down. He should have been grateful enough for that. Asking him to stay on would not just have been a matter of being thick-skinned, but actively causing him trouble.
Momonga stared at the seat Herohero had occupied until just now, and then turned to look at the other thirty nine seats. Those were the places where his old comrades had once sat. After going a circle around the table, Momonga returned his eyes to Herohero's place.
"Let's meet up again somewhere… huh."
Let's meet up again somewhere.
See you again.
He had heard these words several times before, but they had never come true.
Nobody had ever returned to YGGDRASIL.
"When and where will we meet again—"
Momonga's shoulders shook violently, and the words he could no longer hold back exploded forth:
"—Are you kidding me!?"
He pounded the table as he shouted.
The YGGDRASIL system registered this action as an attack, and began the complex calculations of Momonga's barehanded attack strength against the table's defensive strength to determine the final total of damage inflicted. In the end, the area Momonga had struck emitted a simple [0].
"This is the Great Tomb of Nazarick that we built together! How could you abandon it just like that!?"
After he shouted the words in his heart, the only thing left in there was emptiness.
"...No, that's not right. They didn't abandon it lightly; they simply made the choice between reality and fantasy. It couldn't be helped. Nobody would betray the guild. Everyone who made that decision must have found it painful…"
Momonga muttered like he was trying to convince himself, and then he stood up. He walked toward the wall, where an elaborately decorated magic staff was kept.
—Seven serpents twined around the body of the staff, which resembled the kerykeion carried by Hermes Trismegistus. The serpents' mouths gaped open in agony, and each mouth held a gem of a different color. The grip was exquisitely carved out of crystal and glowed with blue light.
Anyone would be able to recognize this staff as a supremely high-quality item, and it was a Guild Weapon that was unique to this guild. One could call it the symbol of Ainz Ooal Gown.
This staff, which should have been a treasure held by the guildmaster, was instead kept in this room as a decoration.
That was because there was nothing else which represented the guild quite like this.
Guild weapons were typically kept hidden away in safe places and not used for their tremendous powers because a guild would be disbanded if its associated guild weapon was destroyed. Even Ainz Ooal Gown, a guild which existed at the peak of YGGDRASIL, was no exception to this.
This was the reason why the weapon had been kept here, and Momonga had never touched it, despite the fact that it had been tailor-made to complement his abilities.
Momonga extended a hand to the staff, but stopped halfway. This was because at this moment — in the last few minutes before YGGDRASIL shut down for good, he realised that soon the glorious memories he had made with his comrades would be lost forever, like tears in rain. The confusion he felt over this made him hesitate as he struggled to come to a decision.
Everyone had adventured every day, with the sole purpose of assembling the guild weapon.
Back then, they had held contests to see who could collect more raw materials more quickly, and there had been many disputes over the appearance of weapon. But slowly, after everyone's opinions were gathered, the weapon gradually took shape.
That period of time had been the prime of Ainz Ooal Gown, when all his glorious memories had been made.
People had dragged themselves online after a gruelling day at work, others had argued with their wives because they played until they neglected their families, and some even laughed and said they had taken special leave to stay home from work and log on to the game.
There were times when they had spent entire days doing nothing but talking about silly things for amusement. There were times when they would draw up plans for adventures, and times when they went looking for treasure. They had also mounted raids on enemy guilds' home bases and laid siege to their strongholds. Once, they had been attacked by a World Class Enemy — an immensely powerful, hidden boss monster — and the guild had nearly been destroyed as a result. They had also discovered many previously unknown resources, and they had placed all sorts of monsters in their guild base in order to eliminate invading players.
However, nine of them were left as of today.
Of the forty one members of the guild, thirty seven of them had quit. The other three were still registered as members of the guild, but Momonga had already lost count of the number of days since they had last come here.
Momonga opened a system console and connected to the developer's website to inspect the official guild rankings. Right now there were just under eight hundred guilds in YGGDRASIL. In the past, they had ranked as high as the ninth place, but now — as of the last day of the game — they were in the twenty-ninth place. At their lowest, they had fallen to forty-eighth place.
The reason why their ranking had not fallen even further was not because of Momonga's efforts, but because of the items left behind by his former comrades.
One could call this a hollow shell of a guild a relic of past glories.
—This was the incarnation of those days.
This was the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown.
He did not want to let this weapon and its memories of their golden days stay here to be a painful reminder of the past. Yet, contrary thoughts wormed their way through Momonga's heart.
Ainz Ooal Gown had always decided things by use of a majority vote. Momonga might have been the guildmaster, but his job was mainly communicating with people and doing other minor tasks.
Because of that, now that there were no other guild members present, for the first time, Momonga thought to exercise his powers as the guild's leader.
"This is a pretty sad state of affairs."
Momonga muttered to himself as he operated his player console. He intended to equip himself in the gear that best suited the leader of a top tier guild.
YGGDRASIL's equipment was classified according to how much data each item possessed. Items with more data were ranked higher. From the lowest to the highest rank, they were low class, middle class, high class, top class, legacy class, relic class, legendary class and, what Momonga was currently selecting, divine class.
On his ten bony fingers he wore nine rings, each with a different ability. Then there was the matter of his necklace, his gloves, his cape, his shirt, and his circlet, all of which were divine class items as well. If they had a price, it would be a jaw-dropping one.
The flowing robe which covered his torso was grander than the one he had worn earlier.
A red and black aura rose slowly from beneath his feet, and at a glance it seemed extremely ominous. This aura was not the result of any skill Momonga activated. It was simply because there had been extra room in the robe's data capacity, so the special effects data for a
「Disaster Aura」had been added into it. Touching that aura would not cause any harm.
In the corner of Momonga's vision, he could see various indicators which showed his stats increasing.
After changing out his gear, the fully-equipped Momonga nodded, satisfied that he looked the part of the guild's leader. Then, he reached out and grasped the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown.
As Momonga grasped the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown, it radiated a nimbus of reddish-black light. Tormented faces occasionally coalesced out of the roiling light, and then they crumbled and vanished again. They looked so realistic one could almost imagine them wailing in agony.
"...I wonder if they went overboard with the details."
The staff that had been made but never used had finally found its way into its rightful owner's hands, in the twilight hours of YGGDRASIL.
Momonga rejoiced as he saw his parameters rising rapidly, but at the same time he felt sad.
"Let's go, symbol of the guild. Or no — my symbol of the guild."