The Undead King
Page 3
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.
That’s better.
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.
23:59:58, 59—
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.
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.