I had been playing Yggdrasil since the beginning, and loved it; I was never an excellent player but I was in the top 500 players list. Most people stayed in guilds, but a small number of players, of which I was included, were called solo players. I played by myself for levelling, but I did use groups for dungeons and raids, so I used a build of my own design; which took years of experimentation, to level alone and avoid PvP, or survive it. Unfortunately, Yggdrasil was closing down, after 12 years of operation, and no second version of the game was announced. My story takes place on the night of the shut-down and how this leads to a fun time in a new world.

My character was a level 100 doppelganger called Tek, I liked the shape-shifting. My build was…unusual to say the least:

Doppelgänger (15)

Elder Doppelgänger (10)

Job skills:

Guardian (10)

Black Guard (5)

Unholy Knight (10)

Illusionist (15)

Cleric (15)

High Cleric (10)

Elementalist (Ground, Ice) (10) (10)

For these to make sense I must explain some of how the game works. Yggdrasil had thousands of possible jobs, and a lot of classes and races. A doppelganger was one that could shape-shift, but its true form looked like a humanoid with long fingers, pale skin, bald head, and a face that was just three holes. The doppelganger belonged to a class of species called the heteromorphic races.

Now if these explanations sound familiar, it's because I played the same game as a very famous Overlord called Momonga/Ainz Ooal Gown, I did get to meet him later, and when in Yggdrasil I was a fan of him and his friends, they never knew me but they were on the list of top players; as well as a huge topic on the forums, primarily people blaming them of cheating as well as whining about stolen guild weapons.

Basically, I was a magic tank. A tank takes the attention and damage from enemies so that other classes can focus on direct damage or healing. Tanks are difficult to level as quickly, they have high health and defence, but their killing speed is slow. The guardian and knight classes where based around physical tanking. But Cleric was to heal myself, and illusionist to confuse enemies. An illusionist can change an enemy's perception as well as cause distractions and fear de-buffs.

My last class was elementalist, both specializing in earth and ice. I chose those two elemental specializations so as to use the strength and shielding buffs, from earth elementalism such as [Wall of stone] / [Wall of Crystal]. And Ice so I can counter flame spells and slow/freeze enemies, which is vital for escaping

Anyway, I was guildless; always a solo player, though friends with people from one of the stronger guilds (Titan's Legacy), rank 15th of all the guilds, who helped me with dungeons and getting gear and in return I helped level and train their newbies, it was give and take; I was always good at training and explaining to beginners.

The night my world changed was the night of the shut-down. I had decided to stay online until the server kicked me off automatically when the servers shut down. I was waiting in my favourite place, the city of Helheim, talking to players from TL who were staying too; though they logged before the actual shut-down because the Game Masters sent messages that suggested that players log off before the official server shut down time, because it might corrupt character data if it was still saving changes as the server closed. Some of that data had a chance to be disrupted, the reasons they suggest this and didn't want the data to be corrupted was for if they made Yggdrasil II or restarted the servers or games for any reason later. We got the messages saying that the server would shut down soon and the GMs were setting off fireworks.

At the second of shut-down, at exactly midnight in Japan; everything started going dark, which was to be expected. It was a rolling shut down, which meant that parts of the server would shut down in orders, like a ball rolling, to allow people to leave before the actual complete power off, in case people didn't get the messages to log off. But something changed.