Tabula Smaragdina
Epithet: The Great Alchemist
Gender: Male
Race: Heteromorphic Race - Brain Eater
Affiliation: Ainz Ooal Gown
Occupation: The Tomb of Nazarick's "Gimmick Maker"
Racial Levels
Brain Eater (10)
Neuromancer (5)
Job Levels
Alchemist (15)
Doctor (15)
Life Crafter (10)
Wizard (10)
War Wizard (10)
Vivisectionist (10)
Craftsman (10)
Gene Stealer (5)
Total Level: 100
-O-O-O-
Prologue
With only a single tiny but precise cut of the scalpel the ogre warlord collapsed. The loot drop would have been amazing to any level 10 to 15 players. Enough gold to buy a few armor sets and that mace would have made any properly spec'ed a fighter ecstatic, that was until the party began to bicker over who got what loot. Not today however. As this ogre fortress dungeon had just been cleared by a single lone player. Tabula Smaragdina returned the low level scalpel to his starter doctor garb. He'd been playing YGGDRASIL for years now, so much so that he had leveled up his character to the maximum level of 100, becoming not only one of the most powerful players in the entire game, but also a member of one of the most infamous guilds in that game, Ainz Ooal Gown.
Tabula himself was a player race known as a "Brain Eater". He had a mostly humanoid body, but with an extremely thin and emaciated frame covered in semi-amphibious smooth grey skin. His head resembled a large octopus with tentacles flowing down over his shoulders and back, making for useful additional limbs at times. He had chosen the race primarily for its creepy appearance, as he was a huge fan of horror, among other things. To compliment it he also tried to create the creepiest combination of classes he could, focusing on medical mutilation and Frankenstein body horror through alchemy, crafting, and medicine. The character was never intended to be particularly powerful, or suited to PVP. It was just meant to be cool. Of cause his focus in creation made him an invaluable member to his guild as an item, trap, and monster creator.
Normally he'd have been wearing his end game enchanted surgeon robes. But as YGGDRASIL would soon be shutting down their servers, possibly forever, he decided to go on a nostalgic ride through some of the early dungeons he played in so many years ago. Normally this Ogre fortress would have taken a solid party of at least a dozen level 10 or so players to beat. But he got through the whole thing without ever losing more than one or two points of health, and that was with only starter items and without casting any of his potent destruction spells.
Tabula chuckled, "Hah, it's interesting to see how far I have come." He mused to himself, "It's a shame I had to leave Herohero and Momonga alone in the guild room… but he kind of just wanted to solo play for a while... Part of the nostalgic experience." It did feel like a huge part of his life, and indeed all their lives was going to be dying soon, but at least he still had most of his guild friends on social media. Perhaps they could still find another game to play?
He looked around the room, it was something of a throne room, ogre corpses thrown about, so much blood but only small wounds on most of the creatures, evidence of Tabula's medical combat skill thanks to the Vivisectionist job. Large tables with barely half cooked food for the ogres as he had interrupted them in the middle of their "dinner time routine". He slowly walked up to the warlord's throne and sat down. Pulling up his menu the holograph like box appeared in front of him and with a few waves of his long spindly webbed fingers he cycled through information, "Herohero just logged off… although it looks like Momonga is still online… maybe I should message him." He considered it for a few moments before shaking his octopi bead, "Nah, The servers got minutes left at most, and I've got nothing to say… I'll message him and everyone else tomorrow."
Leaning back into the animal fur draped stone throne he realized how tired he was suddenly feeling. He didn't have any time to do any more low level quests, even at his ridiculous level. He'd just sit there and wait for the servers to shut down… any moment now…
LEVEL 1
With a start Tabula awoke, sitting up quickly his inhuman mouth creating a spluttering squeal in surprise. His hand reached up to rub his head as he whispered to himself, "Woah… I must have dozed off… I didn't think I was that tired."
He looked around the room in confusion, "What time is it? Did they extend the shutdown time." He raised his hand and attempted to activate the menu, only nothing happened.
"W-what?" He said before attempting the same action again several times, still the menu did not appear. It was then he also began to realize the smell of blood around him… usually YGGDRASIL's simulated smells were limited at best, there was probably only a dozen smells in the entire game, and certainly not a smell for old caked blood… but that was definitely blood he could smell.
He looked around the room again, realizing that much of the spilled ogre blood had oxygenated, gone brown through contact with the air. This was something he understood well from his obsession with horror, but he knew it was a piece of real life YGGDRASIL never bothered to implement.
Starting to get worried he stood up, noticing his eyesight was sharper then it usually was. He also noted an unusual amount of dexterous control over his tentacle appendages. Normally players only had a limited amount of control over their non-human limbs in YGGDRASIL But Tabula was now finding himself flexing them around with articulate ease, like they had been a part of him his entire life.
"This is too weird!" He exclaimed to himself, "What is this? Some kind of unannounced update?"
Before he could ponder anymore he heard a sound that chilled him to his very core, "HalCK! Help! Plea-ahck, Please!"
He turned to his right and followed the noise until coming to a hallway connecting to the throne room, a single dismembered ogre lay on the ground he remembered taking that NPC down, he scored less damage on that one then most others, but it was still more than enough to kill it… or at least disable it after several more attacks.
As he approached the wounded ogre the thing saw him with its one still intact eye, its entire body seized as it attempted to flee on limbs it did not have. Only a single arm that ended in a bloody stump at the elbow remained, but that couldn't move its corpulent form.
"What the hell?" Exclaimed Tabula, YGGDRASIL was no children's game, but gore like this had never been a feature of it, certainly not such gruesome sights as half dead enemies whimpering for their lives.
Upon realizing it could not move the ogre seemed to stop fighting it and mealy slumped down staring up at the brain eater that slaughtered its brethren. "Y-Yah stoopid squeid ting!" He seemed to be trying to trying to think of an insult but could only shout in pain again.
It collected itself again before grunting, "Go on then! Pleease! FINISH ME!"
Tabula took a step back in shock from the confronting scene before him. He had long been desensitized to basic gore form this beloved horror movies… but seeing it in front of him in person like this, with this weird sense of guilt… He felt like he was going to throw up. His stomach lurched, but just before he could empty out a green glow shone around him, seeming to alter his mood, he suddenly felt as though he was unfazed by the gore before him. Like it was inconsequential, even… beautiful?
Doing the only thing he could think of, he drew out his viciously sharp scalpel and completely severed the ogre's neck arteries. The creature seemed to give Tabula the faintest of smiles as though thanking him for his mercy, and finally bled out, dying.
"What's going on?" Asked Tabula to the air, "Th-this can't be YGGDRASIL!"
He quickly turned around and ran towards a stair case, making his way up towards the top of the fortress. He knew the Ogre fort was in the center of a wide open Badlands, but upon reaching the top and stepping out into the air he gasped.
All around the fortress in every direction was a huge lush forest that the fort had been seemingly just dropped straight in the middle of. Tabula leaned on a stone palisade barely processing what was going on.
"Where the hell am I?!" He looked down at his long webbed fingers, and at his slithery smooth and ever so slightly moist tentacles that he raised beside his hands, "This is… Is this real?"
-O-O-O-
(Author's Note: I should make sure reader's are aware that I have not read the light novel (Mostly because I have not yet been able to find a copy) Although I have watched the anime and read the Manga. As such some parts of the world I will probably have to fill in myself, and some of it may conflict with the novel's lore. Although I will do my best to avoid this. If I give any easily corrected lore errors please let me know and I'll probably fix them.)