The Professional of the New World
By: MrDenim
So, I won't lie, this is directly inspired by stories like Chaotic Good by Mister Grin, A Vulpine Spanner in the Works by Ten-Tailed-God, Black Sky Legion by LurkingEvil, and Tiamat: The Goddess of Dragons by imaweeaboo. If you have not read them, I highly recommend them because they are better written than this.
This is mostly me trying to write something concrete instead of just me writing down my brainstormed ideas and never finishing. I have not opened a non-work-related word document in around 7 years give or take – plus I was a rather poor writer to begin with – so you will probably see a shift in writing style throughout this story as I oil my old wordsmith hinges.
My main goal with this story is to try and write something I have seen in separate fics but not all in one (the stories above are the main ones I've read, so it is possible I've missed one that fits but I digress). So, let me tell you what this story will have right from the get-go so that you can decide for yourself if you want to stick around or leave to avoid annoyance at/disappointment in my choices.
What this story will have:
R63!SI!OC as the Main Character not as a 42nd member of Ainz Ooal Gown.
Original RP Guild that is completely separate from Nine's Own Goal/Ainz Ooal Gown.
OC!Players that may/may not (still undecided) come with MC to New World.
OC!NPCs that will gain sapience and worship (devotedly follow?) the Player(s) without question.
Character Builds that may/may not be balanced. (Really difficult to make a build for a non-existent MMO-RPG)
Not a crazy amount, but a fair amount of Wish-Fulfillment. (I'll do my best to show that MC has earned what she is given but let's be honest, this entire fandom and the IP, in general, is nothing but different levels of Wish-Fulfillment.)
What this story will not have:
Lemons/Limes/Smut/Sex/Etc. (I have nothing against that facet of the internet but I've never written R-18 content of that nature and I feel that this story is not the place to make the first attempt.)
Romance (I swear on your paycheck that I don't have any experience with romance in any form [I have essentially diagnosed myself as asexual/aromantic at this point in my life.] so I will not subject you all to my mediocre attempts at writing it. That, and I personally feel that romance tends to disrupt a story's flow if it wasn't presented very early on.)
MC!Harem (See above)
Now, I am still up in the air about when this story will end up in the New World's timeline, so I'll be taking suggestions in reviews/PMs. I can say that if I end up choosing to have them arrive at the same point in time as Nazarick, they will not knowingly interact much, if at all. If you guys want to read about what Nazarick gets up to then go read the Light Novels or watch the anime again, this is fanfiction, not canon.
This first chapter is just to set the stage. Even though I haven't done so before, I'll try to make the chapters after this one 10,000 words or more.
Endnote, I will finish this 500+ word opening Author's Note with a simple "Thank You" for bothering to read it and for clicking this story in the first place.
I bid you, adieu.
[Arc 1-1] Awakening
I ain't gonna lie, I didn't expect reincarnation to be so… abrupt. One moment I was heaving a line hand-over-hand with a group of about six others for a refuel and resupply out at sea. The next moment the supply ship we were with had slammed into our port bow. Our line immediately snapped and fell where it was from the lost tension as it was designed to. Our Line Captain was able to grab the nearest two sailors and kept them from going overboard. I was at the rear of the line-up and was flung headfirst into our forward gun, caving in my skull despite wearing a hardhat.
The moment after that I lurched out of a very stiff bed and fell face-first into the carpet. Yup, in a span of about 5 seconds I went from living on a USN warship, eagerly dreaming about our future Bahrain port visit, to dying on a USN warship, to living again and smashing my face into the floor. It took around a solid minute for me to collect myself and roll upright to see a light blue ceiling with a black ceiling fan rotating on the lowest speed with the light off.
With a grunt, I heaved myself up and sat on the edge of the bed, making the black/red plaid-patterned comforter fall around my waist. I took a confused look around the room. The side opposite of my bed had a bookshelf that contained two rows of books in various sizes and colored spines. The top row had a decent mixture of figurines and miniatures. There was a black circle on the deep blue wall next to the bookshelf that had a holographic image of a sea-green moon with the time in the center reading as 03:23. Below that clock was a stained wooden desk with a computer set up that visually put top-tier Twitch streamers to shame. I'm talking a four-monitor set-up (three side-by-side with one above the center monitor), an absolute unit of a tower, and some kind of VR headset that made SAO's NerveGear pack its bags and go home.
The wall to my right had two dark green doors at opposite ends of each other. In between those doors was a small table that acted as a support for some brand of ultra-thin, flat-screen tv. The wall to my left had a heavy-duty window with the blinds shut and the ocean-printed curtains closed. My bed had the previously mentioned comforter on top with white sheets and a white pillowcase underneath. As for myself, I was wearing some very comfortable red pajama bottoms and a white tank-top. I sighed and laid down on the bed, not bothering with the comforter, placing my hands behind my head.
"Alright," I thought to myself. "what the hell is going on?"
Almost instantly, someone else's memories started to surface. Apparently, the body I was currently… commandeering, is a young Japanese woman by the name of Sugawara Misoka. Born in 2107 AD what the fu… I blinked and my expression fell into a deadpan at that knowledge. I sighed in annoyance and continued to comb through the memories that were starting to trickle through. Born in 2107 AD to Sugawara Mikoto and Sugawara Hitoshi, Misoka was born with a compromised immune system, leading to her having a sickly childhood. Misoka's parents hired the best doctors money could buy to try and alleviate their child's problems, to no avail. Apparently, these guys were – and still are – so rich that they could buy out Jeff Bezos at his peak and still have enough money to not want for anything in their entire lives. Instead of using their vast fortune to get richer or better the world through humanitarian efforts – and let me tell you, the world needs it if these memories are to be believed – they chose to ensure that their child would not need to labor for a day of their lives.
You see, the planet is quite literally FUBAR beyond anything Sir David Attenborough could have possibly anticipated. The total population of the planet is over 20 billion people. The rain is acidic to the point that the roofing industry is considered one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. The atmosphere is contaminated with so much smog that you would need to layer and gas-mask up like it's S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Metro's illegitimate lovechild outside. Buildings are outfitted with heavy-duty air filters to make sure the occupants don't die in their sleep. White-collar corporations have taken over the world's governments and the criminal underworld. Damn near every job in the world has at least one turnover a day.
Then there's little Sugawara Misoka, the 16-year-old sick kid that didn't need to work, drive, or even leave the manor if she didn't want to. She got every brand new luxury item she asked for without question. She just finished her private tutor's final exams several years ahead of schedule, leaving her free as a bird when it came to education.
Then there's me, the asshole American sailor that never went to college and almost flunked out of high school, just to die and take over her body.
Plink!
I grunted and turned to look at the computer to see the tower's fans kick on and start to cycle between every shade of dark blue to light green.
"Oh goddammit, kid!" I grunted in pain, slammed my eyes shut, and shifted my head away from the far wall as the monitor flashed white at the maximum brightness before it slowly dimmed as it exited Sleep Mode.
I blinked when my voice registered. "My voice…" I then deadpanned. "Right, the gods thought it would be funny to put a dead 21st-century sailor's mind in the body of a growing Japanese teenage girl." I huffed out a laugh. "Who can apparently get very snarky… well, at least that's one thing we have in common."
I waited a few seconds for the spots to disappear from my eyes and slowly worked myself into a sitting position. I stood up and stumbled across the room – my legs were too short and my new breasts threw off my balance okay! - and saw that the inbox was open and that I had a new email. Subject line reading "Closed Beta Invite Accepted!" Curious, I opened the email and immediately choked on my own saliva.
"No fucking way…" I muttered in shock. "Yggdrasil?"
Not only did I die. Not only did I reincarnate just to take over a teenage girl's body. Not only was I a solid 100 years in the future. But also I was in the Overlord universe. Well, it certainly put a new perspective on things. A glance at the date on the bottom of the screen showed it was May 18th, 2123. It was a good three years until the DMMO-RPG game Yggdrasil was set to release. And I was apparently accepted to participate in the first of possibly several betas to bug-hunt and provide input before release.
Congratulations, Sugawara Misoka-san! The email read. You have been accepted to participate in the first closed beta of the upcoming DMMO-RPG game Yggdrasil. Within this email, you will find enclosed your login credentials, which is used to access our beta site linked at the end of this email; your beta access key, a 32-character passcode that you must enter after you log in to gain access to the files and launcher that must be installed to your nano-interface console; and your beta-tester identification number, which is used on our end to catalog the various bugs, glitches, and other issues that specific users have found.
Once you launch the game, you will be able to create your character with our provided tools or use the following 3rd-party tools that are natively supported: Imperial3DModeler, Falcion3D Toolkit, Custom's Overlay Creator, Visionary, Redux's Redux, and TwistHead Studio Creation Kit. After your character is created you can play through the tutorial quests, or don't! Explore, or don't! Fight other players in PvP matches, or don't! In Yggdrasil, player freedom is the number one priority.
There will be a new beta session every quarter, each lasting two weeks, up to the official release date on December 13th, 2126. Seeing how you are a "First Wave" beta-tester, you are automatically granted access to all future closed and open betas. When the game releases, your beta-tester account will be upgraded to the Ginnungagap account tier which will give the following benefits:
- Monthly stipend of in-game currency and shop tickets that can be redeemed for customization kits, high-end weapons and armor, and much more.
- Access to new beta features 7 days ahead of other players.
- Character name in golden text with the beta-tester symbol as an optional flair.
- An "Ascension" option where you can change your character's race and build on launch day while keeping all items that you have acquired throughout the beta phase. (Think of this as a New Game+ feature)
- Priority access to the GM call queue.
- And much more!
We are excited to have you as a part of this journey from the very beginning!
Signed,
The Nine Worlds Studio
...well, Ferb, I know what we're doing today…
[[[(({~~~}))]]]
One Terabyte of data?! How much open space does the console ha-
Oh, that's a lot of Tera.
So, after going to a website that looked like it was made by the same guy that made AskJeeves, I entered the log-in information and the beta key. My account and beta-tester identification number were the same – no surprise there – as #125. The 120 studio house members all had their own accounts which means I was the fifth person to be accepted to the closed beta.
Hmm…
While the game was downloading to the console, I turned and looked at the miniatures that were sitting on the bookshelf. Suspicious, I combed through my new memories and found out that my new mother, Mikoto, was a leader in the video game industry and a bigger nerd than I was in both of my lives, and had invested heavily into Dive Technology when it was in its infancy. This means that my acceptance to the closed beta was not done of my own merit or even a lottery pick, but because the development team was probably hoping I would mention the game, and by extension, their game studio, to my mother and bring them the highest of investors.
So, I get to play the biggest and most immersive video game of all time ahead of damn near everyone else because my mom has pockets so deep they make the Mariana Trench look like a ditch at the side of the road. Well, shit! It's Tuesday right now so, by the end of the week I'll be singing this game's praises to the point that my mom might just outright buy the studio and keep the team on her payroll just to keep the game alive all so that her daughter can continue to enjoy it.
That's when I remembered the plot of Overlord. I have roughly 15 years to make the most broken character possible to ensure that if I get sent to the New World, I won't get curb-stomped by the first schmuck that decides to get snarky. Or I could do that while also role-playing for 15 years, that's also an option. That's when I noticed a particular figurine that had two swords on his back, white hair in a ponytail, a short scruffy beard, and piercing yellow eyes.
If I recall Yggdrasil and the New World correctly, they were both filled with monsters of various breeds and strengths. So, maybe they didn't need a Hero.
Maybe they needed a professional.
I turned back to the monitor and blinked in surprise. The game already finished downloading and was almost finished installing. An entire terabyte of compressed data was already downloaded. When it finishes installing… now, this nano-interface, dive, tech… stuff, now has around 2.8 terabytes of uncompressed data dedicated to the biggest and best video game I will ever experience. The crazy part is I still have around half of a petabyte – around 500 terabytes – of storage free in the console's storage drive.
"How fast is our damn internet?" I snorted in amusement. It's funny hearing a 16-year-old Japanese girl swear like a sailor.
Alright! Time to get comfy and to Matrix for 12 hours straight. I grabbed the console and placed it over my head, leaned back in my leather chair, and smiled as I grabbed the input cable that plugs into the back of my neck.
"Link, start!"
Shit hold on I put it in backward…
God damn it seriously, backward again! Every fucking time I swear to…
There we go! Now then…
"Link, start!"
Nothing happened…
Was I supposed to- oh Jesus!
My vision suddenly faded to black as music started to play. Drums pounded in my ears as bones were used as percussion in the back of my head. Guttural male voices and a shamanic female voice sang in ancient proto-germanic at the front. They sang of glorious wars and battles to come. Of demons hidden in Hel and the gods and goddesses that opposed them from Asgard. Of giants and undead. Of humans and beasts. Of dwarfs and elves. The World Tree, in all of its insurmountable size and resplendence, its innumerous leaves falling to nine enormous worlds. The title card faded in as the music climaxed and faded into a soft ambient track.
Yggdrasil
Gesture to Start
A quick gesture and a message popped in front of me while the character creator loaded everything in the background.
Hello and welcome to the closed beta of Yggdrasil! You are one of two hundred and fifty lucky chosen to take part in the Yggdrasil experience before its release! Behind this message is the character creator where you can build your avatar in any way you wish, including with accepted 3rd party tools. Keep in mind that actions that can be considered as an R-18 action like explicit messages and motions of a sexual nature are forbidden by this game's rating of CERO C and can result in a permanent ban from all Yggdrasil and Nine Worlds Studio content.
I tapped "I understand" and looked at the rotating avatar model. I flicked a hand towards a flashing light at the edge of my vision and a message screen opened showing six system updates.
[x6] Successfully loaded third-party tool!
It seems that this console already had the six natively supported creation tools installed on its storage drive. Let's take a look at what races are available to be selected in the first closed beta.
200 options?! Christ-on-a-stick! What is this thing gonna look like on release day? Let's see here: Human, Dwarf, Elf, High Elf, Dark Elf, Wild Elf, Fey, Siren, Fairy, Dragonoid, Slime, Vampire, Skeleton, Tabaxi, Demon, Lycanthrope, Dryad, Giant, Merfolk, Minotaur, Goblin, Kobold, Naga, Lamia, Centaur, Automaton, Elemental, Zombie, Undead, Insect and so on. This… is going to be so much fun!
With the apparent New Game+ on launch, what I choose to do for the beta period doesn't matter in the end so let me think for a minute here. Ooh, Tabaxi looks cool! But the Kobold looks so cute. If I can fly then the Dragonoid might be the way to go. On the other hand, if I choose Lycanthrope I could transform into a giant-ass wolf!
Dammit, this is so difficult! I can't figure out which one I want to play as.
Oh my god just PICK ONE!
Uuh… Hello?
Oh so now you can hear me?!
Great, I thought sarcastically, not only did I reincarnate, but now I'm schizophrenic as well!
No, you fucking asshole gaijin! The voice snapped. I'm Sugawara Misoka!
My heart stopped for a second. Oh, fu… Well, shit. I can apologize for it being you, but I can't exactly apologize for dying in the first place.
Stupid fucking… Misoka groaned in annoyance. Listen, I know you died. We have each other's memories. Everything's a fucking mess up here and you being indecisive is really hampering on things getting sorted!
I blinked at that and turned off the game and took off the console. What do you mean by "getting sorted"?
HELL IF I KNOW! Misoka shouted, sounding near hysteric. I just wake up to find myself being controlled like some kind of puppet by some 100-year-old asshole!
Wow, hurtful. I deadpanned.
Fuck off! She faded off, just letting out large heaving breaths. It took a few moments for her to recollect herself and softly say, I just want things to go back to normal.
I do too, Misoka-
Oh, don't fucking lie! This is basically a dream come true for you. You get to have super-rich parents that'll buy you an island if you asked for it. You get to play a game that your generation couldn't even dream of. You don't have to labor away on a rusty warship for a shitty paycheck. You don't have to worry about money, or food, or bills, or anything ever again! Then there's me. What do I get? I get to play backseat driver and watch someone else control my body, talk to my family, touch my stuff, eat my food! I might as well just fucking disappear once you get all of my memories. And there's not a damn thing I can do about it!
I was quiet for a few minutes while Misoka cried.
Misoka-chan, I-
Shut UP! I flinched at the sudden sharp pain behind my eyes the appeared when she snarled. Enjoy your new life, Misoka-chan…
Misoka… Misoka! I started breathing a bit heavier. Misoka come back, please! We can figure things out!
...Misoka?
I suddenly let out a shuddering breath and tears started falling. I leaped up and stormed out into the hall and the hallway bathroom. I lurched over the sink and emptied my- Misoka's stomach.
...Misoka?
I dry-heaved and covered my – Misoka's! - mouth to muffle a sob as tears streaked down my-Misoka's face.
...Misoka, talk to me… please?
My back hit the wall and I slid down it to rest on the wooden floor. I hunched over and planted my face into my knees, desperately trying to keep my crying quiet to the rest of the family.
Misoka come back, please! I don't FUCKING want this, Misoka! Please come back! Pleasepleasepleasepleasepleaseplease-
"Misoka? Misoka!"
I suddenly felt my mother's arms wrap around my shoulders as she shushed under her breath to try and calm me down.
"Misoka dear what's wrong? Did you have another bad nightmare? Come on dear tell your Mother what's wrong."
On and on and on she kept muttering those calming words into my hair.
I don't fucking deserve this Hell! I don't fucking want this, Misoka! Please! Come back!
...please come back, Misoka...