It was the games last day, without him knowing, and luckily Shota had a day off. The reason for it wasn't as lucky as the fact itself. He got the day off because one of is co-workers passed away at the workplace due to his terrible physical condition.

Of course the company claimed that they didn't know about his condition and that they feel deeply sorry for this misfortune. The truth of course is, that this is all just stated by them to get a good PR.

"Looks like the death march became quite literal for the poor dude.. Fucking company should schedule realistic finishing days for developers, these capitalistic bastards!"

Shota didn't know the guy that died, he saw him now and then - his bad condition even visible to him - but he never talked and didn't work in the same project area as him.

Object-Oriented Programming doesn't leave space for much interaction yet the company gave them all a day off to recover 'from the shock and the loss of their friend and co-worker'.

Shota had to chuckle ironically at this knowing full well that tomorrow would be even harder because their finishing date only got rescheduled by one day and he heard that the UI department was even forced to continue the project from home on their "day off".

After eating his tasteless dinner he decided to spend the rest of his free evening by doing something that would let him escape that world for a bit and continued reading his manga Attack on Titan. Ah yeah the early 21st century really had the best manga he thought while flipping through the digital pages.

After quite a long time of just sitting there and reading he finished the manga and now got a feeling that he didn't have the luxury of experiencing often - he was bored.

"What am I supposed to do with my time now?" He didn't want to waste a single drop of his precious free-time, especially since a co-worker sacrificed himself for that day off.

He then saw is VM gear and while thinking what game he should try playing again he put the device onto his head and linked it up.

"Jeez so many games and I'm not in the mood for any of these" he said while mindlessly scrolling through them. He hasn't been on this in ages because of the lack of free time on his hand and now that he had the time, he didn't even know what to do, until -

"Yggdrasil" he mumbled seeing the icon of the fantasy game floating in front of his inner eye.

"I think it's time for a nostalgia overload" he chuckled while launching the game.

In the main menu he saw his character floating in front of him.

It could be best described as a humanoid silhouette made out of blue smoke-like essence on the outside with a simple face that didn't have any detail. From thereon downwards to it's waist it looks like a human shape dressed in a cloak that looks like the skin of an octopus with blue glowing rings on its surface.

From the waist downwards his character has a long tail made from a mysterious purple looking matter. The tail is completely flat and reaches 2 meters(6'7 feet) in length. at the end of the tail it widens a bit and splits into 3 parts, the left and right part smaller and ending in an pointed tip while the center part of the tail has a glowing yellow circle on it with an eye symbol inside.

His race was called "Aboleth" and was probably one of the rarest races played in the game.

When the race first came out there were quite a few players trying it out but soon realized that they will just easily get PKed and against monsters with low intelligence its attacks were almost useless so they also died to monsters fairly often. Because of this a lot of players quit playing as the race and it got marked as garbage by the games community.

"I haven't seen you in a long while bud" Shota said to his Avatar and joined the game, after sitting in the loading screen for a short time while looking at useless lore displayed he was finally in the game.

"Hmm it doesn't seem like there is too much going on at the moment" he said while looking around in his last spawned location. It was a safe zone in alfheim. When he first spawned here he was confused for a second and wondering why he wasn't inside the guild base but soon realized that he decided to set this as his spawn the last time before he left. He and

Nishikienrai stopped here the last time after scouting out a random humanoid guild that was fighting a boss so they could evaluate their power. Turned out these guys were useless so they just told their guild-mates started to PK them.

"Good old times, I remember saying that I will come back tomorrow before I left, well that obviously didn't happen - RIP" he mumbled feeling a bit guilty for abandoning his friends while looking around for any players but he couldn't find anyone.

Even though the chances of players hiding here and waiting to pk him were very low he still checked just in chase and activated his skill [Revelation of the truest sight]. Right after the circle on his tail started to glow and after a few seconds of activation he could see everything in his field of view up to 4 kilometers (4370 yards) that could potentially harm him, however in the list of collected information there were no hidden players and nothing that could seriously threaten him, except - "Oh yeah that would be a great opportunity to warm up and kick some ass!". At the top of the list something popped up called Ljósálfar-Noble which was one of the light-elf bosses in the game, the same boss he remembers the humanoid squad fight. He already knew the bosses skillset and attack pattern by spying on the fight so he swiftly decided to go there.

"So here we are, go bring it on" he said after arriving in a marble dome with bright pillars. a fat 3 meter tall elf with a lavish looking scepter in his hand. The AI was obviously not programmed to reply to him but rather to just initiate a fight once someone enters the dome.

Right before the entrance, which is the fight trigger. he casts [Programmed Illusion], a 7th tier spell, on the pillars next to the noble, after the short cast time a menu popped up with the programming menu containing a handful of options for the program of the illusion, Shota quickly selects "activate on aggression" and the action to perform "block target(aggressor)". The spell is usually useless mid fight because of the menu setup and cast time which leaves you vulnerable however it is really handy if you want to prepare for a fight. He then proceeds by casting a 2nd tier [mirror image] a few steps in front of him. Mirror Image basically just projects an image of your avatar that does exactly what you do and by walking in first, the image was the first thing the boss encountered.

Sadly his intelligence was too high and the AI didn't attack.

"Hmm smarter than a beast are you for sure" he chuckled and right after that he rushed into the fight with an insane speed. After entering the boss roared in an instant and started to cast it's opening attack.

"HAHA I already know what your plan is!" Shota said as all of a sudden illusions of the pillars started moving obscuring the elfs sight and thus making his binding spell miss. After moving past the pillar Shota was already channeling his next attack, [Nightmare Manifest] stunning the enemy completely in fear for 5 seconds, which is an insanely good amount, until his mental resistance kicked in and freed him. Shota quickly activated is racial [Gazing Blade], which made his tail raise once again and his yellow eye shine, right after that the two pointed tips of the tail fired a projectile which connected the same moment it was shot and two blades stuck deep inside the boss. Now he fired back with an druidic air slash spell firing multiple big waves of compressed air right at him. The moment before they hit he activated another skill called [illusion swap] which basically warps him with any illusion he created and let him easily evade the attack. Because there still was the mirror image from the beginning he could swap position and easily evade the attack, after that they clashed again and again.

…

the fight was almost over, it wasn't clear to an outstander yet but his Aboleth skill [Fear Observer] was now fully charged and Shota was ready to use one of his signature moves so he closed the distance after stunning the boss again for a short while and then activated the skill [Living Nightmare]. His tail extended and wrapped itself around the poor Noble that just freed himself from another stun just to see the him holding it's glowing eye right in front of his face. The eye started to shine in a blue light and for a while after that nothing happened, the Noble was just standing around, with the insanity effect symbol above him but not moving and after that, it just collapsed and died.

Shota was proud of himself seeing that he was still capable of mastering all his skills and abilities as he watches the boss dissolve into gold and some trash item drops - Or that's what should've happened - Instead a amount of gold that usually just drops if you finish a huge dungeon raid with a guild spawned and filled up the whole dome. Shota was just stunned in confusion as he watches how his character absorbs all the money onto its account. And admits the drops that should've been only trash he found some really rare items.

"What the heck is going on? How are there so many drops? Did I miss an update or something? That's just ridiculous!" He continued browsing through the items, drops that don't even make sense for an elf. Curious but also confused he looked at all the items and data crystals and admits them he found an item called "Developers message".

"Is that some kind of thing the shitty developers came up with to just give overpowered shit to noobs?" he thought while proceeding to open the message, in it it simply said "You don't need to raid bosses, come enjoy the last hours with us, in the Plateau of midgard ~ the Yggdrasil team". He read the message twice before realizing what it meant. "Last day..?" Shota quickly opens up the GUI and looks into the Global Chat, and what is this? A countdown and only 3 minutes left? Server shutdown? Last day of Yggdrasil?.."Oh shit, oh shit"Now he remembered that there wasn't even any lore in the loading screen earlier but rather just messages from the developers to the players. He quickly swiped to his friend list, in which he didn't actually expect anyone to be online in, but what he saw almost broke his heart.

Momonga. He was online, alone, inside the guild base. He was waiting. Waiting maybe for him, probably just for someone to spend the last moments of the game with. Yet he was sitting there alone, probably still in the conference room. Why didn't he call him, why didn't he send him a message? But deep inside he knew why, it was simply the way Momonga was, no matter what his problem was he never liked making it the problem of others, even though everyone in the guild always told him that they like helping him it still made him feel guilty. This was probably also one of these occasions, Momonga must have thought I had a good reason to be somewhere else, probably setting off fireworks with the devs and didn't want to disturb me..

"fuck FUCK FUCK! Aaargh stupid game why is there no notification that my friend is online?Why did no one tell me earlier that today is the last day of the game?! Why- " he realized that he was just making up excuses for his own ignorance. He quickly called Momonga and explained the situation to him.

...

"It's alright, I understand but at least we could talk before the game shuts down"

"But still I'm so sorry for not being with you, I won't make it to the guild base in time"

"It's fine trust me just call me after the game ends and we can talk for a little more"

"Yes awesome ide-...umm Momonga..I think I just obtained a World Item" Shota was just as confused as Momonga as all of a sudden a bright shining world item emerged from the pile of items.