Prologue

Ahna smirked victoriously to herself as her fingers trailed over the headgear she had torn from the boxes that now laid in defeat. Bubblewrap draped over furniture as if gorey residue from her battle.

It was time. One of the most expensive purchases of her life had arrived. The Vetro Immersive Dive System Gear. Top of the line and now all hers. She had finally gotten them and for one specific purpose.

To play the game known as Yggdrasil. THE top DMMO-RPG of the last three years. Boasting a whopping 4.9/5 rating on Game Infomate and her best friend had begged her to play since it came out. She had already downloaded the game and all that was left was this.

She punted the box back to the living room and out of her way before moving to install the devices.

Logging in

The woman bounced her foot impatiently before it finished, flashing a new screen with only one option reading:

Create New Character

A wide smirk grew on her face as she clicked the button, ready to launch into the game.

"Ahna?" A voice called hours later into the now darkened home. "What the hell happened in here?" The male glanced around at the trash littered around the shared apartment.

"Desolation." The woman called from the floor near her gaming rig. "And the utter stench of failure."

Takashi, Ahna's college friend, rounded the corner to see the set up and a screen that proclaimed that she had died and needed to remake her character.

"Oh shit. Did you start playing by yourself?!" He hurried over to the screen to see the details of her character. "How long have you been at this?"

"I don't know anymore. All I know is Yggdrasil is a garbage game and I don't want to play anymore this evening."

He chuckled, causing the smaller woman to whip her head towards him, eyes furious. "Is something funny? I've literally saved for months for this system and this game. Only to be killed at least a dozen times by player characters that were at least 20 times my level. Worse still, did you know if you are killed below level 10 you have to remake your character?" She glared at him. "Cause I sure as fuck didn't. Who designs a game with only one character slot and you have to remake it if you die?"

The black haired man raised his hands. "Just let me get on my rig and I'll guard you through the beginner level."

Frustrated tears began to leak from the woman's eyes. "Why should I have to be guarded? I just wanna play the game I spent money on."

Takashi could understand. If you wanted to play a heteromorph then you had to work hard on getting past the first part. It was something all the guild members remember going through all too well. "If you'll give it one more try, I promise it'll be worth it." He told his best friend softly.

"Fine, but you have to help me make the character." Ahna said with a renewed sense of purpose. "I'm gonna get my character to max level and then I'm gonna come back here and waffle stomp these shitty little snipes."

The male extended his hand for a fist bump. "Now that's the Ahna I know."

To be fair that is exactly what Ahna did over the years under the gamertag AntiSavior69. She became a regular on raid nights in her and Takashi's guild, Ainz Ooal Gown. While she wasn't a founding member nor was she even one of the first to join, she turned up to almost every event. Be it raid, role playing, or Tomb repair quests, she showed up and was fairly liked by everyone.

Obviously she had her favorite guild member, Takashi or as the guild knew him, Ulbert Alain Odle. She could honestly say there was not many who she disliked but Momonga, a skeleton mage, and Luci Fer, an angel Puppeteer, were by far some of her favorite players.

The game became a place of refuge as the woman's life began to fall apart and with everyone leaving for newer and brighter games, or just outgrowing it and moving on with their lives in general. The members dwindled down to two. That was okay, Ahna had always thought that so long as she could play the game with Momo she would have at least one friend.

However fate was a cruel and merciless mistress, as she took from Ahna once again.

The woman couldn't believe her eyes when she had first gotten the email. Yggdrasil was closing its servers?! She knew that the amount of players had dwindled from its glory days but she had never thought that it would actually shut down.

Maybe in her heart she had thought that her guild members would return one day but now the chance of that had been thrown out the window. She knew that she should see this as any other game, but this had been her comfort game. It was something her friends and she had worked hard to create. A small piece of each one of them was in the halls and floors of the Tomb. She loved each character simply because they were pieces of their creators. She had thought that it would last forever.

It seemed that forever ended tonight.