Overlord: Beyond the New World

by decoysnail

After reflecting in death a scientist and scholar has a chance to go to the overlord world and he sees this as his chance to finally reach the stars and fulfill his ambitions, with the exploitation of wishes, red text, and good ole bribery our protagonist sets himself up for the long haul, building his own guild, and NPC's to support his exploration of the new world and beyond.

4. Chapter 4

I am back and want to apologize for the Hiatus, in the time between the last chapter and this one I have moved 5 times over 2 states and finished my diploma and associates degree as well as most of my bachelors Degree on top of my job so time has been scarce for me, the first half of this chapter was written in the same day the 3rd chapter was but after that I wrote a few pages sporadically over the course of months so if there is a change in tone randomly through the latter half I hope you will be willing to suspend your disbelief as I initially intended for these 4 chapters to just be the prolog but more and more details kept getting thrown in and I had to get this out as soon as possible or it might have never been finished.

But overall I am happy with the chapter and while I had A few more thoughts about what can be done in the "real world" the chapters is already nearly 14k words and I want to actually start the real story since I have been thinking about this story none stop since months before chapter 1. Hope you enjoy.

The time between me logging off and then logging back on was about 18 hours. For 18 hours the servers were empty for the first time since the launch of the game and new players were still coming in by the thousands.

I, in the meantime, was simply on a lower floor in the building hanging out with the devs, just talking about the current state of the game and how development is going. Though nothing particularly interesting was discussed, most things on the content side of things were finished a few days ago, and all that was happening now was making sure everything was meshing well with networking and nothing got broken in the implementation.

I eventually went to sleep soon after.

I needed to consolidate what I knew, what I am planning, and what I am going to do as soon as the update launches.

There is nothing complicated planned for now but this is my future we are talking about, I have to take this seriously even though I know exactly what is coming.

Waking up earlier than usual I immediately get to the dive gear, there is still a few minutes until the servers come back up and I am already sitting at the login screen.

And just like a sprinter waiting at a line, as soon as I hear the beep that indicates the servers are back up, I launch into the game the very frame such an action is permitted.

Immediately I met with pop ups of congratulations, that I have gained the option to level into 2 classes that I earned by being the top player in the Angel and Demon leaderboards.

The rankings of the leaderboards is one of the new major features in this update; and its ranking is determined by various factors such as PvP records, main quest progression, side quests completed, raids completed, XP accumulated, Total hours played, and a few other factors all backed into a weighting algorithm that determines how much each achievement is worth in overall rankings.

Obviously I have known about each exact condition and the exact algorithm ever since I have seen the devs work on it all those months ago and have been playing accordingly to maximize my scores.

Though I was magnanimous enough to not pull too far ahead of other players, I am only a mere few orders of magnitude ahead of my nearest competitors.

Needless to say my position is firmly cemented in first place where it belongs.

As for the classes I unlocked I quickly respected to get the details on them. Being in the top 3 of the angel race gets you the rather vague class of [Ruach hakodesh]. Obviously based on the judeo christian idea of the holy spirit, or rather more abstractly the influence of god on the universe. Which bodes very well to my ever growing expectations of what will be the abilities and stats of these classes.

And disappointed I am not. It truly lives up to its name. Boasting massive stat modifiers across the board and an incredible passive ability, [Cardinal of Fortitude] a bona fide virtue which grants stackable buffs based on failed actions.

Damage an enemy but still in combat? More damage. Miss a swing, spell, or arrow? More accuracy. Damage taken? Resist that damage type. etc.

Of course they are only temporary but it is still enough to ensure that the window of opportunity for a successful attack on me grows over smaller as an attacker (or lets be real here, attackers) will have but mere moments of combating me without absurd amounts of buffs.

Definitely not very flashy like the special abilities of other races like the /kill skill undead get with their eclipse class but it is the epitome of the hypercompetitive scene in this game at the moment.

As for the demonic Leaderboard class it is called [Yetzer hara] showing the dev's dedication to double down on this judeo-christian mythological theme for rare angelic and demonic classes, and as well as the obligatory stats increase that is the standard for very rare classes such as this one, it also has the special passive ability of [one for good one for evil] a skill that adds a stacks buffs for the opposite action and attribute you are currently using, and consumes the all stacks of [one for good one for evil] when it is used. For example everytime I deal fire damage I gain a stack of defense and elemental Ice resistance. For every time I take holy damage I gain a stack of damage buff, and add unholy elemental damage to next attack.

Needless to say this scales incredibly fast with [Cardinal of Fortitude] and it has insane synergy.

All of this was expected. It was the whole reason that I leveled so heavily in racial levels instead of class levels. However what I did not expect was that I met the requirements for a third class.

It was called [Final Frontier] and it's red text was quite interesting ( red text is just an in lore description all the classes, races, and notable items have one but most are pretty vague).The text read " To thou who conquers heaven, earth, and hell there is only one more frontier to conquer, the final frontier". How thematically appropriate I muse.

It is a chronomancy/aethermancy (Aether is the ancient greek answer to what is above the atmosphere, aka space) focused class with a few time spells, and space based spells, like [Gravity Maelstrom] which is hands down the best area denial spell in the game that we currently know about.

I was not expecting to get such a useful set of skills but the new area denial, mobility, and time fuckery is a welcome edition, this alone would probably double the amount of people I can take in a single battle.

Not because it will kill them any faster but I would be able to split groups better. For example instead of fighting a single 1v28 which I probably couldn't win if they were competitive players, I can instead split them into groups and instead do 2 consecutive 1v14 or 4 consecutive 1v7 which I can absolutely win against even against extremely competitive players.

Regardless I am happy with how this turned out, I respec accordingly and continue on the main mission.

Find the high dungeon of vanaheim. And conquer it.

I know the general direction and the overall environment it is supposed to be in.

I definitely had my work cut out for me however. It took over 28 hours of scouring plains, and fields as well as a few false dungeons that I realized were not what I was looking for before I eventually found it.

This is my first time I have actually seen the place. So far I have only had glances at the more backend of things, the mechanics, the algorithms,etc, and a few blurbs of descriptions.

And I very much like what I see.

The main dungeon of Vanaheim was an enormous library on the end of a narrow peninsula surrounded by canals, ports, and other waterways. Overgrown by dense vines and vegetation it strikes an impressive silhouette and I have to approach by a small canoe.

So integrated with the sea it is that I can even row my boat inside of the behemoth building, like a cathedral, the walls and ceiling are covered in mosaics and paintings, though significantly degraded and damaged with roots swallowing much of the artwork.

Through the building I can see passageways on each side of the canals with ripped banners and long faded signs failing to convey any meaning navigation.

Well they would fail to do so to the average human.

For me however all these details and decorations build up my understanding of a very important factor that is essential to how dungeons are made in this game.

You see dungeons in Yggdrasil are procedurally generated. This is to make sure that each dungeon attempt is at least somewhat unique with differing layouts in each attempt though much of the core mechanics and themes of each different dungeon is preserved.

However this comes with the important detail that every dungeon attempt has a seed.

And if, for example, a super intelligent Human were memorize the entirety of the algorithm used to generate the dungeon and fully understand the pseudorandom number generation, one could work out the entire structure of a dungeon from traps, to spawn location, to secret passages by extrapolating the seed used by observing details of one room then putting the extrapolated seed though the algorithm memorized and predicting the rest of the structure by comparing predicted structures with discovered structures and refining the "guessed seed" to better correspond to reality.

Such a method would allow basically full knowledge of the entire dungeon and be incredibly useful.

Needless to say I took immediate advantage, as I will need many such advantages since I am currently taking on a max level dungeon, which is balanced to still be extremely difficult with parties of 30+ people, alone.

After I got off the boat and started exploring and got the information I needed to guess the whole layout I started to muse on the fact that even though I fully intend to beat this dungeon on my first attempt but also expect to do so in record time I am actually very poorly optimized for solo dungeon diving.

So far my entire build has been pretty heavily focused on turning all of my mana and stamina into damage as quickly as possible. Which is wonderful for single target battles such as many formats of tournament play.

But against large mobs of resilient foes such as multiple players or many high tier enemies and bosses I have to rely on alternate strategies to increase stamina, reduce encounter frequency, and reduce encounter duration.

The obvious solution would be bait and kiting, aggroing only a few select enemies and pulling them from main hordes and killing them far away allowing me to pick and choose battles and the flow of engagements but such tactics aren't always viable.

Against clans and groups of players who are well disciplined and are experienced fighting top level players like the 9 champions of the different realms who are pretty constantly attacked just for the sheer prestige of killing your realm's champion.

Though such raids rarely go well, but win or lose they are allegedly quite fun to participate in, like a chess novice facing a GM, they will obviously lose but it is still fun and will be a good story for later regardless.

I Digress however. The other solution to my sustainability problem is of course, cash shop items, low cool down potions, stuipid amounts of mana and stamina potions, items that reduce ability costs, all of it exploited to hell and back to help me become a one man army of ceaseless DPS.

I blasted through the opening canal section fast enough, there wasn't much stopping me apart from a few sea monsters that tried getting you into the water.

Luckily, I had taken a liking to a spear as my main weapon after my last weapon had an.. Unfortunate encounter. So spearing the beasts as they closed distance was simple enough.

I rocketed off as soon as I touched the end of the canal. The cavernous internal waterways quickly transitioned to an even more cavernous main reception and lobby with dozens of floors packed with shelves with even more books, many rotted and nothing but colored dust in the shape of a book long since over claimed by the jungles of Vanaheim that is bursting through the walls and ceiling of this once magnificent building.

Though I must stop being distracted by the tasteful decor and nice floor plan, this place isn't mine yet.

To make it mine I need to clear the last floor and defeat the main boss, or rather "realm keeper" as the marketing for these high level dungeons insist on calling them. It is quite an unpopular term and rarely used.

So without breaking step I start B-lining it to the spawn location I know the boss is at, the hidden vault, filled to the absolute brim with rare books and tomes and of course zephyr owls, the undisputed kings of rage quit inducing fights, the second fastest mobs in the game, disputably the stealthiest enemies in the game, and the 4th highest crit rate and multiplier.

The amount of bug reports players have submitted thinking that they just died for no reason is probably responsible for at least an hour of a GM's daily schedule of copy and pasting the same message informing players that the logs state they just got one shot crited by an owl they didn't see and to please get better at the game.

Needless to say they are threatening enough that unless I am willing to respec into a tank classes that any amount of armor I can put on will only get in my way, So I opted for a paper armor, genuinely paper armor, made from corrupted exalted tree ents and laminated with condensed lighting nimbuses.

Easily the weirdest thing I bought but considering it weighs a whopping 2.6 ounces and reached a legendary classification while only improving the agility stat and nothing else it is basically built to shatter speed records.

Which I was well on my way of doing, skipping most encounters, cutting corners, using every movement skill I have the second is off cool down and keeping track of where I am and what spawns where and what I need to do next and I am making amazing time.

Using every trick in the book I finally make it to where I need to be. You see, you technically have to beat a series of puzzles, area bosses, and monster group kills to be able to progress to the next floor. But that is only required to access the next floor and it is not a requirement for the game to recognize the dungeon as "cleared".

So I skip them, if they are not needed then why do them? Instead I can use my old friend, load zone fuckery, to pass the impassable division between floors. I do this by using a short range line of sight teleport skill [Blink] and a teleportation trap which I know the destination of and since I know where the second floor is in relation to the destination of the trap I can,

Step on the trap activating it

Before being teleported to the destination time my blink to the far off wall at the perfect distance (in this case it is a north wall that is 12 meters away and 40 meters down).

And in the split second where the first room despawns, I am transported to the destination before all assets of the second room spawn thus allowing my line of sight teleportation sling me 12 meters north and 40 meters down, into the void where a split second later all the walls, floors, and ceilings spawn in.

Considering the game runs at 320 frames per second I must admit that If i didn't see the code and testing for asset loading myself I would have never even noticed there was a gap but it is the cornerstone of this run and will allow me to skip what would normally be hours of ceaseless slaughter and puzzles.

The other floors were much the same, with some books now becoming better preserved the deeper into the library you go, with tomes and items among them as well as many offshoot paths that promise adventure, challenge and rewards.

None of which tempted me. This was my prize, all of It. every room. Every beast, every trap, every item, ever brick and mote of dust, it was to be the basis of my every future action, it was to be my home.

And it is with that conviction that I opened the heavy ornate bronze doors that lead to the inner crypt of this tomb of knowledge, at 27 minutes and 43 seconds I am at a spot that was designed to take a group of 36 people working in perfect coordination 18 hours to be at.

Opening the doors I met with the owlish gaze of a truly magnificent being, cloaked in feathers stronger than most dragon hides, bearing eyes with more fury than most demons and possessing speed and power unmatched by any other creature that dwells in the realm of vanaheim.

Slowly rising up to his full height of a staggering 14 feet, a series of red bars begin to span my sight from end to end and Stacked one above the next, these red stripes were testament to the absurdity the world of yggdrasill has been pushed too as the neatly proportional bars so carefully crafted to be proportional to the vitality of the boss one wished to slay had to be broken and bent to describe the monstrosity that was of a level that one thought never to be necessary to defend an area oh so tempting to intruders.

And above the red stripes was a name carved into my vision in thick strokes of black, lettering exclusive to enemies of at least 30 levels your better. Its named spelled out

Coeus, Keeper of the First Word

And he was to be my stepping stone.

4 years later

Sometimes I can't help myself but think back to that day that won me so much. I really have never been challenged like that since, though that statement is unfair since if my approximations are correct this game still has a good 8 years of life still in it before it is off to the next phase.

Currently sitting at the top of 1 of 3 incredibly tall spires I look down on what I have built. Truthfully you would think decorating would be easy but with how massive the area that my guild base occupies, the decisions are endless and making something I can be happy with for centuries to come, has been stressful to say the least, of course I could renovate later but frankly that just feels wrong to me.

From the center to the very edge the radius of the guild base is nearly 7.4 kilometers, expanded with thousands of dollars of cash shop items and perfectly molded into hundreds of kilometers of canals of all different sizes flanked by a light brown stone paveways and endless rows of buildings spanning unbroken for the entire length of the system, these building themselves were quite towering in height on their own, and were the scoring point for a bright red canopy that shaded the area between leaving but the barest gaps in the middle of canals where boats could be seen from high above in the tower that is in the centermost island surrounded by rings of canals.

The canopy extended for all portions of the water except the outermost ring, where there is no covering, and the innermost wing, where the covering is instead stone arches whose underside hangs hundreds of feet above the water and is covered in multiple square miles of brightly colored art and mosaics depicting tens of thousands representing nearly every culture ever documented and many pieces of art that could be brought into the game from scans and pictures of countless real pieces of art that survived to this dystopian future, and even more were commissioned by me to multiple guilds in game for talented players who pride themselves in fashion and decorating and painting all over the course of several years.

I could go on for days as I really ended up falling in love with the style and culture this place brings. And I haven't even mentioned the library and towers built in the central island. The library itself has been resorted to its full glory, it wraps around the entire central island which has a mile radius, but thanks to cash shop items and guild tools its insides are larger than the outside so you could run for miles and miles down one end and only make it back around after a trip many times longer than it should have taken, and the depth and ceiling are equally mind boggling you can easily walk towards the center of this island for nearly ten times longer than an island of this size should allow.

Furthermore the interior of the library has the stateliness and minimalism of beinecke rare book library and the national library of china, while also having countless tucked away, quite and cozy reading areas with classy dark wood, matte black metal framing, copper, and glass with white lighting on the shelfs and warm lighting for the rest of room as well as window and skylights in select rooms where one might question if a window or skylight could actually be pleased there, each with eternal weather so finding a quite cozy reading nook with a gentle thunderstorm right out the windows could be seen just down the hall that is filled with the light of a bright summer's day.

And to fill this library I simply downloaded nearly every single printed text in the public domain, as well as paying licenses for many more that are not public domain as well as scans of incredibly rare books and handwritten journals of many notable men and women throughout history were bought and paid for by me. The "Surface level" as some call it, is a real registered library and is the largest and most thorough virtual library of this type ever made or even attempted.

And below the surface level is a similar area though slightly smaller (not that anyone but me would ever notice) level that holds a similar purpose but for books and tomes and slates of yggdrasil origin. Pretty much all are not actually able to be opened, as they just have a title, and flavor text on what it allegedly contains, and various states and effects associated with it, a book of 'intermediate necromancy' when equipt will buff undead summons and allow a single death knight to be summoned at half health once per day, while something like 'the grand tome of Ghytar the archoverlord of the damned' will have much more potent effects and even higher levels of summons more frequently.

This isn't to say I am going to become a necromancer or anything, it is just a very long winded way to say that I am extremely interested in what I will read when I am finally able to open these books and read and learn from them as books are meant to be used, and if the flavor texts are anything to go buy I will have plenty of reading material for a long long time and I am very glad I picked a species with no lifespan as I will be reading every single one of them.

However having a guild base being an area that is somewhat open to most players and a very publicly known location comes at a considerable cost of defencability. A Lot of the people who come here are not here to make an attempt on the guild base, hell, some of the players only got the game to come to this library as many areas of the world have restrictive censorship laws that would make accessing these books impossible.

But there are a few who try. And they get to start much deeper than most invaders of other bases. Below the central island is what would best be described as an upside down wedding cake in a cylinder whose volume outside of the "cake" is extremely dense and cramped maze-like labyrinths which are dark and often underwater.

Keeping what I have and preventing others from taking it is by far the most draining part of how I am doing things. I know deep down inside that building a hole in the ground that tries to wipe out full 32 player raid parties from the first step in, would be a better way to keep what I have. But this city, this mix of viencien,persian, and old world culture and esthetic have grown on me far too much to ever accept living in any other way.

So sadly of the 3000 levels a base of this caliber have allotted to it to build NPC's with all of them had to be used on just 30 NPC's all of which are balls the wall min-maxed pvp monsters since I don't have any guildmates.

There is however a solution to all my problems however, but it's not something I can do in the game.

Stepping away from the window, dismisses the illusion of the outside, and I move back to an empty grey stone room with a slightly raised dais which I sit upon and proceed to log out.

Taking off my nerve gear I get up and start walking down to the elevators. It is about 2 P.M and the Devs mentioned they took a look at the proposed content Idea I sent them and they were interested and we set up a 'formal' discussion about these things and it was about time to make my way to the conference room where a lot of the team leads and other assorted members of various teams gathered. A meeting like this is held semi-regularly oftentimes talking about ideas, bugs, the community, the meta, balance problems, content people are liking, content people are not liking, anything that is relevant to the game starts out in a discussion held here.

"Oh hello we are just about to get started" one of the head developers says.

"Ah, I am just in time then" I respond and it is returned in kind with a nod before the head dev stands up and starts the meeting, getting to the point quickly about what is being done right now, what needs to get done at various agreed upon time, and what different departments need for each other to keep everything on pace before going to a brainstorming/idea discussion open to all employees and this is usually when the many non head of teams speak up about an idea they had and want to start. But today It starts with me.

"Alright with all that out of the way lets start of Xuan's proposal I believe everyone got the email about it?" asks the head dev, who receives his answers in nods, "alright then" he then gestures to me and I stand up.

I offer my polite greeting a short intro and set up the small presentation I made beforehand. Nothing too fancy as this feature might as well be already in development since most of the devs think its fun and I am the boss of their bosses boss and framing this as a "suggestion" was more polite than actually giving them room to rebuff this idea.

After the everything is good to go a slide pops up with the title being "Sanctuary cities, and Factions"

"So getting to it, I was thinking of offering another layer of player interaction and customization of guild bases and player organization by allowing guildbases who meet a certain criteria to turn off PVP in their guild controlled areas as to allow guilds to offer more services to other players that isn't focused around combat. Essentially turning several areas of the realms into player-made, player-ran cities, even going so far as allowing them to offer quests to other players as well as form ties with other guilds to build factions."

I continue on " This is in response to the considerable performance gap between guilds who build like cities above ground, and those who build like dungeons below ground." I then select the next slide that shows various stats that measure performances of guildbases, their kill success rate, average amount of time spent inside, average amount of people, amount of items taken,ect.

"This shows nearly every metric a guild base could be judged by and as you can see dungeon type guilds dramatically outperform city types by a fair margin which takes away a lot of motivation for players to makes their bases in this way which is detrimental to the overall health and diversity of the community as well as.." I pause dramatically to switch to the next slide.

"Our profits. According to metrics across all servers users and guilds spend up to 4 times more money on city type bases than on their dungeon counterparts, and using sentiment analysis on various forums city bases are generally more pleasing, engaging, and more fun to users than a fortress in the ground." I explain.

At this point a lot of those in attendance are thinking about how to do this rather than if we should do this and it snowballed from there into a discussion of the next major content update.

"So it would be like a city state update? That can work, those were big around the mediterranean right won't that work out good for you Tonaka since you and your team is working on some greek stuff?" One of the member of the writing team asks.

"Yea and since this can be made into a major update instead of a monthly content add we might have enough time to add romans into it too?" Tonaka responds, sounding a bit unsure at that last bit as he looks to the rest of the members to get their reaction to it and is met with a serious of nods and mumbled "that could work".

"It could also be expended to middle eastern and african mythology, our sales have not been doing too well in the african market so this could be nice platform for a push in that direction" Chips in one of the people from marketing.

" We could also uncap size and npc limits for city states, so they can be as big and populated as the players want as long as they keep buying the expansion from the cash shop" one of the devs ask. This suggestion was actually one of my ideas that I told this particular dev to bring up.

As much as I like taking credit for my work I need this to really be a team effort, the more the devs are willing to push the envelope the more crazy and outlandish they make the game, it will only serve to strengthen myself when the transition to the new world takes place. As much as having a strong character matters, having a game that facilitates strength is just as important, if not even more important.

This last comment however got a lot of people quiet. It is a very cool idea, and will certainly make obscene amounts of money, but that just seems too unbalanced, too pay to win, even for this company who is already quite shameless.

I was just as silent, hoping the team will see the solution to this issue on their own. I am sure they would have figured out something to make this happen, but it seems that they were willing to shelf this idea for a while, which would put a damper on my expansion so I had to speak up before that could be said out loud.

"We could have a deployable limit of NPCs allowed per encounter, and battles in the city states could include the attacking guilds pop mobs scaled with the size of the area, we could make big events of city state raids, could be a huge gold sink too costing gold to bring in these pop militias and siege weapons and 'Hero' NPCs that the attacking guild(s) made, so that will help the player market as well." I chime in. These people are pros and they are at the very top of the industry so once they have a good idea running with it is as natural as walking to them.

"We could finally get some use out of those siege assets you were working on" one of the devs mentions to a graphic designer who nodds in responses.

"I've been working on a revamp of summon controls for a while now, if I could get some more help I can expand that to a system for ordering around pop mobs and NPCs during these raids" A developer who I recognize as one of the rising stars of the programming department mentions, he is a real go getter so no wonder he already has something baked up.

The lead dev nods and says "Alright go ahead and put together a team from what we have right now, then talk to Kilora in HR and go through the applications and pic some hires for this season I remember seeing a few applicants who worked on Narvana 2 and we all know how smooth those bots were in co-op".

The discussion went on for about 2 hours more, hashing out plans and forming teams working on different parts of the upcoming major expansion and after those talks died down a few more things were presented and then it was back to work and for me it was back to the grind.

Getting back to my computer I noticed 2 messages that were immediately put in my junk box, which means they were probably not just the normal hate spam those at the top of leaderboards get.

"Hey Typhon! We are raiding Ainz-ooal-gown in 6 hours want in?"- Holier-Than-Thou

Huh so I guess that 1500 player raid is supposed to happen today then? Well its 4 P.M right now so more accurate to say Tonight but semantics.

The other message is just as intriguing. If not more so.

"Typhon, momonga got a tip from someone in seraphim that there is going to be a massive multi guild raid on Nazarick, everyone is going to be online later tonight I know you want in on this!" - Touch-Me.

Oh how the plot thickens, Though the choice is obvious, better get on good terms now. Plus it does sound very fun regardless.

So I messaged back " Yea I just got online, I got invited to the raid as well but not on your guys side, how did you find out about this?"

A few seconds later I get the classic *ping* " What? You aren't actually going to join seraphim on this are you? Why didn't you give us a heads up? And one of the members of seraphim gave up the details as a price to get a spot in our guild afterwards he is going to come to our defense when everyone gets here." Touch-Me replies.

" Well Holier-than-Thou came up first in my inbox so i just found out a few seconds before I messaged you, and look at you lot recruiting defectors, getting a fallen angel? How thematic for you all. And no Im definitely not going to pass up a chance to fuck up mobs of actual players. Though I do like the last second team switching, Imma accept his offer and see if I can flip a few more angels, imma DM Ulbert since setting up a terrorist cell in another guild seems like something he would have an oddly large amount of experience in" I respond.

"Sounds like a plan! Though we aren't looking to add any more people in the guild so don't promise anything like that" He adds.

"No worries just leave it to me, I'll see you guys later tonight." I finally state.

Switching over back to the offer sent by seraphim I reply with what they were hoping for "I'm in. What's the details?" I ask.

And Holier-than-Thou, bless his oh so trusting heart, sent me a full document of information and invite to a chat room with all the participating guilds.

This gets forwarded to Ulbert, and for the next 4 hours we are going through lists of people private messaging those we think would be willing to flip. Some do it for the laughs, some do it for gold, and others do it for items and information.

We could not get a crazy amount of people, just 14 people out of around 1550 people, but it doesn't matter, anything that gets down to the 8th floor will be wiped anyway so this is really just to kill some players, get some drops and have fun.

By the time the raid starts everything is set up and I arrive fashionably late, the guild of Ainz Ooal Gown are at the steps of nazarick with a crowd of 1550 players just out the outskirts currently they are monologging and hurling insults and jokes and my arrival is met with walls of text about how they are so fucked now that I am here and that the cavalry has arrived and other such comments.

"Muah-ha-ha-ha pitiful mortals cheering at the arrival of just 1 extra soon to be corpse, rejoice as you will die just that little bit less lonely ha-ha-ha" one of the figures at the top of the stairs announced, which was met with boo's and goads of our own.

Then Ulburt mentioned something to Momonga that went unheard by those at the bottom of the stairs and Momonga stepped forward " It appears that this is all you could muster Seraphim, truly a weak showing" Which is quite the thing to say in front of 1500+ max level players.

To that much of the guild began walking back into the tomb content on having the army die at the hands of nazarick as they role play evil masterminds at the end of the dungeon acting as the final bosses.

"Oh, and those of you who were given 'special assignment' the time to begin is now" Says Momanga over his shoulder and then with an evil laugh they teleport away, deep into the infamous crypt.

Well that's as good of a signal as any, I look over the crowd to find my co-conspirators and they do the same to me.

"Special assignment? What is that suppo-" Holier-than-Thou stops mid sentence as he sees my hand on the grip of my sword, and the subtle shimmer of dozens of buffs, I came in pre buffed, I expected a fight before we even got in the door, And all of a Sudden it make sense to him "Oh you motherfu-" [Dimensional slash] Missing the leader of the number 1 guild by mere inches the blade of warped space time go on to its true targets 3 squishy support mages and dedicated healers.

And all Hell broke loose, 5 more conspirators also decide to open up at the very start with 3 spreading misinformation about who betrayed who is sowing havoc while the rest is convincing the others to just rush into the Dungeon.

[Gravity Maelstrom] is then used to engulf a huge swath of players and I jump in with it as it does not affect the caster. Soon a whole section of players are swallowed up and are either whipped up and nearly ragdolled in a storm of ripped reality or they resist the ragdolling and instead take increased damage from the warped space and getting hit debris and players who pop into and out of reality in a funhouse mirror like hell for 12 seconds which has been extended to nearly 35 seconds from items and buffs.

They also have to worry about a rampaging world champion in the midst and my summoned [Divine Cohort].

The players whipped up however are not completely out of control however, they are still fully capable of casting spells that do not require channeling, and using skills and attacking. So the inside of the storm is complete multi-colored mayhem of mostly friendly fire and panic and healing spam.

But I have a solution to that as well. My sword while it is definitely a top tier item, it is definitely not a heavy hitter nor an amazing damage dealer. It does however inflict a certain debuff called [corruption] which temporarily reverses what type of healing works for the character inflicted. As in, now angels take damage from healing spells and gain health from negative energy, and undead would take damage from negative energy and gain health from healing. In a situation like this where dedicated healers are spamming all the AOE healing they can to ride out the storm and nobody is near anyone else long enough to complain that their healing spell is doing damage to their teammates, it very quickly becomes a thinning mob with very few survivors.

"JUST RUSH TO THE TOMB RUSH TO THE TOMB FLOOD IT! FLOOD IT!" Comes the command of Holier-than-Thou he didn't come here to deal with a fight against me in an open field completely unprepared, he came for a raid, and as proficient of a PK'er I am I can't hold back everyone forever and as long as the guild raid is successful then this fight doesn't matter.

Soon the huge swath of bodies is reduced to drop loot and items for the collection of their killer and I ignore the few scattered and recovering survivors and instead go into the backlines of the advancing army where I am met with my favorite sight, ranks upon ranks of squishy mages.

Getting to them only costs the lives of a few assassins who thought rushing a fully buffed [World champion] mid rampage would be a good idea, and a few tanks who see the writing on the wall and try to do something about the soon to be support mage genocide of 2130.

These tanks fall into two categories, the first being the "I will use all my defensive abilities and skills to stall for time" category, who promptly get left behind and ignored as their speed drops to near 0. And the second type of tank get to join the much more prestigious and far more numerous "soon to be pink mist" category along with their squishy protectees.

[Gaze of Thrones] pre-empting my calculated slaughter I start using my favorite buff skill to get some more AOE into this crowd and open up with [Glacial Requiem] freezing about 3 ish dozen to the ground and even more staying of their own free will trying to defend until the ice gives out.

How foolish of them.

I go from my sprint to a sudden jump and the fly above the soon to be dead men and cast [Empty Eyes] A dark type debuff that induces the fear debuff and cuts resistance down drastically before resorting to tried and true [World Break] and a torrent of ripped apart space time comes raining down on the stationary players and it is a blood bath.

Not every level 100 character is built the same, sure Ainz Ooal Gown is filled with amazing players each one of them powerful in their own way, but that is because they are a rather tall guild, expressing their strength in very few extremely powerful and well equipped members while the guilds raiding them are rather wide, using huge player counts to express their strength, So while my body count touching triple digits, it really isn't all that impressive since the difference between a casual level 100 player and a competitive level 100 player is insane.

The amount of time it takes to get all the equipment needed for a crazy build or get all the prerequisites for rare classes can easily take dozens of times longer to do than to make a level 100 character, afterall nearly all of the content added in the past few years of development has been end game content.

Well regardless, the rest of the clean up was even easier than making the mess, any player good enough to make things hard would have been good enough to escape in the first place, and those who can work together and are organized won't waste time out here they would be inside playing the objective.

A dozen scattered duels with tanks and damaged players went easy enough, even using meme tactics like [Corruption] and then healing them to death was enough to put them down.

Sadly it looks like the 5 conspirators who opened up with me at the beginning of the engagement got killed after getting about 13 kills of their own.

If anything, those yelling false info probably did more damage with how many team killings I see in the chat box. The chat box is also filled with quite the colorful display of language that gives me something good to read while collecting all my loot.

"*Phwwwwwhht*" I hear someone whistle behind me and turn to be met with the sight of Momonga, Punitto Moe, Touch-Me, Ulbert, Bellriver, and Peroroncino.

"Always something special watching you work Typhon." say Punitto Moe, who is also evidently the one who whistled.

"Well when you love what you do you never work a day in your life" I respond before catching an Item thrown to me by Touch-Me.

It is a cursed ring of Ainz Ooal Gown that loses all special effects in 3 hours. Wordlessly I put it on and start shifting around other equipment, rings and weapons in preparation for the next phase of the plan.

"How are things on your end?" I ask.

This time Momonga responds " Everything is according to plan, you did well in organizing them, they practically went inside in single file and are having trouble organizing in large groups thanks to the communication wards in place in the tomb." He explains.

"Well I didn't do this alone" I point out.

And at the same time everyone turns to look at the 5 bodies of our friendly neighborhood co-conspiring terrorists.

"They were quite Courageous warriors"

"They were worthless cannon-fodder"

Says Touch-Me and Ulbert at the same time.

"Indeed they were" I respond to neither in particular while still changing out my gear.

"This definitely makes the next step easier, just wipe groups you encounter until you can link up with more of our turn coats and sow as much mayhem as you can in levels one, two, and three, just make sure they don't group up together or let them organize. Once the majority is through start prepping in the 5th floor like we planned since nothing has changed" Punitto Moe ever the tactician once again goes over the plan and makes sure we are on the same page about what is going to happen next since I don't have a good way to message any of them for the next hour or so.

I nod in agreement, making the final switches of gear now and getting a new round of buff from Momonga, Punitto Moe, Ulbert, and myself. While also downing a few potions of various effects.

"And you mentioned something about getting some help during all this?" I ask, I assume that is why Bellriver is here but they said they are going to be on the last floor prepping in case their plans don't work.

"Yes we are going to set the NPC of the catacombs to follow and assist you, and since you got the ring you should be able to give her commands" Punitto Moe helpfully answers.

"What the build?" I ask, and although I am well aware they mean shalltear I still only have limited details on what exactly her build is and what would best synergize with it.

At this point Peroronchino comes in practically frothing at the mouth Unchained and unrestricted from Bukubukuchagama "Oh Shalltear is insane, a bloody Valkyrie If I say so myself, which I do. She is a 1v1 monster based on a true vampire meta build from patch 2.38.4 when blood based skills didnt have a dedicated resistance that me and Punitto Moe came up with, she is 140 centimeterstallandhasasickasssetofarmorand…." And thus for the next 6 minutes All of us were practically assaulted with details and stats of shalltear with Peroronchino nearly just reading off here whole setting and lore sheet, her strengths,weaknesses,personality,kinks, genuinely everything he knows about her was gushed out in an endless flurry of words with barely a breath in between.

"...so basically just use blood damage and bleed procs." Punitto Moe sums up.

"Yea alright, see? That's all I needed." I say, still slightly taken aback by the whole spiel I was forced through, I was hoping to get in a word telling him to stop when he took time to breathe, but he just.. Didn't stop to breathe?

"Well Looks like I got my work cut out for me" I mention as I replace my weapons from a Legendary [corruption] procing sword to a set of crimson and silver hatchets which have the highest bleed damage of anything I have currently.

"We are behind schedule so Imma get to axe murdering, what are you guys going to do, are you seriously just going to wait at the bottom floor all meancinly incase they make it that far?" I ask since I genuinely don't know what they are going to be doing as the plan really only revolved around me and the terrorist cell, which is fine I get to keep everything that drops from what I kill but still.

"Ha! You kidding? We are spamming trap reset buttons and buying mercenary mobs as fast as we can click" Peroroncino says, which earns him a glare from pretty much everyone except Touch-me and Punitto Moe since he basically told me how to do a magic trick in front of the magicians and they still want to keep their "badass villain" Vibe they are striving so hard for.

However Ulbert is there to correct him telling me what they are actually doing "We need not lift a finger for the Great Tomb of Nazarick to churn our foes to corpes!" he half sarcastically and overly dramatically says, even adding the cape flourish emote to the end of it.

"Right, got it." I say, 100% convinced that his word is completely accurate before I leave to the second floor Adipocere Chamber where shalltear is waiting in her full kit, and upon seeing me she walks to me and stands to my right slightly behind me which is the default position for NPCs to take when battling, If I had more following NPC the second one would be to my back left and this will continue on alternating sides until I am at the front of a massive V. But I only have the 1 so all the fancy formations that I can command will just move here a few steps around.

"Well shalltear it looks like we have a lot of time to make up for" I say to the now lifeless NPC before I start running out and beginning my hunt.

Pov: 3rd person

Deep within the Tomb of Nazarick, at its final level sits a grand throne upon which sits momonga surrounded by his guildmates and dozens of screens showing various area in the tomb which are being raided and ravaged by the locust swarm that is the allied guilds. But one screen in particular draws the most attention.

"Jesus Touch-Me you had to fight this guy?" Nishikierai asks what most people in the room have been thinking.

"Yea, Though it sounds crazy when you put it like that, what is his count looking like?" Touch-Me asks.

"He is already back to double digits-" Just as he says that the subject of their discussion once again makes this raid party one member lighter "-I believe that makes 23 for him and 7 to shalltear" Punitto Moe adds.

On the screen a whirlwind of activity is unfolding as a set of blurs travel through the crypt looking for any gathering of people, and disrupting efforts to organize, slaying the occasional ranger or assassin who was sent ahead to scout and the tracing their steps back to the unfortunate group which sent them.

Diving in the midst of groups preventing the powerful long range AOE mages of the back using their most powerful spells while ignoring front line tanks who are too slow to keep up and protect their allies. Then it becomes a game of dealing as much bleed damage to the Dedicated DPS players as well as anyone else that gets too close, then a bleed buffed Shalltear comes in to the now turned backs of the former frontlining players and keeps them pinned while Typhon is wreaking havoc on the squishy supports and glass cannons of the group.

"Well it looks like the majority are past the catacombs, but at this rate I doubt rubedo will be needed" Punitto Moe adds.

He then continues "Well lets link up with Typhon again, I think we can attempt to wipe them at the 6th floor, use teleportation traps to pull the big players into arena fights with Typhon, Aura, Mare and various magical beasts. That should stretch them thin enough to stop this raid here."

Pov: Typhon

1 Year later

Looking over the canals at the top of the towers I can't help but smile grimly. At the beginning I played this game because I felt that I didn't have a choice, I could have a truly spectacular life even if I never touched this game and that would be fine, but I still felt bound to this game as if I was given such an incredible opportunity to achieve so much more than mere money can ever accomplish that there was no way I could do anything except devote myself to this game.

And it is not like it hasn't taken a toll on me, mentally and physically. I work out quite often out of game not to be fit or to be healthy but because I must, I play so much for so long it is the only way I can continue walking as my muscles and limbs atrophy and even my dreams are dominated by the game.

But over time I have come to appreciate this game, love it even, This is easily and indisputably is one of the most successful games to ever be made yet. But all thing good come to and end and today we topped the hill, the game peaked.

If the analytics are correct This month will be the last month that we expect to see positive growth. The game isn't in a decline yet but the growth of the community, the game is certainly slowing down.

The truth of the matter is games like this can't simply be made out of nowhere and expect to be even half as popular as Yggdrasil is. This game was a once in a lifetime miracle of circumstance. It was a staple of the Dive gaming technology and for quite a while it was the only highly polished major game that one could get with the system.

But times are changing, and more and more games have come out and Yggdrasil is now the giant whose shoulders stand the rest of the now thriving dive gaming industry and its knees are starting to shake under the weight of the newcomers.

But regardless of that, the sight before me is truly beautiful, something special, after the city state update my guild has exploded, becoming the home of tens of thousands of players and even guilds who reserve space in the buildings all around the canals.

And in the water ways there are ships so plentiful that I can barely see the water under them. Some are simply for fun or for promotion but others are player run stores or services and between them planks and ropes and players jump and criss cross all about in a flurry of activity.

This update has really opened up what is possible to do with player owned property and now I am the sole owner of what can easily be considered one of the most major cities in my server.

This lead to a famous reputation which just increased the people who come here which made more people want to do business here which made this even more popular and thus the cycle continued.

And as the owner of the city, I get a cut of every. Single. Transaction. That takes place here. Needless to say this had made me quite well off. But the real money is in the ships himself, A special building where, for a fee, a player can buy and customize their own ship to sail in my canals, Some prefer sleek sloops and charming junks small ships with lots of character, other make full recreations of famous ships ranging from mythical vessels or legendary warships from history from battleships to aircraft carriers. Anything is possible with the creation tools, though a lot make floating platforms with ads and shelves and sell on waterways.

Truthfully My little library has really come to life and I cant help but smile, even within the massive 3 towers of the central island and library it gotten more crowded as I began spending a lot of time making NPC's, now without a hard ceiling on how many levels or data NPC's can use all that can limit me is how many "Guild base NPC level expansion"s I am willing to buy from the cash shop.

And I am willing to buy a lot of them so I have had my hands full. Even more so since I have gotten the idea to link as many features of the game to physical objects around the base from a group of no-hud RPers. So instead of using menus to create NPC's or items I have to actually sculpt them with my characters and etch the lore with an actual hammer and chisel. Needless to say, that got old quick and after confirming that I can do it with no hud I started using the menus again, I got through 8 NPC's like that and frankly it was enough.

And while the extra NPCs are great, when I occasionally do get raided from another city state I can still only have a max of 3200 total levels and the rest despawn.

But such things are quite rare since there are very few proper city states anyways, About 27 or 28 across the 9 realms in the server I am in.

In addition I have allies with 3 of the larger city states including seraphim's. Holier than thou was quite mad about my "betrayal" at the raid of Nazarick a few years ago but we agreed that I would owe him a few favors for that one and frankly I was fine with it. Working with him is usually pretty productive anyways, joining raids and helping members of his guild with various requirements as well as joining his alliance of city states were most of the things he asked of me. Though I am sure me joining his alliance was more for the clout than any practical reason, after all the 2 other city states were in asgard with seraphim and I was in Vanaheim on top of being just a single person guild.

But regardless the years have been kind to my guild, and to me, but it is time to prepare the final items and get as many samples of items, materials, data crystals, and books/tomes as I possibly can, as well as finishing up all the NPCs with crafting classes to make sure I dont have limited amounts of items of some kind.

The game still has a few years of life left and several major content adds coming up, soon I will add flying ships as well to the docks and my water ways but now it is a waiting game there is only 1 more item I truly need and it is on the drawing board in a conference room somewhere downstairs, and it is to be added in the eastern mythology update, along with that I have recover ouroborus and I am saving it until the last few hours where any request I make would more likely be accepted since it will simply be seen as the last moments of fun.

Logging out I take in a big gasp of air. I would like to say it is fresh but even I haven't had truly fresh air since this life has begun. Sitting up I take off the dive set and and get out of the chair, my boney hand pushes off the seat and I rise to be met with a dark room. It is day time, noon actually but there is so much smog and pollution that it is still a nearly pitch black room despite the open blinds.

Walking to my fridge I open it and take out a rarity. Meat. real meat, something that very few in this world had. Deciding that this is good enough for dinner I decided to carry on and make a meal of it.

But It is depressing. This is the best meat money can buy and it is about as good as gas station lunch meat from my last world. It is little moments like this where I find once again my passion to go back and escape. The world is too far gone for anyone to reverse what has happened to it, maybe I could slow it down by a bit should I devote my everything to such a task like I do with Yggdrasil but I know it is fruitless.

I take one more bite of the meal before looking back again to the dive set, "yea I need to make sure I bring a lot of different types of food with me" I say to myself before putting down my fork and looking down at my food in indifference.

Ironically global warming in this world stopped decades ago. If anything this world is much much colder than my last.

There is so much pollution, smog and metal in the air that very little solar radiation ever reaches below the constant clouds. People who have gone their entire lives without seeing the sky are not rare at all, even myself who can easily be considered one of the "1 percenters" have only seen it a handful of times, not that i seek it out in particular but just everything about this world makes me want to leave it.

One way or another when the server shuts down I will no longer be in this world, I am at this world's peak and I can't see anything in it that is desirable. People say it is the little things that count, that make all the different, but despite living here for almost 20 years it still feels so fake and untrue and grim.

In my past life I did enjoy the little things, I was someone and I had a deeply fulfilling life and career for the last 40 years of my last life but even space and science in this world have been corrupted by corporations to the point of dread.

This world has an orbital ring, it has lunar colonies, it has martian outposts, it has a station around europa. Things that I was working on myself before my death but hear instead of the shining achievements of science and industry they were supposed to be on my world, here, they are penal colonies, or helium 3 mining pits ran with indentured laborers, or just hubs to launch shit from one miserable place to another.

Everything so cheapened and diluted by misery.

This "Game" is the only path forward for me. It wasn't clear at the beginning, I thought that as one of this worlds elite that if this didn't work out that I can carve out a fulfilling life here, but it is clear now that this is the only way forward.

I have poured incredible amounts of money into not only this game, but into the company, into the private accounts of the devs, into the accounts of other players, to any account that gave me an edge in the "next" life.

At the end of the day I have put over $768 million dollars into this company and game over its 12 years.

I have put 62,843 hours into this game over its 12 years.

I have killed 7 people over this game over its 12 years.

Some buildings needed to burn down. Some devs wanted to implement features and balances that would affect the game for the next few updates for him, but affect countless thousands of years of my next life. Some politicians wanted to limit dive VR's, some investors wanted pieces of the company.

Every step forward towards a better next life, alienates me further from this life, I know more money and hours and blood into yggdrasil would be bad for me if I stayed here but-

*bzzz* *bzzz*

'Ah, I was villain monologuing again wasn't I? I am not even a proper villain or one at all and my monologues are getting interrupted.'

I curiously checked my phone to see who would be texting me. It is an ungodly 3:34 A.M so certainly no one I know locally must be a message from yggdrasil.

-Holierthanthou-

"You owe me"

-Typhon-

"Surely you meant that for someone else."

-Holierthanthou-

"I got the right guy, remember back during the raid on Ainz Ooal Gown and you betrayed us and before you killed me I said you would owe me for this? Well I am calling it in"

-Typhon-

"That was years ago and hardly binding, what exactly do you want anyways? You are the head of seraphim Last I checked, plenty of muscle to bully whoever you wish, no need to get me involved."

-Holierthanthou-

"Ha! The only one I would want to bully is you, Ainz Ooal Gown and that prick from midgard but we both know how that will turn out. Nah I want you to help us grind, you know how the next update will have the four auspicious beasts for raids?"

Oh dear god out of everything he would want its the most annoying task possible in game.

-Typhon-

"Ahh so you want me thrown away the next 3 months of my life I see."

-Holierthanthou-

"The drop rates are not confirmed yet so it might not be so bad. And it could be even faster if you pop a drop charm"

Ah how lovely, it is an open secret that I am the biggest whale in yggdrasil so of course he comes to me to ask to use a 250$ cash shop item. But I know the drop rates,and the charm only lasts 12 hours and it will still take hundreds of hours per boss to get a decent haul.

But giving it some thought this might be more of a boon for me than him. He asking quite a lot of me so I can probably get some form of dibs on what we get, and even if I could take a boss like this solo which I don't even want to try because I know the devs don't have any reward for it, it would still be faster if I could team up with a top tier guild like seraphim to get my drops.

And now that he brought up the subject.. There is a drop that I absolutely need.. This is quite the lucky break depending on how the loot gets split.

-Typhon-

"Ahh so you want my money and my time. Should I throw in rep charms and item souls as well so we can get this to cost 1200$ every 12 hours instead of 250$?"

-Holierthanthou-

"Actually that would be great!"

-Typhon-

"Fuck you"

-Holierthanthou-

"I am joking (unless?), but really, think about it, better with us than anyone else. You will be farming for this stuff anyways I know you, so if anything i'm doing you a favor"

Ah how cute it's trying to get an upper hand in negotiations.

-Typhon-

"Well there is always Ainz Ooal Gown I can call on for the grinding, or I can just msg the other world champs and we can get the drop through 4 man squad kills instead of 64 man raids. Or the 2 other guilds in my alliance would be happy to help as well. My time is valuable and you are going to need more than just calling in a favor to get me spending that much time and money. How about I help out with a Silrog run or two?"

-Holierthanthou-

"Come on Typhon, this is what's best for both of us, and I know your times valuable so that's why I am reaching out before the update even drops, Did anyone else reach out to you yet?"

-Typhon-

"I want the azure dragon pearl, and loot will be split by guild"

-Holierthanthou-

"You are joking right? The pearl is the best part, it's like 70% of the reason why the grind is worth it, and guild split? Unless you suddenly start getting members I'm not so desperate to go for that, I still need to look out for my guild and going 50/50 when we contribute 63 of the 64 people isn't gonna work, 64 man draw."

-Typhon-

"Ill stay with the group until at least 3 pearl drops, and honestly 64 man draw? Unless the other 63 members are popping 250$ in charms every other kill then Im not accepting that, most of your guild is casuals and i'm guessing at least 50 people won't even spend a single cent in items. Guild split."

-Holierthanthou-

"That is still too much"

-Typhon-

"Then dragon pearl, first pick rights on the other 3 bosses, and dps split"

-Holierthanthou-

"You will have to stay until we get at least 3 pearls, 72 black tortoise scales and 4 white tiger claws"

-Typhon-

"Thats fine with me."

This is going to kill me, I still need to hunt ouroboros and scout the Mercenary Magicians. Well there goes any chance of having a fun time with this update.

Pov: Typhon

Last Moments of Yggdrasil

[6:43:33]

[6:43:32]

[6:43:31]

Truly I am the only one to have ever feel like this. Knowing from the moment of my birth to right now exactly where I will end up, To live a life with purpose from moment one, and in 6 hours, I will be done.

My life would have served its purpose and I can move on. Everything I have created and every skill or class or racial level I have gained. I am sure that I am ready, that its enough, anything is better than this hell hole world but I almost waiver at the thought that I will soon no longer have a lifespan.

I will soon be responsible for thousands of beings that will think of me as a supreme being, and while I am comfortable in a position of leadership, such a thought is still, humbling, I can only hope that in a few years I would at least be somewhat recognizable. I highly doubt that losing my literal humanity is a positive experience in the mental wellness side of things and none of my racial levels are in beings that have suppressing emotion like the undead.

Though I won't be wallowing in extravagance, I still have a passion for knowledge and exploration and ironically I really do have a 10000 year plan. Though the vast majority of the plan is a series of experiments and study, I already have books filled with theories and tests that I wish to conduct as well as further plans to accelerate development.

If anything I might need to build a second library, I always admired Wong shi tong's aesthetic of just running a library for countless millennia, maybe we should make a club.

Well first thing is first.

Standing up from my seat on the high tower I reach into my inventory and pull out the item that will make the next 10000 years possible and activate it.

*ring*

*ring*

*ri-*

"Ah a bit late for changes now player." says the voice.

"Hello Hinata, isn't an ouroboros request a bit below one of the team leads?" I ask.

"Of course you are the one who has the ouroboros, and hey it's the last call so color me curious, everyone else is prepping for the final shutdown so we can set up the servers for the next project. So how did you come by ouroboros so late in the game? Did you find it or buy it?" Asks Hinata

Perfect, now comes the million dollar question "I've had it for a few months now, and hey if everything is getting set up for the next project then I assume that means you are done with the final official game stats?"

"Yup, the final leaderboard and game records have been set in stone since half an hour ago. Why? First in player ranking is not enough for you?" He jokes.

"As a matter of fact no it's not" I joke back.

"But since nothing really matters in the game anymore I wanted to have some fun seeing big numbers, remember the first ouroboros from way back? The XP storage ring with no capacity? I have been saving up for over a decade now, wanna find out what level that would bring me too?" I ask casually.

Luckily I know Hinata and since this is just last second fun rather and won't be saved on the leaderboards a request like this that would normally get shut down can pass by pretty smoothly.

"Haha, really making the most of this huh, don't tell me you were planning this since the start." He ask, although I can already hear him type away on his keyboard, apparently just as curious as I am on how this will turn out.

"I just figured I would change classes more and would need the extra XP, but it would be such a waste if I never used it, afterall it did take up an entire ring slot for a decade. Oh and you can probably save yourself time by deleting the PDVIP file of my city state so you only have to search through 30 files to find my guild rather than search through 80 million individual players and rife through player limits individually for me" I add helpfully.

The game for the last few years has actually been free to play but with level,race,class,and travel limitations depending on if you had a premium account or DLC or a Vip account. So the game is made in such a way that the classes and races don't have any limits written into them and all limitations are enforced through a player's or guild's PDVIP file so different players at different tiers can keep their characters even if they change what tier their membership is.

So deleting this will remove class restrictions, race restrictions, and level caps.

Luckily it seems Hinata is in a good mood and just gives a hum and mumbles a "smart" before doing exactly that. After all, it's less work for him and soon he will take his first vacation in years.

"Oh yea, before you go, I was working on the ragnarok's firework display but I think I bought out every firework vendor in game, think I could get the copy paste wand from the test server so I can finish this up before I have to set off the show?" I ask, why not things are going so well I might as well push my luck.

"People are calling this Ragnarok? Is that really a thing?" He asks, more concerned with the name players have given the server shut down than giving a player a dev item as I get a notification that I received an item in my inventory.

"Wait you didn't know? All the dead guilds have a bunch of players coming back and people are having ragnarok parties, Even on my end things are more busy than they have been in years. After all it is the end of the 9 realms, what else would we call it?" I ask.

"Honestly Xuan I got burnt out of the whole norse lore after the first few years I cant get why people will still make jokes like that after all this time." He replies with audible exhaustion.

"Well Most of these people are back for the first time in a while, I don't blame them for RPing like they used too. Well, anyways I am going to get finished with the deploy then start teleporting all the players out to the hill nearby so they can get a good view, Enjoy today Hinata"

He replies with a hmm and a "you as well" and the audio cuts out.

For the final and most crucial changes to go off without a hitch is a weight off my shoulders, I don't have the same natural talent with people as I do with language and academics but I still stacked the odds in my favor as much as I could balancing risk with reward since I would have very little time for changes so close to the server shut down.

Reaching into my inventory I pull out a wand that is just a reskinned level 40 quest item, But this want is actually a dev tool used on beta and alpha servers to test assets rapidly.

Tapping it to the ring on my hand it begins to glow and swishing the wand again a copy of the ring plops down in front of me.

Picking it up it is a perfect copy of the last item I got with ouroboros, better yet it copied the XP storage ring as it, absurd amount of XP included.

Satisfied I return both items back into my inventory and start working on the firework display which I haven't lied about, I really am going to put on a show, but more as an excuse to clear the city under pretense of getting everyone to a distant mountain to view the entire show rather than randomly setting the city to "members only" and then having everyone at the very edge of my guild risking the chance of people coming along.

Best to teleport them out hours in advance and gather them miles and miles away than invoke a last second city state raid event where I couldnt simply set the city to "members only" and then have most of the NPC's disappear as the 3000 total npc levels apply to city state only when it is being attacked.

Though now that the PDVIP file for my guild is gone, that might not be a problem anymore.

…

[23:59:00]

[23:59:01]

[23:59:02]

Finally.

After so much work, time, money, and blood, I can sit, All I have to do is look presentable. And I can finally rest.

Finding a room on the very top floor, various NPCs turn to face as a walk past them,and then they return to their idle stance.

Finally arriving at the room I had in mind, I walk in and take a seat, it is a small room with walls of rough stone and a small raised stone dais which I sit on with crossed legs.

And finally take a breath I did not know I was holding.

I simply close my eyes, and relax.

For the first time in several decades; I relax.

[23:59:58]

[23:59:59]

[00:00:00]

[00:00:01]

Even without opening my eyes the difference is immediate, the sounds of background noise fade and the reverberations of the hard stone walls become the new silence, I can feel my own body, my wings, my magic, my health. Truly it is unlike anything I have ever experienced before.

Then faintly behind the closed doors the sound of rapid footsteps approach before the door nearly slams open and a pale man in dull silver armor enters and with a thud drops to a knee "My lord the grand Library has been Transported! Your orders?".

—-