C10 Last world.
Ainz was a corporate slave without many options. In a nutshell his life was absolute shit. In the 22nd century life was cheaper than clean air, the pollution was simply too much, and even the radiation left behind by wars ate away people's life span. This future that the past fiction writers could called "dystopian" was his reality and Suzuki Satoru hated it as much as he could and even far beyond that, the only good thing in this world was Yggdrasil, the video game that allowed him to disconnect from the world.
He loved Yggdrasil so much that he had a chuunibyou time in what he believed that Momonga, the Overlord was his true self; during this time he also became bit obsessed with the aesthetics of the Second World War and created Pandora's Actor, but luckily this face passed faded away with time.
One day four years before the closure of Yggdrasil in a dark time of the game Momonga met Maple for the first time, he was raiding a level 60 guild called «flame emperors» looking for a special consumable item they had when she appeared. Her level was barely 30 at the time and her armor was basic armor that could be bought with a starter pack, to wear that gear despite being level 30, it was the definition of a noob incarnated, an instant death spell deal whit it.
The second time he heard of her was when he found out that a girl in black armor died at Shalltear's hands after eating all the mobs on the first floor of Nazarick's tomb.
The next time he heard about she was when he saw on a forum how a girl took down a Hydra-type dragon from a mid-level raid by eating it alive, while tanking most of its damage surviving with potions and a nearly useless ability called [Meditation].
The time of the second meeting between the two would come when Ainz Ooal Gown and the 16th guild of Yggdrasil «Order of the Holy Sword», while Momonga was destroying the guild leader with his undeads, a Maple level 75 appeared, theoretically someone of that level would not have no choice but to fall before the lord of death level 100...
30 minutes.
The fucking fight lasted 30 minutes, it lasted longer than it should for Momonga's pride to not use super tier magic but it still took 30 minutes and 50% of his huge pool of Mana to kill Maple. It was only after many complaints to the developers that a limit of 10 times was finally put on Maple's [Devour], being able to consume any spell of any level and having it give Maple mana just didn't make sense and the developers agreed.
Before Maple knew it, she became fundamentally invulnerable upon reaching level 100, Momonga became more and more interested in her and as their paths crossed more and more times, Momonga discovered the madness that Maple embodied and all of Maple's weird but still powerful transformations.
Maple soon became Yggdrasil's cover girl with only a year of game play behind her, bringing with her a second wave of new players and causing some old players to return to Yggdrasil, including 10 members of Ainz Ooal Gown who went to hunt down this monster.
Kaede Honjo in a few words was born well placed, she was the daughter of Honjo the CEO of a Japanese branch of one of the most important super Corps in the world, she lived in a relative normality that could be considered as the most absolute luxury for the Most of the people, including Suzuki Satoru. She could go to a high school and did not have the slightest problem breathing fresh air; her father always motivated her to give 120% of herself in school, being almost a genius Maple would eventually inherit his father's position due to nepotism.
But Maple had a silly dream, a silly and stupid dream, when she inherited the position in the company as her father wanted she would not stay there and just become the CEO of the super Corp, she would climb up in the enterprise she would make this world a better place. Indeed, a very dumb dream.
However one day Sally introduced her into Yggdrasil and by good or bad luck she would become addicted to the game discovering the thing that truly made her happy. At that moment Kaede gave way to Maple and her obsession escalated to insane levels in which for times she couldn't distinguish the reality and the game, Maple would die of embarrassment remembering that time she tried to block a ball in physical education by summoning her shield.
Kaede's mother had seen well-meaning people like Maple get into the horrible machine of the super Corps only to come out totally twisted. With the intention of keeping Maple away from this rotten world her mother supported her addiction and convinced Maple's father to contact the developers. Before she notices her account was full of pay items that she never really got to use due to her particular style of play, Sally her best friend who was the daughter of a friend of her father had an account in similar conditions but in order to make the game funnier she didn't use them. Her friends on Maple Tree (except for Kazumi who had the same condition) sometimes felt like fortunes chaser.
Ainz Ooal Gown and Maple Tree were great rivals although Maple Tree suffered a lot in events due to lack of personnel, however eventually they all reached level 100 and gathered 4 world items which considering Ainz Ooal Gown's 11 was not that great.
Still Impressive but inspiring due to the efforts of her Guild, however that world item count would drop to three when Maple used [devour] on one of these world items, to "see if it unlocked any abilities". It didn't unlock anything and Maple became quite depressed to the point that she left Yggdrasil for a month making Maple's father quite angry and causing the developers to go into a period of chaos.
When Maple eventually reconnected she found herself with quite a unique mission.
If he managed to feed her shield a total of five more items a "surprise" would be put into Maple's hands.
Thus began the great hunt of world items and the second great incursion into Nazarick.
The other three items in her possession were instantly devoured and the usually peaceful Maple Tree guild quickly turned into a violent PK guild that would go to great lengths for the two missing world items.
Among their targets was Ainz Ooal Gown.
After bringing together 2000 people, including a large part of new players with an average level of 45, the raid was carried out. Usually a raid of this level would be easily repelled in the first three floors of the tomb without too much trouble due to the large level difference.
However Armageddon fell on Nazarick, a hell in the grave. Taking advantage of an exploit [Loving Sacrifice] spread to all raid members.
Incredible as it was, in the end you could only push reality to its limits at some point and unfortunately Maple is especially easy to fool into a teleportation trap far from the grave.
A cowardly tactic could be called but still was clever; 90% of the raid was destroyed in less than 10 seconds on the sixth floor of Nazarick. Any way the way down was a unique travel, the special ability of Shalltear was nullified by [Love Sacrifice] Beating the first 3 floors in just over 1 hour, on the fourth floor Sally and Maple Tree Guided everyone through victory, on the fifth floor, the Cold couldn't get past Maple's defense. Cocytus was killed after a combined attack from Kuromi, Sally, and Chrome. They finally reached the sixth floor and although it seemed to be conquered just as easily, the members of Ainz Ooal Gown prepared a counterattack, using the Level 9 spell [Nuclear Explosion] Momonga created a distraction that one of his friends took advantage of to sneak between the rows and cling to Maple, then Paladin Touch-Me used the world item [Representation of Nature and Society] separating Maple from the rest of the Raid and preparing to face her in 1v1.
Then the counterattack in the big stadium on the sixth floor really started. The super level spell [Pantheon] was released on the raid; there was not a single chance of victory as the goats swept away the hopes of the noobies.
Unfortunately however this was a victory for Maple Tree despite not reaching the treasury, Touch-Me was unable to stop Maple from finding one of the exits from the illusory world claiming ownership over the world item.
Only one more item was missing to complete the mission and the developers were being exploited to finish the programming, or rather to start it because the "surprise" was not planned yet and nobody expected Maple to eat the 3 world items she had and win one more after his assault on Nazarick's tomb in less of three days. Of course, all of the items gained were devoured by her shield instantly.
And while brainstorming about what to do whit the surprise, the notification that Maple fed the sixth item to the shield reached everyone.
Servers crashed, forums burned, and Maple had a look of curiosity and excitement on her face.
Hours later and some programmers overexploited laying at their desks the new patch was released to the public. This was from far the simplest idea of all, and it was realized without being quite ready for the consequences, Maple's shield was renamed the world-devouring shield and was made into a world item. The changes were simple: a x10 to vitality was applied to whoever equips it, a protection against all status effects was also applied, a passive was attached that healed 50% of the damage taken, and finally a totally unique ability called [World Eater] along with a final boss skin of Yggdrasil the great world-eating dragon for the shield and armor.
At the end of the great world item hunt Maple Tree ended up with two world items in his possession, one of them was Maple's shield and the second one was obtained from another guild and survived Maple eating it to celebrate; and this one remained until the end of the servers, patiently waiting for the moment when he would finally be used, ready to unleash a power greater than that of the final boss of Yggdrasil.
This item waits at Maple Tree in this new world.
Hi, I'm a bit late posting and the chapter isn't very long but I'm a bit busy. Also, I took my time reading through Ainz's wiki and looking for specific data about Maple, what I concluded is that Ainz was much more broken than he thought and that he needed to give Maple at least one world item; On Maple's part I didn't find too much information, I should read bofuri's novel thoroughly to have it and well I'll take a little liberty when writing Maple's past.
As you read in the chapter I tried to adapt the Overlord's back-story with Bofuri, although I'm not entirely satisfied with the handling I gave Ainz Ooal Gown, even so according to what I established Maple would be in theory 16 years old when she entered Yggdrasil and 20 in the end, however Maple is the type of person who doesn't mature until she's 80, other than that Maple from the game looks like her 16 self because let's be honest if Maple was going to become a character for the first time I think she would make a human just like her. So even if I'm thinking about Maple X Gazef I'm not using this as short of a justification to do it.
Also, I ended this chap the last Sunday but I forgot to publish it so….. Sorry mb!
Changing the subject a bit, I know that in Yggdrasil you can create NPCs and I feel a bit strange that Maple Tree doesn't have it; I don't know what I'll do with that, if someone create NPCs that persona was Sally but I don't feel quite comfortable writing OCs as NPCs for Maple, still I think it would be interesting, I have some ideas to it but how I said I'm not comfortable about making OC to fill the spot; at the end I can always said that Maple Tree Guild was too small to have NPCs so they didn't thought about making them, but it really dosen't make sense since they suffer for their number inferiority… Anyway, next time I will continue with the story.
See you, I send you kisses and I love reading to you!
Atte.
"I hope this isn't tragic by messing with Overlord's past"
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