Hello Scrolls and Nazarins, Mr.Bones with another chapter of the final stretch of my fanfic The One Who Came Back.
Wild tells his story and the Guardians fear for their master.
Thanks for reading this far, comment and share.
With you
The One Who Came Back
Chapter 39: The God-Killing Weapon
Ainz and TW walked down the corridor in silence, followed closely by the Overseer, Floor Guardians, Sebas, and the Pleiades. No one wanted to leave their master alone with someone who claimed to be a Supreme Being they didn't remember. His name was known to be among the guild members, mentioned in conversations witnessed by them, but they had never seen or interacted with him.
The Tomb was so vast that they might indeed have never encountered a specific Supreme Being, but all of them? Even Albedo, who had always been present in meetings and the throne room, didn't remember him? It seemed impossible. They even remembered Bellriver, who had disappeared years before Touch Me left the Tomb, triggering the departure of the others.
With every step Ainz took, the emotional suppressors had to work to contain their excitement, their eagerness, their genuine... happiness. After so long, so long, one of their old companions had finally returned. A small part of Ainz's mind reminded him to be cautious in this situation.
Arriving at the office, Ainz looked back; everyone seemed to plead to accompany him, but this conversation had to be private.
"Return to your posts."
"Ainz-Sama, we beg you to at least let us guard this door."
"I will allow you to stay outside if you wish, but only enter when I call."
As the doors closed, the three most intelligent beings began to discuss.
"Who is he?"
"I don't know, Fraulein. His statue is in the treasure corridor, but for some reason, it's as if I've never noticed it before, and I clean them daily."
"Hmm, it seems like some kind of memory loss or mental manipulation. If only we could access restricted information..." Demiurge mumbled.
"I can do that". Shalltear said, and everyone looked at her, "I have access not only to the private library but also to Lord Peroroncino's restricted files."
"How do you have that access?", Albedo questioned in a sour tone.
"My creator wanted me to learn about the First World."
"The First World? The land from where the Supreme Beings came?! Why didn't you tell us anything before?"
"No one asked me."
Albedo looked like she was about to strangle the small vampire.
"Alright, Shalltear, let's go to the Great Library of Ashurbanipal", the Archdemon said before a fight could break out.
Inside the office:
"I want to be alone, leave", Ainz said to no one in particular, but the door opened and moments later closed, "I guess now we're alone, all the Eight-Edge Assassins have left."
"Quite confident of you to be alone with someone who might not be who you think he is", TW spoke behind Ainz's back.
"And who could you be?"
"I could be an assassin pretending to be your friend, here to kill you."
"You know too much about TW."
"I could be a doppelganger."
"You've been checked, you are human."
"I could be your friend, but a traitor."
"It's possible, but unlikely..."
"I could be mentally controlled."
"Yes, you could be, but how would you kill me and escape?"
"It would be a suicide mission."
"And how do you intend to kill me?"
"I could use a spell on a sealed crystal."
"It would take time to activate it, and even if you used an hourglass, I could kill you just by emitting my aura."
"I could be stronger than I appear."
"No, you can't, I've already assessed you."
"Humph! Then I could use this weapon I took from my inventory."
Ainz turned around abruptly.
"WHAT WEAPON IS THAT?!"
"The Weapon Capable of Killing Gods!", TW proudly said, holding absolutely nothing in his hand.
"And why can't I see it?"
"It's invisible."
"Hmmm! Luckily, I have MY FORCE FIELD AGAINST INVISIBLE WEAPONS!"
"And I, I... HA! Santa! You always cheat."
"It's not cheating if the opponent cheats first, hehe! It's good to see you again, Wild."
"It's also great to see you again, Senpai."
"Don't call me that, it's embarrassing, besides, you're not even Japanese."
"Ha! You know I always liked these things, I've always been a hmm... what was it called? Otaku, that's it."
"An old word, no one used it anymore in our time, but you always liked those old things."
"Classics! Movies, series, anime, music, words. With AIs saturating the world with generic media, it's only natural that I would like something made the old way. If it weren't for the audience's preference, even anime voices wouldn't be done by voice actors. Do you have any idea of the torture I went through in this world? The closest thing to a manga or a comic here was the stained glass windows of churches."
"Speaking of which, how long have you been here?"
"Well, time counting is different in this world, but similar enough to orient oneself, so I've been here for about 102 years or so."
"102 years, how didn't you die? What happened for you to disappear? Everything about you just vanished, as if your account had been deleted."
"Well, I'll have to go back to the day we were ambushed. As far as I remember, you were offline, so it was me, Luci*fer, Beast King, and Ulbert. Pero and Hero had already logged out. We were coming back from a mission, completely drained. Ulbert wasn't even the World Disaster at that time, so there were no mana potions left. When we reached the portal that would take us to Helheim, that's when things went south.
"We should have called the others, Ulbert."
"Nah, we handled it. You worry too much, Luci."
"I hate to agree with Luci*fer, but we barely made it. Touch Me was available."
"Beast, you know I can't stand that guy, always trying to boss everyone around. Let him do his missions with others."
"He could have provided more support as a Tank."
"Why bother? We have the newbie here, besides, he can use those healing talismans without the cost of potion crafting, right, newbie?"
"Of course, but even those have limits, and it's quite a hassle to prepare them in advance."
"Don't complain, we got what we wanted, now let's just head home and..."
"Well, well, well! If it isn't the infamous Ainz Ooal Gown! ", said an unfamiliar voice.
Everyone looked around and noticed that right behind them was a group of six players.
"Wow! And who are you supposed to be?"
"We are the ones who are going to kick your furry butts all the way to Helheim."
"Look, if you're going to PK, you should have attacked by surprise. This is the worst trap I've ever seen", Ulbert bluffed.
"And miss the chance to humiliate you? I don't think so! NOW!"
"What the...", Ulbert tried to say before realizing that they were just stalling for time to activate high-level spells.
None of them seemed offensive, so they hadn't been too concerned, but they weren't expecting this. The spells used were Holy and Arcane BUFFs, and when used on players with negative karma, they caused damage as powerful as attacks, with the advantage that the only way to avoid them was to be prepared in advance, which Ulbert's group was not.
Magic circles formed, and they would kill everyone at once. They would lose several levels, even if no one yet knew where the Tomb was located, it would still weaken it. They had only one solution for this.
Totally Wild used his ability "Roar of the Beast" to attract the attacks. As a TANK, he could withstand them for a longer time, giving the others a chance to escape, arm themselves, and come back to take these guys down. He endured exactly three seconds before he died.
"And that's how I died.
"Okay, I already knew that part. Beast King and the others told me. Ulbert was so mad after that, he started training for the tournament and eventually became the World Disaster. But when they came back to look for you, they only found your belongings being looted. They took care of those bastards, collected everything, and returned, thinking you would have respawned at the Guild by then. But you never showed up. In fact, all records of you disappeared. We waited for contact that never came, even tried reaching out to the administrators, but we never got any response from those damn people."
"Yeah, you can blame them, alright. You have no idea what they did! First of all, they played a prank on players who were vampires, werewolves, or like me, a Wendigo. Technically, we were cursed beings, so they thought it would be funny to make it so that if our Karma were neutralized, the "curse" would be broken, and we would turn into a little level 1 human, running around in our underwear before getting killed. Ah ha! So funny, YOU SHITTY DEVELOPERS!", TW ranted, gesturing his fist at nothing.
"But still, you should have respawned at the Guild."
"That's if they had tested that prank better. They didn't know that when there was a race change, I would stop being Totally Wild the Wendigo and become Totally Wild the human. My account was automatically renamed, and as a human, I couldn't be a part of Ainz Ooal Gown anymore, so the system kicked me out and deleted everything about me. I turned into that little human, my things dropped because I didn't have the level to use them, and I died from terrain damage, respawning in Midgard as a NOOB."
"But you should have returned to your previous form after respawning!"
"Sure, but there was the BUFFs issue. Several of them were continuous, and when they were applied to a race change code that wasn't well tested, it generated an infinite usage BUG. I simply didn't revert to the Wendigo form because the BUFFs wouldn't disappear. I tried contacting, sending messages, but I was blocked by the system. The Guild didn't recognize me as a member, as if I had never existed. You know, I even sent emails, that thing we used just to log in when we bought the game. Seriously! You guys should check your spam box once in a while."
"Emails were outdated years ago... I know it's no excuse, but we never thought about that..."
"I know, I don't blame you. Eventually, I got in touch with the admins. They thanked me for pointing out the BUG and said they would fix it in the next patch, but there was nothing they could do about me. There were too many errors, so they gave me a monetary compensation for the inconvenience and offered to create a new account free of charge. I asked them to get in touch with you, and they said they would give me an update, but they never responded again."
"What happened next, Wild?"
"I tried to level up to reach Helheim, which required at least level 10, but my new character was just a standard model, not meant to be played, so it wouldn't level up. I became so disheartened that I quit the game. I only logged in occasionally when I missed it."
"And why didn't you open the new account?", Ainz asked.
"I don't know. I didn't want to start over; I was level 76, so much time invested gone to waste... starting another account just felt wrong. I logged in from time to time, wandering around Midgard and other worlds that didn't hurt me. I saw Touch Me's victory on a screen, learned about the Tomb invasion, and how you guys took them down, hehehe! You know, I found out that the BUFFS left some interesting things. For example, I was immune to passive effects like auras, and I could use luck once a day with a randomly generated percentage. One time it gave me a 56% luck, and I ran towards Helheim. I made it a little over halfway in the swamp before dying."
"I'm sorry, Wild. We never stopped looking for you. After Bellriver disappeared, the Guild was shaken, and then it was Touch Me's turn to leave. One by one, everyone left the game. In the end, it was just me and Hero-Hero, who came to visit, and then the game ended, and we ended up here. But tell me... how did you get to the Tomb? You said you didn't play anymore!"
"I couldn't help but try at least one more time, especially on the last day, the last hour. I played my luck and got a 99%, it was the last chance, the game was closing in minutes. I used the teleport that would take me closer to the Guild. I could literally see it when the game ended. I wasn't fast enough."
...
Author's Note
Quite an expository chapter, isn't it? I wanted to give TW a coherent enough backstory that would be acceptable as part of Overlord, so in my version, Bellriver wasn't the first to go.
I also wanted to put in a little more humor to show that Ainz can still act like a human and have silly joys without being blocked by the emotion inhibitor.
There will be a little more explanation in the next chapter, wait.
