Sitting on his throne, Momonga looked at the huge room again, he let out a sigh that his skeletal body simply could not represent.
To one side of him, below the stairs that led to the throne, were the battle maids, despite each one having a totally different appearance, their stiffness when standing did not take away from the fact that he basically could not stop seeing them as simple statues, something that did not help him in not wanting to feel alone.
One of the NPCs that functioned as their leader was missing, Sebas-Tian, he had stayed in his creator's room, he had moved him to his room before his last session, and since then, he had stayed there.
Momonga was supposed to have placed him with the other maids, but due to various circumstances, in addition to certain feelings when entering the room, he preferred to leave him there.
He remembered vos' command to make certain postures for the maids, extending one of his skeletal hands, and gestured with it.
"On your knees."
The 6 maids and Albedo, who were standing beside him, knelt down in unison, like subjects would humble themselves to their masters.
I guess that's fine.
He turned his gaze to one of his hands, where a watch was placed to check the time.
23:55:48
23:55:49
23:55:50
The time was about to come.
Probably, a lot of GMs would be celebrating, starting directors, launching fireworks, among other things, but he had disabled any form of transmission, so he wasn't really aware of that.
Momonga placed one of his hands on one of the armrests of the throne, and placed his head on top of his hand, his eyes turned to the huge chandeliers on the ceiling.
The Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick, an insurmountable challenge, an invincible fortress, Momonga thought that because of that status, some players would decide to try one last attack, one last event against that guild that was infamous for a long time.
He would wait for those players, he would wait like any Guildmaster would.
Even though they sent letters to each of those who were members of Ainz Ooal Gown, the fact that a few returned was not something too positive, not to say that they could be counted on one hand.
Despite that, Momonga would wait.
He would wait for the arrival of any returning member.
Momonga looked again at the huge main hall, where a huge red carpet was heading towards the throne.
"A relic of the past..."
Momonga understood that in the end, this place was nothing more than an empty shell, that apparently, he was the only one who remembered it.
"1... 2, 3, 4, 5, 6."
41 flags hung from the huge pillars, Momonga counted each one, each one of them carried the symbol that the members chose to represent themselves.
Each one of them had a memory that came to his mind, fragments of past adventures, past names, different appearances, those memories began to distance him from reality.
But before his memories overwhelmed him, he shook his head, quickly pushing those thoughts away to the corner he least wanted to visit.
"This is not the time for that..."
Momonga remembered the activity he had planned for this day.
The ending he wanted to have with his friends.
To celebrate with his friends who had returned on the last day of the servers, and to be able to say goodbye with a grand show at the end, Momonga had gone to markets he rarely visited, and bought a large number of different items that he hoped to use in this event.
Unfortunately for him, the few companions who had returned, could not stay with him until the end.
Clearly, they would put their personal lives first, that was the main reason for having left in the first place, something he could actually anticipate.
However, that did not take away the loneliness and frustration he felt at the moment.
For those reasons, he had put the event aside in his conscience, a way to perhaps ignore the two feelings that were in his heart, failing in the attempt.
Perhaps there was another ending beyond.
One where a skeleton would be found sitting on a forgotten throne.
But despite that...
Momonga clenched his fists.
"No! A captain dies with dignity on his own ship!"
Momonga immediately stood up from the throne, a light thud on the ground was heard coming from the guild staff that Ainz had been holding this entire time. With a wave of his hand, he activated one of the rings on one of his fingers—the ring of Ainz Ooal Gown.
A menu opened in front of him in the form of a panel, it had different teleportation points, one of the main ones being his own room.
"Why did I put it in the first place?"
Momonga removed the priority from his room, and turned his gaze to the other teleportation points that he used the least.
"Bingo."
He said to himself when he finally found the fastest exit point to the outside, however, he stopped his finger before pressing the teleportation point.
He turned his gaze to the guild staff.
"'Is it really okay...?'
The importance of the staff was something he simply couldn't ignore, the possibility of leaving it floated through his mind, but.
"No, this is proof of this guild's existence."
Did this really matter with just minutes to go before closing time? The answer was no.
But still...
He turned his gaze to the best candidate for bodyguard in the huge hall, Albedo.
"He's a tank... plus he's level 100 and carries a world item with him..."
A perfect candidate for a bodyguard, though.
He turned his gaze to the battle maids.
None of them were over level 70, and they didn't have particularly powerful equipment either, Albedo could probably easily handle the entire group of maids by herself.
None of them were really a candidate to accompany him, and if he decided to bring them together he might draw more attention.
"You're wasting your time... Just choose Albedo."
He raised his hand to call her, but before he did, an intrusive thought crossed his mind for an instant.
"Damn it! You guys follow me!"
He ordered in a loud voice, directing his hand that was first directed at Albedo, now they, the 6 maids quickly stopped kneeling, and approached him, surrounding him, as if they were protecting him.
Momonga activated the ring, a light surrounded her, the maids also began to be surrounded by a bright light that lasted for a very short time until the great throne room was exchanged for gray walls deteriorated by time.
Momonga had appeared at the entrance of the first floor of the Great Tomb of Nazarick, a huge stone tomb functioned as a kind of door to the steps that led to the labyrinth of the first floor.
The maidens had been teleported with him, in the same position they were in a few moments ago, the ring itself couldn't really do that, as its function was only for the ring's user, but because Ainz carried the guild item with him, which had access to various control settings over the tomb, it granted him the power to do that, although this was only exclusive to NPCs of the same guild, this was designed to be able to move or place them more easily around the guild base.
Momonga checked the time again.
23:58:30
"Damn it!"
Momonga realized the waste of time he had made in choosing his bodyguards, panicking slightly.
He could almost hear the sound of the doors of a train closing, replaced by the hiss of gas from inside the door.
Momonga quickly cast "Mass Flight" as if he were a salaryman quickly climbing the stairs.
Despite the panic, Momonga's movements through the spell panels were not lost.
This was because he had practiced for a year memorizing the locations of the spells on the console, each spell had a specific location, so any mistake would be huge in a fight, so Momonga quickly chose to learn them, something that impressed his other guildmates, although unfortunately that effort was never enough to beat Touch Me even once, but despite that, Momonga knew that his good record of victories in PVP was due to that invested effort.
Momonga flew as much as the spell could grant him when traveling long distances, the maids kept up with him, even surrounding him despite flying at a good speed, he quickly entered the swamp that surrounded the great underground tomb of Nazarick.
Flying was especially difficult, Momonga once heard that it was just as difficult as certain flight simulators, however, flying in a specific direction without any strange movements would completely lower the difficulty of the flight, something that NPCs could luckily do, so none of them were delayed because of it.
Figures began to appear in the swamp, but they were motionless, since a week ago, the artificial intelligence of the enemies had been deactivated, this gave rise to more detailed investigations and explorations on the 9 kingdoms of YGGDRASIL, achieving great discoveries, some that by themselves would be complicated, if not almost impossible, with the artificial intelligence active, something that bothered some people, although for his part, he had really been excited to hear the news about these discoveries.
Momonga thought that maybe someone would attack the tomb taking advantage of the fact that the swamp was no longer an obstacle to get there, however, no one did anything, something that, on the one hand, made him happy, but at the same time did not work to avoid feeling forgotten by the entire game.
Momonga had already moved far enough away from the surface of the tomb, and had already crossed a good part of the swamp, until he finally saw the place where he was going.
A small and curious floating island.
It was covered in a large number of cylindrical objects, enough to fill a large part of the floating island's surface.
Momonga took out something resembling a stick from his inventory, while a red button was on it.
He looked at the floating island, and noticed a place high enough to be able to see it from the ground.
"Ah... I guess that wouldn't be bad."
Momonga headed there, the Maids followed him the instant he moved again, Momonga observed each of them for a few moments.
They moved like simple NPCs, they made no gestures beyond the standard ones when flying and they did not make any sound either. However, Momonga could not help but feel minimally happy to be surrounded by them.
Deep inside, he felt somewhat happy to not be alone at this moment, and that influenced his choice when choosing them a few moments ago despite how ridiculous it was to be NPCs, their completely different appearances, unlike the mercenary NPCs that he frequently used a few months ago to be able to get the money to pay for himself by maintaining the cost of the guild base, they had managed to make several memories come back to his mind.
"Ah... this is so pathetic..."
He mocked to himself, finally reaching the elevated area, and he and the maids landed on the dark dirt floor of the swamp.
"Protect me."
Momonga ordered in a somewhat dry and disinterested manner to a certain extent. Gesturing them with his hand, the maids quickly got into combat stances, some of them equipped with their respective weapons.
Yuri-Alpha stood in front of him in a martial art pose, Lupusregina Beta would stand behind him, being a healer, it was logical that she would stand behind him to help him regenerate health without being directly affected by combat, although this strategy was not specifically for him, since he could not be healed by any of her spells, due to his Undead race, Cz Delta and Narberal Gamma stood at his side, while Solution Epsilon and Entoma stood at Yuri-Alpha's sides.
Momonga watched them being placed, and it again brought back memories of the old tactics his companions used to do when they went into battle.
Momonga shook his head to push away those thoughts that brought him nothing but melancholy and turned his attention back to the small island.
He decided to completely put aside those thoughts, and finally, try to simply enjoy this moment.
"Well, here I go!"
Momonga said with an exaggerated tone that he wouldn't normally use, and pressed the red button hard.
The cylindrical objects instantly opened, and bright lights quickly rose into the sky, illuminating it and exploding, generating a large ball of light after rising to a considerable height.
They were fireworks that were sold in the game.
Momonga had easily bought about ten thousand fireworks that he had scattered around the small island, although in the end he had only placed 3/4 of the total because he had gotten bored halfway through placing them.
This was the idea he had planned to celebrate with his friends.
"At 4 in the morning..."
He said to himself, grumpily, remembering what time he should show up at work, he continued watching the explosions of the fireworks, this was the idea to say goodbye to the game with his friends, but at this moment, he was alone.
Momonga looked at the maids again, he knew that they did not have a minimum sign of life, but even so, he was grateful that they were there, even if they were not even paying attention to the fireworks, they minimally managed to totally avoid his loneliness and he was happy about that.
Momonga raised his gaze to observe how the largest and therefore, the most powerful firework he had bought, rose towards the sky to make its explosion.
"I suppose that will be all..."
A large explosion arose from the sky, the light overlapped with more light, Momonga quickly became impressed by the apparent power of the firework.
But as the light grew larger and larger, he realized that this explosion was not caused by the firework.
"Ah..."
The flickering lights began to cover him, until his vision was denied.
Momonga did not know what would happen when a DMMO-RPG like YGGDRASIL closed its servers.
This was because Momonga, No, Suzuki Satoru had never played another one other than YGGDRASIL himself, however, he thought that with just a click, a panel would notify him about the closure of the servers and he would be expelled to the console's start menu.
However, this explosion was pleasantly welcomed for him.
He knew that he would return to the real world a few seconds later, but at least they still maintained the feeling of coming from another world from the game.
It could be said that this moment managed to fill Suzuki Satoru with a small happiness.
And then-
-Momonga began to panic.
He thought that the light would fade in a few moments, however, the light remained for quite a long time.
"Is this... not a long time?"
Momonga could not help but feel more and more nervous as the light prevented him from seeing anything, various possibilities of some kind of error before the closure had caused him to apparently remain stuck in this situation.
Something he could do nothing but panic more and more, not having access to any controller, basically remaining locked in, but before his mind became a cluster of panic and fear.
"Momonga-Sama!?"
A female voice was heard a few meters away from him, almost as if she was standing in front of him.
This stunned Momonga's mind in many ways.
"What..."
"What is happening!?"
Once again, the female voice spoke, it was somewhere between panic and confusion, something very similar to what he was going through right now, Momonga couldn't recognize that voice at all, especially since he hadn't had many conversations with women in the first place in his life.
He tried to formulate some words, despite not knowing that voice, he didn't seem to have any other choice in the first place, and being locked in by a console error wasn't an option for him.
"I-I don't know..."
It was the only thing he could get out of his mouth, but something caught his attention.
"My voice... Why is it so thick?"
Another unanswered question entered his head, he brought his hand to his mouth, with his other hand, he released something that he forgot he had at the moment, and he also brought it to his face, covering his eyes, in an attempt to stop the light, however, it was of no use.
Momonga was about to enter a total state of panic, he didn't understand anything, and that light almost seemed to be starting to burn his vision, until, simply, the light faded away.
A darkness replaced him completely, this one caused by his hand, with which he had previously tried to deny the passage of light.
Momonga lowered his head to the ground, he couldn't see because of his own obstruction, but he decided to stay that way, in case the light came back if he removed his hand.
Momonga tried to calm down... although he really already was.
""Wait..."
Momonga stood still for a few seconds. Until...
"Momonga-Sama...?"
The voice called him again, his panic had disappeared, but his confusion remained palpable in his tone.
Again, some nervousness began to fill Momonga's mind, but it softened for some reason, finally, he decided to remove his hands from his face, normally it would have taken him longer to react, but his apparent... calm, made him decide to act faster, for some reason.
He slowly removed his hands from his face, the possibility of the light being behind his hands vanished after the first thing he noticed was… grass.
"Grass…?"
Momonga was confused, but then, he saw a black cloth appear at the top of his vision.
"Am… are you okay?"
Momonga quickly realized that the cloth came from the suit of the person who had been calling him, but, if that was the case…
Momonga decided to look up and calmly let himself go, the questions, the confusion, everything accumulated in his mind, and he decided to finally get the answer from the root.
And he finally found the face that belonged to that voice, but that really didn't help him get answers, and only opened a cluster of questions that made his mind, which was underperforming at the moment, enter a backup energy state.
"Yuri… Alpha?"