Chapter 6: A Harsh Reality Check

The eyes of death fixed on the purple stone in his hand. It was a mineral riddled with imperfections, and within it, a torrent of mana swirled violently, spinning back and forth as if trying to break free.
'This isn't a data crystal,' he thought after inspecting it carefully.

After so many years playing Yggdrasil, he could almost instinctively recognize treasures—and this certainly looked like one—but it was still a bit far from being an actual data crystal.
As one of the most fundamental items in Yggdrasil, crystals drove the economy of the Nine Worlds to the point where certain crystals, loaded with specific data, could be worth as much as a divine item.
Even though they were drop items in high-level zones, they were practically useful for everything: enchanting and crafting gear, acquiring abilities, customizing avatars and NPCs.

Momonga still remembered an angelic race player who had used thousands of crystals to upgrade a trash item until it became divine—just because, in his own words, "it had an OP skill and I didn't want to lose it."
He himself wasn't innocent of that crime. How many crystals had Ainz Ooal Gown burned to reach his ideal form? It wouldn't be a lie to say many end-of-month paychecks and bonuses were spent on crystals for that very purpose.

Luckily, appearance customization crystals were relatively cheap; otherwise, many guild members would've gone bankrupt after designing their creations.
Those were dark days for the guild's gold reserves.

"[All Appraisal Magic Item]"
The flames that represented his Overlord eyes flared brightly for a moment before returning to normal.
Nothing... Seconds passed and the skill still didn't activate. Just as he was about to give up, a status window appeared in front of the crystal, lighting up his eyes once more.
Most of it displayed question marks, but what he could read made him swallow his thoughts.

This wasn't just any treasure!
It had three functions, but the one that caught Momonga's attention the most was that these magical stones were massive mana batteries.
Pure mana, stored within a crystal, just waiting to be used.

Among the wide variety of consumables in Yggdrasil, there was only one item that, no matter how much players begged, the GMs would never implement.
Mana potions!

Magic classes in the game were absurdly powerful damage cannons, and the only thing holding them back was their mana reserves. Even Ulbert suffered from that issue—he had the highest burst damage in the entire guild, but if he couldn't finish a fight before running out of mana, he was as good as dead.

Without hesitation, he tossed the crystal into his inventory.
"I should keep going and gather a few more before time runs out," he whispered, fixing his gaze on the large entrance that led up to the next floor.
...

The grind, in any player's words, had been satisfying. After an hour of farming—clearing floors that ranged from frozen tundras to vibrant, life-filled jungles—Momonga had already collected several thousand mana crystals.
Occasionally, monsters dropped different items like scales, hides, or horns. Though seemingly useless, after inspecting them with [All Appraisal Magic Item, he decided to keep them.

If Yggdrasil II followed the same patterns as its predecessor, those materials would be useful for non-combat professions. While Ainz Ooal Gown didn't have many players fully dedicated to those roles, plenty took on sub-professions to make adventuring easier.
A couple of levels in alchemy to brew emergency potions or in blacksmithing to repair weapons after a dungeon run were fairly common.

However, there were the so-called "lifestyle professionals." Many of them were human or dwarven players who, not needing to invest in racial levels, poured ridiculous amounts of time into reaching 100 levels in specific sub-professions.
There were also some well-known heteromorphic races. Depending on how customized they were and the lifestyle path they pursued, they could greatly leverage their racial traits in their respective fields of expertise.

Apparently, a large group of players didn't care much for exploration or PvP. They preferred to spend their time in the bustling metropolises of the Nine Realms, devoting themselves to crafting weapons, potions, scrolls, and anything else useful to guilds—fueling trade and resource distribution in the process.

But more importantly, some of the strongest guilds actively supported these so-called "lifestyle professionals" to reap the benefits of their work, buying resources in bulk even if the prices were above market value.
Who could forget the player who obtained the special class of "Legendary Chef" after investing thousands of hours? His dishes were highly sought after, as consuming them granted buffs equivalent to carrying another divine item.

Seeing this, many guilds targeted the player in an attempt to uncover the acquisition requirements for his class. After a brutal wave of PKing, where even a single step outside a safe zone meant certain death, the player dropped to level 1 and quit the game shortly after.
As for the legendary dish, it vanished—and never appeared again in the Nine Realms.

If he wanted to found a guild, he needed a strong gold income. He could slowly grind it from level one, but that would take more time than he had—after all, he was a responsible worker who spent twelve hours a day locked in a dark office.

Subconsciously, he hoped that those competitive guilds, backed by "whale" members who didn't bat an eye at spending more than a suburban family's monthly grocery budget, would snap up his items for a hefty amount of gold whenever they had the chance.

He knew those kinds of players well. They didn't play for fun—they played to win. Their overinflated egos, fed since childhood, wouldn't allow them to feel inferior to others. If given the option to speed up their in-game progress, they wouldn't hesitate to swipe their corporate credit cards.

Momonga sighed as he glanced at the clock on the side of his HUD, surprised by how quickly time had flown while he was enjoying himself.
"This should be enough. The beta's lasted longer than I expected—I can't stay logged in any longer," he muttered, tossing the last mana stones into his storage.
"I haven't stayed up this late since the guild's glory days," he chuckled to himself.

He looked around at the dungeon floor he had ascended to—it was simply beautiful. Though the sky above was made of stone, the glow of the embedded crystals shimmered like the skies described in the stories his mother used to tell him as a child.
The vegetation was lush and vibrant, and the waters were crystal clear. Just gazing at it was enough to refresh his spirit.

He knew that once he logged out, he wouldn't be able to come back—and who knew when the full version of the new title would be officially released? It could be months, years without a word, or they might even decide to cancel it altogether.

Reluctantly, he raised his hand and waved, trying to open the user panel to log out—but oddly, nothing happened.
"A bug?" He tried again with his other hand, but no matter how much he waved his arms, nothing responded.

"Mnnn, I'll have to report it to one of the GMs. Even though I don't particularly like them, they should be able to disconnect me remotely, right?"
He brought his fingers to his temple and activated the [Message] skill, attempting to contact the administrators.
... Click.
The call disconnected instantly the moment he launched it.

An unsettling feeling crawled down Momonga's spine, and for a fleeting moment, an innocent thought crossed his mind—sending his nerves into overdrive.
Annoyance and fear screamed within him: something strange was happening.

The laws surrounding full-dive VR games were incredibly strict. Simply being unable to access the user panel was completely illegal in any DMMO, let alone the absence of an administrator to resolve in-game issues.
There was no way a megacorporation like the one behind Yggdrasil wouldn't catch something like this.

His paranoia escalated quickly, clouding his thoughts, and strangely, Ulbert's words echoed in his mind again and again:
"I really wish I could wake up in another world!"

A green light surrounded him, silencing the screams. His thoughts, once scattered, calmed and aligned, becoming as clear as water. Momonga stood frozen like a statue before being bombarded by that glow again and again.
Each time he found peace, the emotions surged back, overflowing—only to be soothed once more, which ironically unsettled him all over again.

After this one-two cycle that trapped him for several minutes, Momonga's consciousness finally reached a state of harmony. He was still paranoid, but not enough to trigger the glow that forcibly suppressed his emotions again.
"Was that the undead passive against mental alterations?" he whispered, covering his skeletal face with his palm. "Am I really... in another world?"

The weight of the situation began to press down on him, filling him with uncertainty and questions.
From the moment his skill bar failed to appear, he had felt a bit uneasy. Small things had bothered him, but he had pushed them aside, chalking it all up to "beta stuff."

There had been so many familiar elements—monsters, items, everything—so much so that he couldn't bring himself to believe he was outside a game. But now, everything had become clear to him...
He was no longer in a game.

As if the world itself tried to slap him in the face after that realization, a pop-up screen appeared before him:

[A fragment of the creator's consciousness has awakened]

[The last creator has cursed the world /%#£§ Monster hordes will assault every inhabited refuge]

[The power of the seal is beginning to weaken. Time remaining before it breaks: 359 days]

[! Warning ! A monster horde is about to spawn in the inhabited area 'Labyrinth City Orario'. As the holder of the title 'Last Hope of the World', the overall difficulty of the horde has increased!]

"Orario..." Thanks to the pulsing glow of the screen before him, the notion of being in another world started to feel slightly less distant."[Perfect Unknowable]" The space around him rippled before enveloping him completely.

So far, only two plausible explanations fit what was happening: either he had been unwillingly captured in a simulation to serve as a guinea pig for experimental technology, or he had truly crossed the boundary between worlds with his Yggdrasil avatar.

Both options gave him a headache—but thankfully, his undead passive came to the rescue, easing his mental stress and helping him focus on what mattered.

At that moment, it didn't really matter which of the two was true. In time, he would find out the truth, but for that to happen, survival was paramount. He wasn't sure if revival was possible under these circumstances—and he had no intention of finding out firsthand.

"[Draconic Power, [Radiant Beryl Body, [Archmage's Blessing, [Greater Full Potential, [Greater Luck, [Greater Resistance, [Paranormal Intuition, [Enhance Sensor]" A large number of spells activated in succession, significantly boosting Momonga's defensive and detection capabilities.

He looked around, noting that even though his perfect invisibility spell had erased all traces of his presence, rendering him completely undetectable to everything around him, death had already begun to spread in his surroundings.

He bent down and picked a small flower from the ground. Just moments ago, it had been full of life—but after being exposed to his aura of despair, it had withered, turning a sickly purple.

"My skills now affect the environment too," he murmured, letting the flower fall. "This is problematic. I need to refrain from using some of my spells for now—especially something like nuclear blast. If its effects are more real here, that magic has become far more dangerous to me."

As a post–World War III citizen, Suzuki Satoru had grown up hearing the horrors of radiation. The bombs themselves had only wiped out a handful of cities—but the irreversible damage to the world killed hundreds of millions over the years.
Fifty percent of the planet had become uninhabitable, where merely approaching certain areas guaranteed a slow and painful death. Radioactive clouds blotted out the skies, and toxic rain poisoned the earth.
The year 2138 was not a pleasant time to live.

Though Momonga's Overlord body was powerful and immune to status effects, he didn't know if it could resist radiation—something never coded into the original game.

For now, to prevent his location from being revealed by the indiscriminate massacre left in his wake, he decided to deactivate his auras.
They were powerful weapons—up until now, more than enough to kill almost every monster they encountered—but he wasn't going to take any chances.