Flying Squirrel tried to pull up the game menu and use the guild's admin privileges—but… nothing happened. No familiar interface popped up, no system chime. It was as if he'd truly become an undead standing in the real world.
Aside from wearing the same body model he used in the game, he had lost every "player" privilege.
A crushing sense of absurdity and loss of control seized him. He had come to say goodbye to a virtual world, only to find he'd barged into a terrifyingly real parallel timeline? And in this timeline, the Great Tomb of Nazarick he had built with such care—those NPCs he was so proud of—had all changed hands, and were looking at him with the complicated gaze one reserves for an "outsider."
"Suzuki Satoru, is it?"
The man on the throne finally spoke, calmly uttering Momonga's real name.
"As Albedo said, this place is no longer the game world you knew. The Great Tomb of Nazarick and its inhabitants have shifted from virtual to real and now truly exist."
His gaze seemed to pierce Momonga's skeletal exterior and see the ordinary human soul named Suzuki Satoru within.
"And I am the new master of Nazarick."
Rei Ao lifted a hand. An invisible force swept the throne room. At once, Momonga felt the surrounding space grow more solid, the world's sense of reality intensify—as if proving the truth of the man's words.
"As for you," Rei Ao looked at him, "as one of this place's former creators, your arrival is a kind of fate."
Momonga listened in a daze. The information was too much to digest at once. The NPCs he created (configured in-game) had come to life. His guild base had become real. And a stranger claiming to be lord of the world sat on his throne as Nazarick's new master.
He looked to the Guardians. They seemed to recognize him, but offered no response. Their loyalty had been given, wholly and without reservation, to the man on the throne.
Nazarick remained. The Guardians remained. But everything was different.
He—Momonga, guildmaster of Ainz Ooal Gown—had become an outsider in this real Nazarick?
"A real world… a new Supreme…"
He murmured. The chaos flickering in his soul-flames gave way to a deep, hollow confusion. He had come to see a game off the stage, yet had stumbled into the dawn of a new era. And what was he supposed to do now?
The air in the throne room congealed, subtle and tense. He stood there rigidly; the soul-fire in his hollow eye sockets lashed, betraying the storm inside. Albedo's cold, resolute proclamation, and the silent posture of submission from the other Guardians, all hammered home a single fact—he was no longer the master here.
Then, cutting through the suffocating silence, a translucent system prompt—one only a player could see—suddenly appeared in the corner of his vision:
[System Announcement] YGGDRASIL server shutdown countdown: 00:00:10
The red numbers ticked down mercilessly: 9… 8… 7…
That familiar countdown tugged him back from his spiraling thoughts. Right. Whatever unfathomable change had occurred here, the game was shutting down. Perhaps that meant all this strangeness would vanish in a few seconds when the servers closed?
A strange hint of relief rose in him—tinged with an even deeper sense of loss and aimlessness. His eyes drifted back to Rei Ao.
The man still sat there, utterly calm, as if everything in the world was under his control. At the approach of shutdown, not a ripple crossed his face. If anything… there was a faint trace of expectation?
Countdown: 6… 5… 4…
Momonga parted his jaw, as if to ask one last question—or do something, anything. But just as the counter slipped into its final three seconds—
Seated on the throne, Rei Ao casually tapped a knuckle against the armrest.
Tock.
A tiny sound, barely audible. Yet at that instant, Momonga's tall skeletal form erased—like words rubbed out by an eraser, like a faulty projection losing signal—without so much as a ripple, disappearing from the hall altogether. As if he had never been there.
[System Announcement] YGGDRASIL server shutdown countdown: 00:00:00
Zero.
And yet—there was no expected disconnect, no forced logout into darkness. The throne room was still bright with lamps. Nazarick stood as solid as a mountain. The Guardians remained, fully real.
The game had not shut down.
More precisely, the way Nazarick existed within the game had undergone a world-shaking metamorphosis.
"R-Rei Ao-sama!" Albedo stared, startled, at the spot where Momonga had vanished, then looked to Rei Ao, confusion written on her beautiful face. "He…"
Rei Ao slowly withdrew his finger. "It's fine. I merely logged him out of the game," he said, tone flat and even, as if brushing away a speck of dust. He had no intention of erasing Momonga—only returning him, in the ordinary way, to his original world.
Still, having taken his Nazarick, Rei Ao had given him a measure of compensation—for instance, altering the doomsday-like state of the world he lived in.
"Logged… out." Albedo rolled the phrase on her tongue. Thinking back to his sudden appearance and disappearance, and the countdown that hit zero without bringing an end, she seemed to understand.
Rei Ao-sama had used his authority as master of this world—at the instant before that system called "the game" executed its shutdown command, he forcibly stripped the former Supreme's existence from this realm and sent him back to his own world.
~~~
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