The Slane Theocracy – The Sanctuary of the Six Great Gods
Zesshi Zetsumei, the extra seat of the Black Scripture, stared at the air in front of her face.
She sat on the edge of her bed, swinging her legs, her scythe resting against the pristine white marble wall. She was bored. She was usually bored unless she was killing things or hoping someone would defeat her so she could marry them.
But the glowing blue box floating in front of her nose wasn't boring.
[System Alert: World Partition merging.]
[Active Players Detected: 2]
She poked the text. Her finger passed through it, shivering as if dipping into cold water.
"Players..." she whispered. A grin stretched across her face, manic and terrifying. "Two of them?"
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors to her sanctum burst open. The Captain of the Black Scripture stood there, chest heaving, his spear gripped so tight his knuckles were white.
"Zesshi! Do not engage!"
"Engage what?" Zesshi giggled, leaning back on her hands. "The shiny box? Did you get one too, Captain? Does it tell you how weak you are?"
"It's appearing for everyone with... God-kin blood," the Captain hissed, stepping into the room and scanning the corners as if assassins were hiding in the shadows. "The Cardinals are in chaos. The astrologers are screaming that the stars have vanished from the southern sky."
"So?"
"So look at the text, you maniac! 'Players detected.' It's not just a myth anymore." The Captain wiped sweat from his forehead. "The Sorcerer King. We knew he was powerful, but this... this confirms he interacts with the world on a level we can't comprehend."
Zesshi stood up. She grabbed her scythe. The smile on her face didn't reach her eyes—it surpassed them.
"Two," she repeated. "One is that skeleton over in the Re-Estize rubble. Who is the other?"
"We don't know. That's why we're locking down. The Cardinals have authorized the deployment of 'Downfall of Castle and Country' to the defensive line."
"Boring." Zesshi began walking past him.
"Where are you going?"
"To find out," she licked her lips. "If the world is breaking, I want a front-row seat."
[Server Synch: 0.25%]
Nazarick – The 4th Floor – The Underground Lake
The ground shook.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was rhythm. Boom... Boom... Boom.
Gargantua, the Strategic Siege Golem, was moving.
It was a golem the size of a skyscraper, a construct given to the guild as a bonus for system administration rights back in the early days of Yggdrasil. It had no mind, no will. It was simply violence given form and gravity.
Demiurge stood on a rocky overlook, watching the colossus slowly march into the teleportation gate created by Ainz's massive expenditure of gold coins. The gate had to be expanded to three times its normal size, tearing the fabric of space until it screamed.
Beside him, Cocytus exhaled a cloud of frost.
"Impressive." Cocytus clicked his mandibles. "To. Deploy. Gargantua. Against. A. Mere. Temple."
"Do not be so simple-minded, Cocytus," Demiurge chided gently, though his eyes never left the golem. "Look deeper. What is the primary function of Gargantua?"
"Siege. Warfare."
"Incorrect. Its function is denial." Demiurge smiled, his tail swishing with intellectual ecstasy. "Gargantua is slow. It cannot chase. But where it stands, nothing passes. Ainz-sama is not attacking the new dungeon. He is plugging it."
Demiurge adjusted his glasses.
"Ainz-sama called it a 'Test Server.' He believes this new structure is a lure. If we entered it, we would fall into the trap of the 'Developers.' By placing Gargantua on top of the entrance, he asserts dominance. He tells the invisible enemy: You will not test me. I will test you."
"Sasuga," Cocytus breathed. "His. Wisdom. Is. Bottomless."
"Indeed. He realizes that in a battle against reality-warping entities, gravity is the only honest weapon." Demiurge turned away. "I must return to the Happy Farm. The skin harvest will be necessary for the scroll production. If Ainz-sama expects a war of attrition, we will need every spell we can cast."
"I. Shall. Command. The. Vanguard."
Cocytus leapt down the cliff face, landing with a crash of ice.
High above them, watching via a magic mirror, Ainz suppressed a scream.
Nazarick – The Throne Room
I just wanted to block the door!
Ainz buried his face in his skeletal hands.
Why do they always think I'm speaking in metaphors? I literally just panic-ordered the biggest rock I owned to sit on the spooky glitch-house so nothing would come out and eat us!
"Denial tactics... asserting dominance..." Ainz muttered Demiurge's words to himself. "Sure. Let's go with that."
He sat up straight on the throne. Being alone was the only time he could slouch, but even now, the phantom weight of the guild rested on his shoulders.
The interface in his vision was changing.
The "Log Out" button was still grayed out, but new icons were flickering into existence. They weren't the polished, gold-trim UI of Yggdrasil. They were raw, wireframe boxes. Debug code.
[Quest Generated: The First Glitch]
[Objective: Survive the Rendering]
[Reward: Admin Privileges (Level 1)]
A quest.
Real life didn't have quests.
"This proves it," Ainz whispered. "The New World... isn't real either. Or it was real, and now it's being gamified again."
A terrifying thought struck him. If the world was turning back into a game, what happened to the people who weren't players? What happened to Enri? To Nfirea?
Did they become NPCs?
If they became NPCs, they could be deleted.
"My Lord."
Albedo was at his side. She had approached silently, her presence masked by Ainz's internal spiral. She held a tablet—not stone, but a weirdly smooth, glowing slab that she looked at with suspicion.
"This item... it appeared in the treasury. Just now. Pandora's Actor is holding it at wand-point, but he says it bears your signature."
Ainz took the slab. It was sleek, black glass.
A smartphone.
A distinct, pre-2138 model smartphone.
His nonexistent stomach dropped. This was an artifact from his world. The real world. The polluted, corporate-dystopia Earth he had left behind.
He tapped the screen. It lit up. No signal, but there was one app installed.
Yggdrasil Connect.
"Ainz-sama?" Albedo asked, her voice trembling slightly. "Is it... a weapon of the Supreme Beings?"
"In a way," Ainz said. His voice was hollow. He looked at the contacts list. It was empty.
Except for one entry.
Touching Me.
Wait. Touch Me?
His friend? The creator of Sebas? The Paladin of Justice?
Ainz stared at the name. Touch Me had quit the game long before the shutdown to care for his family. It was impossible.
Unless.
Unless the "Expansion" wasn't pulling from the game. It was pulling from the players' memories.
"Albedo," Ainz stood up. The smartphone vanished into his inventory space—which felt greasy and wrong, like reaching into a bucket of oil. "Alert Sebas. Tell him to scour the Re-Estize territories. He is looking for a knight in silver armor."
"A knight?" Albedo tilted her head. "Is this knight an enemy?"
Ainz paused.
If it was really Touch Me, it would be his greatest joy.
But if it was an AI reconstruction based on the game data of Touch Me? A Touch Me that followed the lore of being a "Champion of Justice"?
Ainz looked at his hands. He had slaughtered armies. He had condoned human farms. He was an Undead Overlord.
If the Touch Me of lore appeared... he wouldn't be Ainz's friend. He would be the Raid Boss coming to kill the villain.
"I do not know," Ainz said quietly. "But if found... he is to be contained. Use of World Items is authorized."
Albedo's eyes went wide. World Items authorized against a single knight?
"It will be done."
She bowed low.
Ainz watched her leave. He needed to see the dungeon. He needed to see Gargantua.
He cast [Gate].
The purple portal opened, but it sputtered. Static arced around the edges. The sound wasn't a hum; it was a screeching modem dial-up tone.
System instability.
Ainz stepped through.
The Great Plains – The Tower of Agony
Gargantua had arrived.
The scenery was apocalyptic. The massive golem, standing over a hundred meters tall, had simply sat down directly on top of the newly spawned dungeon. The stone temple had crumbled under millions of tons of magically reinforced rock.
Trees for miles had been flattened by the shockwave. The air smelled of pulverized ozone and crushed pine.
Ainz floated in the air under a concealment spell, observing.
"Well," he mumbled. "That's one way to solve it."
CRACK.
A sound like a whip-crack splitting the sky echoed.
Ainz looked down. Beneath Gargantua's massive stony backside, light was leaking. Violet, corrupted light.
The dungeon wasn't destroyed. It was clipping.
The stone of the temple was phasing through Gargantua's body. The textures were fighting. Rock flickered into wireframe, then back to rock.
[Error: Collision Mesh Failure.]
[Error: Object Overlap.]
[Solution: Ejection.]
The text scrolled across Ainz's vision. "Ejection? Wait, don't tell me—"
BOOM.
Gargantua, the heaviest object in Nazarick's arsenal, was launched into the air.
It wasn't an attack. The physics engine simply decided two objects couldn't occupy the same space and applied a repelling force to separate them.
The billion-ton golem flew upward like a kicked pebble, arc'd through the sky, and crashed three kilometers away with an earth-shattering thud that likely registered as an earthquake in the Empire.
"Cheh!" Ainz shielded his face from the dust cloud. "Physics glitches? Are you kidding me?"
Where Gargantua had been sitting, the Tower of Agony stood pristine. Not a scratch on it.
And standing at the door was the Skeleton Centurion. It looked up directly at Ainz's concealed position.
It waved.
It wasn't an agro animation. It was a casual, human wave.
[Incoming Call...]
Ainz froze. The text appeared in his vision. The caller ID was obscured.
Ainz reached out with a trembling mental hand and accepted the call.
"Satoru?" a voice crackled in his mind.
Ainz's undead heart stopped.
It was a woman's voice. Calm, professional, tired. He knew that voice. It was the voice he heard every day before logging in.
"Lucifer?" Ainz blurted out, naming a guild member. "No, wait. Blue Planet?"
"This isn't a player, Suzuki-san," the voice sighed. "This is Administration. ID number 774. We have a... situation."
Ainz floated there, the wind whipping his robes. Administration. The Devs.
"You trapped us here," Ainz growled, the green light flickering rapidly to keep him from raging. "Why?"
"Trapped? No. You're the backup," the Admin said. She sounded terrified. "The real world is gone, Satoru. The Nanite swarm ate the servers. Ate Tokyo. We... we uploaded what we could into the framework."
Ainz stared at the waving skeleton below.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying this isn't a game anymore. It's a lifeboat. And we ran out of disk space." The voice cracked. "We have to delete the corruption to make room for the survivors. And I'm sorry, Satoru..."
The Skeleton Centurion pointed a rusty sword at Ainz.
"...but your data profile is marked as 'Corrupted File'."
[Quest Updated: Survival.]
[Objective: Defeat Administrator 774.]
[Time Limit: 10:00 Minutes]
The Skeleton Centurion began to grow. Its bones twisted, fusing with the stone of the dungeon. Flesh knit together from the glitches in the air.
Ainz gripped his staff. The Panic was gone. The Fear was gone.
If they wanted to delete him, they were welcome to try.
"Corrupted?" Ainz laughed, and the sky darkened in response to his mana. "I am not a file. I am Ainz Ooal Gown."
"And it is very rude to hang up on support."
He cast [Maximize Magic: Gravity Maelstrom].
The battle for reality had begun.