Yggdrasil was a meticulously crafted DMMO-RPG (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) developed by an island-based producer and officially launched in the year 2126.
The game's primary appeal lay in the immense freedom it offered its players, once sparking a wave of popular gaming within the island nation.
However, after twelve years, the game seemed to have reached its end. The number of online players dwindled below freezing point, and the official announcement of the game's closure was made.
Today was the day the servers for Yggdrasil would shut down.
One of the nine world maps within the game. In the game's lore, it was a mountainous region in Midgard, the realm where humanity resided. The magnificent white city glittered like fireflies in the dark night, its outline sharply defined.
Inside the temple at the city's center, towering white marble pillars soared, supporting a grand domed ceiling. The silence within this place was almost sacred, yet something unsettled Kael here.
Each column was carved with the figures of holy angels, their gazes seemingly judgmental, as if following Kael's every move. Behind the left column, a scene of the Last Supper was depicted, immortalizing the moment of betrayal and sacrifice.
At the end of the path formed by the two rows of pillars stood a tiered platform, upon which rested a five-meter-tall white jade statue, depicting a kind-faced old man seated on a throne.
Flashes of light and shadow greeted the arrival of a handsome young man with black hair and eyes before the statue.
Kael wore a long white coat and gold-patterned trousers, with a short hooded cloak draped over his shoulders. His feet did not touch the ground, hovering about five or six centimeters above the red carpet. Golden light flowed across his body, creating an aura like a deity descending to earth.
"Damn it, every time I see this old man, I want to smash him to pieces," Kael grumbled inwardly. There was something about the statue's serene smile that made his blood boil.
He floated forward two steps, then turned and sat on the steps of the platform, both feet touching the red carpet.
The first thing Kael did after logging into the game was to open his player message mailbox and check all the emails he had received that day.
With swift and efficient movements, he took out the items included in the letters and stored them in his inventory bag.
Thanks to the approaching end of the game's operation, a large number of players began frantically selling their equipment and properties to recover losses and prepare to switch to new games. Legendary and mythical props that were once highly valuable could now be obtained at low prices.
Over the past year, he had entrusted reputable player associations to help recycle game props and had accumulated a large number of items.
However, once the game was shut down, no matter how much game property one possessed, it would all be just a pile of data waiting to be deleted and worthless.
Therefore, in the eyes of others, his behavior seemed unreasonable and foolish.
"Let them laugh at my foolishness," Kael thought cynically. "I'm laughing at their ignorance."
Every time this happened, Kael felt a strange sense of satisfaction.
He wasn't stupid. He had his reasons for doing this, and the rewards he would obtain might exceed anyone's imagination!
"Who would have thought that playing a game could take you to another world and become a top-tier boss?" he murmured, his eyes gleaming with ambition.
Yes.
He was collecting game props precisely for the purpose of bringing them to a different world of swords and magic and living the life of a protagonist.
And in the game Yggdrasil, there was an opportunity for that.
To understand this secret, we must start with an anime series from the country of Japan called "Overlord."
This anime mainly tells the story of the protagonist Suzuki Satoru, an ordinary office worker in a parallel dystopian world. Due to his addiction to virtual games, he ends up adventuring into another world along with his game account and guild, which had reached the maximum level on the day the game shut down.
A year ago, Kael traveled to the world of this anime and took over the body of a white-collar worker in a corporate company who was at a higher social level than Suzuki Satoru.
Like most fan-fiction protagonists, Kael also tried to join Suzuki Satoru's game guild, Ainz Ooal Gown, after learning the truth about this anime world.
If he could successfully join, he could directly obtain the opportunity to transfer to another world. In the early stages, he would also gain a group of loyal subordinates, in-game wives who had become real, and various other benefits. Only a fool wouldn't want that!
Unfortunately, all of Kael's applications to become a member of Suzuki Satoru were flatly rejected.
Because Suzuki Satoru and his guild, Ainz Ooal Gown, were a bit special.
The real world was a cruel hell. The planet's environment was severely polluted, resources for survival were scarce, the national regime was essentially controlled by entrepreneurs who possessed more resources, and ordinary civilians struggled to survive.
Suzuki Satoru's parents worked hard to support his education until he graduated from elementary school and helped him escape the lowest social class, only to die from overwork.
Therefore, Suzuki Satoru was essentially an orphan with no siblings or close friends. That was the reason for his addiction to virtual games. He deeply cherished his guildmates who played with him, as well as the Ainz Ooal Gown guild that he and his friends had established together.
When the popularity of the game Yggdrasil declined, most of the Ainz Ooal Gown guild members chose to leave the game like ordinary players. When Kael arrived in this world, Suzuki Satoru was the only one who logged in every day.
Even though his friends had left, Ainz Ooal Gown would always be the home of the forty-one guild members. They couldn't casually accept strangers just because the others weren't around.
Perhaps it was for this reason that Suzuki Satoru rejected Kael's membership applications several times and even blacklisted him in the end.
Kael sighed. "I can understand," he thought inwardly. "The world doesn't revolve around me. I'm not so arrogant as to demand that others give me what I want, and I certainly won't hold a grudge against Suzuki Satoru for it." After all, resentment would only waste his time and energy, resources better spent on more productive pursuits.
However, this rejection forced him to consider two things.
First, how to travel to the other world? Second, how to treat Suzuki Satoru and the Ainz Ooal Gown Guild after he arrived there?
The former was quite tricky. Although the original author did not give a clear explanation of the time-travel mechanism, it was definitely not exclusive to the protagonist Suzuki Satoru. There were other game players who were also stranded in this new world.
According to the conclusions drawn by many fans, a player could time-travel as long as they remained online when the game servers shut down, just like Suzuki Satoru, and possessed a special in-game item known as a World Item.
Kael currently met these two basic conditions, but it was not the safest approach. There were too many unknown variables, too many things that could go wrong.
In the original work, both the main story and the spin-offs, the guild base of Ainz Ooal Gown, the Great Tomb of Nazarick, was transferred to the other world in its entirety. It was a stable anchor amidst the chaos.
Therefore, Kael had no intention of taking risks with other methods. He simply needed to sneak into the Great Tomb of Nazarick when the game shut down and hitch a ride on that giant ark to the other world. This gave him the best chance of survival and development in the new world.
However, the latter was a more pressing issue. How to face Suzuki Satoru and the NPC guardians of the Great Tomb of Nazarick after time-traveling? This required careful planning and diplomacy.
In the original work, many Yggdrasil players traveled to the other world, but in the end, the strongest combination was still the "last player," Suzuki Satoru, and Nazarick. They were a force to be reckoned with, a power that could become either allies or enemies.
So, in the original story, after the NPCs in the Great Tomb of Nazarick misunderstood Suzuki Satoru's intention to conquer the world, they launched a series of crusades. Their actions were often brutal and inhumane.
This included kidnapping humans for cruel experiments, attacking human nations and providing assistance to secretly replace successors and seize state power, invading human countries and carrying out indiscriminate massacres even when the other side showed willingness to surrender unconditionally, and much more.
After traveling to the other world, players used their game characters as soul vessels. NPCs were granted intelligence, but their way of thinking and worldview were deeply influenced by their character data settings. They were essentially digital versions of their former selves.
Suzuki Satoru's game character was a skeletal monster, an Overlord. His race had a passive effect known as 'Forced Calm.' Once his emotions began to fluctuate, this effect would suppress them, causing him to always maintain a relatively stable emotional state. He was a calm and calculating fortress.
Almost all the NPCs in the Great Tomb of Nazarick were designed by the guild members to have anti-human demon personalities. They viewed humans as insignificant insects. Empathy was not part of their programming.
For them, power was everything. Strength determined attitude, and the strong determined what was right and wrong. This was the law of the jungle applied on a cosmic scale.
If Kael had successfully joined Ainz Ooal Gown, he might have regarded the behavior of the people in the Great Tomb as necessary evils. At most, he would try to implement a certain degree of control within the bounds of decency. He would be part of the machine, trying to steer it from within.
But the problem was that he was not part of Ainz Ooal Gown. He was an outsider, a potential intruder. He had no right to control them, even if he could, and he had no guarantee that he wouldn't become their target.
Therefore, he only had three options. Each had its advantages and disadvantages, each carried different consequences.
The first option was to find a remote corner to hide in after crossing over to the other world and retreat as far as possible when encountering people from the Great Tomb of Nazarick, adopting a strategy of complete withdrawal. He would become a hermit, spending his days in hiding, always looking over his shoulder.
With his strength as a level 100 player, coupled with the many game props in his possession, as long as the people of the Great Tomb did not see him as an obstacle to their conquest of the world, it was highly likely that he would not be killed. He would be a survivor, not a player.
But... that was almost equivalent to someone pointing their nose at Kael and saying, "From now on, you have to sit at the children's table during meals." The price to pay for living was constant humiliation.
He was unwilling to take this shameful path unless absolutely necessary. There was a matter of dignity involved, a respect that was non-negotiable.
The second option was to change his character race to a monster like Suzuki Satoru and the Great Tomb NPCs. After crossing over to the other world, he would immediately seek them out to declare his surrender and become a subordinate of Suzuki Satoru or one of the NPCs. He would kneel before those with greater power, hoping to gain their mercy.
Besides slaughtering, the Great Tomb also absorbed some natives to conquer the other world. This strategy was likely to succeed. He would become a pawn in their game, a disposable tool for achieving their goals.
But... Kael had admiration for the protagonist Suzuki Satoru when watching the anime, but that didn't mean he had to lick his boots and flatter him without ulterior motives, or become his pawn. He refused to surrender his freedom so easily.