Nazarick – The Treasury
"Observe, my Creator! Is this angle regal enough? Or perhaps a more... melancholic tilt to the skull?"
Pandora's Actor struck a pose. He leaned against a stack of gold coins, one hand pressed against his forehead, the other extended toward the void as if grasping a lost love. He was currently transformed into Ainz Ooal Gown.
The resemblance was physically perfect. The energy radiating from him, however, was pure theater kid energy.
"Stop it," Ainz said, pressing his hands to his face. "Just sit on the throne. Don't move. Don't monologue. And for the love of the Guild, do not start singing in German."
"Nein! I am a stone! I am the mountain of death!" Pandora's Actor stiffened, freezing instantly. Then his finger twitched. "But... if Albedo-sama approaches... may I caress her cheek?"
"Absolutely not!" Ainz whisper-shouted. "Tell her I am in deep meditation to recover my mana. If she insists, say I am communing with the abyss."
Ainz adjusted his cloak. He wasn't wearing his divine-class gear. He was wearing a brown, hooded traveler's robe over a chain shirt—a disguise set he used for his Momon persona, but stripped of the flashy plates.
He checked his smartphone.
[Patch_v1.0_Anti_Glitch.exe]
[Status: Active]
It was terrifying to trust a random .exe file sent by a stranger, but he had no choice. The "Paladin" had found him instantly. If he walked out of Nazarick now, he'd be a beacon.
"I'm going," Ainz muttered.
"Vater," Pandora's voice dropped the theatrics for a nanosecond. "Be safe. The Treasury is... lonely without items to catalogue."
Ainz paused. He looked at his creation. The NPC's grotesque, egg-like face (in his base form) was hidden, but the concern felt real.
"I'll bring back souvenirs," Ainz promised.
He activated the [Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown]. Not to teleport outside, but to the surface edge. From there, he would have to fly manually.
Please don't let me die in a hooded cloak. It's such a cliché way to go.
The Great Forest of Tob – Sector 4
The trees were screaming.
Well, the Dryads inside them were screaming, which was essentially the same thing.
"Disappointing," Demiurge murmured, stepping over a burning log. "These specimens possess no resistance to hellfire."
"They are trash mobs," Albedo replied. She swung her greataxe, 3F, clearing a path through the dense undergrowth. Her new right arm—fully healed but phantomly itching—gripped the haft with crushing force. "Why are we here, Demiurge? Ainz-sama ordered a consolidation."
"We are consolidating," Demiurge corrected. "By removing potential observation posts. The sensors picked up movement here. 'Powered Suits'. A signature consistent with Yggdrasil technology."
They entered a clearing. Standing there were twelve figures.
They wore bulky, red armor plates. Hoses connected backpack mana tanks to wrist-mounted blasters. They looked like low-budget space marines from a knockoff sci-fi game.
The Red Drop adventurers? No. The gear was newer. cleaner.
"Halt!" the lead soldier amplified his voice. "By order of the Alliance, this sector is quarantined! Return to the Demon nest or be pur-ga-ted!"
"Purgated?" Albedo tilted her head. Her smile was dazzling. "I believe you mean 'purged', human. Unless your vocabulary is as cheap as your armor."
The soldier raised his blaster. [Fireball].
A sphere of flame shot out. It was fast—much faster than standard casting.
Albedo didn't dodge. She caught the fireball with her bare hand, crushing it into embers.
"Level 40 damage output," she analyzed coldly. "Artificial casting focus. No soul behind it."
She vanished.
CRUNCH.
She reappeared behind the leader. Her hand was buried in his backpack reactor.
"Let's see what makes you tick."
She ripped the reactor out. The suit powered down instantly, the soldier inside collapsing under the weight of the now-inert metal.
The other eleven opened fire. Beams of red mana scarred the air.
"[Aspect of the Devil: Hellfire Mantle]," Demiurge commanded softly.
A wall of black flames erupted around the demons, incinerating the projectiles. Demiurge walked through the fire, adjusting his glasses.
"Don't kill them, Albedo," he said. "We need to interrogate the supplier."
"Oops," Albedo said. She had already decapitated three of them with a casual swing of her axe. "My hand slipped."
"Target locked," one of the surviving soldiers droned. His voice... wasn't human anymore. It shifted, digital and glitchy. "[Initiate Self-Destruct]."
"Stop them!" Demiurge ordered.
Too late.
All eight remaining soldiers glowed white. It wasn't a chemical explosion. It was a mana detonation.
BOOM.
The clearing was wiped white.
When the dust settled, Albedo and Demiurge stood unscathed, shielded by Demiurge's defensive skills. But the soldiers were gone.
Or rather, their bodies were gone.
Floating where they had stood were twelve small, glowing octahedrons.
Crystals.
Albedo approached one. She poked it.
Ping.
The crystal shattered into particles of light. A menu—visible to everyone—popped up in the air.
[Loot Acquired:]
[3x Gold Coin]
[1x Damaged Power Cell]
[1x Red Drop Data Chip]
Albedo stared. She looked at Demiurge.
"They... turned into loot," she whispered.
In the New World, dead bodies stayed dead. They rotted. You couldn't loot a corpse by walking over a glowing crystal. That was a Game Mechanic.
Demiurge picked up a 'Data Chip'. It felt cold.
"The contamination," Demiurge deduced, his tail still. "It is rewriting the biological laws. These men... were turned into Mobs."
"Sasuga Ainz-sama," Albedo breathed, her eyes widening. "He ordered us to find World Items to anchor our reality. He knew! He knew the enemy was turning the population into farmable resources!"
"Indeed," Demiurge nodded gravely. "If we do not act, soon all of humanity will be nothing but RNG drops. A brilliant, if horrifying, efficiency."
He crushed the data chip.
"We must bring these... 'crystals'... to the Treasury. Ainz-sama will want to analyze the yield rates."
The Eastern Edge – The Old Great Wall
The location was desolate.
This wasn't the Great Wall of China. It was a massive, crumbling structure of black obsidian that separated the Central Continent from the Beastman Nations of the East. It stood three hundred meters tall, a jagged scar against the night sky.
The wind here howled. It sounded like wolves mourning.
Ainz touched down on top of a watchtower. He scanned the area.
[Enemy Detection: Passive].
Nothing.
The location was isolated. If it was a trap, it was a lonely one.
"You're late," a voice said.
Ainz spun around, staff raised.
Sitting on the edge of the crenellations, dangling legs over the abyss, sat a figure.
They were small. Maybe a teenager's height. They wore a patchwork cloak made of textures that didn't match—swamp mud next to castle stone, stitched together with blue neon thread. Their face was obscured by a hood that seemed to absorb light.
But above their head, a nameplate flickered. It was faint, gray, and glitchy.
[Player: Zero]
"Late?" Ainz managed to keep his voice steady, thanking his skeletal vocal cords. "I wasn't aware we set a specific second, Unknown User."
"Zero is fine," the figure said. They turned around.
There was no face. Under the hood, there was just a pair of floating chatter teeth—like the wind-up toy—and two mismatched eyes. one an exclamation mark, the other a question mark.
"A Cosmetic Aura head?" Ainz noted. "Rare item. Halloween Event, 2132."
"You have a good memory, Momonga." Zero stood up. They dusted off their patchwork cloak. "Though I suppose being trapped in a Lich body helps with the nostalgia."
"You know my name. You know my cooldowns." Ainz stepped forward, radiating mana. "Who are you? One of the Seraphim? Trinity?"
"None of the big guilds," Zero laughed. The chatter teeth clacked. "I'm a Bug Hunter."
"Bug Hunter?"
"I find holes in the map," Zero explained. "I slip through walls. When the server shut down... everyone else got booted or died in the Nanite waves. You? You got isekai'd because you were sitting on a Throne of Kings that acted as a database anchor. Me? I fell through the floor geometry."
Zero gestured to the world around them.
"I've been falling for ten years, Satoru. Watching. The 'Admin' you fought? That's an auto-cleanup script. It's trying to delete the irregularities."
"The Glitch," Ainz realized. "And the hostility of Touch Me..."
"System Defense. It sees you as a virus. So it takes the shape of what you fear or respect most to eliminate you."
Zero walked closer. Ainz tensed, readying a spell.
"Don't bother," Zero said. "I have 1 HP. You can kill me with a sneeze. I'm not here to fight. I'm here to give you the User Manual."
Zero held out a hand. In it was a data crystal. Not a loot drop—a memory crystal from Yggdrasil.
"This world isn't a game, and it isn't reality," Zero said, the chatter teeth slowing down. "It's a Quarantine Zone. The Real World Earth is gone. Destroyed. Humanity uploaded itself to the cloud to survive. This—the New World—is Sector 9. It's where they put the Corrupted Files."
Ainz froze. "Corrupted?"
"You. Nazarick. The NPCs. You're the data that didn't transfer clean. You have 'feelings'. You have 'memories' that the System deems inefficient." Zero pointed a patch-work finger at Ainz's chest. "The Admin wants to wipe the drive to make room for 'Perfect Humans'. No pain, no guilt, no creativity."
Ainz felt a cold rage that even the suppression couldn't stifle.
"They want to delete us because we are... flawed?"
"Because you are dangerous," Zero corrected. "But here's the kicker. The System can't delete a Guild Base if it has an active Admin."
"I am the Admin of Nazarick," Ainz said.
"Local Admin," Zero shook his head. "I'm talking Server Admin. The Throne of Kings... it's not just a chair. It's a Root Access Terminal."
Zero dropped the crystal into Ainz's hand.
"Collect the World Items, Momonga. They are admin keys. If you get enough of them... you can hijack the migration. you can stop the format."
Ainz looked at the crystal. [Sector_9_Map_v.02].
"Why help me?" Ainz asked. "If you are a Player... surely you want to be 'Perfect' and join the new humanity."
Zero laughed. It was a bitter, cracking sound.
"Perfect humanity? A world without bugs? Without exploits? Boring."
Zero stepped back onto the ledge.
"I'm a glitch, Momonga. I belong in the cracks. And honestly... I'd rather watch an Overlord conquer the world than watch a machine sterilize it."
BZZT.
Zero began to flicker.
"Heads up," Zero warned. "The Dragon Lords aren't part of the System. They're the original Anti-Virus software. And that Platinum lizard just found a loophole."
"A loophole?"
"He's got a Trojan Horse. Watch your back, Momonga. The 42nd Supreme Being isn't coming to save you. But the 43rd might try to kill you."
"Who is the 43rd?"
"You," Zero grinned. "When you rewrite the code."
Zero fell backward off the wall.
Ainz rushed to the edge. There was no body. No landing sound. Just the howl of the wind.
[Notification: Map Data Updated.]
[Quest Updated: The Key Collector]
[Objective: Gather 5 World Items (Currently: 3/5)]
Ainz stared into the abyss.
"Three?" He muttered. "I have ten in Nazarick."
Then he realized. The quest wasn't counting owned items. It was counting active keys.
The Throne of Kings.
The Orb of Momonga.
And one other... likely Ginnungagap.
But if the Theocracy had Downfall of Castle and Country...
"That's a key," Ainz realized. "If they use it on me while I'm Corrupted... they can lock me out of my own guild."
His phone buzzed. A text from Pandora's Actor.
< "Vater! Emergency! A visitor has arrived at the Gates! She claims to have a message from the Cardinals!" >
< "Who is it?" >
< "A girl! Black and white hair! But Vater... she detects as Undead!" >
Ainz's eye sockets flared.
Zesshi Zetsumei. With Surshana's aura.
The Trojan Horse.
"Ainz Ooal Gown does not yield," Ainz whispered. He cast [Gate]. "Let them come."