Chapter Text
【Herohero has logged out.】
Momonga stared at the message, a tangle of emotions twisting in his chest—frustration, sorrow, something harder to name. But the message window showed no regard for his feelings. Without the slightest pause for sentiment, it vanished, leaving nothing behind.
It was the final day of service for the DMMORPG Yggdrasil. Once ranked ninth in the guild leaderboard at its peak, the monstrous race guild Ainz Ooal Gown had earned a notorious reputation as a den of habitual PKers—though in truth, most of them were PKKs. Their base of operations: the Great Tomb of Nazarick.
The guild, which had once boasted forty-one members at its height, had now dwindled to just four. And on this last night before the servers shut down, only one remained—the guild master.
Momonga rose from his seat at the round table and began to walk. He stopped before the wall that housed the guild’s symbol: the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown. For a long moment, he stared at the ornate, resplendent weapon. Then, without a word, he turned and left the room.
Memories are, in the end, just that—memories. But for Momonga—once known as Suzuki Satoru, a man who had nothing else in his life—those memories with the members of Ainz Ooal Gown were everything. They were the brightest part of his existence, more precious than anything else.
He had considered, just for this final moment, picking up the Staff of Ainz Ooal Gown—the symbol of those shining days, forged together by the hands of all the guild members. But he hesitated. Would touching it now tarnish those memories?
In the end, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
Though the staff had been specially tuned for Momonga to wield, it wasn’t something he had the right to take on his own. Ainz Ooal Gown had always been a guild that respected majority rule. No matter how little time remained—less than ten minutes until the servers shut down—he couldn’t justify making that decision alone. The staff, if destroyed, would mean the end of the guild. And even though destruction was no longer a real risk, Momonga still couldn’t bring himself to treat it so casually.
Ten years had passed since he first started playing the game, and in that time, so much had happened.
Back in the beginning, hunting heteromorphic races was all the rage. Starting out as a Skeleton Mage—one of those very heteromorphs—Momonga had been a frequent target. Again and again, he’d been hunted down, losing levels he had painstakingly gained, only to start the grind all over. It felt endless. He had begun to wonder if he was fated to be oppressed even in a virtual world. The futility of it all weighed on him, and he came close to quitting the game entirely.
But then he met Touch Me.
Touch Me had saved him, brought him into the fold, and introduced him to others. That first group of nine—members of the clan Nine’s Own Goal—taught him the joy of laughing and playing alongside friends. His levels rose steadily, and even though he still fell victim to PKs from time to time, he also began helping out other heteromorphs who, like him, had no place to belong. One by one, they became allies.
There were hardships, too. Ulbert, one of the earliest recruits, had joined not long after, but tensions flared between him and Touch Me, the clan leader, due in part to real-world circumstances. The conflict nearly tore the group apart. In the end, Momonga was persuaded—after much urging from the others—to take on the role of guild master and bring them together under a new banner: Ainz Ooal Gown.
The days that followed were noisy, lively, and like a dream—so joyful that even if he tried, Momonga could never forget them. As guild master, he wasn’t doing anything glamorous—mostly just handling minor tasks like coordinating opinions and sending out announcements. But somehow, egged on by Ulbert and Peroroncino, he ended up taking on the role of a demon king. Paired with the ominous appearance of his undead avatar—the so-called Overlord—it suited him surprisingly well. And so, combined with the guild’s reputation as a band of notorious PKers, Ainz Ooal Gown came to be seen as an “evil guild,” and Momonga himself gained the unasked-for title of an unofficial final boss.
They joked around about nonsense, went on adventures to seek the unknown. The joy and excitement of those days were amplified a hundredfold when shared with his friends, and whenever anger or frustration arose, they were always there to laugh it off with him. Nowhere else in the world had ever felt so fun, so comforting, so much like home.
He lost his father before he was even old enough to understand what that meant, and his mother—who had pushed herself just to get him into a halfway decent elementary school—passed away before he could even graduate. Somehow, he managed to finish elementary school, earning the bare minimum education expected of someone from the lower classes. But what awaited him beyond that was a life of drudgery, reduced to just another cog in the machine of a soul-crushing, exploitative company.
No family, no lover, no friends—just a colorless existence he endured out of sheer inertia. For Suzuki Satoru, the time he spent as Momonga, surrounded by comrades in a world of magic and adventure, shone brighter than anything else in his life. Nothing else even came close.
—It was fun. Truly, it was the happiest time of my life.
He stepped out into the hallway—and stopped, just for a moment.
One by one, the guild members had begun to retire from the game, each led away by circumstances in the real world. Now, only four remained in the guild, including Momonga himself. The other three had logged in today just briefly, dropping by to say their goodbyes. It had been so long since any of them had last logged in to actually play that even Momonga couldn’t remember when that was.
He couldn’t bring himself to ask them to stay until the very end. They had work in the morning. Responsibilities. Lives to return to.
“Sometimes you should be a little more selfish, Momonga-san,” they would tell him now and then. But in the end, aside from the one instance where a majority vote allowed one of the guild's World-Class Items to be reserved exclusively for his use, Momonga never really asked for anything.
It wasn’t just that he didn’t want to disturb the harmony of the group—though that was part of it. It was also that he’d never quite known what to wish for.
Now that he was alone, Momonga figured he might as well spend the final moments in the throne room—just as a guildmaster should, like the dark lord of a guild once called the blossom of evil. With that in mind, he left the round table behind.
But then, an old quirk of his—a deeply ingrained reluctance to let anything go to waste, even when there was no reason to hold on to it—rose to the surface. He suddenly remembered something he had prepared out in the Glendera Marshes beyond the tomb, hoping to create a memorable scene for his friends to enjoy at the very end. It would be a shame to waste all that effort without even using it.
Once the idea struck, there was no time to waste. The servers were scheduled to shut down at midnight—only a few minutes left. Activating the teleportation function of the Ring of Ainz Ooal Gown on his finger, he warped to the Grand Mausoleum on the surface floor and rushed outside in a hurry.
Helheim, the land that housed the Great Tomb of Nazarick, was a world shrouded in eternal night. The sky above held no stars—only an unbroken veil of darkness—and the tomb itself was encircled by poisonous marshland. Even the usually aggressive Zweiks that spawned around the area were non-hostile today, as a final courtesy on the game’s last day; they no longer attacked even when approached.
Momonga had taken the day off work, logging in early that morning to carefully set everything up, weaving his way through the now passive monsters to complete his preparations.
When he checked the system clock, it read 11:57 p.m. Has it gotten that late already? he thought, then nodded to himself—it was the perfect moment.
Stepping out from Nazarick’s grand front gate and into the marsh, he approached one of the many items he had placed throughout the area, and lit the first one.
A sharp whoosh cut through the air as the first shot soared skyward. A heartbeat later, a blossom of light burst open in the darkness, followed by a deep thud that echoed through his chest.
The fireworks were set to trigger in sequence—ignite the first, and the rest would follow automatically. One after another, they bloomed across the starless sky, filling the void above the marshland with brilliant color.
Five thousand in total.
Brilliant hues painted the night in fleeting patterns, only to fade away just as quickly, leaving behind a soft afterglow and silence.
They had been part of a special sale—fireworks discounted for the end-of-service event. Momonga had bought them in bulk. Just for this.
To make the final sight his friends might see together as vibrant as possible.
For no reason other than that.
The Tomb—if it could still be called that—had become a glorious ruin, a monument to a time long past. And for these past few years, Momonga had remained its lone warden, quietly grinding solo to fund its upkeep, all in the hope that his companions might one day return.
Somewhere deep down, he had always known. He wasn’t preserving it for them. He was clinging to something he couldn’t let go of—the brilliance of what once was. And he understood that. He understood it all too well.
Still, he couldn’t bring himself to let go.
Fireworks… he never should have lit them. That thought gripped him like a fist around the heart.
A burst of brilliance, a trailing glow, and then nothing.
It felt as if the game itself were telling him that those shining days in Yggdrasil had always been fleeting, nothing more than illusions in the night sky.
He stood alone, watching the light show unfold above, and felt only hollow sorrow.
Why had he thought this was a good idea?
If someone—anyone—had been there to smile and say, “Beautiful,”
maybe then…
maybe even this could’ve become one more bright, happy memory.
The fireworks multiplied, filling the sky until Momonga’s vision turned nearly pure white. A faint, self-deprecating chuckle escaped his lips—Maybe I overdid it a little, even for the last day.
Once the show ended and the system forced a shutdown, he would have to go straight to bed. Tomorrow meant waking at four AM. The dream was ending. The brilliance overhead would leave only bitterness and ache behind, fading into memory.
No one can run forever from reality.
And for someone like Suzuki Satoru, buried in the lower rungs of society, just surviving each day was all he could manage. The poor stay poor. There is no ladder offered to them.
The world was built that way.
And then—
his vision, painted white with light—
suddenly went black.
Just as he thought the system had forced a shutdown, his vision abruptly shifted.
The first thing he saw was a treetop.
There was no way this was his room. And he hadn't been logged out. That meant—he had to still be in the game. And yet...
Glendela Marsh was, as its name suggested, a marshland. There shouldn’t be any trees growing there. But when he looked around, it was unmistakably a dense forest.
A terrible suspicion stirred within him, and he cast his gaze downward. Thick undergrowth stretched across the ground in every direction, so lush it buried his shins.
And then, riding a gentle breeze, came the unmistakable scent of damp greenery—cool, earthy, and real.
Wait—a smell? That can’t be right.
Glancing around in every direction, Momonga was visibly shaken. Taste and smell were strictly forbidden in DMMO-RPGs under the Fundamental Cyber Law. The rationale was simple: if sensations were rendered too realistically, it would blur the line between the virtual and the real world—something that had to be avoided at all costs.
No matter how he looked at it, this clearly wasn’t his room. And if he hadn’t been forcibly logged out, why was he able to smell anything?
Panicking, he tried to check the in-game clock—only to find that the usual system commands and interface displays had vanished. Nothing would open.
A glance at the physical-looking watch on his left wrist told him it was already 12:02 AM.
Was this just a delay in the forced server shutdown? Was the unfamiliar environment a bug? The only possible recourse he could think of was to contact a GM and report the issue. But when he tried to open the console—nothing. No response. No GM call. No system shutdown option.
It was as if he’d been completely cut off from the game’s infrastructure—excluded from the system itself.
Could something like this even happen?
“What the hell is this, you fuckin' shit devs?! It was supposed to be the perfect ending—and this is what I get?! Don’t screw with me!”
His voice thundered through the forest, loud and furious, born of frustration and helplessness. Whether it was the sheer force of his shout or the fury behind it, the world around him visibly reacted. Birds startled awake and took off in flocks, animals scattered through the underbrush, insects with wings buzzed away at full speed, while the crawling and hopping ones desperately scrambled to escape as if their lives depended on it.
“…What?”
Staring at the surreal sight, Momonga forgot his anger entirely, left speechless by the scene before him.Sure, if this forest had been populated with hostile mobs that spawn in the area, he could chalk it up to game design. But this? This was something else. The sheer number and detail of the forest creatures—their subtle, natural movements, the way they fled—how much data would it take to render something like this?
He wasn’t a programmer, so he had no clue. But it had to be immense. If only Herohero-san were here, he might be able to explain it.
And it wasn’t just about display quality—these creatures had reacted to him. Directly. Naturally. As if they were really there.
Could this really be... reality?
As that thought crossed his mind, a chill ran down his spine.
DMMO-RPGs certainly offered immersive virtual experiences with an impressive degree of realism—but they were still virtual. No matter how real it felt, it wasn't actual reality.
Even just the forest in front of him was far more detailed than any forest zone in Yggdrasil, with much higher visual resolution and intricately rendered detail. It looked—no, it felt—as if it were real. The soft breeze brushing against his cheek was so vivid, it could only be described as reality itself.
Satoru Suzuki had been following news about Yggdrasil II with cautious optimism, so he had a fair—if somewhat shallow—understanding of the newest DMMO-RPG technology. But he had never heard of anything like this—anything that could create such an intensely lifelike experience, to the point of feeling truly real.
If that kind of breakthrough had been made, it would have been all over the news. And even if such a technological leap had happened, the implementation of sensory features like smell was strictly prohibited by law. There was simply no way something like this should be possible.
Thinking about it wouldn’t help—what he didn’t know, he didn’t know.
What he needed to do now was figure out how to contact a GM.
Shaking off his confusion, he tried to refocus. Maybe—just maybe—he could use the Message spell to reach them. He’d never tried it before, but the thought struck him as plausible. After all, GMs had character data and their avatars sometimes appeared in-game. That meant, at least theoretically, it wasn’t impossible.
But how was he supposed to cast a spell when he couldn’t even pull up the console?
He fell silent in thought. Then, suddenly, it clicked. This wasn’t something that could be explained in terms of interface or commands—it was like moving your arm: you didn’t click a button, you just thought it, and your body responded.
He reached deep into himself, toward the unmistakable presence of mana, and cast Message.
A strange sensation followed—something like a thread unfurling from within him, stretching outward. But the thread reached nothing. After a while, the spell’s duration expired and faded.
A hunch forming in his mind, he extended his arm into the air, fingers outstretched.
Just by intending to cast, he suddenly knew—the spell’s range, its cooldown, how much MP it would cost.
“Lightning.”
A loud crackling sound tore through the forest as a flash of lightning split the night. The tree he had aimed at now had a gaping hole blown through it.
He had cast a spell. And it had worked.
His hands and arms were bones—he must still be in the avatar of an Overlord. The robe he wore was the same one he'd been wearing in-game. That meant this place wasn’t reality. But if he could use Yggdrasil’s magic, then maybe—just maybe—this was some kind of sequel or follow-up to Yggdrasil.
He wanted to believe that. But there had been no announcements, no news whatsoever. And even if it were some elaborate surprise, dragging someone in without warning was practically kidnapping. No game company would take that kind of legal risk—there was no benefit, no logic to it. Besides, how could a game even allow magic to be cast just by willing it, without a console or commands? That wasn’t something current technology could pull off.
So if this wasn’t reality, and it wasn’t Yggdrasil—then what was this place?
There was no way to know. No matter how long he thought about it, he wasn’t going to find the answer.
Eventually, Momonga gave up on thinking. He slumped down at the base of a tree.
The nanomachines in Suzuki Satoru’s brain—the real body in the real world—needed nutrients to keep running such an intense simulation. If his body didn’t get enough, the hardware was supposed to force a shutdown to protect him. So even if this was some new game, all he had to do was wait.
He had last eaten around nine o’clock, so it shouldn’t take too long before he was forcibly logged out.
* * * * * * * * * *
There was a time when I actually believed that.
Even after the night ended, there was still no sign of a forced shutdown.
And now, two new inconsistencies had emerged.
The first: he felt no sleepiness, no hunger, no thirst at all.
The second: the way time seemed to pass.
He had, by all rights, pulled an all-nighter—but he wasn’t tired in the slightest. His mind was sharp, as though it were broad daylight and he was fully rested. He hadn’t experienced any biological urges either. As much as he didn’t want to consider it, it was likely due to the traits of being undead—never tiring, never needing food or drink.
Now that he thought about it, the calmness with which he’d been able to think things through—despite how utterly bizarre this situation was—might also be due to his undead immunity to emotional effects. Every time his feelings flared—anger, confusion—they would quickly subside, leaving him unnaturally composed.
He had assumed the night forest appeared as bright as day because it was a game, but in hindsight, that too was probably thanks to his racial trait: darkvision.
As for the passage of time, he had checked his watch and confirmed that it seemed to be progressing in real time. In the game, time (used as a standard for things like quest progression) moved differently from real time. In fact, day and night progressed in line with the in-game clock (though this didn’t apply in worlds like Helheim, which were in perpetual darkness). That alone suggested this place was not a game. If anything, the possibility that it was a world closer to reality had grown even stronger.
To confirm, he had once used Fly to ascend and survey the surroundings from above—but saw nothing familiar. Now, he simply sat at the base of a tree, drained of all motivation.
What mattered most to Momonga was the fact that he had been cast into an unfamiliar world, completely alone.
In the real world, Suzuki Satoru was utterly alone—no family, no lover, no friends. There was no one to wait for him, no one who would come looking. The members of Ainz Ooal Gown had each left, one by one, until only he remained. And now, he had truly been thrown into a world where no one knew him.
Even a dry laugh began to bubble up.
Why am I all alone?
Should I have begged them not to leave? Should I have held them back?
I did exchange personal contact info with Ulbert and Peroroncino—should I have reached out more in real life, tried harder to stay connected?
The regrets came one after another, piling up without end.
Was it really necessary to be left so completely, so utterly alone?
He felt like crying, but even that intense rush of emotion quickly settled into a dull ache that slowly tightened in his chest.
Besides, he didn’t even have eyeballs or tear ducts. How was a skull supposed to shed tears?
That slow, creeping sadness and hollowness was unbearable. Hugging his knees to his chest, Momonga curled in on himself.
* * * * * * * * * *
That day, Enri Emmot had entered the Great Forest of Tob in search of medicinal herbs that could only be harvested during that particular season. However, something about the forest felt off.
There was no sign of life whatsoever. Normally, she would hear birds calling from somewhere in the distance, and at this time of year, the insects should have been out in such force as to be annoying. Yet now, there was no trace of them—neither sight nor sound.
The ominous stillness made her sense of foreboding grow stronger and heavier. Still, the herbs were a vital source of income for the village. If she missed the narrow window for harvesting them, their medicinal properties would weaken and they wouldn't fetch a high price. So, staying on alert in case she needed to flee at a moment’s notice, she pressed on through the familiar forest, moving with deliberate caution.
Eventually, she pushed through a patch of tall underbrush and stepped into a slightly more open area. Just ahead lay the place where the herbs she sought grew in clusters—but as soon as she emerged from the thicket, Enri froze in place. No, it would be more accurate to say she had to freeze.
“Eep…!”
Before her sat something inhuman.
Seated at the base of a tree was a figure clad in a robe of pitch-black fabric that looked so lavish, its quality obvious at a glance—far beyond anything she’d ever seen.Its face was that of a skull, glowing red deep within the eye sockets. The inhuman creature glanced at Enri once, then dropped its gaze as if having lost interest.
It had to be—an undead. She’d only ever heard of them in stories. In E-Rantel, they were said to appear frequently around the graveyards, but Enri had never seen one in Carne Village. For one to be this close to the village, in the Great Forest of Tob no less, was a serious matter.
Yet her feet didn’t move to carry her back to the village.
One reason was simple terror—her legs felt pinned to the ground. The other was the inexplicable sight before her: undead were said to loathe the living and kill indiscriminately. And yet, this creature showed no interest in Enri, a living human. On the contrary—it sat there hugging its knees, looking… sulky, almost.
“…Um.”
“…Yes?”
“What are you doing? Sitting there like that?”
She hadn’t expected a response at all, much less one spoken in such polite tones. The unexpected civility caught her so off guard that a rather foolish question slipped out before she could stop herself. But it was too late—the words were out, and there was no taking them back. She waited for a reply, stiff with fear, ready to be attacked at any moment.
“…I’m not doing anything. Or rather, I don’t feel like doing anything, and I don’t even know what I should be doing.”
“…I see…”
“If you don’t have any business with me, could you please just leave me alone?”
“Um… I don’t think I can really do that… I mean, you’re… you’re an undead, aren’t you?”
Her voice was tinged with unmistakable caution as she spoke, eyes fixed on the strange figure. At her words, he lifted his skull-like face and stared straight at her. The sight was terrifying. His features were more severe than those of a typical human skeleton, and the crimson glow burning in the hollow of his eye sockets exuded an unmistakable sense of dread. Combined with the ornate robe, he looked like something that could easily be mistaken for a sacred idol of some sinister cult. The longer she looked, the more overwhelming the fear became—her knees nearly gave out beneath her.
“Probably… yeah, I think so. I’m… probably undead. I only just became one, so I’m not entirely sure yet.”
“Oh… that’s how it works? Becoming undead?”
“I mean, I don’t really know. It all happened so suddenly—I’m still confused myself.”
“Um… you… hate the living, right…? Don’t you?”
“Huh? Oh—no, not at all. Is that what undead are supposed to do?”
He waved his hands loosely in front of his face in an almost comical “no no” gesture. The motion was so unmistakably human—so kindly human—that Enri couldn’t help but let out a soft giggle. It was absurd, laughing in front of such a frightening face.
“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘supposed to,’ but that’s what my friend—the apothecary in the city—told me. That undead hate the living. You’re the first undead I’ve ever met, so…”
“Oh… uh, sorry about that. I guess it’s a bit weird that your first undead is someone like me…”
“No, no! I’d have been way more troubled if it had been a normal undead! I’d be dead!”
“Haha, fair enough.”
The undead’s laughter sounded like that of a gentle, good-natured young man—if you ignored his fearsome, demon king-like appearance. Maybe, Enri thought, she didn’t need to worry about her village being attacked, at least not right away. As relief flooded her chest, the tension finally drained from her legs, and she slumped forward, collapsing slightly onto the ground.
“Are you all right?”
“Ah, um… My legs gave out from the tension… I was just so scared…”
“Scared…? Ah—yeah, of course. I’m sorry. My face is scary, isn’t it…”
“It’s okay. I mean, I’m the one who got scared all on my own… Um, may I ask your name?”
At that, the undead figure placed a bony hand to his chin and lowered his gaze, as if in deep thought. If what he’d said earlier was true—that he’d only just become undead—perhaps he didn’t even have a name yet. Enri began to panic, wondering if she’d asked something she shouldn’t have. But then he lifted his face and moved his jawbone as he spoke.
“…Momonga. That’s my name. And you are?”
“I’m Enri. Enri Emmot.”
“There was a village nearby, right? Is that where you live?”
“Yes, but… um, is there something…”
“Oh—no, I wasn’t thinking of attacking or anything like that. It’s just small talk. From what you said, I’ve realized pretty clearly that undead probably can’t live peacefully among humans, so I don’t intend to get close.”
“Uh… I—I’m sorry… I didn’t mean it like that…”
Feeling guilty, Enri lowered her eyes.
This undead—Momonga—hadn’t shown a hint of malice. He was simply trying to talk, and yet she’d instinctively treated him with suspicion, just because he was undead. She felt ashamed of herself.
If he had meant harm, he already knew about the village—he could have attacked it at any time. The very fact that nothing had happened was proof enough of his good will. And besides, he had said it himself: that he didn’t feel like doing anything, that he didn’t even know what he should be doing.
“A-ah! You said before—right? That you didn’t feel like doing anything, and you didn’t know what to do? Is there… I mean, are you troubled by something?”
She looked up and blurted it all out at once.
Momonga stared at her, silent for a moment. He probably looked puzzled. She was slowly beginning to recognize the nuances of his expression, skeletal as it was. After a moment, he let out a deep sigh, pulled his knees in tighter, and looked away.
“It was somewhere else, not here… but I used to have companions.
Little by little, they all left. I kept hoping they’d come back, kept waiting… but none of them did.
In the end, I was left alone.
And then—suddenly—I found myself in this place I don’t even recognize, with no one I know. Truly alone now.
I thought I was used to being alone, but I realized… I was only able to bear it because I still had those moments with them.
Sorry, I know this probably doesn’t make any sense…
But now I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be living for anymore.”
“To live… for a reason? You ask really hard questions, Mr. Momonga.”
She said it without sarcasm—just honestly, with a touch of wonder.
Momonga turned his gaze toward her again, his glowing red eyes narrowing slightly as if puzzled.
“Do I? I thought it was something everyone wonders at some point.”
“Well, for people like us—peasants, I mean—we’re too busy just trying to survive.
We don’t really have the time to think about the meaning of life or anything so complicated.
But, hearing you talk just now, I think I did figure one thing out.”
“What is it?”
“That you’re lonely.
And maybe, if you weren’t lonely anymore, you’d start to see a reason to live again.
I actually came out here to gather herbs today, so I can’t stay too long, but… if it’s alright with you, can I come talk to you again sometime?”
A smile had found its way onto her face without her realizing.
He’d seemed sulky when they first met, but now she understood—it wasn’t anger or malice, just a quiet sadness at being left behind.
Knowing that, she couldn’t help but want to do something for this gentle undead.
He said he was newly made and unfamiliar with the area.
Even someone as ordinary as her—just a village girl—might be able to help, just a little.
Momonga looked a bit stunned by her offer.
But eventually, he gave her a slow nod.
“Yes, please.
If you come talk with me again, I won’t feel so alone.
I’d really appreciate that.”
“I’m glad! Then I’ll head over and pick the herbs I came for.”
“Be careful out there.”
With that, and a (probably) friendly wave from Momonga behind her, she stood up.
Now that her fear had eased, her legs finally obeyed her again.
She walked a few steps, but then a sharp, smoky scent caught her attention.
Looking off to the side, she saw a massive tree—now hollowed through with a large, smoldering hole.
“Um… Mr. Momonga?”
“Yes? What is it?”
“That, uh… that hole…”
“Ah… ahaha… I was testing out a spell, just a little target practice… Sorry about that.”
This person—this being—could clearly be incredibly dangerous if provoked.
She still wanted to help him… but she’d better be careful.
Renewing her resolve, Enri stepped into the grove where the herbs grew thick, ready to begin gathering.
* * * * * * * * * *
“…This is a problem.”
The quiet murmur, barely audible, vanished into the air like mist.
Talking with Enri had made something painfully clear to Momonga—he could no longer perceive humans as his own kind.
When he first saw Enri, her presence barely registered—like a fly buzzing past.
He lost interest almost immediately.
But as they spoke, gradually, a kind of affection began to grow in him.
The sort one might feel for a dog or a cat.
She had said that undead are supposed to hate the living, but for Momonga, that wasn’t quite it.
He didn’t hate humans—he just didn’t care about them.
If they got in his way, he might crush them without a second thought. That was all.
Momonga-san, the opposite of love isn’t hate—it’s indifference. Love and hate are twins.
Who was it that said that?
It had a nice ring to it, the kind of thing he'd usually save to his collection of “Punit Moe-isms.”
But this one… probably wasn’t hims.
If love is the sense of kinship one feels for fellow humans, then Momonga was now standing firmly on the opposite shore.
In a way, the undead who truly hate the living might still be more human than he was.
He hadn’t just changed physically.
Somewhere along the way, without even noticing, he’d stopped being human in spirit as well.
Overlord.
That was the title he’d chosen in his chuunibyou days, back when Suzuki Satoru—the man he used to be—picked his race class purely because the katakana looked cool.
He never imagined it would make him see people as ants. Or flies.
He hadn’t imagined ending up in some bizarre, unknown world with his body and soul twisted into that of an undead either.
Maybe things would be different if he met someone of his own kind.
If such a person even existed.
There seemed to be other undead out there, at least.
Still, he had learned something important—if he felt positively about someone, he could still experience a kind of fondness.
Like finding a pet cute.
That was something.
And just as Enri had said… what Momonga, what Suzuki Satoru hated the most wasn’t loneliness—it was the pain of being left behind.
Of not having anyone to turn to.
Of having no one to confide in, even if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to live a life that would lead him back to that place.
If possible, he wanted to avoid unnecessary trouble.
It wouldn’t be easy, not for an undead, but he still wanted to live peacefully—kindly, if he could.
A faint light had pierced the darkness—so thin it might vanish at the slightest breeze, but it was light nonetheless.
And though his face lacked the muscles to smile, Momonga sat there hugging his knees, quietly content, as if smiling inside.