The Grand Catrastophe

Book one: The Grand Catastrophe

By: Zog Salken

Prologue: Excuse me?

          In the year 2138, there exists a game that is called, DMMORPG. In these types of games, the player is partially brought into the world of the game. Taste, smell, sexual acts, and partially touch aren’t brought through.

          But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t immersed in the worlds themselves. In the hit success, Yggdrasil, player have ultimate freedom that hasn’t been seen in games since the likes of Dark Souls and TF2. Most games in the early 22^nd century are riddled with microtransactions, and simply cost a fortune to purchase outright.

          Yggdrasil was different. It only had a simple microtransaction system, and didn’t cost said fortune. Yet, all this hype and fanfare is all for nought. For the game just spoken of is begin shut down soon. It truly is a sad state of affairs. What also makes this so sad is that no one seems to care.

          The game was in the hearts of so many, yet in the end, it isn’t even remembered. Well, except for one player. They used to be known as the ruler of death.

          However, two years before this fabled shutdown, their good friend and an even more infamous player by the name of Ulbert Alain Odle gave him his own title of “World Disaster”. Their gamertag is Momonga; and they played a female overlord, the most magical of all undead.

…

          He walked down the halls of the enemy guild base. In his feminine left hand he held a sword. It was a simple, yet elegant thing. The leaf shaped bastard sword was held out, its tip dragging across the left wall.

          Numbers popped up in his field of view. Right now, he was dealing damage to the very walls of the guild base. Said walls were made of living material, so it was safe to assume that they could be damage by his undead touch.

          He looked away from the now decaying walls and decided to check the cool down time for some of his spells. The automated defenses hadn’t been all to tuff for the pro player, but he had spent a lot of time trying to avoid them. That plan didn’t work.

          He sighed behind his helmet and noticed the napalm was done resetting and looked up from his game window. He was just in time to notice the only player in this druid-like guild base in front of him.

          He panicked a little and dodged to the right as a spell came his way. the offending player then stepped back a bit as they fired a different spell. To bad for them that Momonga noticed their level. They were only level 60.

          He sighed a happy sigh as he pointed out with his staff in his right hand toward the enemy player. He released a lightning spell and the player disappeared in a puff of blue light.

          Momonga hummed a happy tuned as he walked over to the spot where the other player died and took all the items he dropped. He then looked back up and continued his trek through the guild base, plundering it all. Though, it made little use, the game was about to be shutdown anyway.

…

There, at a rather long table, sat two beings. One was what a normal person would call tar, and the other a world class beauty. Though, both were male. The both of them were also heteromorphs, the inhuman.

          The world in which this meeting between these two beings was Yggdrasil. Players of the game known as Yggdrasil can play as really anything, there are 720 playable races after all. Though, most people didn’t play as heteromorphs, for some odd reason, at least it was odd to the heteromorphs.

          As the Author had described and written, the one on the left of the table was a pile of evermoving tar and slime. This player had the tag of Herohero. He was a player of this game of course. Though he hadn’t been on in a while.

He was tired, as one could guess and see. His manager had been pushing him to the brink more and more as of late. This was also an all-to-common thing for people in the 22^nd century.

          The other one, sat in the middle of back of the table, was Momonga, and as stated before, was a female overlord. The avatar’s skin was pale, so pale it was slightly translucent. The hair was a white-ish lilac color that pulsed with negative energy. The eyes that looked at the elder ooze were red with upside down triangles for pupils.

          The avatar also wore a crown made of bone-white wood on her head, because, why not? He had taken it from the guild he had laid to rest yesterday, so he thought he should wear it.

Her chest was large and covered in an overlapping robe that seemed to hold in just enough for a man’s mind to start imagining things. Over the shoulders were puldrons that held small red orbs in them that crisscrossed and formed constellations that mankind could never see again. A red glow from a red orb could be seen peeking through the robes it wore.

          This person was also a member of the Heteromorphic classification. In fact, all the members of this guild were. He was also the guild master of this guild.

          The guild in question was called Ainz Ooal Gown. It had originally been a guild for all Heteromorphic beings to seek shelter from the other players of the game. But over time, it had become more of a roleplay group. Said roleplay revolved around their negative karma.

          You see, in Yggdrasil everybody has a karma score. It goes from -500 karma to +500 karma. The lower your karma score, the lower your morals are and vice versa.

Most people who were in the guild Ainz Ooal Gown were players with a negative karma score. Some of the only ones that didn’t were some of the original founders of the guild. But back to the matter at hand.

          “Wow, I can’t believe this place is still up and running Momonga. I half expected it to just be ruins by this point,” the Elder Ooze called Herohero said.

          The overlord nearly flinched in the game at those words. It was true by this point that most guild bases were in ruins, he had just run through one last night. The great underground tomb of Nazarick was spared this fate by its leader, Momonga.

          “Well, we spent so long on it, it would be a waste to let it rot like that,” responded the overlord.

          The sludge nodded what could only be its head and continued in its cold and tired voice. His tone and mannerisms made Momonga frown on the other side of the headset.

          “I feel like my avatar looks man. I’ll need to go now, got work in like four hours,” he said his peace.

          The overlord sent a smiley face emoji to him and spoke their last words to their good friend they’d probably ever have.

          “Alright man, feel better,” he said.

          “By man, I’ll miss this place. You were the right person to become guild master after all,” he said then left.

          The overlord grimaced and then frowned behind the headset once more. They gripped their hand and hit it upon the long table. The game calculated this as an attack and decided that this did zero damage to the table.

          “Just, please stay. We can talk about things, like how’s it been since we last saw each other. It’s only fifteen minutes till the shutdown, we can walk and talk about things,” the overlord mumbled to themselves as they hit the table once more and the game said they did nothing to it once more.

          “Just, what is this place to them? We built this place with blood, sweat and tears; mostly tears! Can some of them at least stay till the end?!” the overlord pushed their hands into the air and screamed into the microphone.

          Momonga looked around the room they were in and spotted the staff of Ainz Ooal Gown, the guild weapon. Momonga walked over to the staff and gripped it in his Avatar’s slender, yet strong hands.

          “You know what? Let’s go walk around the tomb and end this in the main hall, like we wanted to do at the end of this all,” he said through his Avatar’s motherly and mature voice.

          Momonga used to be a pure magic caster, before the rest of the guild left. When his friend Ulbert Alian Olde had left, he had decided to give Momonga his Title.

          Of course, this wasn’t without its challenge. Momonga had to beat Ulbert in a dual. After about nine consecutive rounds, Momonga had come out victorious. Though, this victory was bittersweet as Ulbert then left after giving a rather powerful speech to the rest of the guild that remained.

          “His words still linger in my mind, “follow your heart to home, there you shall see salvation,” he said in his avatar’s voice.

          The rest of the guild was mainly just Momonga and the original leader of the guild, Touch Me If You Can. After Ulbert had left, Touch Me had to go as well. The man had family he needed to take care of, and Momonga couldn’t fault him on that.

          Momonga took a deep and ragged breath on the other side of the headset. That trip down memory lane had brought with it some nostalgia and equal parts sadness.

          He looked at the staff in his Avatar’s hand once more. The staff was a culmination of the guild’s peak of power. The staff was a remembrance of his friends. Of their actions and time together.

          But that was enough sadness for now, right now he was standing by the battle maids. As far as he could remember, these maids were supposed to be sisters, though they looked nothing alike.

          Their leader was supposed to be his own butler. Though, he couldn’t remember his name for the life of him. He looked at the staff in his hands once more. Then raised it to the butler that looked to be made of steel and checked his name.

          “For the life of me I can’t remember your name. let’s check what it is, shall we?” Momonga spoke to himself, “Sebas.”

          He checked the name of the NPC and it said Sebas. Really though, Touch Me couldn’t come up with a better name. He sighed beneath his headset and looked over the rest of the NPCs there.

          He decided to take them with him to the grand hall where all the banners of the guild members were. He raised his hand to them and spoke the command.

          “Follow,” he said with his Avatars voice.

          He soon made it all the way to the door to the grand hall. The twin doors were made of metal and had a rather well-made depiction of an angel and a demon on them. Just as he was about to open the twin doors, he paused and looked around the room.

          There were a number of golems depicting demons all around the walls of the room. They had always given Momonga the creeps, but now they simply filled him with nostalgia.

          Then he pushed open the door and began to walk all the way down the hall. He looked up at the ceiling and saw all the emblems of all the other guild members. He was hit with another round of longing and a tear started to form in his eye behind the headset.

          He brought up his IRL hand and wiped it away. He spent years on this game, it was the only true game he had ever played really, and now it was going to be wiped out, cleansed. It was enough to make him cry.

          He took a deep breath when he got to the steps leading up to the throne of kings, a world level item that the guild obtained after killing the boss of the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick and taking it from him.

          He turned to the NPCs following him. He then raised his hand and told them to stay, yet when he walked up the steps, he heard them follow him. He turned back to them with a bit of a frown on his IRL face and tried to remember the right commands.

          “I think the right commands were, “Cease following and stay,” he said, and they stopped.

          He nodded his avatar’s head and went back up the steps to the throne of kings. There, he sat his avatar’s rather full rear down on it. He then set his staff to the side and let it float as if gravity didn’t even know that it existed.

          Lasing his avatar’s fingers together he looked to the NPC by his side. There she stood, the Guardian overseer of the tomb. Her name, if Momonga was to remember correctly was Albedo. Just as a smile came over his IRL face, he looked at the thing she was holding in her hands.

          “That’s a world level item,” he said.

He reached out for the staff at his side, and it came into his avatar’s hands. He raised the staff to the NPC and checked her over. He skimmed through the backstory section of her data sheet and found the end. He was hoping for an explanation from the NPC’s creator, Tabula Smaragdina, but no.

          The line that greeted the eyes of the last member of the Guild of Anz Ooal Gown was “But she is also a slut.”

          “Wha?” was the only thing to come out of the overlord’s mouth, “Tabula, that isn’t even “Gap Moe.” She’s a succubus, of course she’s gonna be a slut!” the overlord screamed right after.

          Then he erased the line and wrote his own line in place of it. He was rather happy with this line. It also made sense given what he did here most of the day.

          “She is also in Love with Momonga,” he smiled behind the headset, “there, that actually makes sense. At least Momonga and Albedo will live happily together in the afterlife after the shutdown. After all, it feels good to be remembered,” he said while nodding his head.

          He then closed the panel in front of him and looked at the time. Only a minute left until the shutdown. He laid his avatar’s back against the back of the throne and sighed.

          “It was a good run, but now it ends,” he closed his eyes, then the timer reached zero, and started counting once more.

…