You know the deal, I don't own Overlord or any of the characters except the OC being used. Here's to hoping he doesn't end up being too overpowered.

Please enjoy

"Ah, the number decreased again...Only a few left now, hm?"

A sad tone broke the silence surrounding what appeared to be an empty hill overlooking a fortress city. A large man clad in bright red armor had made this predictable and cliche location to be his final resting place...Well that was a bit dramatic for a video game but the feelings that statement carried felt all the same for him.

It was a sad day, the last in operation for the DMMO-RPG known as Yggdrasil, a game that in it's prime set the online gaming world ablaze with it's intuitive gameplay aspects and wide range of freedom. For those who dedicated large amounts of time and effort out of their lives to explore all the game had to offer the declaration of it's impending shutdown had cut deep. Twelve long years of dedication were about to disappear forever, and for the individual currently monitoring the number of players steadily dropping before his eyes he could only see the entire scenario as a void that likely wouldn't be filled anytime soon.

Tanabe Takahashi, a man in his late twenties whose life had consisted of playing video games or otherwise staring at a computer screen for at least twelve hours a day found himself as one of the few remaining players logged onto the dying game.

The man himself wasn't the most interesting of people, in fact he was quite the opposite, but not because he didn't have much personality, it was more like no one really wanted to know him any better than they already did. He was the disagreeable sort, stuck-up, judgmental, and he never hesitated to get involved in problems that weren't his concern. The kind of person who hated to be wrong and very much enjoyed the justification he received when he was right. A textbook "smartass" as most would call him, a big reason why he didn't have many friends, though that fact didn't bother him at all.

With all that said, why was a man like this spending his time playing games like a middle schooler on a saturday night? The answer was simple really: The traits he exhibited, namely his aptitude for playing judge, jury and executioner with the people he encountered made him a surprisingly good candidate for administration.

As unlikely as it seemed, Takahashi Tanabe had landed himself a job as a server admin for one of the most popular role-playing games in the past decade, and it fit him perfectly. With no more than a few hours of sleep each night, he managed his responsibilities almost flawlessly, keeping order and making sure every rule in the player guidelines was enforced without exception. Because of his position and because he was almost always the one in the right he pretty much had all the justification he needed to be himself and do as he pleased with those reckless enough to find themselves under his ire, earning him the nickname "Gatekeeper of Hell" by both his colleagues and fellow players.

His character was the personification of that very being. A large intimidating monster of a man with plates of red metal covering every inch of his body, leaving only his bright orange eyes visible in the visor to his helmet. In his right hand was a massive great axe, the perfect weapon for chopping down those he found guilty of tampering with the game files, using any kind of third party program or whatever other offense was deserving of being struck by the almost literal ban hammer.

Yes, to wield such power for himself was a dream come true. But alas that dream was coming to an end. With Yggdrasil gone he would likely have to begin concentrating his efforts on whatever new project was in store to replace it, one that may or may not grant him the same position of authority he had in Yggdrasil. It was a sad thing to think about. Sure, there were hundreds of others like him who worked on the game almost tirelessly but they'd already taken off along with ninety five percent of the active player base. And so it was up to him to make sure no last minute trolls would have the game go out on a bad note, not even in the last few minutes it would have, well no one except him anyway.

Even if it was only for a little while, Tanabe or "NemomeN", as his avatar was named found himself staring into the sky in deep thought as he watched the player count for the server shrink more and more with each passing second, knowing that there was nothing to be done to stop it.

"To think all these so called fans won't even see the game through all the way to its end…"He spoke again to no one in particular, not having noticed that those who'd sat around him were long since gone.

He had hoped to at least get one more chance at handling a reckless fool who decided to do as they pleased with the games final moments but that hope was now gone, all that was left was to log off at midnight and go to bed.

10 seconds until the shutdown.

He sat down and waited.

7 seconds remaining.

"I'm probably the only one who seriously thought to stay for the last day, how disappointing…"

3 seconds remaining.

He counted down in his head

1 second remaining

"Wished it could have lasted just a little while longer..."

00:00:01

Huh?

His eyes snapped open but...Everything was blank.

For a moment he froze, unsure of what to think. Then he took a look down at himself. He was still wearing the same armor.

"Is this the end of the...Game?" His voice echoed outward, no ears to fall on but his own.

He scanned his environment. Nothing in sight, just a gray canvas. Not only that, the HUD was essentially gone, leaving him in seemingly real first person experience.

He stood up and moved his body, unfamiliar with the sudden weight he was feeling, actually feeling anything at all was kind of weird. He took a step forward and nearly panicked when he heard the resounding thud from his footfall.

Looking down he stepped again, taking note of the sound, then he stomped harder, making a loud boom.

"Uh..."

The sound was terrifying, and the weight of his own leg even more so. It was as if he could suddenly feel the very armor he was wearing.

He tried to open a menu, to message another GM, but was met with failure. With no other options coming to mind he closed his eyes for a moment to think. "A system failure? Or maybe the game crashed?" But those theories didn't seem right, if the game had broken in some way then he should have been logged out immediately and yet here he was, in the same armor and with the same ominous voice he used to judge other players so harshly.

His confusion was matched only by curiosity. If he was still within the game then he must have found himself in a precarious position due to a failure that came from the server shutdown. His current whereabouts were clearly an unrefined space outside of the map. But that would mean the game was still running somehow, that he somehow managed to remain inside the system despite the shutdown, that was the only explanation that he could come up with on the spot.

Slowly he checked the rest of his equipment: Weapon? Check. Skills? A spinning slash proved that function to still be in effect as well.

accessories...?

He looked to his left hand and inspected the ring on the index finger. The one accessory he kept on consistently was the Gamemaster's Ring, the only in-game physical evidence of one's status as an administrator aside from a small title beside his username. The ring was an unobtainable item, reserved only for those of his position, one that basically made him into a walking god among men. When equipped many basic game rules stopped applying, to the point that a warrior like himself could cast a few high tier spells, teleport, tamper with the nature of items or other players, and even fly across the map without much effort. Much like a world item it was obviously too powerful to be used without good reason and thus could only very rarely be activated. He already missed the immediate fear and respect he gained whenever he would show up in person to tend to his duties as a server admin. If the ring still functioned correctly then it should have made it easy to return to the map.

"Enhanced Recall." He voiced the command of returning to home, expecting an immediate shift in scenery.

Nothing happened.

"That didn't work...Then, Mirror of Remote Viewing!"

The meter tall floating device popped into reality in front of Tanabe, an honest surprise to him.

"Hmmm, how do I- ah there we are." With a bit of fiddling he was able to orient himself and scope out the land...Unfamiliar land.

"People? Villagers, And that village...Wait, where is that exactly?" His voice slowly went from intrigued to outright confused.

Getting a view of the landscape through this mirror had raised even more questions than before. Not only were there functioning NPCs but there was also a village he had never seen before along with a landscape very different from what he was used to. He should have been in a fortress city located at the base of a mountain but instead there were plains and trees and villages and people and...His head began to hurt, the game was clearly still running despite the deadline and the one place he could see thus far was unfamiliar to him.

Again he took a look around at the space before him. Emptiness. A gray background with no foreseeable end and a white floor that echoed his footsteps as he walked upon it. This was definitely someplace out of the map, perhaps above the skybox? He didn't have much of a lead to go on, and his current plans to get out of there were slipping rapidly.

He could not use the ring to teleport to a place he didn't know the location of and he surely wasn't about to try and risk sending himself into yet another unknown plane of existence. Slowly his confusion became frustration.

"You had one job guys, how did you manage to botch shutting down the game? Is there not an off button? Open task manager and kill program or something!" And his rant was nothing more than nerd rage.

If his avatar was stuck and he couldn't log out then next would be trying to contact other players, after all when he'd closed his eyes before the "shutdown" the number of available players may have been exceedingly low but it wasn't zero, which meant a few others probably also got stuck in the same situation as him. What a horrible way to send the game off.

Shaking his head at the the thought of others messing up this badly he once again looked to his mirror and began searching the land for familiar landmarks. Nothing, nothing he saw stood out to him at all. He was stuck sitting in spectator mode and had no clue what he was watching over. "Contact a random then?" It was a stretch but if others were as stuck as he was then it only made sense for him to check and so he attempted to use「Message」on an adventurer who seemed enough like a new player for him to believe it might not be an NPC. To his dismay the result of such a risky tactic was the confusion and ensuing panic of the poor rookie adventurer.

"Is that in my head? Who said that? Show yourself!" The adventurer yelled, not sure as to who had spoken to him.

"Uh, what?" And of course the human-like response caught the admin completely off guard.

The NPC spoke. He spoke of his own volition in a seemingly dynamic manner.

"You can talk? Like, talk normally? You can understand what I'm saying?" The warrior spoke quickly, to him things were getting far too weird.

"Yes, I can! Who are you!?"

For a moment Tanabe froze up. This was not a player, but to call it an NPC when it could think and act in such a manner was not right either. This was not a game, it had to be a dream then, there was no possible way that this could be real.

"Hello?" The young adventurer called out again in his silence.

Tanabe shook his head and stared on for a bit longer before dispelling the message spell completely, leaving his victim clueless. There were real living people...Was people the right word? He didn't even know at this point, but this little bit of information was more than enough to open his eyes to the reality of his situation. The results of this experiment should have terrified him, but realizing that living, sentient people were somehow walking around in what should have been a dead world blew his mind.

Then a scary thought invaded his mind.

Without another word he picked up his great axe and examined it carefully. Then he swung it a few times, he wasn't imagining things now, nor trying to come up with an excuse for any oddities he was experiencing. He could truly feel the weight behind his swings and hear the sound of the weapon cutting through the air.

Then he sat in silence again before removing his his helmet and taking a look at it next. If this were a dream then it was too good to be true, his senses were not only intact, they were working better than he could remember.

It took more than a few minutes of silent processing before his mind truly caught up to everything he was experiencing.

"I'm not religious but whatever God heard my wish..." He stopped talking there, too excited to even think of anything other than what he wanted to do first.

Before that though another idea came to mind. He quickly turned back to the mirror he summoned and scoped out the environment for another person to run tests on. Information gathering was not very easy to do in such a roundabout way but with a bit of practice the mirror was not so difficult to use and new people could be found, he needed to be absolutely sure that this wasn't just some crazy coincidence, that the "NPC" were truly capable of responding like normal people.

An hour passed very quickly for a nerd who'd come to terms with figuring out he was in an isekai situation.

Honestly for him this was thrilling, absolutely thrilling. What was once a horrible day had become a miracle among miracles, something he could have never in his wildest dreams expect to happen. He could already see what would happen should he mess around a little too much, but he had no reason to let this opportunity go to waste. If this were a dream, hallucination or anything similar then he wanted to enjoy it while it lasted before he woke up.

Now only one issue stood in his way: Figuring out where he was, and how to get to the new world that awaited him.

"What should I do then? If I could escape this room then-" He spoke up for a second but stopped when another voice cut in.

"Huh? The GM call function isn't working."

What was that? Another voice? And louder than the rest. The admin immediately began searching tirelessly for the source with his mirror.

"What's wrong Lord Momonga?" said another voice, this one female.

The voices he heard in his head were concerning to say the least, but it was a sign of something significant. Whatever just spoke seemed to know of GM calls, meaning that this person must have been in Yggdrasil beforehand. The terrifying thought of others winding up in the same situation as him suddenly got far worse. As if the world of possibilities that had just collapsed on him wasn't enough already.

Tanabe looked back to his mirror and began his search, it took a bit of time but he finally came upon what seemed to be a dungeon. No, to be specific it was a tomb and not just any tomb, any serious Yggdrasil player would have been able to identify the place immediately and Tanabe was no exception.

The Great Tomb of Nazarick. The dungeon belonging to one of the top 10 guilds in all of Yggdrasil, Ainz Ooal Gown. It was there and there was no mistaking that the voices he was hearing came from there as well. He began to try getting his mirror to work inside the walls of the tomb. Of course under regular circumstances, the mirror would not be able to see inside any structure, let alone a multi-layered dungeon of death but he had a nifty little cheat item at his disposal.

"Best I don't start relying on this thing too much, lest I become dependent on it." The admin spoke at a whisper, not wanting his voice to carry through the medium he was using like a television screen.

With a little flash, he used the Gamemaster's Ring to alter his Mirror of Remote Viewing, just enough to get it to look a further than just beyond a few walls.

And what he saw, what he saw was truly a sight to behold. This was unlike anything he would have ever thought to witness in this world, a sight most would not believe. What he saw was…

A skeleton groping his female attendant.

And thus Tanabe, began to witness the exploits of Ainz Ooal Gown first hand.

To be continued…If you want it to

This is actually a rewrite of a story I was already writing, I'm hoping it turn out a bit better now.