"What the hell?"

Awoken from the sounds of his alarm, Suzuki's vision began to clear. He was in a small dark room, sitting on a high-class comfortable looking chair with a footrest.

"Shit. My head..." He gripped his head because of a sudden headache. He winced from the pain. Usually, after playing Yggdrasil, he would log out from Yggdrasil and go sleep in his room, but he had woken up in his chair. I must have fallen asleep after the shutdown. Wait, the shutdown? Oh yeah, that happened.He became depressed at the thought of the Yggdrasil shutdown. In the beautiful years of Nine's Own Goal and Ainz Ooal Gown, he had experienced so many wonderful memories with his guildmates. Now, there was no shred of evidence left from that time.

"Damn it. DAMN IT ALL!" Suzuki pounded at the arm at his chair.

"Shit!" After he let his anger subside for a bit, he became depressed once more.

There probably won't even be a Yggdrasil 2 anyways. Hell, I probably won't be able to talk to anyone else before, since only 4 people had come yesterday…

"Man, what the hell am I supposed to do after work?" Suzuki kept on talking to himself. Talking to himself became one of his growing tendencies since no one had come around anymore back in Yggdrasil.

He unplugged the cord from out of the back of his neck and took his helmet off.

He left to work with nothing eventful happening. The same dreary work as before. He got home and his door welcomed him with the same ear-piercing sound as always. He dumped his work clothes on the floor like normal and went to go eat. The same paste as always was on the menu, but Suzuki ate it with no complaints.

When he had finished, he mindlessly walked over to the room with his VR gear and sat down on his chair. He went to plug in the cable that connected the headset to his neck, but he had stopped midway. He had realized something. He was about to go and log into Yggdrasil out of habit.

"Ah. That's right. I'm so fucking stupid." Suzuki's normal routine consisted of going to work then playing Yggdrasil when he had gotten home. He had had this routine for years and had followed it without failure.

The problem now is that Yggdrasil is gone. Leaving a hole in both his routine and his heart.

He slammed his fist onto the chair's armrest for the second time today. Despite the blow, the chair remained unharmed.

Shit! My hand!

When he had slammed his fist down, he had hit it at a weird angle, causing his hand to hurt for a bit. He winced at his mistake.

Clutching his hand, he rubbed it in hopes of easing his pain a bit. Silence permeated throughout the room.

After the pain had gone away, Suzuki broke the silence once more. "What the hell is wrong with me? I should have known to not do this ages ago but, yet, I still haven't accepted that Yggdrasil is truly gone now."

The only thing that I have now is just my work. Maybe I'll finally play an eroge game that Peroroncino-san has always tried to make me try out.

Just kidding.

And so for the next few months, Suzuki's life began to become grayer and grayer and grayer. He was yelled at by his bosses again and again for trivial mistakes and given more work and more unpaid overtime. It had gotten to the point where almost every day had played out the same. He would wake up, work, get yelled at, work some more, and go home to sleep.

In his sleep, he would dream of another world.

He would dream of the NPC's. They talked to him as if they were actual people, which was strange to even imagine since they were all just code.

He dreamed of opening a small black box, but the dream would usually end there as everything else became fuzzy and he would wake up.

Of course, like all dreams, they would be forgotten before the days end.

.

.

.

"Ainz-sama! Please wake up!"

Suzuki was abruptly awoken from his sleep by something that he had thought he had heard.

"What the?"

He sat upon his bed and looked around the room. There was no one in the room so he concluded that it was probably part of his dream or an auditory hallucination.

I don't remember having a weird dream today though…

Suzuki prepared himself for work as he ate his breakfast in silence the same paste as always was on the menu, but Suzuki ate it with no complaints and put on his everyday suit and tie.

He was putting on his shoes getting ready to leave before being interrupted by the sounds of his doorbell ringing. He looked through the eye hole of his door. A tall man dressed in a red deliveryman uniform stood at his doorway. Usually, the mail was left in the lobby of the apartment complex, but this probably meant that he had to sign something.

Weird. Usually, they don't come this early.

Suzuki opened the door and got a better look at the man. His black hair was slicked back as he bore a wicked smile on his face. His eyes were hidden behind the reflection of his glasses.

"I have a delivery for you. Please sign the form as confirmation." He had a particularly luscious voice as he spoke. He held a small package in one hand and a tablet in the other, prompting Suzuki to sign it.

Suzuki quickly signed for the package and went back into his apartment.

The package was strange as it did not have a sender's address on it, nor did it have any discernible features on it. Opening the box, he found a smaller black box inside. It looked like a jewelry box with exquisite engravings etched onto it. It was made with excellent craftsmanship and the box itself looked to be extremely valuable.

Was I sent this by mistake? Who could have even bought me this in the first place?

He grabbed the jewelry box and opened it. It held a beautiful golden ring with an intricate symbol etched onto the center of the ring's red jewel.

He immediately knew what this was. It was a replica of the guild ring of Ainz Ooal Gown. Even though much time had passed, he recognized the symbol of Ainz Ooal Gown. How could he forget something so memorable and precious to him?

He reached out to touch the gem with his finger and was met by a small zap. He instantly retracted his finger from the moment he had felt it.

The ring couldn't have had a zapping effect added as a prank right? I'm probably overreacting since it just might have been a static shock.

He reached out to touch it once again, but this time he did not feel anything. So it was just nothing huh. If It had been a function, I might've known who could have sent this to me.

Unfortunately, he had no more time to admire the ring since he was going to run late for work so he closed the box and put it away.

He rode the bullet train, as usual, to get to his work which was a nice 20 minutes away. His boss would dock his pay and give him more unpaid overtime if he was late, so luckily he lived somewhat nearby.

Looking out the window, he looked out at the various domes out of sheer boredom. He noticed the big ads for different products outside of every dome, but there was one that caught his eye. A gigantic poster for a fantasy game with the title of: 'Join the new Sorcerous Kingdom! New adventures await you!' appeared on one of the domes.

Seems like a new VRMMO is already popping up with the absence of Yggdrasil. Or It had just always been there but I just never really noticed. Suzuki had no intention of doing anything that wasn't playing Yggdrasil. But now that Yggdrasil is gone, the thought of having to move on to a new game started to fill up his mind.

"No… Never," he said under his breath.

Nothing could ever replace Yggdrasil for me. The hard work that I and my comrades have made, will never be seen again. My, no, our glorious Nazarick, will never be seen again.

"Haaaah." Suzuki laid back on his seat. He had to remove all of the thoughts from his mind before he went back to work. He would be less productive if he got distracted which means more overtime for him.

He then saw it. Out the corner of his eye, two kids ran past him as they giggled. He could barely make it out but they looked like blond-haired twins. By the time he had looked towards where they were running, they had disappeared. He rubbed his eyes in disbelief. So how could they just disappear like that? Was I just hallucinating from the lack of sleep?

Thinking about it wouldn't be much help at all so he went back to looking outside of the window, though there wasn't much to see.

He arrived at his workplace and began to start on his usual enormous pile of work. He was also expected to train a new employee as well, which just increased his workload further. Luckily, she would be reassigned to a new branch tomorrow, so this would just be teaching her the basics. Usually, Suzuki would quickly finish his work so he could go back to playing Yggdrasil. He would probably have to stay behind for the first time in forever. It didn't matter anymore anyway.

The new employee was no doubt new. Compared to the employees at the company, she lacked the usually tired eyes and the unenthusiastic charm of every employee. She was also beautiful, with raven black hair, and beautiful enough to bewitch any man she desired. A shame she had to waste that beauty of hers here.

Satoru helped her the best he could, though, she was already the hard worker and she got the hang of everything pretty quickly.

"Excuse me Satoru-san, how do I deal with this particular client's order? I'm running into a wall of sorts."

Suzuki looked up at the beauty, breaking the concentration of his work once more.

He moved from his messy desk and walked over to hers. Her desk was the definition of neat and tidy. Not one object was out of place.

Albedo pointed at the company's name on the screen. Baharuth Industrial, have I heard of that name from somewhere?

"Baharuth Industrial, huh?"

"Have they had a history with our company?"

"Yes, though their relationship with this company is fairly new. They had specified to keep everything the same, but I don't have access to their purchase history yet."

"Rather than talking to the manager about it, I'll send you their previous orders from my account so you can copy it off of there. It'll be faster this way since you'll still get the credentials for it tomorrow. Other than that, I'm not sure on their specifics so you'll have to take over from there"

"Thank you so much! Sasuga Satoru-sama! " She then quickly went back to her desk and resumed work.

Did she just say 'Sasuga Satoru-sama?' No, I was probably just imagining it. I'm not worthy of any praise since all I did was just send her a list of their purchase history. Soon enough you'll be reassigned to a new branch and forget about me.

The rest of the day went on as usual and the number of questions began to lessen quickly. At this rate, Suzuki would be able to finish his work in peace and be able to leave at a normal time.

His eyes hurt from staring at his screen for hours on end and he had felt very fatigued but he endured it. He didn't want to stay an extra minute at his workplace again.

After an hour, he decided to give his eyes a break from the blue light of the computer screen and looked away for a bit. He closed his eyes for just a second, but that was enough to make him fall asleep in his chair.

He found himself laid in a large grassy field. It was nighttime, but everything was so illuminated by the moonlight. The sky was clear and the stars in the sky glittered like jewels.

This dream had felt so vivid that he had sworn he had felt the cold breeze waft over him.

He began to tear up. He was extremely awed by the sky. Clear, just like how Blue Planet had shown to him once before but was even more beautiful. It had paled in comparison.

He reached his hand out toward the night sky, looking into the distance as he remembered his old comrade.

The stars then slowly began to flicker away, everything became cloudy and dark, hiding the moon once and for all. The grass beneath him withered away. Everything became as he had known it to be in reality.

Chains rose from the ground and tied him to the ground. He continued to struggle to get out of the chains as he was being dragged deeper and deeper underground.

"No! No! Let me see it once more! I don't want to-!"

"Wake up!"

His eyes snapped open. He was back at his office desk. He looked to his right after noticing someone that was tapping on his shoulder.

"I came in to check on you but you were fast asleep! I thought it would be a good idea to wake you up since it's almost time to leave."

It was the woman from before. She still looked beautiful even after all this time. He was able to smell her perfume because of how close she was. It smells nice and familiar…

"Ara ara senpai, are you going to continue staring at me or are you going to finish up your work?"

Had I been staring at her for that long?!

"Oh! S-sorry about that. I-I'll get back to it t-then." Suzuki blushed a bit as he went back to work.

The day ended as a bell rung signaling the end of Suzuki's workday. Luckily, he had reached today's quota right as the day had ended, or else he would have been in major trouble.

Suzuki began to walk out of his office's building when someone ran up to him. It was the woman from earlier, but he had forgotten her name. Rather, he hadn't asked for it in the first place since he was only going to train her today before she was moved to another branch.

"I wanted to thank you for today before you left." She bore a warm smile for Suzuki.

Suzuki blushed a bit. Of course, this would be his reaction since he had never been genuinely thanked before, especially from a beautiful woman such as herself.

"T-thanks. I just did my job though. It wasn't anything too praiseworthy or anything to be thanked for."

"That's not true. You've helped me learn some new things as well today. The people whom I've worked with before expected me to do things on my own but I'm glad you were nice enough to help me."

Satoru began to get a bit more flustered by her comment. "As I told you, I was just doing my job! You- You know, I should be thanking you instead! If you hadn't woken me up I would've-"

"Pfffft! Don't worry about it at all. Getting flustered about it won't help your case. Let's just call it even then."

"F-Fine then… Anyways, I didn't catch your name. What was it?"

The woman lightly chuckled.

"It's Albedo."

That name's oddly familiar… I swear I've heard of it before from-

"Oh! Forgive me Satoru-san, but I'm going to have to leave before I'm late for my bus!"

Suzuki was broken from his thoughts as he watched her quickly wave goodbye to him and gracefully ran towards the bus stop.

He waved goodbye in return as they went their separate ways.

By the time he arrived back home, it had already gotten late. His door welcomed him with the same ear-piercing sound as always. He dumped his work clothes on the floor like normal and went to go eat. He'll be able to think more on a full stomach.

After he ate, he went to go watch T.V since he had nothing better to do. Although he had no interest in the news, he flipped through some of the news channels. More jargon about threats from other countries, more companies on the rise again, and one thing that attracted his eye.

The newscaster was in the middle of his story, but Suzuki couldn't help but look at him. The newscaster looked like an old man, but his figure was sharp and imposing. He had a warm and welcoming face, but a sharp gaze. I think I've seen him before but I don't know where…

The screen then went haywire for a second before returning to normal and haywire again. You could still hear tidbits of the audio but they became extremely cryptic.

"I don't know- wrong with- z-sama. I can't heal- we should- call- Peston-. She- able to- wake him."

What the hell is he talking about? He switched to another channel hoping for it to be different.

It wasn't.

This time the newscaster had the appearance of a buxom fourteen-year-old girl. Or well, she looked like one since the size of her chest looked oddly big for her stature. He felt like he had known her as well.

Again the screen kept on glitching and the audio was cutting in and out again.

"I've already- her. She should be- minute now- insu."

He switched the channels again, more rapidly this time. The voices of each caster slowly meshed together to create one sentence that repeated over and over.

"He- won't- wake- up."

"He- won't- wake- up."

"He- won't- wake- up."

"HE WON'T WAKE UP."

He turned off the T.V.

He quietly went to his room and opened one of his drawers. He grabbed the black jewelry box and sat down on his bed. He opened the box to see the same ring glimmering in the box.

Ever since I received this ring, strange things have happened as of late. He began to recall his dream, the disappearing twins, his new responsibility that was Albedo, the newscasters, and the voices that he's heard throughout the day.

They all stayed fresh on his mind. It was as if something was calling him, but he didn't know what.

He looked back at the ring. It looked as if it were glowing, beckoning him to put it on. He grabbed the ring hesitantly and it glowed intensely and gave off a glamorous aura. It was as if the ring had found its owner.

What'll happen if I put the ring on?

He put it on his left ring finger. Once he had put it on, the ring began to glow even more. With that as a signal, memories began to flood back into his mind.

Memories of Nazarick.

Memories of the new world.

Memories of the guardians.

Tears began to pour out of his eyes. He had realized what was happening.

"You've finally realized it, haven't you Satoru-san. Or should I say Ainz-sama."

Suzuki looked to where the voice came from and saw her. Albedo, the coworker, was in his room now. He wiped his tears away. He looked back at Albedo and she had now changed to her true form. The beautiful Overseer of the Guardians of the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

"I have Albedo, though, you aren't real are you?"

Albedo gave Ainz a warm smile.

"It is as you have surmised Ainz-sama. This reality, including myself, was created when you opened that box. A world in which you had never been transported to the new world."

"What about the hallucinations? Were they also created by the box or?"

"They were not hallucinations but snippets of the ongoing reality that have leaked into this world."

If what I had heard from the voices were real then, "Everyone must be really worried about me..."

"It's all up to you if you want to return."

"This world is fake, isn't it? Why would I stay after hearing I could leave?" This reality is so much worse compared to the beautiful and vast new world full of life. Nothing is real anyways. Even if I choose to stay, I would be failing countless people in the real world.

"You know what to do, don't you?"

Ainz gave her a silent nod.

As he unleashed the ring's power, the world before him began to crumble away before turning black.

' W ' It's Authors note teim baby!

This chapter was... (uses calculator) about 60% Longer than the last one! w

I planned to make this chapter 4k words long but I guess that plan failed! Umu, I wanted to release this already too! Well, if you include this Author's note, it makes this 3,820 words long to be exact! It's not much of a difference anyway.

Sorry for the late release as this was planned to come out 2 days ago! Though... least I brought you 1k more words! Plus, I wasn't happy on the way some of the events had played out and I didn't have enough words at all! Plus, this wasn't proofread as well as I wanted it to be but oh well. As always, please leave your comments and suggestions down below. Pffft, I love that I got 2 reviews about humanizing Ainz or giving him an "extra bone".

owo Expect a chapter to come out every week or so!

Update as of 5/8/2020: I have 2 new puppies to deal with and y'know, google meetings and shid cause of Corona-chan. Ano, expect a chapter next week or so. Sorry for promising a weekly schedule when this happened LOL.